Polenth's Quill

The Next Big Thing: Wolf Island

noreply@blogger.com (Polenth) — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 00:48:00 +0000

I've been tagged in The Next Big Thing meme, where writers talk about their work-in-progress. So here I'm getting my meme on.

(I'm not tagging anyone, as I think most people I know were tagged last year.)

1. What is the working title of your next book?

Wolf Island

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?

In the wild, wolves live as families. The nature of these families is flexible, and wolves in different areas may have different family setups, but they're still families. Unrelated wolves may join packs sometimes, but we're talking about the unrelated wolf being adopted into the family, not an alpha taking over by force or anything of that nature.

The whole alpha and beta thing was based on observations of wolves in zoos, where adult wolves were forced together in small enclosures. This wouldn't happen in the wild. Scientists have realised it was a mistake to apply the zoo behaviour to the wild for a long time, but fantasy authors have yet to get the memo (for the most part).

I didn't set out to write a werewolf book, but the lack of real wolf behaviour bothered me. So I ended up writing about a pack forming in wild wolf style. Unrelated young wolves placed together, with enough space to go their own ways if they wanted. The island is a prison, but it's not a tiny zoo cage. The pack is a family, not a strict hierarchy system.

3. What genre does your book fall under?

Young Adult Contemporary Fantasy

4. What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

No idea. I don't cast my books, but even if I did, the people I write about are often under-represented in the acting world. The two older teens are a British Indian girl and a Black British boy. The ideal actors are likely to be unknowns who've been struggling to get roles.

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

When Anjali's werewolfism is discovered, she's sent to a nature reserve in the Hebrides, allegedly for her own good.

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I plan to query agents and try publisher submission calls. After that, who knows.

7. How long did/will it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

I work on several projects at once and I don't time them, so I don't know.

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

It has more in common with other wilderness survival books, than it does with other werewolf books. But there are some appropriative aspects of the young adult survival genre that I don't like. There's a tendency to appropriate indigenous spiritualties, so the characters can have a spiritual encounter. As such, I don't want to make direct comparisons to those books.

But imagine a book where teens survive on an island and add wolves.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Outside of the general grumbling about wolf behaviour, I'm also interested in the history and ecology of the Hebrides. Some of the islands are pretty big and have deer and ponies. There are also a number that were once inhabited, and all that's left now are old buildings. (Wolf Island isn't a specific island. It's a mashup of interesting bits of the other islands.)

10.What else about the book might pique the reader's interest?

There's also sheep! But no weresheep. And the two main characters are friends rather than dating, for fans of low-romance books.

The Tools of Gesture Writing

noreply@blogger.com (Polenth) — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 09:32:00 +0000

The New York Times blog had a piece comparing writing to gesture drawing, written by Rachel Howard. A gesture drawing is one done quickly, which aims to capture the essence of the gesture, rather than the detail. For a human model, the aim is to catch the life and feeling, more than the proportions, facial features or anything of that nature.

It caught my attention for two reasons. One is I've been working on my gesture drawing skills, as evidence by the stopwatch tied onto the top of my easel*.

The other is it's exactly how I write. I have snippets of dialogue, odd descriptions and a whole lot of holes between. I write bits from all over the story, in any order. It's only later that I go in and flesh out the scene.

I don't agree that it's always the way to go. Everyone writes (and draws) differently. But it was interesting to see the parallels.

It also lead to a ponder that in order to start with the gesture, you need the right tools, and that will vary from person to person. For drawing, I find gesture easier with a pencil or pen. I'm awkward with paint and I'm still finding my way with charcoal, though I should get there with practise. But some tools I'll never get the hang of, because they're not designed for it. Drawing with a mouse is challenging at the best of times, but mice don't generally have the sensitivity to take quick strokes. If all I had was my computer and a mouse, I wouldn't be gesture drawing at all**.

Writing is the reverse. Writing by hand has always been awkward. Ever since I was young, I would edit what I planned to write, to take out as many words and sentences as possible. Not in a way that made it stronger. Often it made the thing confusing. It was simply because I struggled to keep writing, so I tried to cut down the amount I had to do. This wasn't good for creativity and led to very stale and overly concise work.

The computer was my escape from that. I can type much more easily than I can handwrite. I make fewer of my dyslexia mistakes***. I can rearrange things later. It gave me the tools to gesture write, once I'd gotten over the initial awkwardness of learning to type.

All this means there may be hope for my gesture painting skills, once I figure out the whole brush business. And if you're struggling to write or draw, it may be trying some new tools will help more than you realise.

* There's an extra challenge to this due to being ambidextrous. I dither about which hand to use, which wastes time. If you ever wondered why the world isn't populated by ambidextrous people, this is the one.

A lion is coming towards me! I must throw this stone at it! Should I use my right hand or my left hand? Which one is which anyway? I think I'm holding the stone in my right, but maybe I should pass it to my lef-

~eaten by lion~

** Though I did have a shot at it for this blog post. Behold my gesture drawing with a mouse. It's Psy doing the Gangnam Style dance, just to add a bit of celebrity stickpersoness.

*** I know the b and d keys apart due to their placement on the keyboard, so it doesn't matter if I confuse the letters when I'm reading or handwriting... when I'm typing, I almost always hit the correct letter. I do still muddle b and p sometimes, as I use the same hand to hit those keys.

Rainbow Lights Released (Plus Cupcakes)

noreply@blogger.com (Polenth) — Sat, 25 May 2013 21:02:00 +0000

'Tis the season for lots of sugar, as my collection Rainbow Lights is now live on Amazon. In celebration, I made cupcakes in rainbow cases and decorated them with a rainbow of sweets. Some might notice indigo and ink are missing from my collection colours, which was due to the availability of dyes and sweets. But the family aren't complaining, as it's all still sugar.

In less sugary information, the book is a collection of fantasy and science fiction stories and poems (mostly stories). I have an official page on my site, which has the table of contents, links to any stories available free online (you can also read the first couple with Amazon's look inside feature) and a comprehensive list of where to buy. Currently these are Amazon's sites in various countries, but there will be other places later.

There's also a page on Goodreads if you'd like to mark it for later, leave a review, or anything of that nature.

Dates and Deadlines

The date I originally set was 13th May, 2013. This was great, except I'd forgotten it was my parents' ruby wedding anniversary, and I was down to cook a meal. (I remembered the meal, but not the date.) This meant the collection was pushed on a little way, but I didn't miss it by much. The book went live on 23rd May, and I got down to making cupcakes on the 25th.

Future Plans

Currently the book is only available on Kindle. I'd like to get it up on Smashwords too. I also plan to make a paperback version, with charcoal illustrations inside. The paperback will take time due to the extra pictures, so I'm not setting a date. It'll be done when it's done.

There will also be a steampunk novelette in the future, and the family appears to have nominated me to make themed cupcakes for that too. I may have set a precedent here...

But now it's time for me to drink tea, eat cupcakes, and start work on the next thing.

Yay!

Rainbow Lights Cover Reveal

noreply@blogger.com (Polenth) — Tue, 21 May 2013 02:11:00 +0000

Rainbow Lights is almost here, but not quite. In the meantime, after the ritual smearing of chalk pastels on my face, it's time to reveal the cover:

The original picture was drawn on A2 white card with chalk pastels and charcoal. I took a few progress shots as I went along, for those interested in the process:

That's all for now. The actual release, with obligatory cupcake pictures, will be soon. Most likely by the end of this week, where I'll have a few tales to tell of things that got in the way (none of them bad). Until then, if you have any questions about covers, squid or chalk pastels, I'm your mushroom.

Vicious - Episodes 1-3 (Review)

noreply@blogger.com (Polenth) — Wed, 15 May 2013 07:24:00 +0000

Vicious (originally titled Vicious Old Queens) is a new sitcom on ITV, centred around an old gay couple who have been together for almost 50 years. The show focuses on the interactions between them and their friends, and their new neighbour Ash, a young man who rents the flat above them*.

At first glance, it's a very different thing to my usual reviews, as it's not a speculative show. However, it has a crossover of actors between speculative things. Freddy is played by Ian McKellen (Magneto, Gandalf) and Stuart by Derek Jacobi (Professor Yana in Doctor Who). Some of the jokes are aimed at the genre crowd. Add in the representation themes (not just on-screen, as McKellen and Jacobi are both gay), and I was interested to see where it went.

This review covers the first three episodes and some thoughts on the general series themes. I watched episode two first, went back to watch one, and then watched three (just to be confusing). The series has three more episodes to go and a Christmas special (I likely won't review those, as this is more of an early review so people can see if it's something that might interest them).

The Episodes

Episode One

The first episode mainly serves to introduce the characters. Freddy and Stuart find out an old friend has died, and decide to have a little gathering at their flat after the funeral. Ash (Iwan Rheon) visits to see the vacant flat, but gets the wrong door and rings the bell of Freddie and Stuart's flat instead.

When the gathering happens, also attending are Violet (Frances de la Tour), absent-minded Penelope (Marcia Warren) and grumpy Mason (Phillip Voss).

I likely appreciated this episode more as I'd seen the second, because it wasn't as quotable. It also had a rape joke, which really wasn't funny. But there were some moments in the rest, such as Freddie and Stuart's reaction when Ash opens their curtains (this is me - I never open my curtains). And cutting the sandwiches up very small (this is a very British thing at parties, though on a more serious note, also hints at money not being too plentiful for the couple).

The strength of this episode is in its potential. The parts are all well cast. It also wins on the basic setup. Apart from the running joke of Stuart not having told his mother, everyone knows about their relationship. It's refreshing to have a story about gay characters that isn't focused on coming out. And due to the not-so-subtle attempts to find out Ash's sexuality, Ash ends up coming out as straight, which is a fun reversal.

But it didn't hit that potential. One of things that makes it harder to laugh is Freddie repeatedly pushes too far in the bickering and upsets Stuart (though Stuart also snipes back, he's generally a little milder and less egotistical than Freddie). If this had been a later episode, where the viewer knew how their relationship went, it'd come across differently. I viewed it differently having seen episode two first. But here, without that context, it created an uncertainty about whether there's a genuine problem in the relationship, and it's hard to laugh at that.

Episode Two

Freddie's acting career wasn't much of a career, but he did play a villain in an episode of Doctor Who and he's been invited to a Doctor Who fan event. As the event approaches, Stuart is spending increasing amounts of time out of the flat and Freddie worries he's having an affair.

Meanwhile, Ash wants to get back together with his ex-girlfriend, and comes to Freddie and Stuart for advice. Violet also has a few suggestions.

The plot is one that's very guessable, as it's the old nutshell of assuming absence is an affair, when something else is going on. However, this series isn't really about plot, but character interaction, and this episode got that part down. The layers of Freddie and Stuart's interactions are much clearer here. The way they show caring about each other may be a little different, but it's there.

After this episode, I'm in love with Penelope. Her delivery of the lines where she's trying to prove she does know Stuart's name, by constantly using it, is classic. In general, the actors seem more comfortable with their roles.

Episode 3

While Freddie is preparing for an audition, Ash visits to ask for career advice. Freddie suggests he try acting, and should help him prepare.

When Ash gets a part at his first audition, Freddie's confidence is ruined, and he starts being nice to people. Stuart can't take it anymore, so comes up with a plan to get Freddie's confidence back.

This is generally a quieter episode, as Freddie spends a fair bit of it feeling sad, but I found it a nice change of pace. The acting humour reminded me of my amateur dramatics days**. I've met the person who tried to make being Cook Staff Number Four the most important part in the whole script. Freddie's reaction to Ash's success was spot on (success is fine... as long as you're not more successful than him).

