Book Review: An Artficial Night

This book was the third book in Seanan McGuire’s urban fantasy series about a changeling P.I. named October “Toby” Daye.  I’ve read all three books in the series over the past month and a half or so, and have to say I’m incredibly impressed.

The primary plot of An Artificial Night involves Toby Daye’s quest to rescue a group of abducted children from the Wild Hunt.  The quest has several complications.  The children come from several different faerie backgrounds: the mixed blood children of one of Toby’s best friends; the nephew and royal heir of Tybalt, the Cait Sidhe King of Cats who has a very complicated relationship with Toby; the human girlfriend of Quentin, a pure blood Dainh Sidhe who could best be described as informally apprenticed to Toby.  The Wild Hunt is led by Blind Micheal, who is a firstborn faerie and thus insanely powerful.  Unfortunately he is also powerfully insane, at least by human standards.  There is a sharp time limit, or the kids will be forever part of the Wild Hunt.  Each of the three paths Toby could use to get to Blind Micheal’s realm can only be used once, and each has a toll.  Oh, and Toby’s fetch, a magical duplicate and omen of oncoming imminent death, has shown up to be there when Toby dies.

The plotting is tight and suspenseful.  The prose is richly descriptive, making it easy to visualize the action.  The characters are interesting and sympathetic, and McGuire paints a wonderfully believable picture of fae society in the Bay Area, and the intricate protocols of fae interactions.  The theme of the novel is courage and heroism, as Toby is forced to push herself to her limits to protect those she cares for and to admit to herself that she is in fact a Hero.  (And decide what exactly that means, particularly when capitalized…)  Moreover, not only does Toby grow and mature over the course of the book and the series, her relationships gain nuance and depth.  For example, I mentioned Quentin as an informal apprentice.  In the first novel, Rosemary and Rue, he is a spoiled courtier.  By An Artificial Night, he is a friend, one of those who voluntarily binds himself to the cause of helping and protecting Toby just as she helps and protects her family of friends.

The depth of characters is ultimately the novel’s greatest strength.  Seanen McGuire gets us to care about Toby and her friends, to feel her pains and triumphs, and to emotionally invest ourselves in the outcome.  There is a little bit of hand-waving in the ultimate ending, but McGuire gets away with it because our suspense isn’t so much about whether Toby will succeed (of course, she will, she’s a series protagonist!) but about what sacrifices will she have to make to succeed and what scars will those sacrifices leave.

I strongly encourage anyone who hasn’t read this series to do so immediately.  (And I will also throw in a blatant plug: Book 4 in the series, Late Eclipses, is supposed to be released today.  Go out and buy it today!)

Real Concert

Last night, my wife and I went to see Lincoln Brewster in concert.  For those who don’t know (a group that included me until recently) Lincoln Brewster is a very talented Christian Rock musician.  Neither my wife nor I knew what to expect at the concert.  The tickets had been my Valentine’s Day present to my wife, so I was hoping the show would be good, but I was a little nervous.

We had some good reasons to be nervous.  Not only was neither of us personally familiar with his music, but both of us generally listen to secular music.  My wife generally listens to mainstream pop and country, and somehow I became a big fan of alternative and punk music.  The concert venue was our church.  Fairhaven is a very cool church, but you rarely hear ‘church’ and ‘awesome concert’ in the same sentence.  The opening act was the church choir.  Yes, it’s a cool church and a talented choir, but again you rarely hear ‘church choir’ and ‘awesome rock concert’ in the same sentence.  My mom is in that choir.  My wife’s Valentine’s Day present was a pair of tickets to see her mother-in-law in concert.  Go ahead, take a moment to wrap your mind around that last sentence and ask what I was thinking.  That’s why I was nervous about the concert experience.

So I’m thinking, “small concert, large church, show up a half hour early to deal with Will Call and we’ll be good.”  First surprise of the evening: the parking lot is full.  The auditorium is full.  The concert is sold out and Fairhaven is jam-packed for the concert.  Not a problem; the staff at Fairhaven anticipated the crowd and handled everything smoothly.  But since my wife and I hadn’t anticipated the crowd it was quite a surprise.

Second surprise: Lincoln Brewster is an incredible guitarist.  I had heard the choir perform a few of the songs he’s written.  I knew they would be inspiring and uplifting; I knew he’s a talented song writer.  I didn’t realize that Lincoln Brewster had once been lead guitarist for Steve Perry, that he was an A-list caliber music talent.  I was struck speechless by just how good a guitarist he was.  As a singer, he was decent.  Not great, but perfectly serviceable.  His guitar playing and his message were what made him a great musician.