Stuart and Violet also have some scenes, where the chemistry between them as long term (probably) best friends really comes across.

Overview

Style of Comedy

Vicious is an old-fashioned sitcom, with limited sets (it's mostly in Stuart and Freddie's flat) and snarky one-liners. It has a laughter track (which is my least favourite thing about it) but I'd learnt to ignore it by the third episode.

I can't really say how funny or unfunny it is, as I rarely laugh out loud at sitcoms. I suppose because I'm expecting the jokes. But I was looking forward to the third episode, so it did succeed in that.

Gay Themes

One of the inevitable discussions is how the gay characters are portrayed and whether that's a good or bad thing. The main criticism here tends to be that they're rather camp. It's true they are, but the problem with campiness isn't the campiness, as some gay men are camp. It's that it's usually a trait for gay men who are there to be accessories, rather than characters in their own right. It's often used as a lazy shorthand for gayness, as though there's no other way to be gay.

In most cases, a camp gay man will be the gay best friend. He will be there to help the straight main character. He'll drop everything for that main character, because his life revolves around serving them. If the gay friend is in a relationship, it will be there to inspire the main character.

Alternatively, the camp gay man is there to appear as a minor comedy character.

None of that is true in Vicious. It's about Eddie and Stuart, with the straight characters being there to help tell Eddie and Stuart's story. People may come for advice or see the couple's relationship as an inspiration, but that's not why Eddie and Stuart exist in the story. Nor is campiness a shortcut for gayness, as it's evident they're gay in other ways (like living together and having direct discussions about being gay, whether other people are gay, etc.)

It's also notable that these are older men, who lived through the time when gay relationships were illegal, when code words were needed to talk about it, and when being camp was something used as a weapon and an identity in a hostile climate.

The style of the show won't appeal to everyone, but I don't think its existence is a bad thing.

Reversals

Stereotype reversals and gender fluidity come up repeatedly in this. From the start, there's Ash cast in a role that would usually go to a young woman, of the pretty young thing people are ogling. Yet he reacts as a young man might - uncomfortable and unsure how to handle it, because this isn't something that usually happens to men.

Ash is also the one with romantic dreams of finding true love. Compared to Violet, who is clearly less interested in the love part.

At one point Freddie uses the term "shop girl" to refer to a man, which gets a laugh from the studio audience, because that's not how it goes. People will argue that fireman and paper boy mean everyone really, not just men. But the same logic doesn't apply to house wife and shop girl. They might say anyone can be a bitch, slut or whore, but in reality, it's rare for people to use them as insults towards a man (or if they do, to add the extra of manwhore and manslut, as though it's a different thing when it's a man).

This is a mixed bag for me, because I do appreciate that it hits people as unexpected, which may make them laugh and to think about why it's unexpected at the same time. It makes people notice the things they otherwise don't notice because they're so common, by switching the targets***.

But I also have an instinctively bad reaction to those insults, even if used in contexts where they're not being aimed at women. I cringe at Ash's discomfort, at the same time as being aware that if he were a woman, it'd be taken as normal treatment and some viewers wouldn't notice. His facial expressions of horror and discomfort would be seen as over-reacting if he was a she.

So the jokes in this category are sometimes things that need to be said, but it doesn't stop them having an uncomfortable layer to them.

Conclusions

Comedies are one of the hardest things to recommend to other people, as there's a wide range in what people find funny, and how funny they need to find them to want to watch. So I'm not going to say if anyone should or shouldn't watch it, but I hope there's enough information in my review to give a fair idea of whether it might appeal.

* ITV's press pack says "their lives now consist of reading books, walking their dog and bickering." The dog is an almost dead dog they wake up sporadically to see he isn't dead. He's played by a pile of blankets rather than an actual dog, because he doesn't move. Walking their dog? Who wrote this?

** I was also reminded of Tumblr, where creative aspects of scripts are often put down to the actor adding something in and it being kept, rather than being in the script. These things happen, but not as often as Tumblr posts claim. The part where Freddie is talking about dropping a potato not being in the script, but them keeping it in, reminded me of that so much. This needs to be a Tumblr meme.

*** This is a similar philosophy to gender-switching superhero characters or cover models, to highlight that the way women are dressed and posed is not equivalent to the men.

On Defining Conflict

noreply@blogger.com (Polenth) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 10:09:00 +0000

I find discussions of whether stories have conflict in different cultures interesting, but not for the reason most appear to. It's not that I think, "Wow, maybe I don't need conflict!" It's that I read the example stories and think, "But that story has conflict."

Which leads to the inevitable conclusion: I define conflict completely differently, but it's rare than someone will stop to give their definition of conflict before writing an article about whether something contains conflict. If they do, it confirms that my definition is different.

The issue I face is that everything has conflict. If it didn't, I'd wake up in the morning and never move again. I'd have no need to move or think, because there's nothing to do and nothing to think about.

Instead, I get up and eat. I have to eat regularly, because if I don't, I'll die. This may not be the thought on my mind when I'm making a sandwich, but I'm aware this is why I eat. A lot of my day is taken up with this conflict, because I have to shop, cook, and consider nutrition.

Watching me make a sandwich and consider its nutritional value may not be a story everyone wants to read (then again, if you've got this far, you've read an account on my sandwich ponderings and not stopped reading). But saying it has no conflict is an exaggeration. Existence comes with obstacles and those generate conflicts. You can only escape that by not existing anymore.

So my thought on conflict discussions comes from a different perspective. Rather than not seeing conflict, I see a different presentation. It may be the conflicts chosen are different. It may be in the story structure. Sometimes what's considered relevant to the story is different. But something happens in the story, either directly or implied*. No reader is likely to pay money for a blank page (not intentionally anyway... and if they're tricked into it, that may create a conflict of the more obvious punching-author-in-nose variety).

Then again, it might be why I've written things get rejected with, "This isn't a story"** so maybe you shouldn't listen to me***. But I like my version of conflict and I'm sticking with it.

* An example of implied would be if I wrote about a ball balancing at the top of a slope and a child standing at the bottom of the slope. I don't tell you how the scene got to that point or what will happen next, but the story is still there.

** I don't have many of these stories, because they don't sell, and they annoy readers even if they do sell. It reduces my incentive to keep trying. I've tried selling a few as prose poetry****, but it usually doesn't wash. I may get bolder about sneaking them into my collections, but we'll see how that goes.

*** I have this vague idea that things like a three act structure exists, but I can't apply it to stories. I can't say this is how this story splits into acts or write something with the intention that it'll end up that way. I don't learn well from theory books and how-to writing instructions. People never believe this. When I say stuff like that, they try to show me a worked example, and it means nothing to me. Rather like when I explain my dyslexia word mixups, and they say, "But word X means this and Y means that," not realising what they've said to me is "Word X/Y means this and X/Y means that." If I was capable of reliably telling the words apart, they wouldn't be mixups.

This is why I read stories, rather than how-to guides.

**** This was inspired by someone on a writing forum, who submitted a piece of flash fiction for critique. It was shredded as lacking story and lacking conflict. The writer took the piece, inserted line breaks, deleted a couple of words for flow, and placed it in the poetry critique forum instead. They loved it.

I liked the piece in both forms, but it was clear it was more likely to sell as a poem than as a story (as far as the English-speaking SFF market was concerned).

Writing Diary: The Future

noreply@blogger.com (Polenth) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 07:38:00 +0000

Looking back over my posts, I realised I hadn't posted a writing diary this year, and it's April. So here's a bit of catching up on what I'm doing and where I'm going.

Short Stories

I'll be writing fewer of these this year, so I'm mainly focusing on interesting calls for submissions, but will likely write some random stuff too. Upcoming themed deadlines of interest are:

Innsmouth Magazine: Wings - Innsmouth is moving to a chapbook format, which will start with the first theme of wings. Deadline: July 25, 2013

Long Hidden - An anthology of historical speculative fiction, with a focus on the hidden stories of marginalised groups. Deadline: July 31, 2013

Arc - Not a themed call as such (outside of the magazine's theme of the future). Arc has opened for general submissions for stories of 5000 words or more. They pay £1500 per story, so they're worth a try.

Collections, Novelettes and Novellas

The self-published collection is on-going, and looks set to hit the deadline of May 13th. I have some more related blog posts. Some are useful stuff, like thoughts on how to sort a table of contents (something a person raised on a forum some time back, and no one had an answer... so it seems like an often overlooked topic). And possibly some fun ones, like photos of my hometown illustrating a story, including the local twittens*.

On more practical lines, I also plan to self-publish some novelettes and novellas as standalones. These seem to do pretty well (hearing other people's experiences), probably because it's an area where other publishing doesn't do as much.

Novels

My aim this year is to finish off a novel and query it. I'd still like an agent and trade publishing deals for novel-length work. It'd be nice to have other people to handle the contracts, money in advance, bookstore distribution and all those things. I also dream of having a cover with shiny foil on it one day, which is a small dream, but I like shiny things**.

I have been asked if I plan to self-publish any novels. It's possible, but it's not my focus at the moment.

Fish Versus Fungi

I'm now officially Polenth Blake of Fungi on Goodreads. Fish started later and is catching up, though had a setback when Crossed Genres: Year 2 got an extra rating out of nowhere (that book is out-of-print, so I was surprised).

If anyone's read either anthology and has a Goodreads account, ratings and reviews are really helpful. Most short fiction comes out of small presses, so it's good to support them.

You'll note I'm looking at number of ratings, rather than what the rating is. This is because I believe any rating/review is a good thing, including the bad ones. I've also come to realise I'm a lot like Mike in Monsters Inc, where he's super excited about appearing in an advert for one second before being covered in a logo. I tend to be going, "Look! Look! I was mentioned in a review!" even if the mention was really bad. It means they read my story! (Before setting fire to it and stomping on the pieces.)

I may have a different way of looking at it, but I'm a whole lot happier than the authors throwing toddler tantrums***.

* I didn't make it up. They're really called twittens, and have been long before Twitter. They're basically little alleyways.

** And if I ever publish a picture book, I want glitter. Lots of glitter.

*** The last author meltdown I read was over a four-star review. Four stars just isn't enough.

Rainbow Lights: Writing the Back Cover

noreply@blogger.com (Polenth) — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 21:19:00 +0000

Recently in one writing community, a new person arrived and declared themselves amazingly talented. Their other online bios said they were special and unique. The reaction was a certain amount of bogglement, to say the least.

This is the issue self-published books face. Everyone knows the author wrote the summary on the back*, so the usual marketing fluff sounds hilariously unaware at best. Most authors deal with it by writing as little as possible, which is going to harm their sales, because it leaves the reader with little idea about the book.

So what can go on the back, if declaring myself to be an amazing writer is off the cards**?

I tackled it in a similar way to covers, by going out and reading descriptions for short story collections (and a few anthologies). My thoughts aren't rules set in stone. Someone else may prefer an entirely different sort of back cover. But these are the things that I felt worked, or didn't, when it came to telling me whether I wanted to buy the book.

Sections of the Summary

These are the main areas I found in summaries. They appear in different mixes in effective summaries, but I didn't find any I liked that missed out summaries of the stories inside. After all, I'm buying the collection for the stories, so it better say something about them.

1. Author Name

It sounds obvious, but a lot of self-published collections missed this piece of information. It's on the cover, yes. But it still helps to state it directly in the product description, so it's clear it's a collection of stories by one person, and not an anthology.

2. Genre and Themes

This might refer to the author or the stories. Genre writers have this one easy, as it's where the book would be placed in the bookstore (romance, mystery, fantasy, etc.), with perhaps a modifier like humorous, dark or experimental. It's a little trickier with books that don't easily classify, but experimental, interstitial and cross-genre are all possibles.

Some descriptions avoided this direct reference, and tried to rely on descriptions of the story content. The issue here is some left me uncertain about the overall genre. Stories about dark secrets could be literary fiction about people's past traumas, mystery stories about serial killers or paranormal stories about werewolves. So which is it?

Making up genres also doesn't help. I know people like to believe they're created something all-new, which couldn't possibly be described in basic terms, but how many readers will search the online store for spacehamsterpunk?

3. Statistics

The ebook age has changed the needs of the summary somewhat. In a physical book, you can see how thick the book is, so you know roughly how many words are inside. In the digital world, a collection could be anything from three short stories to fifty. The reader needs some idea of length, so they can judge whether it's good value for money.

Self-published authors win on this point, as even the shortest description tended to include the number of stories and their length category (five short stories, three novellas, and so on). Some of the trade published books have yet to catch up.

4. Story Summary

This is likely to be the biggest part of a lot of back covers. It's a way of going past a basic genre tag and showing what the author writes about. A few common ways:

Story description: A cat grows a fish tail and swims across the Atlantic, to be reunited with her owner.

Character lists: A sentient potato, a pink mushroom and a lump of coal find happiness in this collection of twelve romance stories. Character lists worked the best for collections with unusual characters. A college graduate, a house spouse and an office worker aren't as eye-catching. The lists also tended to be part of a sentence with some other elements (like the genre and number of stories).

Character plus story: A cheerleader has a dark secret. A squirrel is chased by the ghosts of acorns. This combines the character list with a bit of story, but not as long or detailed as the single story description.

There wasn't one true way of making these work. The back covers I liked the best all had some story summary, but different combinations work best for different books. The biggest failing of this part is some descriptions tried to summarise every story in the collection (or as many as possible). In general, this worked best with a maximum of three descriptions in a row, or three items in a list. More than that started to drag. It's understandable if it was a collection of four novellas to include a description of all four, but ten in a row is too many.

5. Author Achievements

Not every author has achievements, but when they do, it helps. Someone with professional publications or award wins is expected to be able to put out coherent prose. However, some back covers tried to use achievements to carry the whole collection. It doesn't matter how many awards someone has won... if I don't know the author and there's no suggestion of the type of stories in the book, I won't buy it.

6. Quotes

Established authors often have quotes from reviews or other authors. Personally, I find these useless for buying books. They take up space with waffle about how great the author is, without telling me what the author actually writes. Someone obviously likes them, as they're common, but I skip these. When a back cover is mainly quotes, I'm moving on to the next collection.

7. Table of Contents

An optional extra for short collections is to include the table of contents after everything else. This is more common for online product descriptions than the back cover of printed books, and works best for collections with only a handful of stories. I don't think anyone would expect a collection with thirty stories to list them out.

Back Cover Issues

Order and Weight

The order of the elements mattered. If it started with three quotes from other authors, I would have moved on as a reader. I only read to the end because I was analysing them. If it ended with those same three quotes, it wouldn't have mattered as much.

Some descriptions were also a bit too in love with one element, such as listing author achievements and not much else. Yes, it's nifty they've done all those things, but if no space is given to the stories, it won't attract new readers.

Vagueness

Some summaries had an attack of the vague. Everything's amazing, ground-breaking and awe-inspiring, but nothing got more specific than that. What's the book about exactly?

I Hate my Genre!

It's a fantasy story, but it's totally believable, unlike those other fantasy stories. It's science fiction, but there's no science in it, so it's like it could be the modern world. It's romance, but without any of that love stuff. Apparently it needs to be said this isn't a good idea. Readers generally like the genres they read. Why would they read a book written by someone who hates them?

Repeat Everything

Repeats were often not the exact same word, but similar enough. Mythic, mythical or myth-inspired. Dark, darkness and darkened. This doesn't always pop out as a problem, in that it reads okay when the words are spread out, or someone changed darkened to shadowed. But it means the description misses the chance to introduce a different aspect of the collection. If I replace one of the darknesses with melancholy, it's given me an idea of how the collection is dark.

Oh, the Humanity!

A surprising number of books assure the reader it's about humans. Or if it's not about humans, it's about humanity, the human experience, or some other way of saying it's all about humans. Generally, I think it'd be safe to say people will assume the book is about humans. Or of it's about non-humans, that it won't be so mind-bogglingly incomprehensible a human can't understand what's going on.

I'm never again going to be able to read a cover mentioning the human experience without laughing.

But other than adding to my general level of mirth, you're also filling up space with a rather pointless message. Shock news: there are humans in this! Actual real ones who do human stuff!

Nobody's Perfect

The summaries I liked best were not perfect. Some summarised a few too many of the stories. Or they started with a rather vague review quote. Or they didn't say how long the book would be. But I would have bought the book, if I was looking for that sort of story, and that's ultimately the goal.

It's important to keep in mind, because trying to make things perfect can lead to stripping out any voice and soul from it. A back cover won't work for everyone. It mainly needs to work for the target audience and it only has to work enough for them to want the book. I'm sure some instances where the summary was over-long or repetitive were due to trying to answer all the questions critiquers had (because I've seen the exact same thing happen to queries).

My Back Cover

Putting this all together, I came up with something for my summary. Here's how it ended up:

A deep-sea robot tells stories in every colour, but no shade can describe meeting a giant squid.

Rainbow Lights is the first collection by science fiction and fantasy author Polenth Blake. Alien scorpions, vampire ice cream sellers and clockwork flies, try to find their place in worlds where being human is optional. These thirty-five stories and poems are a mixture of new pieces and work published in venues like Nature, Strange Horizons and ChiZine.

And here's why:

A deep-sea robot tells stories in every colour, but no shade can describe meeting a giant squid. [Leading with something storyish seemed a good idea, as the back cover is mainly for buyers who don't know who I am. It'll be down to whether the stories sound interesting.]

Rainbow Lights is the first collection [Not compulsory, but it sounds shiny and new to be the first one... if it were the tenth and they'd never heard of me, they'd wonder] by science fiction and fantasy [I have genres!] author Polenth Blake. [And also a name. This gets the basic stuff out of the way.]

Alien scorpions, vampire ice cream sellers and clockwork flies, [I aimed to make each part do as much lifting as it could. The character list gives an idea of the range of sub-genres (as it implies science fiction, steampunk and urban fantasy), along with a liking for invertebrates and quirky things (unless ice cream becomes the next big thing for urban fantasy, I think it's safe to call it quirky)] try to find their place in worlds where being human is optional. [Okay, I'm having a joke at the expense of human experience summaries. But there really are non-humans, so it works whether anyone shares my sense of humour or not.]

These thirty-five [I really hope I counted them correctly] stories and poems are a mixture of new pieces and work published in venues like Nature, Strange Horizons and ChiZine. [I write well enough for people to pay me, and these also come with some genre implications, as Nature is hard science fiction and ChiZine is dark/horror. I have range, or something like that.]

And there we go. Someone did suggest I mention my imaginary goldfish on the back cover, but I'm saving that for the author bio.

* Though I'm calling it the back cover summary, it's also the product description for online stores. It's sometimes called the blurb too, but I've seen that used to describe quotes from other authors about the book, and that's not what this post is about.

** Not that it was ever on the cards. I've always hated job application cover letters, where you're supposed to say you're reliable, hard-working and the best person for the job. I'm cursed with a certain amount of honesty, so I know I'm not the best person for the job, and no more hard-working and reliable than the other candidates. My solution was to achieve things, so I could list achievements, rather than talk about how wonderful I was. It's helpful to have something else to waffle about.

Women and Others in Genre

noreply@blogger.com (Polenth) — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 00:54:00 +0000

April has been declared as one for women in genre. There's Women in SF&F Month at Fantasy Cafe [ETA 5/2013: See # footnote for update], and #WomeninGenre going on via blogs and Twitter. I'm all for the general idea. It's about promoting people who otherwise get ignored. I have a list of writers and related people to enthuse about as my contribution. But it raises a question I've asked before: Who counts as a woman?

The Background

In gender terms, I'm an androgyne. That's a stable thing, and would make the most sense as something to put on forms. But forms only really care about sex, even if they label it as gender.

In sex terms, I'm a man and a woman, along with an identity as both and neither. This shifts depending on the day, and sometimes I'm more comfortable identifying one way and sometimes another way. I also acknowledge that others usually see me as female, and that impacts how they treat me. I face sexism for being seen as female, rather than the privilege that comes from being seen as male. So at some level, I see myself as a woman, if not completely and all the time.

In terms of affirmative action, this isn't binary enough. I'll usually be discounted as a man by those running the action, and a woman by those putting together lists of men. An example of this came when a now-dead magazine was going to publish a women's issue. Firstly, they asked for feminine stories, which I queried. And in response said they'd be open to transgender works. Up until a commenter decided to attack me over it, at which point the editor backed down and said they'd see what came in and make the decision then, as though it was a perfectly valid point raised by the commenter.

Their point was this:

An all women issue sounded really cool to me too!!! Then I read your response to Polenth’s question of "or are females of other genders included?" and was very disappointed. How about truly sticking to the theme you’ve announced by leaving out all the confusing stuff about women being of some gender other than female?

You already said: "For this issue the sign on the proverbial door says "girl writers only." Sorry gents.""
WHICH WAS PERFECTLY CLEAR – Please keep it that way.

Why not consider another special edition to accommodate Polenth?

Unsurprisingly, I never submitted to that magazine, because anyone who thinks the above is an fine response worthy of serious consideration has made it plain I'm not wanted. But it's a common attitude, that people like me should find somewhere else to be (always a hypothetical somewhere, because they don't actually care if that place exists). That we don't get to go on the men's list or the women's list, so should get our own list. However, there's never enough in the category of "it's complicated" for there to be a separate list, or a separate theme issue, or a separate month of awareness. And some people don't want to be on a separate list, because they identify mainly as a man or a woman, even if it is complicated.

This isn't just an issue when it comes to sex/gender identity. On Rochita Loenen-Ruiz's article "Woman's Work and Woman of Color at Work", she said:

This is how complex it becomes when we speak of the work of women and the work of women who come from outside of the US or the UK. If the work of women is pressed into the margins, how much more pressed into the margins are the works of women of color? How much more pressed into the margins are the works of women who do not come from within the native English-speaking hegemony?

I can think of a number of occasions where people have called for more diversity in genre, acted on it by producing a list of women writers, and those writers have been very un-diverse in all other respects. 'Women' is taken to mean a very narrow range of people. When a list is a sea of white women, there's something up. Someone's decided, however sub-consciously, that brown women aren't actually women. The same thing happens based on nationality, class, disability and sexuality. That I'm focusing my discussion on one aspect doesn't make it okay to forget it's a wider issue (much as it's not okay to say, "Well, at least the list is all women! We'll work on the other prejudices later.")

The Non-Binary Issues

So, here we are in April with #WomeninGenre month. And those mixed feelings are there, because every month gets to be #MeninGenre month, and occasionally it's #WomeninGenre month, but it's never #UnbinaryinGenre month. I face the issue of either asking to be included as a woman or not being included at all. I don't object to be labelled as a woman when it's kept at that, but it often comes with baggage, like assuming I'm feminine and assuming I'm always and only a woman, which is uncomfortable. And even if I ask, chances are high people will decide if I'm not entirely a woman, I'm a man.

There are also issues when it comes to making lists of unbinary people. For a start, how do you define it? It's not as though people are either totally binary or totally not.