Between songs, Lincoln talked about his life, his family, and how he got to be where he is today.  Both in his talking, and in his songs, his joy in his life is apparent.  Without being preachy, his music emphasizes thanking God for what is good in your life and trusting God to help you through what is not-good in your life.  When he played ‘Real Life’, the title track for his most recent CD, he also showed a video slide show that his mother had made for his birthday, showing both pictures from his childhood and more recent pictures of Lincoln with his wife and sons.  The song is a chillingly beautiful reflection on where he’s been, where he is, and where he hopes to be.  His sense of humor is real, and grounded.  It was relaxingly casual hearing him speak, and then his songs had the crowd on our feet and singing along and jumping up and down.  My wife and I were both moved by the concert, and it was one of the best ‘date nights’ we’ve had in a while.

It may be a rarely heard sentence, but you are hearing it here: I went to see Lincoln Brewster and the Fairhaven Church Choir last night, and it was one of the most awesome rock concerts I’ve been to.

Flyer Design

As a writer, I tend to focus upon fiction.  It’s more ‘glamorous’ and I was drawn to writing by my love of reading, so I naturally think of what I love to read.  On the other hand, I started this blog to show off all of my writing skills.  And given that glamour doesn’t pay bills, I also want to show prospective employers what a skilled communicator can accomplish.

The assignment here was to design a billboard flyer to advertise my availability as a math tutor.  Most such flyers are hand-written, black & white affairs, with tear off tabs along the bottom with info about how to reach the person offering services.  My goals were: 1) use color and computer formatting to make a flyer that catches the eye; 2) make a sales pitch that indicated I was willing to accommodate tutorees, professional, and capable; 3) indicate my general flexibility as I consider myself a jack-of-all-trades and/or utility player rather than a specialist but without detracting from my focus on mathematics tutoring.

The link below shows the result.  The actual flyer also has tear tabs with my name, my ‘math nerd’ e-mail address, and my cell phone number.  The two clip art images are from a quick google search for free math clip art.  The clip art draws the eye, the alliterative intro both establishes that I’m trying to reach students (or parents of students) with math difficulty and encourages people to read on.  The use of integral signs for the qualification bullets is a quirky little way of pairing the flyer with higher math.  The ultimate test, of course, is how many calls the flyer generates, but I’m satisfied with this flyer both as the writer and as my own client for this assignment…

TablessFlyer

My love-hate relationship

There is probably a certain inherent irony to blogging about being a Luddite.  (For those who don’t sponge up odd trivia the way I do, ‘Luddite’ is a historical term.  It refers to protesters who destroyed machinery in the 18th and 19th centuries to try to stop the infernal forces of progress as represented by steam power.)  Yet my relationship with technology is definitely a love-hate relationship.  And the hate portion of the relationship is strong enough that I have real Luddite tendencies.

I’ve come to the conclusion that technology doesn’t solve problems.  Instead, technology allows us to trade old problems for new problems.  We’ve made life complicated enough that we can’t easily determine whether the new problems are better or worse than the old ones.  I’m also naturally conservative.  I’m not talking politically conservative (although I’m that also) but conservative in lifestyle.  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  Change is not necessarily for the better.  Don’t rock the boat, if you don’t have to.  So I don’t see new technology as great, just because it is new technology. 

One of my managers was bragging about his iPhone, and how he “couldn’t live without it.”  Now I’ll admit there is an element of sour grapes: I can’t afford an iPhone, so I cannot conduct the experiment to see if I’m wrong.  But I just see it as a silly toy.  I don’t understand people wanting to watch TV or movies on a screen that small.  I wouldn’t want to deal with e-mail or blogging with such a ridiculously tiny keypad.  My brother-in-law, a musician, showed my a bunch of virtual instrument apps and they just struck me as silly.  I have a cell phone, true, but I view the thing as a nuisance, there for emergencies only.

I enjoy my gaming console, true, but I’m quite content to play older games.  In fact, I am annoyed with most of the newer games, which often feel more concerned with look and feel than story and plot, which were what I wanted from games.  I enjoy blogging, but I cannot stand the social networking sites, which seem to me to embody the worst parts of high school.  (Seriously, how has making little virtual cliques become the internet juggernaut that it has?  Doesn’t anybody else think asking someone else to ‘friend’ them is like a fourth grader writing a note on a napkin in the cafeteria, “Do you like me?  Check yes or no.”)

I think the concept of hybrid cars is neat.  But, for the moment, you pay more upfront for the concept then you can expect to save over the life of the car.  That is changing, yes.  Economies of scale are reducing the cost of the car and of parts and maintenance.  The growth in China and India are creating a demand pressure on gas prices.  Eventually hybrids will be a cost-effective technology.  But we aren’t there yet, and I’m irritated with being pushed.