I wonder how many are around I don't know about. It's often essential to say you're a man or a woman to get through the system. If I refused to tick a box on forms, or ticked both, I couldn't have gone to university, filed for unemployment benefits, signed up for my taxes, got a passport and so many other things. I've chosen the hard road by insisting that outside of official paperwork, I'm going to talk about my identity. I can understand why some people hide it when it comes to the industry, much as I can understand why some women writers still pretend to be men.

And I know some people who might be open to trusted friends, but not family and co-workers, because of the backlash that often comes with it.

When a writer says they're a woman, it may not be entirely what they mean.

A List of Ten People

I took the above into account when I made my list. Some of my list are women. Others are genderqueer, androgynous, trans* and others who are non-binary or don't fit neatly into classifications (who may or may not identify as women, so please don't copy/paste this list under a heading of women without checking). I've used the pronouns from their bios, but it should be noted pronouns are a complex thing, and shouldn't be taken as an identity statement**.

Aliette de Bodard - Aliette's had a good year for award nominations. Two nominated works are Immersion and her novella On a Red Station, Drifting.

Alex Dally Macfarlane - Alex is editing the upcoming anthologies "Aliens: Recent Encounters" and "The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women". Her stories include The 17th Contest of Body Artistry.

Benjanun Sriduangkaew - Benjanun's stories include Courtship in the Country of Machine-Gods.

Brit Mandelo - Brit edited Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction. Her work includes the poem What I Have Not Done.

Kat Zhang - Kat's debut young adult novel What's Left of Me was out in 2012.

Keffy R. M. Kehrli - Keffy is an editor at Shimmer. His story Bonehouse appeared in Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction.

Nnedi Okorafor - Nnedi's written a number of novels, but my favourite is still Zahrah the Windseeker. Her story From the Lost Diary of TreeFrog7 is set in the same world as Zahrah.

Rose Fox - Rose works as a book review editor at Publishers Weekly and is editing the upcoming anthology Long Hidden.

Rose Lemberg - Rose edits poetry magazine Stone Telling and was editor of A Moment of Change: An Anthology of Feminist Speculative Poetry. Her short works include Seven Losses of Na Re.

Shweta Narayan - Shweta edits poetry magazine Stone Telling. I particularly liked her story Pishaach in The Beastly Bride anthology.

* If you followed the star thinking, "Aha, a footnote!" I didn't want to disappoint. But this time, it's not my usual footnote notation. The star goes with the word. When I started blogging, I thought stars would be good for footnotes because no words had stars in them. People are laughing at me now.

** It's not unusual for non-binary people to use binary pronouns in English. I do so because I don't get on with the newer neutral ones very well (I can't type them comfortably into a sentence... I'd have to stop and check each one, which doesn't work for talking about myself) and I don't like the older neutral ones much (they and it). It's less common for someone binary to use neutral pronouns, but it happens.

Basically, a pronoun might be a statement of identity, but you can't assume it is, or that you know what statement it's making.

# The Fantasy Cafe series turned out not to be quite what I was expecting. I was expecting more of a "here are awesome works by women, and don't forget about them the rest of the year", which there is some of. But they also published a post where the author states there isn't as much sexism in the genre as people say, and the main fault of what does exist is people talking about gender. A direct quote being: "I think the way to truly overcome any gender bias is to get rid of these gender-focused discussions. We need to focus on quality, rather than plumbing."

You can focus on quality without telling people they're wrong for discussing sex and gender issues. Stopping talking about gender isn't something I endorse, as you might guess from the fact I wrote a whole post talking about gender and sex identity. And from a non-binary perspective, assuming someone's genitals are their gender or sex is problematic. So handle the Fantasy Cafe series with care.

A more detailed discussion of that post was written by fozmeadows.

My Future Name is an Insult

noreply@blogger.com (Polenth) — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 01:13:00 +0000

In the far future, the words we use to describe different groups of people will change. Both in the sense of using different words and in the attitudes associated with the words. We've already seen that, as gay comes to mean a homosexual person, and queer becomes an insult, and then is reclaimed, but can still be an insult.

Inevitably, some science fiction writers will attempt to write a future where the most socially and politically sensitive words have changed. Often in the direction of the words being treated as lighter, trivial, and not all that important. They may be used to name pet cats or become nicknames.

It's not that it can't happen, but there's something missing from a lot of those attempts. Something that means people are almost universally offended. It's taken me time to figure out what is missing, but I think I've found it.

* * *

In my family, we occasionally joke about being Saxon or Anglo-Saxon peasants. It's a reference to the working class in England, based on the history of the Anglo-Saxons being invaded and dominated by the Normans in 1066. By the same token, the upper classes may get referred to as Normans.

The history of the Normans and the Saxons was recent enough that people remember it and the remains of the Norman castles still litter the landscape. We build Saxon and Norman castles out of cardboard boxes in primary school, because everyone learns about it. But it was far enough back that most of the bite is gone. Most people don't really know if their ancestors were Saxons, Normans or both.

The history of the peasantry is also some way back. Though classism is still an issue, the institution of peasantry is no more.

This is a real example of words that have become seemingly trivial and light-hearted. But what they are not is unimportant. There are politics underneath. The current working class conditions developed from those days of the peasantry. The attitude of poorer workers not deserving rights hasn't gone away. My great grandmother was in a workhouse, and one of her daughters was taken and sent to Canada because it was cheaper than paying to look after her. We don't joke about that. Some things still have scars.

In the joke is the suggestion that things haven't changed that much. That your class and who your ancestors were is still an issue. It's one that might roll on by someone in power, and that's another reason why we joke about being Saxon peasants, and not being in the workhouse.

No words are chosen without reasons. There are layers to those reasons.

* * *

In the far future, where a character is called by a slur, there are often no layers or reasons. It's a throwaway with no political significance.

The character many not be consciously aware of why they're saying it or why things are like that. When asked, they might say it's just how their family talk, or they've always made those jokes, or they don't know because they've never thought about it. This doesn't mean the reasons aren't there.

It's not enough to say it's fine because prejudice isn't a thing in the future. It's more complicated than that, because the history still exists in the future. The characters are impacted by that history, because they're still connected enough to use those words. When a writer makes those word choices, I'm searching for the missing history. I often don't find it.

* * *

Time is not the only distance. It can also be about space. In the USA, it's not unusual to hear a middle class person proudly declare their Anglo-Saxon heritage. I found this boggling, because surely they were a Norman? Or were they proud that they'd worked up to riches from a poor start?

What they meant is they were white.

Distance means the social system in the USA is not as closely linked to the Normans and Saxons. Given the history of the US, it's perhaps not a surprise that Anglo-Saxon came to mean a white person. More often than not, it is shortened to Anglo rather than Saxon, because it is about racial origins rather than culture and class.

The Normans were white, but not Anglo, because they were the invaders. Colonists generally don't like linking themselves to invaders, which may be why people aren't as loud and proud about their Norman heritage. People on distant planets and space stations might have similar avoidances in the words they choose, based on the things in their past they'd rather not think about.

* * *

I can talk about Normans and Saxons safe in the knowledge that it's been close to a thousand years, and no one from that era is going to read my words. The same isn't true for a story set a thousand years in the future, where my audience is going to be from right now.

I'd have to work hard to persuade the reader that it's realistic for white and black to mean different things. Or that gay only applies to people from Earth and not from Mars. No matter how casually the words are used in the future, they don't mean that right now. They have more impact right now. It's not impossible to get this right, but it's difficult. It takes thought and skill.

When it comes to slurs, the work has to be cast-iron, and even then, it'll hurt people. All it takes is seeing the slur, regardless of the context, to hurt someone who has been attacked by it. Even if they agree the story handled it well, they might never want to read it again, or not finish in the first place.

It doesn't mean the story can't be written. It does mean the writer has to realise the challenge and realise they might fail spectacularly. Too many enter thinking they can just churn it out and it'll all be fine because they tried.

* * *

In one Star Trek, there's a comment about the Moon. People on Earth have taken to calling it Luna, because it's not the only moon in the galaxy. But someone from the Moon points out they don't use Luna. They use the Moon.

It's a small moment, but it stuck with me, because it says so much. This is a continuing culture of people who moved to the Moon back when everyone called it that. They're keeping their traditions and their language, even as Earth's view changes. It's not that they lack an interplanetary awareness, because here's someone from the Moon in space. It's that they have an awareness of their history and the importance of the Moon to them, and they're not letting Earth people erase that.

In a series that had often commented on seeing the Moon colony lights from Earth, yet avoided showing the people responsible for those lights, it had extra meaning. How many of the audience had asked about those people? How many had assumed they'd be just like the people on Earth?

The difference between Luna and the Moon changes the perspective of the audience. That's why the reference stuck with me, long after I'd forgotten the story containing it. Repurposed words can be powerful the other way around, when they're words we find trivial, but the future doesn't. It doesn't have to offend someone to work.

* * *

The writer also comes from the present day and it shows. It's not unusual for a story to read as though the writer had decided before they begun that they wanted to use slurs, and they'd do whatever it took to crowbar them in.

The problem with twisting things around to use slurs, with a nudge-nudge-wink-wink attitude, is that it stops being about the story. It's about wanting to sound clever. It's about wanting to use slurs, have people take offense, and then say the story justified it and the readers are being over-sensitive. It's like the people who have very loud discussions about the history of racial slurs when they know non-white people are in range, because they want that reaction, and they want to shout back, "WE'RE HAVING AN ACADEMIC DISCUSSION!"

Sometimes a story will repurpose slurs in a way that fits, but it comes from the direction of creating a future where divisions and politics have changed, and then asking which words will have changed their usage. Not from thinking it'd be neat to use slurs and get away with it.

* * *

Now that I've found the missing things, I've collected them together, so I can show them to people. I can spread them around when someone says they had no idea it'd be offensive, and it was their vision, and why are people being mean. Because it's not the reader who has failed. It's the writer. They've failed in their awareness of history. They've failed in predicting the future. They've failed in describing that to the reader.

But what they've failed in most is understanding the current day. They don't understand how the words are used now or how they impact people now. They don't know that some topics will always hurt people. That lack of awareness is what's missing.

Without awareness, any attempt at changing the words of the future won't be subtle, it won't feel real, and it won't make readers think. I'm not sure on what planet that is the best thing for the story, but probably a far-future one where 'best' has come to mean something entirely different. Maybe someone ought to write a story about that.

On Conservative Urban Fantasy

noreply@blogger.com (Polenth) — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 06:55:00 +0000

When I saw that Tor.com had an article discussing how liberal urban fantasy was compared to epic fantasy, I wondered if it was a joke. My first reaction was to laugh. But apparently someone seriously thought that, hence the discussion.

Taking liberal to mean a stance of current progressive things, like equal rights for all, diversity, representation, and all that (rather than being a member of a certain political party), urban fantasy does not fare well. I wouldn't say it's necessarily worse than other speculative sub-genres, as they all have their successes and failures, but it's not standing out in the crowd.

So, why would anyone think it does?

I suspect it's because on the surface level, it looks hopeful. Women are often the main characters, taking on jobs traditionally taken on by men, such as combat roles. From a read of the back covers, it looks like it's about independent women doing their own thing. But once you scratch at that, it doesn't hold up.

On the side of representing women, a few common issues are:

The strong women are only selectively strong. It's common for these women to be raped (or threatened with rape) at some point during the series, in situations where they took risks, often directly contrary to a man's orders or advice. This is so common that author Seanan McGuire was asked when her characters would be raped (not if they would be).
The women are often paired with abusive love interests, who try to control them apparently for their own good. This is shown as romantic and desirable.
The women rarely have positive relationships with other women (which I discussed previously as the jealous evil harpy phenomenon... it can pop up in any sub-genre, but urban fantasy has a lot of it).
Though the special woman acting as protagonist gets freedoms, these are only for her, often due to her magic powers. They don't apply to other women. Especially not average un-magical women.

And that's only one aspect. Most of these women are white, straight and able-bodied. Where a protagonist doesn't fall into this category, it's usually because he's a white straight able-bodied man. Sometimes a character is portrayed as mixed race, but this is done in a way that implies the non-white ancestry is to make the character "exotic" or justify their magic powers. They won't be seen as non-white by anyone else, face any issues, or have any cultural connections*.

The community the characters live in is often majority white, even when set in real cities where this isn't the actual demographics. Fiction can change things... but it's a little coincidental that it's always changed to make it white, and not to hypothesise an America that wasn't colonised at all, or a Great Britain that was taken over by the Mongols.

Where characters who don't fit this mono-type pop up, they're often minor characters who are walking stereotypes and not an example of good representation. Such stereotypes are used to maintain the status quo, not to challenge it.

Answers on a postcard for the last major urban fantasy release where the protagonist was in a wheelchair or was very old (in the actual sense, not the looks-twenty sense). Some people rarely appear even as stereotypes.

Of course, there are exceptions to everything. I have read urban fantasy with a wider range of characters and where women outside of the main character are not vilified. I've also read epic fantasy that does the same. But this doesn't make a genre ahead of the game. No matter how many examples you list out, you can't escape that the biggest sellers are conservative. The Dresden Files is about a straight white man in a whitewashed Chicago. The Mercy Thompson books have a rape plot and abusive love interest, along with being mixed race for the magic powers. These are the ones often recommended when people ask for typical examples of the genre**.

The only saving grace with this is I wasn't the only one to wonder if it was a joke. Some of the commenters did too. There's hope that one day, no one will have to explain that progressive means a whole lot more than a woman picking up a sword.

* I discussed this in relation to Native American leads in urban fantasy. Fangs for the Fantasy talked about it in general terms, of why a mixed race character doesn't automatically mean it's inclusive.

** It's not inherently wrong to like things that are problematic. I liked the first two Dresden Files. The problem is when that liking is used to excuse the problems as not really being problems, or hassle people who point out the problems for being unreasonable (how dare people have opinions on the things they read, and other such arguments). It helps to realise that the bestsellers might not be someone's best introduction to the sub-genre.

2012 Hugo Nominations

noreply@blogger.com (Polenth) — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 02:51:00 +0000

This is my first year of nominating for the Hugos. Not my last, as the membership will cover me for a couple more years, but I don't know if I'll be doing it again after that. It depends on finances.

I've put the categories that cross over with the Nebulas first (the shorts of various lengths and novels). Then the dramatic presentation categories, which overlap with the Bradbury (though the Hugos break it down into two categories, meaning twice the nominations). For these categories, I've bolded titles that weren't in my Nebula/Bradbury nominations.

After that, it's the brave new world of Hugo-only categories. I couldn't nominate in them all. For example, I have no idea who edited what novels, or whether they managed to edit the required number in the year, so I'll have to leave that to people within the novel publishing industry. I don't listen to podcasts. I still have little idea what separates a pro, semipro and fan work, as the definitions aren't that helpful. All round, the Hugo categories are a nightmare. But where possible, I've tried to nominate.

Like before, the order of each category is probably alphabetical.

Short Story

Immersion - Aliette de Bodard (Clarkesworld)
Seven Losses of Na Re - Rose Lemberg (Daily Science Fiction)
The 17th Contest of Body Artistry - Alex Dally MacFarlane (Expanded Horizons)
The Seed Keeper - Yukimi Ogawa (Jabberwocky)
Tiger Stripes - Nghi Vo (Strange Horizons)

Novelette

Aftermath - Joy Kennedy-O'Neill (Strange Horizons)
The Waves - Ken Liu (Asimov's Science Fiction)
Arbeitskraft - Nick Mamatas (The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, Running Press)
Serkers and Sleep - Kenneth Schneyer (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
Courtship in the Country of Machine-Gods - Benjanun Sriduangkaew (The Future Fire)

Novella

African Sunrise was based on a previously published novelette, which made it ineligible for the Nebula.

On a Red Station, Drifting - Aliette de Bodard (Immersion Press)
The Longest Fall - Liu Cixin [translator: Holger Nahm] (Beijing Guomi Digital Technology)
All the Flavors - Ken Liu (GigaNotoSaurus)
African Sunrise - Nnedi Okorafor (Subterranean Online)
Barry’s Tale - Lawrence M. Schoen (Hadley Rille Books)

Novel

Summer of the Mariposas - Guadalupe Garcia McCall (Tu Books / Lee & Low)
Seraphina - Rachel Hartman (Random House)
The Killing Moon - N. K. Jemisin (Orbit / Hachette)
The Drowning Girl - Caitlín R. Kiernan (Roc / Penguin)
What's Left of Me - Kat Zhang (HarperCollins)

Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form)

I hadn't watched either Dredd or Beasts of the Southern Wild when I wrote my Bradbury nominations. The former because I'd thought it was a 2011 movie, and the latter as I hadn't heard of it (possibly because it's magical realism rather than outright "Here are DRAGONS!")

Beasts of the Southern Wild (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
Brave (Pixar)
Dredd (DNA Films)
The Avengers / Avengers Assemble (Paramount Pictures)
The Hunger Games (Lionsgate)

Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)

Room on the Broom is an adaption of the Julia Donaldson book of the same name, which was shown by the BBC in the UK. As such, it wasn't eligible for the Bradbury, but is here. Head Over Heels was the short I wanted to see before the Bradbury nominations, but couldn't get a copy.

Doctor Who: The Snowmen - Steven Moffat (BBC)
Head Over Heels - Timothy Reckart (National Film and Television School)
Paperman (Disney)
Room on The Broom (Magic Light Pictures)
Sight - Eran May-raz and Daniel Lazo (Sight Systems)

Best Related Work

Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: With Artwork by Yayoi Kusama - Lewis Carroll [writer] / Yayoi Kusama [illustrator] (Penguin) - Nominated for the art and layout, rather than the classic text.
The Moment of Change - Rose Lemberg [editor] (Aqueduct Press) - A book of feminist speculative poetry by various poets.

Best Graphic Story

I don't read many graphic novels, but I realised on re-reading it only says graphic story. So, I'm nominating children's picture books.

Keith the Cat with the Magic Hat - Sue Hendra [writer / illustrator] (Simon and Schuster)
Superworm - Julia Donaldson [writer] and Axel Scheffler [illustrator] (Alison Green Books)
The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore - William Joyce [writer, illustrator] and Joe Bluhm [illustrator] (Atheneum Books)
This is Not My Hat - Jon Klassen [writer / illustrator] (Candlewick, Walker)
Creepy Carrots! - Aaron Reynolds [writer] and Peter Brown [illustrator] (Simon and Schuster)

Best Editor (Short Form)

Neil Clarke - Clarkesworld Magazine.
Ann Leckie - GigaNotoSaurus.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia - Innsmouth Magazine and Fungi (Innsmouth Free Press).
Ann VanderMeer - Weird Tales (Winter 2012 Issue) and Steampunk III: Steampunk Revolution (Tachyon Publications).
Sheila Williams - Asimov's Science Fiction.

Best Fan Artist

Ken Barthelmey - Cover artist of Clarkesworld #74, November 2012.
Galen Dara - Artist showcase in Lightspeed (September 2012).
Zsófia Tuska - Cover artist of a 2012 Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

Best Semiprozine

Best Fanzine

I'm not sure if these are actually fanzines, but I nominated them just in case.

Best Fan Writer

Fatihah Iman - For Equal Writes.
Rochita Loenen-Ruiz - Articles such as Movements: Identity and the Indigenous Spirit (Strange Horizons) and Hunting for Stories in the Philippines (Weird Fiction Review).
Requires Hate - For Requires Only That You Hate.
Aishwarya Subramanian - For Practically Marzipan.
Bogi Takács - For prezzey.net.

John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer

Most of these writers have a short bibliography on the award eligibility page. Kat Zhang doesn't (as I write this), but her debut novel - What's Left of Me - was out in 2012, so I believe she's in her first year of eligibility.

Zen Cho
Damien Walters Grintalis
Joy Kennedy-O'Neill
Alex Shvartsman
Kat Zhang

Omitted due to lack of nominations: Best Editor (Long Form), Best Professional Artist and Best Fancast.

Anthology Ponderings

noreply@blogger.com (Polenth) — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 20:12:00 +0000

I've been musing recently on the anthologies I buy. There's a sort that's noticeably missing from my bookshelf: best of the year anthologies. I think a lot of the reason is I like themes with a bit more substance, such as a sub-genre, or a certain group of authors or some other connecting thread. Best-of-the-years tend to be a little on the random side.

It can also be an issue that the year may have been a poor one for fiction (from my perspective). Some years, I find I don't like a lot of the stories considered the best, because they're not themes I enjoy.

Even for best-of-the-years with tightly defined themes, the best of the best won't have all been published in one year. I'd rather have a book with the best the editors could find from any year.

Of course, someone is buying those anthologies, because they continue to be put out each year. It's not as though it's a problem for me that they are. But when it comes to anthologies I'm exciting about, and I'm saving my pennies to buy, it's always the un-yeared themed ones that do it.

The Issues of Speaking Out Against Madness

noreply@blogger.com (Polenth) — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 05:19:00 +0000

This post isn't about mad scientists, but I'm going to start there, because I need it for where I'm going.

When you find mad scientists, you'll also find some non-neurotypical fans. It's not that there can't be problematic areas of the trope, but there are also some positive ones. The mad scientist is not in a story to show how tragic they are, what an inspiration they are for neurotypical people, or to be cured. They have a plan and they have an adventure trying to achieve that plan. They can build flying machines or try to take over the world. There are no limits.

This is why I don't mind a bit of mad science, as when it's handled well, I enjoy the wish-fulfilment of the trope.

On the other side, the trope can demonise being non-neurotypical (if always portrayed as a genocidal villain). It can suggest that anything a non-neurotypical person comes up with is inherently unstable, rather than simply being a solution no one else had thought of trying. And it does use the word 'mad', which can be a problem in itself.

This is why I understand when others can't read it, find it triggering, and would rather see the trope disappear.

The point of this mad science summary is it highlights something I wished didn't need to be said: we're not out of the woods yet when it comes to the representation of non-neurotypical people and the use of related words (mad, insane, crazy). It's a sensitive issue because the discrimination is still there, the words are still used as insults and the people it impacts still don't have the power to do a lot about it. Though some tropes and uses of the word can be seen as positive for some non-neurotypical people, they can still be hurtful to others. Discussing the topic means understanding why the hurtful things are hurtful, even if they don't push our own buttons.

We're definitely not at a point where casually using the words to mean other things won't be hurtful. You can argue for reclaiming in situations where it's by non-neurotypical people, for non-neurotypical people and about non-neurotypical people.... but the argument gets a whole lot less substantial if you're using mad to mean fluffy pink horses.

In other examples, you don't call someone a faggot and assume people will think you're likening them to a meatball. If your friend is always happy, you're unlikely to say they're such a gay person, without stopping to consider other meanings. And if you say someone is mad, there are layers to that statement too, because calling someone mad still is a way to disregard someone, justify institutionalising them and otherwise take away their rights. If you mean they are happyfun, you've added a rather dark layer on top.