I’m running out of time today, so I may return to this rant later.  I admit that technology has an upside.  But I also feel like as a society we rush in to embrace new technologies before we need to, and there is lots of technology that I find annoying, or irritating, or just over hyped.  I don’t over-idealize the past, but there are times when I would like to trade modern problems for archaic ones again.

Did I mention I’m jealous?

I’m jealous of Mike Stackpole, who is a really strong contender to be my favorite author.  I wish I had his life, his accomplishments, his skills, et. cetera.  If I did that sort of thing, I would be his creepy stalker fan, and I mean that in a good way.  Years ago, when I was a geeky student into RPG’s and sci-fi, Mike Stackpole was the best of the writers working in FASA’s BattleTech universe.  He had a chance to hit the best sellers list by working in the Star Wars universe while Star Wars hype was at its peak because of the prequel trilogy of films.  Since then, he has been writing fantasy in original universes, all of which have been amazingly layered and nuanced, with both superior action scenes and detailed intrigues.

There are several reasons I’m jealous.

First, in my mind, writers can be classified in a hierarchy.  The bottom tier is those who do not write.  Many people are quite content to be in this tier, and have no aspirations to climb higher.  The next tier is what I consider the ‘wannabe’ writer.  This person has aspirations, and devotes themselves to writing, but remains unpublished.  Currently, I am on this tier.  (On this tier, a person is the most literal definition of writer, “one who writes”, but no more.  If someone aspires but doesn’t actually write or if they are more concerned with having a bohemian lifestyle and seeming like a writer but they don’t produce any product even for themselves they are back at tier one.  On the other hand if they have dozens of manuscripts that they keep secreted in their sock drawers and have never shown anyone, they are tier two writers, although their aspirations are different from mine.)  Tier three is ‘communication professionals.’  These are people who have been paid for their writing, but have done more commercial sorts of prose.  Journalists, copy writers, the guy who wrote the fast food tray liner.  They are professional writers, but either lack the glamour of the higher tiers or are customarily defined by job aspects other than just their writing.  Tier four is those who are published in non-fiction and/or magazines.  Tier five is those who have published novels.  The precedence of these tiers reflects my subjective taste, not some outside objective standard, but my point is that Mike Stackpole, earning his living as a novelist, with dozens of published books, is firmly in what I consider to be the apex of the writer’s pyramid.  I’m jealous of him because I wish I was there.

Second, he’s damned good at his writing.  The best way to learn how to write is to write.  The second best way is to read.  I’ve read thousands of novels.  My love of reading is one of the driving forces in my desire to climb the writer’s pyramid.  I read with an eye for what I like, what I don’t, what I wish I had thought of, what I would do better.  Stackpole’s stories are always enjoyable, and I can’t think of any complaints I’ve ever found within his work.  I’m jealous of Mike Stackpole because I envy just how proficient he is.

Third, I’m new at this blogging thing.  I’m aware that e-media is a good thing to be proficient in if I wish to climb the pyramid.  I’m aware that if I try to self-publish instead or in addition to dealing with traditional publishing companies that a blog is a good foundation for that.  The rise of e-readers and how they may change the publishing industry make it even more important to understand this technology.  Mike Stackpole’s blog (at www.stormwolf.com ) is one of the places that taught me that lesson.  So I’m jealous of his nifty blog, his knowledge of e-publishing, and his understanding of how to balance blogging and other writing.

Fourth, I’m always fascinated when a writer lets you look ‘behind the curtain’.  As in the “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” quote from the Wizard of Oz.  As readers, we want to immerse ourselves in the story.  Anything that makes us aware of the writer, anything that interrupts the suspension of disbelief, anything that makes us aware of the mortal man pulling metaphorical levers rather than the story itself is jarring to the reader.  However, as a wannabe writer, I love author comments, interviews, blogs, prefaces, forewords, afterwords, non-fiction about the writing process, etc.  I’ve seen enough Mike Stackpole’s to know that he writes because he loves it.  Yes, it’s also to make a living.  But he is making a living doing something that he’s good at and that he enjoys.  To me, that is the best definition imaginable of ‘the good life’, and I am jealous of Mike Stackpole because he has such a good life.  Congratulations and Kudos to him!

(And if by some remote chance, Mike Stackpole ever reads this blog entry: Wow!  I probably come across here as either a total fan-boy or a potential stalker.  Hopefully I am neither one.  However, you are an incredible writer, one I have been a fan of for decades, and one who has, I hope, been a measurable positive influence on my writing, and I want you to know I really deeply admire you.  And, oh, yeah, I’m really jealous!)