But there's a lot less awareness of the use of words relating to non-neurotypicality. Even in communities that are open to discussing similar issues in regards to race, gender or sexuality, raising non-neurotypicality terms is often taboo. "Oh, everyone uses that. It doesn't really mean that. You're so over-sensitive. My best friend with an anxiety disorder said it was okay." All the arguments that aren't considered acceptable in other contexts.

This is why my social networks haven't been a happyfun place in the last few weeks, because it hurts to see some terms being flung around so casually, in a context that isn't in any way related to non-neurotypicality. I can understand slips in conversations, because I do it too. When you hear something said so often, it can come out, like it or not*. But when it's something planned, considered, and justified, that's when it cuts.

The big thing that hits me is not simply the word, as I have a generally more positive view of mad/crazy/insane than a lot of my friends. It's because this usage takes it away. There's no potential for reclaiming the word, or attaching it to a positive things, as might happen in a story of mad science, because this isn't about non-neurotypical people at all. It's saying, "So, you want to reclaim this word used against you? Tough cookies. I like this word, so I'll use it. Go get another for your identity."

There's not a lot I can do about that, because I don't have the power. I'm small fry compared to the people involved. So each time I see it come up, I feel a little smaller inside, because I'm too small to change anything. All I can do is feel sad and hope if it ever comes up again, someone might remember this post and use a different word.

* Which isn't to say you shouldn't consider your words in casual conversations. But generally, you say it and you're gone. Someone notes it and you say sorry. It's not going to be something I see everywhere I turn for the next few weeks.

Story in FISH

noreply@blogger.com (Polenth) — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 05:37:00 +0000

FISH by Dagan Books, an anthology of speculative fish stories, is out in the world. I wrote a little before about my story, as it was one I had trouble placing. There's also a page on Dagan Book's site all about fish, with a full table of contents and information about purchasing.

Thwarting the Fiends is about a boy called Broccoli, and his slightly surreal adventures in his back garden. The world he travels through is based on his make-believe play.

The inspiration was my own experiences of ancestry issues. I don't look Northern European, and that raises questions, but I can't answer them. I don't know my ancestry. Nor is there any culture remaining from whatever cultures were involved. There's a generally feeling that something was lost, though I don't know what, and that I'll never quite fit. There are always more questions saying I don't belong where I am.

In Broccoli's case, he has more awareness. Not in the direct sense, but he knows enough about his family's cultures to imagine a world where they interact. Not in a tidy and obvious way, because fragments don't go together neatly, but it's there.

I wasn't sure if anyone would see any of that, or if they'd see it an disapprove of how I'd tackled it, but either way, that's how the story came about. And it has goldfish. Lots and lots of goldfish. So if nothing else, read it for the fish.

# Art by Galen Dara.

Rainbow Lights: Analysis of Rainbow Covers

noreply@blogger.com (Polenth) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 07:16:00 +0000

Usually covers have a limited colour scheme, using shades of one colour, two colours that work together (either because they're close together or dramatic opposites), or a bold tri-colour scheme using the primary colours. This is mainly because it's very easy to make rainbows look like a unicorn vomited on the book.

Which is all very well, but the theme for my collection is rainbows, so an all-green cover wouldn't exactly fit (no matter how lovely). I want to avoid any of the unicorn-vomit pitfalls, but I also want a rainbow. So before starting my own cover, I looked at other artwork using rainbows. These are my thoughts about using that colour scheme effectively.

Rainbow Rules

My first step was a visit to Google images. I searched for terms like "rainbows" and "rainbow lights". A few observations on the pictures that came up are as follows:

Some images used the vomit method on purpose, such as psychedelic artwork and digitally edited photos of rainbows. These are intended to overload the viewer. There's nothing wrong with that, but for a book cover, it'd detract from the details you want the viewer to see (the title and the author).
For non-psychedelic works, the most effective had de-saturated backgrounds, such as black, grey or a greyish shade of a colour. This made the rainbow stand out and also solved the visual overload problem. White backgrounds were also used for a brighter feel, but the rainbow stood out less against them.
Some focused mainly on one or two colours, with only small amounts of the rest. This gave the feel of the rainbow, without too much of a colour explosion.
The central colour would often appear to dominate at first glance, even if it was in the same quantity (or less) than the rest.
For contrasting areas, some used rainbow opposites. What I mean by this is they'd pair the opposite ends of the rainbow - red and violet. Usually in art, you'd use the opposite on the colour wheel* for this sort of contrast (which would be red opposite green, and violet (purple) opposite yellow). Red and purple wouldn't be considered to have this sort of contrast, as they're next to each other on the wheel. However, in a rainbow, the viewer has the expectation that red and purple are opposites, so odd though it is, it works (as long as the picture sufficient screams "rainbow").
Realistic rainbows had more subdued colours for the rainbow itself, because in the real world, rainbows aren't generally that bright against the sky. Sometimes it's good to remember that you don't have to set saturation to maximum when editing a rainbow picture.
Rainbow lights often had darker shades of the colour at the edges, with highlights in a bright/light shade. Most of these in the image search were photographs of lights, but the principle would work for a painted image too.

Cover Examples

After looking at rainbow images in general, I found book covers with rainbow colour schemes, and analysed which techniques they used (and how well).

Meant to Be - Lauren Morrill

The cover takes an inspiration from natural rainbows, both in having the rainbow in rays like a sun, and having a scene in the foreground. There are colours in the scene, but they're somewhat muted (note the red dress is not that bright, and has been mostly shadowed out... the grass is somewhat de-saturated). It's focused on reds and yellows, which goes with the feel-good contemporary novel blurb. It's also used some rainbow opposites to show the city against the sky.

It does a decent job of implying a groovy psychedelic theme, without going into eye-bleeding territory. The thing I least like is the font choice, but that's not a colour issue. It's certainly readable.

The End of the Rainbow - V.C. Andrews

Not only did a unicorn have an accident here, but the magic turned it into a rainbow-vomit whirlwind, which ate the protagonist! Also, the title is in a similarly bright colour so there's no real contrast. Add in the blurb, which talks about devastating tragedies, secrets and hardship, and someone had too many skittles.

In terms of colour balance, red was shifted to pink, and the yellow/green part is smaller than the rest (possibly in an attempt to make the yellow title text stand out a little more). This wasn't a successful cover, and it doesn't surprise me they changed it for the newer version (the new cover barely has any rainbow on, so I won't be looking at it).

Arclight - Josin L. McQuein

The black background makes the light beams stand out, with white to outline the face without drawing away from the rainbows. A focus on purples and blues is common for speculative fiction, and has been used to good effect here.

Rainbow opposites were used for the title, making it stand out, but also fit with the rainbow theme. It uses the same patterning as the lights, linking the title to the picture.

Crewel - Gennifer Albin

Another speculative book with a different approach. One trick here is the extremes have been minimised. There's only a hint of violet, indigo and blue. Red is softened to pink for most of it. Saturation has also been used - most of the background colour is less saturated (more subtle than using a grey background, but it's still there). The swirls are the most saturated parts, and draw the eye (the focal point of those being near the centre, close to the title).

I liked the choice of the pink swirls and red lips as the central colours. It's playing with cover colour stereotypes, as such colours are usually put on chicklit books. But it's using them in different ways, with an overall composition that's more dreamlike and suggests a speculative book. This goes with the blurb about becoming a beautiful and deadly spinster.

Much like Arclight, the title interacts with the picture. It's dark, so it stands out, but has reddish sections where it crosses the picture.

My Plans

My original idea was a rainbow squid in a black ocean. Arclight was very close to my colour scheme ideas, so I've seen it can work.

The debatable point is how bright to make the squid. It could be lit up, as though it's self-illuminated. It could also be fairly dark, as though a light is being shone onto it. Or a mix of both, with small points of light. As the squid body will take up a fair bit of the cover, I'm leaning towards a darker approach, with some points of light.

Colour-wise, purple/blue is often associated with speculative work, so would be a sensible dominate colour scheme. I liked Crewel's play on the cover colour stereotypes, but it's more of a risk for self-published work. Making the genre easier to identify increases the chances of a reader looking at the book.

I preferred the covers where the title and the picture went together. Meant to Be worked as far as the picture was concerned, but the text seemed separate, as though it was an afterthought. But this decision can come a little later, as I'll be adding the title digitally. The next step will be drawing the squid, which is a story for another post.

* See the top of the post for a picture of a basic colour wheel.

2012 Nebula Nominations

noreply@blogger.com (Polenth) — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 23:48:00 +0000

This year, I'm able to nominate for the Hugos too, but buying the membership to make this happen removed the funds to buy novels. This is an issue that often gets dismissed by suggesting the library, which vastly overestimates how many new releases appear in the library and how quickly.

The saviour was Second Life. During last year, I sold all my assets there, and had a fair chunk of virtual change. I converted it to real people's money, got the novels, and then had a reading panic to get them read in time. This likely won't be happening next year, so bask in the fullness of my novel nominations, because I don't know what next year will bring.

This post has my Nebula nominations only. I'll do a separate one for the Hugos (which will have some repeats, but there are a lot more categories there and different eligibility rules). Novellas were a sparse category this year, but if I find some for the spaces, I'll update the list.

All lists are probably in alphabetical order by author's family name.

Short Story

Immersion - Aliette de Bodard (Clarkesworld)
Seven Losses of Na Re - Rose Lemberg (Daily Science Fiction)
The 17th Contest of Body Artistry - Alex Dally MacFarlane (Expanded Horizons)
The Seed Keeper - Yukimi Ogawa (Jabberwocky)
Tiger Stripes - Nghi Vo (Strange Horizons)

Novelette

Aftermath - Joy Kennedy-O'Neill (Strange Horizons)
The Waves - Ken Liu (Asimov's Science Fiction)
Arbeitskraft - Nick Mamatas (The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, Running Press)
Serkers and Sleep - Kenneth Schneyer (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
Courtship in the Country of Machine-Gods - Benjanun Sriduangkaew (The Future Fire)

Novella

On a Red Station, Drifting - Aliette de Bodard (Immersion Press)
All the Flavors - Ken Liu (GigaNotoSaurus)

Novel

A Face Like Glass - Frances Hardinge (MacMillan)
Seraphina - Rachel Hartman (Random House)
The Killing Moon - N. K. Jemisin (Orbit / Hachette)
The Drowning Girl - Caitlín R. Kiernan (Roc / Penguin)
What's Left of Me - Kat Zhang (HarperCollins)

Andre Norton Award for Outstanding Young Adult Science Fiction or Fantasy Book

A Face Like Glass - Frances Hardinge (MacMillan)
Seraphina - Rachel Hartman (Random House)
Summer of the Mariposas - Guadalupe Garcia McCall (Tu Books / Lee & Low)
Above World - Jenn Reese (Candlewick)
What's Left of Me - Kat Zhang (HarperCollins)

Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation

The Bradbury is a tricky one to nominate for, as it runs using novel rules in a screenwriting world. It's difficult to see small indie films in their year of eligibility, as they're often only shown at film festivals and other special events. So this year, I'm going to mention a few that looked interesting, but I was unable to see.

The first is The Human Race, a full-length horror movie by Paul Hough Entertainment. The premise is a cross-section of the population are forced into a race, where the losers die. What interested me is they really meant a cross-section. Main characters include a man with one leg and two deaf friends (who talk using sign language during the film).

In animated shorts, Head over Heels by Timothy Reckart (National Film and Television School) is intriguing. A husband and wife live in the same house, but are estranged - he lives on the floor and she lives on the ceiling. I may get a chance to see this before the Hugo deadline, but we'll see.

On to the things I did see:

Brave (Pixar)
Paperman - John Kahrs (Disney)
Sight - Eran May-raz and Daniel Lazo (Sight Systems)
The Avengers (Paramount Pictures)
The Hunger Games (Lionsgate)

Mermaids and H2O: Just Add Water - Part 3

noreply@blogger.com (Polenth) — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 03:16:00 +0000

H2O: Just Add Water is a mermaid series for teens and tweens, which ran for three seasons between 2006 and 2010. Part 1 (over here) considers the series in the context of other mermaid media and reviews season one. Part 2 (over here) reviews season two. Part 3 (this section) deals with season three, wider themes/issues and the upcoming spinoff series, Secret of Mako Island.

(Due to covering three seasons, there are some inevitable spoilers and a few stand-alone episodes are discussed in more detail. However, I've avoided discussing the season finales and there will still be a lot of surprises.)

Review: Season Three

Plot Overview

Emma is off travelling with her family, so Cleo and Rikki are left alone. The Juicenet Cafe has closed, and Zane buys it, so that he can run it with Rikki. On the night of the opening, a water tentacle attacks the girls. New girl in town, Bella (Indiana Evans), jumps in the water to help, revealing she's a mermaid.

The girls travel to the Moon Pool, where they find freediver Will (Luke Mitchell). He'd swum in through the sea entrance and was knocked unconscious by the tentacle as it appeared. They tell him it was all a hallucination, but Will is uncertain.

Now the girls have the mystery of the tentacle to solve, along with trying to get through their last year at school.

Antagonists

The main antagonist is Sophie, Will's sister. She's ruthless in the pursuit of profit, so it's not that she has a personal issue with the girls. Unlike previous antagonists, she has no interest in mermaids. It's simply that she has no qualms about what happens to anyone who gets in the way of making money.

Despite this, there are signs she does genuinely care about Will. It's just that she loses sight of it sometimes when money is at stake.

Allies

Lewis is still around at the start of the season, but heads off part way through. Taking up the slack is Will, a talented freediver who's being pushed to go professional by his sister.

Mermaid stories usually de-emphasise human aquatic abilities. Mermaid allies may well be poor swimmers. If they're comfortable in the water, it'll be related to a surface water sport. Having an ally who can hold his breath and swim to reasonable depths is unusual. It also works well, because it gives Will an understanding of the mermaids that other allies have lacked (and it's not as though freedivers will ever be mermaid replacements... even a talented human can't swim as fast, or hold their breath for as long, as the mermaids).

It does mean he has an initial mermaid squee reaction to finding out mermaids are real, but he settles down soon enough, and comes to see the girls as friends he can share his love of the ocean with.

Overall Views

My criticism of the second season is it took a long time for the plot to get going. This wasn't the case in season three, where the plot of the water tentacle is introduced in the first episode and builds towards much higher stakes finale than the previous seasons.

Emma was absent as the actress had another job. Lewis was also gone for part of the series for the same reason. Which meant the new characters of Bella and Will were introduced. This did have some advantages, as both Bella and Will have lived very sheltered lives, with a lot of travelling and little time to socialise. The result is they're still navigating things others might deal with as younger teens, giving space for Cleo and Rikki to face older challenges.

More specifically, Rikki is dealing with running a business with Zane. Cleo is dealing with disruptions at home (her dad meets someone new and her sister is now a teenager), and a new job as a dolphin trainer (which presumably could be her future career).

The pacing of the season was pretty good, with a mix of the main plot and the sub-plots. I liked that the girls were facing more adult concerns. The eventual stakes in the finale got an eyebrow raise from me, but they do make sense in terms of the worldbuilding done for the mermaids in the series. This was a better conclusion than the previous season, and not a bad place to end the story.

Series Overview

Mermaid Design

Turning into mermaids on contact with water and mermaid powers are fairly standard in modern mermaid stories (though I haven't seen Bella's water-to-jelly power before). Shapeshifting with all worn items is a little more unusual. Most mermaids transform naked and have to find clothes. But given the short episodes, it's a lot easier for filming to have them shapeshift complete with clothes (and they do use the idea in fun ways, such as Emma dying her hair red as a mermaid, but it staying her original colour as a human).

The most unusual thing with the mermaid design was the reactions to the full moon. Seeing the moon or its reflection can cause them to act like they're intoxicated and possibly give them temporary abilities. As the girls spend more time as mermaids, this lessens, but the moon cycles remain significant.

The girls themselves joke about it being werewolf time, but it does make more sense for mermaids than werewolves. The moon has a big impact on the oceans, so the idea that mermaids would be sensitive to it isn't that far-fetched. As the series progresses, it becomes clear it's more complicated than that. The position of the planets and other heavenly bodies also has an impact. And there's a suggestion about why this might have come about in the first place.

Continuity

There are issues with continuity in the story. Some are likely budget concerns, as actors aren't rehired after their part of the story is done. It would've been interesting to see what Charlotte was up to in season three or to see Miriam from season one develop as a character. Perhaps to have the girls go to Miss Chatham or Max for advice sometime. These people wouldn't have all vanished mysteriously in real life.

Others are clearly mistakes. Ronnie turns from a wild rescue dolphin to a captive bred one. Rikki forgets that Cleo has painful singing.

Generally though, the continuity isn't too bad. There are some fun things that carry over, such as Lewis using his spiral lure anytime he fishes.

Racial Diversity

When I first saw the cover photo, I did wonder about Phoebe Tonkin's (Cleo's) race* (and judging from my internet searches, other people have too). However, she seems to identify as white and she's portrayed as white in the series**. And she's as dark and non-Northern European as any main characters get.

There are some side characters of other races, so if anyone's about to argue that everyone in Australia is white... no, they're not, and clearly they had no issues finding non-white actors for background parts.

Given that the series ran for three seasons, with eight different mermaids plus assorted love interests, they could have widened the net for their main character casting choices. As well as general issues of diversity, it reinforces the trope of non-white people never getting to be the cool non-humans (and thus never the centre of supernatural stories).

Romantic Relationships

All of the relationships are opposite sex. This may not be something the writers can control, as the networks often insist on no same sex relationships for child and young teen shows. But it's still something that needs mentioning, because somewhere along the line, someone's deciding that only heterosexual children and teens get to see themselves and their issues.

On a positive note for the show, it doesn't glorify abusive stalker relationships. When the boys act in ways that are controlling, this is shown as a bad thing. The girls also aren't vilified for handling relationships their own way. They can break up with boyfriends, have different boyfriends or not date (they're not all actively dating when the series ends). However, it did bother me that all the boys had controlling moments. Even though the narrative tended to slap the boys when they tried, it would have been nice if at least one of them didn't feel the need to try.

Cleo and Lewis's relationship was good to see after a few too many books. Young adult novels are a little prone to partners who are fated to be together, like it or not. This predestined bond gets used as an excuse for all sorts of abuse. So seeing a one-true-love setup where there's no predestination, only two people who've grown up together and are close friends, is nice.

Women in Science

The handling of women in science wasn't ideal in the first season. Though Doctor Denman is portrayed as being a talented scientist, she's also the target of appearance-based criticisms (that she can't be a real scientist due to being pretty). The girls generally avoid science, leaving it to Lewis.

The second season has Cleo fail biology and need to retake it, because she can't cope with science. Though her student mentor is Charlotte, and Cleo does pass after her extra study, there's still a vibe of science not being for girls.

This turns around in the third season. Cleo and Lewis work together on analysing the tentacle and Moon Pool. When Lewis leaves, Cleo continues the study, and is also shown working hard at science at school. A new science teacher character is a woman, who's shown as competent, without any of the overtones aimed at Doctor Denman. (Though an eye-roll is directed at the fact Cleo starts wearing glasses in this season.)

Taken as a whole, this creates a character arc where Cleo starts out avoiding science because she doesn't think it's for girls, slowly realises she can do it if she studies, and starts to become enthusiastic about it by the end. I don't believe this was the plan from the start (season three wasn't in the original plan), but it was a reasonable way to redirect problematic elements of season one.

Final Summary

There are issues with the series. Season two flounders, and the way side characters vanish is a sign of budget considerations. There's also a big lack of diversity among the main cast. This is an issue in mermaid shows and films in general, but H2O didn't exactly decide to break the trend.

However, I enjoyed it overall. The mermaid lore went to some interesting places, and I liked that the personal issues the girls face age with them. The visuals are nice, the characters are relatable for the intended audience, and it's generally strong on its depiction of women and girls (and where it's not, it's a talking point***). If you're looking for something generally fluffy and fun****, plus mermaids, H2O is one to watch.

The Secret of Mako Island

It is good to show that boys can be merpeople too (or fairies or riders of sparklie pink unicorns), but it needs to be done in a way that doesn't backslide to the old male-centric focus, where girls and women were just the accessories in the stories of the men.

This test is coming up for the makers of H2O with their next series, The Secret of Mako Island. In this, Zac falls into the Moon Pool and gains merpowers (early sources disagreed on whether he gets a fish tail or finned feet... but the promotional photos show a tail). This causes problems for three mermaids guarding the pool, who grow legs and head onto land to find him.

Potentially, this could go very wrong, becoming a story where Zac's needs are the core of the story at all times. However, if they create a friendship group much like the mermaids and Lewis in the previous series, it could work. A boy as part of the group is different from a boy dominating the group.

The series does address one of the H2O issues. Zac's actor - Chai Roumune - is mixed raced Thai/White Australian, which is a first for the merpeople (or any of the main characters) in the franchise. How well they handle this will be one of the areas I'll be looking for when the series is available.

On a story level, they need to find new places to go. It does look set to continue developing the mermaid lore, with sea-dwelling mermaid pods (something hinted as possible in season three, but not actually shown). There have been promotional shots of an older mermaid instructing the three girls, so there's potential for showing pod politics and family.

For now, I'll remain cautiously optimistic.

* Based on the cover image for this post, you might wonder what I mean about Phoebe Tonkin. She looked more obviously different in the season one cover photo, and appears to have been lightening on the covers as the seasons have gone on.

** The distinction between character and actor is important. It's not unusual for lighter non-white actors to be paled down and given Northern European family members, in order to portray them as white characters. It's also not unusual for mixed race characters to be played by white people.

*** I grew up chatting about the things I watched with my parents. And later with my friends. I learnt a lot about social issues that way. So I look for the potential for being a conversation opener in series for younger viewers. You're never too young to start analysing what you watch.

**** And if you're looking for something serious and adult, I'm not sure how you made it through three posts of sparklie mermaids.

End of 2012 - Goals and Dolphins

noreply@blogger.com (Polenth) — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 02:00:00 +0000

It's time for the end of the year, when I consider if I hit last year's goals and make new ones.

Writing Goals

Short Stories

My writing this year has mainly been short stories. I've had a few published, and the rest will be going into a short story collection (but more on that in a moment). My stories from this year were:

"Dead Meat", Nature (Nature Futures), Volume 488 (7409), 2 August 2012 (available online)
"The Road to the Beach", Penumbra, Volume 1 Issue 11 (Dreams), August 2012
"Through the Hoops", The Tomorrow Project, November 2012 (available online)
"Letters to a Fungus", Fungi, Innsmouth Free Press, 1 December 2012

My contributor's copy of Fungi has now arrived. It's actually the first anthology I've been in that isn't a collection of 'best ofs' for a market. Fish will be out early next year, as I understand it.

Short Story Collection

I've already blogged about my plans to self-publish a collection. Rainbow Lights will consist of my previously published stuff and new stories.

I set a tentative target of 13 February, 2013 as a publishing date, with the comment that I'd set a final date at the end of the year. It's now that time.