A True Story

This really happened, and it still puzzles me.

I work in a local restaurant.  It’s a busy restaurant, and we get deliveries from several vendors.  There is one particular driver (I’ll call him Doug, for the sake of this story) who management loves to talk up and to impress.  Whenever Doug arrives, he brings the delivery in, and then stops in the office to collect the check.  Management will chat with him while the delivery is verified and then, while they cut the check, call up to the kitchen on the intercom and ask for someone to bring a drink in a to go cup back to the office for Doug.  Generally they will specify which server they would like to bring the drink back, and usually it is one of the prettiest waitresses currently on duty.  This has been going on for a couple of years, and I just roll my eyes.  After all, it may be a petty power trip, but it’s petty.  insignificant.  Not important.  Management gets to show off that they have authority and that pretty girls do what they say; Doug gets a soda for the road and a chance to see a pretty girl.

The other day Doug was a little later than usual.  Normally he arrives about forty minutes before we open, when most of the servers are in the kitchen helping get the restaurant ready for customer arrival.  Instead, he was fifteen minutes before we open, so the servers had finished our kitchen work and moved out into the dining room where we were spot checking our stations, doing some of the busy-work dusting that we don’t do everyday, or otherwise occupying ourselves.  Either no one answered the intercom, or the manager in question didn’t try it.  Instead he left the office, walked through the kitchen (and past the Pepsi station), and came out to the bar/dining room area to ask, “Can one of you bring a to go Pepsi back to the office for Doug?”

The catch?  He walked past the Pepsi Machine to come and ask one of us to bring a Pepsi for Doug, when it would have quicker and shorter just to get it himself.  So, as a writer, I have a few questions:  What does this say about the manager that he behaved this way?  I assume this is all about a petty abuse of power, but can I think of another explanation?  This anecdote is a little too pointless to make a story out of, but can I use it either as something else (like this blog entry) or as a scene in another story?  And does anyone else find this as silly a behavior as I do?

Burning Bridges

I’ve been putting a lot of work in this week on a short story entitled Burning Bridges.  The narrator, Emily Marik, is the protagonist of the novel I’ve been working on.  The short story occurs shortly after the novel, and is a practice run on Emily’s voice since I’ve never been a twenty-five year old woman with psychic talents and abandonment issues.  This is an introductory anecdote, probably how I will begin the final draft.

            I remember what my father told me on my ninth birthday.  Roger Bellman, who was eleven and one of the biggest bullies at St Anthony’s, had made some casually cruel comment suggesting that I was the reason my mother had left us.  Dad had been called to take me home early because I had made a determined effort to push Roger’s teeth through the back of his head with my knuckles and come dangerously close to succeeding.  Even though I would have had to gain ten pounds to be called scrawny, even though I was one of the smallest girls in my class, it had taken three sisters to peel me off Roger and drag me to the principal’s office.

            We had made the trip home in a palpable silence.  Dad’s knuckles were white as he clenched the steering wheel.  My hands were shaking slightly as the anger and adrenaline drained away, to be replaced by shame that I had disappointed my father and fear of what my punishment would be.  We pulled into the driveway and my dad turned the car off, but we continued to sit silently for a moment.  “Emily Marie Marik,” he said- a sure sign of his disappointment for I was always simply ‘Emmy’ when times were good- “No matter how angry or hurt someone makes you today, there is always the chance you will need their help or their friendship tomorrow.  So never burn your bridges, because you may need to get back there again someday.”

            I also remember what Uncle Norm told me the day after my ninth birthday.  It was a rainy, dreary Saturday, and I was home alone and grounded.  My older brother was at a track meet and Dad was working a noon to midnight shift in the fifth district.  The night before Dad had returned my birthday cake, locked my presents away, still in their shiny silver paper, and sent me to bed immediately after supper, so I was wallowing in aggrieved self-pity.  Norm Landings wasn’t really family, but he was my dad’s best friend and first partner and always there whenever any of us needed him.  He brought me a second-hand skateboard, a new soccer ball, and a huge chocolate cake from Belmont Bakery.  He insisted I give him the play-by-play of my battle with Roger twice and congratulated me.  As he packed up the left over cake, he told me not to tell dad he had been by.  “Don’t worry too much about yesterday.  Some bridges just have to be burned.  The important thing to remember, Princess, is that if you do have to burn a bridge, you make sure you burn it good and hot.”

            No one will ever suggest a paternity test; it’s obvious to the most casual observer that I am my father’s daughter.  There are times, however, when I think somehow I got my personality from Uncle Norm.  So it was ironic that almost fifteen years later, here I was, trying to keep my coworker Monica from burning her bridges.