I know I could finish everything I need to by the February date, but my editorial volunteers have other stuff going on and I don't want them to be pressured. I also think it's better to finish early than scramble to finish on time. So I'm setting the final release date as 13 May, 2013. This gives a bit of breathing space for all involved.

My goal is to get the collection out, but also to produce a series of posts about the process. This won't swamp all other content on the blog... I'll keep it balanced, so no need to worry. Unless you don't like my random posts about daisies.

Urban Fantasy Novel

My goal this year was to query my urban fantasy book. Though my goal was met, it didn't lead anywhere. I'm not surprised, but I had to try in case it turned out differently.

Urban fantasy has always been a mixed thing for me. I don't like the racism, sexism, and every other -ism. I don't like the limited range of characters with major roles. And I don't want to read another book with a female main character where she's raped, often because she went against the wishes of an abusive alpha male who told her not to go to a place/do a certain thing/talk to a certain person, and often justified as being necessary to make her vulnerable to the abusive male's advances.

The book I wrote was in response to that. It took the things I found fun about the genre, and changed the things I didn't. I chose a cast I didn't get to see much in urban fantasy. I wrote a murder mystery, rather than a saving-the-world story, because that's what I wanted to read. I didn't write a romance, abusive or otherwise. But I knew when I did it that I'd written something hard to sell, in a genre that was already at saturation point. It was a risk and it didn't work out.

I will still keep an eye open for publisher's submission calls. It's possible some of the smaller houses might be interested. But for the most part, this one comes in the category of, "...but it'll make a great second novel."

New Novel

I didn't have a set novel-completing goal last year, as I wanted some flexibility. As it turned out, I focused mainly on shorts and floated around a number of novel ideas. This was useful, as it gave me space to think through where I might fit as a novelist, and what sort of novel might work as a first novel.

I'm not going to say which of my floating ideas will be the one I finish, but I intend to finish one in the early part of the year and query in the late part. This means no idea that needs massive cultural research (unlike the urban fantasy).

Picture Books

My goal was to get ten manuscripts ready. I don't have ten ready to go, but I do have some, and more than ten in various stages of written. This one's on a bit of a back-burner, as I don't see picture books happening any time soon.

Other Goals

Art Course

I went on an art course last year, which was one of my set goals. I haven't put the pictures online yet, as they'll need to be photographed rather than scanned. But once I get the lighting sorted for that, they'll be there.

It was useful being able to work large scale, using an easel. It made it easier to draw/paint with both hands and it wasn't as fiddly. Most of my previous stuff hasn't been any bigger than A4, which limited what I could do.

Since then, I've brought my own easel, and I'll use some of the stuff for producing illustrations for my story collection.

Freediving

I've always been interested in the sea/ocean and the idea of freediving (diving whilst holding your breath, rather than using air tanks), but I've also always been a poor swimmer. I was scared off swimming as a child and stopped entirely when I was about 13.

Towards the end of this year, I decided to do something about it (which I've been tweeting using the #terribledolphin tag, for those of you who follow me there). I found a swimming costume that covered all my skin (except hands, feet and neck/head), which dealt with my sensory overload issues (I have problems when my skin is exposed to the air or water directly). And I've been swimming once a week.

My swimming goals for next year are to improve my technique and swimming strength, in breast stroke, front crawl and dolphin kicks (this is a whole-body movement used to swim). I'm also working on learning to hold my breath for longer and to swim whilst holding my breath. I have a heart rate monitor, so I can see how low I'm managing to get it down before breath holds.

During the summer, I'll be practising my dolphin kicks in the sea, with my Christmas present attached to my feet:

A monofin, attached to me!

This is a SwEA'm Hydra monofin, and the packaging claims you can "be a dolphin...*" I guessed the starred footnote would be something like, "actual dolphin transformation not guaranteed," but it's a French translation of "be a dolphin". So I'm expecting great things. I'll only be swimming at the surface and shallow depths this year... a proper freediving course and stuff will be for a future year.

World Fantasy Convention

Sort of writing too, though I don't actually need to write to attend, so I'm putting this as an 'other' goal. I've booked a room at the hotel and I have my membership, so I'll be at WFC 2013 in Brighton. I may even bring my fin, if I'm feeling bold and like submersing myself in near-freezing sea water. If you're going to be there, it doesn't hurt to mention, so I know who might be interested in meeting me.

Short Version

I'm going to write a new novel, publish a short story collection and transform into a dolphin! Also, see you at WFC 2013.

How did your year go?

When Sexual Authors Write Asexuals

noreply@blogger.com (Polenth) — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 06:44:00 +0000

When sexual authors write asexual characters, my reaction often falls into the category of, "Oh dear." Sometimes with an added, "I'm never going into a room alone with you, ever." This generally isn't how authors hope anyone will react to their story, so I thought I'd talk a bit about why many of these stories are sigh-inducing. And why some are downright scary.

Asexuality isn't a binary thing. It's more like a scale of sexualness, with highly sexual at one end and highly asexual at the other. Some asexuals won't want to have sex at all. Some may do in relationships or other specific situations (terms like grey/gray asexual and demisexual are sometimes used for people in these areas). But in general, it's people at the end of the scale who are not that interested in sex and are unlikely to find people sexually attractive.

But here's the thing that doesn't get included in any formal definition: saying you're asexual, of any variety, means a radical increase in the number of sex questions people ask. It means more attempts to pressure you into casual sex, because sexual people create a fantasy where they're so awesome at sex, the asexual person will stop being asexual.

The result is I don't usually tell people I'm at the asexual end of the scale - I tell them I'm bisexual. Both are actually true, in the sense that I use them to identify myself*, but it's a partial truth to miss off the asexuality. However, it means people leave me alone.

How does this tie in to fiction? Most asexual characters are written by sexual people, and it goes the same way as announcing asexuality in a room of sexual people. Stories often fall into these two groups:

The asexual will have lots of sex for plot-related reasons - The asexual will say "yes" because they're coerced, blackmailed or otherwise forced into the situation. Often the author doesn't show it as rape (even though it is) and plays the scene to arouse sexual readers. But even if they avoid this, it doesn't change the fact it's about an asexual person being repeatedly raped.
Other people have lots of sex - Though the asexual isn't having sex directly, it's a strong focus in the story. Bonus points if some of this other sex involves images, reconstructions or clones of the asexual.

The same authors wouldn't have any issues writing a story with a sexual character who doesn't have sex, in a story where sex is not the focus. But the moment the character becomes asexual, everything turns to sex. It often comes across as a fetishisation of asexuals.

If everyone realised that, it wouldn't be as much of an issue, but they don't. These stories get promoted for inclusiveness ("look, an asexual character!"), but they're not written to be inclusive. They're written to arouse sexual readers, rather than being written for asexual people, or to provide an accurate representation of asexual people. They reinforce the idea that asexuals want to have sex really, if only you keep hassling them about it, or maybe rape them, so they can see how great sex is. When an asexual person tells you they want to see more asexuals in fiction, chances are very high these story tropes are not what they meant.

There are ways to avoid looking like you have a squicky fetish for asexual people. You can basically sum it up with these:

Write a story about asexuals that don't involve sex in any way. Look at how you mention being sexual in stories that aren't about sex. Apply the same principle to asexual characters.
If romance is your thing, you could have two asexuals in a romance and not need sex at all, whilst having all that romantic tension malarky.

However, if you're determined the story will have sex:

De-focus the sexual aspects. Your asexual character doesn't have to live in the sex-bot district.
Avoid rape. It's an easy thing to get wrong in general, but when the target is someone who explicitly doesn't want sex with anyone, there are connotations when the author sets things up to get that character raped.
For consensual sex, read up about demisexuals and grey asexuals (Google is your friend**)...
...and avoid writing the scenes graphically. Asexuals vary in their reaction to sex scenes, but you'll increase the chances of asexual readers if you tone down how much you show.

But really, if you don't want to be that author, try thinking about a story with an asexual who doesn't have sex.

* It gets complicated, in that I know some would classify me as biromantic and demisexual. Or panromantic and grey asexual. Or some other combination I haven't figured out. I don't cope with new words very well, due to the dyslexia and non-verbal thinking. So I pick a basic term that works, and explain it if I need more granularity than that. And you don't need a whole lot more granularity than that to understand where I'm coming from with this post.

** For a lot of marginalised groups, you'll be told to ask a friend. I'm telling you to use a search engine if your questions to an asexual are about their sex life***. The reason is as explained in the early part of the post - asexuals often get asked a lot of sex questions, and for people who range from disinterest to aversion to the idea of having sex, this is very uncomfortable. It's not something to do to a friend. Or to anyone else.

So head to the search engine of your choice and read everything you can find. And chances are, you'll find someone offering to answer a few questions. By now, you'll be past needing the basics, so you can ask one or two focused questions.

*** If you want to know things like what they want to see in stories, how people react when they say they're asexual, do they use the word "sexy" to describe people, and those sorts of things... then ask the friend (and you're welcome to ask me that level of question). Just don't add to the whole, "Hey, you're asexual! Let's talk sex!"

Diverse Reviewers (Links)

noreply@blogger.com (Polenth) — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 02:21:00 +0000

'Tis the season for award reading*, and one way to track down stuff I might have missed is following reviewers**. It can be difficult to find reviewers who match my tastes, as I like to see some discussion of social justice issues. There's no point in me tracking down a highly recommended story, only to find out it's full of anti-Muslim stereotypes and transphobia. And on the other side, some authors will be ignored by the more mainstream review places.

These are a few of the reviewers I follow (in alphabetical order), with some comments on why you might want to read them too:

American Indians in Children's Literature - I originally found Debbie Reese's blog when I started my urban fantasy book. Though mine wasn't aimed at children, her reviews have a perspective that usually gets overlooked on other blogs (many blogs dealing with race issues don't cover indigenous people well, if at all).

The focus is a little broader than the title suggests, as it covers young adult work too. All genres are reviewed.

Fangs for the Fantasy - The reviews are mainly urban fantasy (novels and television), with a few other things sprinkled in. I think the strongest areas are the discussions of race and sexuality. Discussions of how women are depicted are a little mixed... they've sometimes not commented on things I thought were pretty glaring. However, it's the only urban fantasy review blog I've found that notices any of these issues at all.

prezzey.net - A rarity in blog reviewing, in that prezzey (Bogi Takács) handles short fiction rather than novels. All stories reviewed are speculative, and mostly eligible for the year's awards. Eir discussions have a pretty broad focus, though include some issues that are often missed elsewhere (such as ableism).

Requires Only That You Hate - I found Requires Hate due to a particular book, where I noted some issues, but no one mentioned them in reviews. Until I read RH's review. Her die-in-a-fire and I-hope-you-fall-in-acid approach can be too much for some people, but if that's not something you find triggering, there's a lot of useful information in her reviews.

Many reviewed works are speculative and book-length (novels, with a few collections/anthologies). The focus is on race, feminism and lesbian themes, though other things do get discussed.

If you have any reviewers you think I might be interested in, feel free to mention them in the comments... though keep in mind if a reviewer compliments a story on how wonderfully exotic it is, or complains the story would be better if it had less gay people, they're not going to be the reviewer for me. I'm looking for the viewpoints that don't get in the big magazines.

* I think if I'm right, I also get to nominate for the Hugos and World Fantasy Awards this year, in addition to the Nebulas. But don't quote me on that. I will aim to nominate / vote to the full extent I can.

** Another way is when people suggest things to me directly.

Fungi Anthology Available

noreply@blogger.com (Polenth) — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 22:12:00 +0000

The Fungi anthology by Innsmouth Free Press is now out (the official release date is 1st December, 2012). It has a mushroom person on the cover! You can't get much more shiny than that. When my contributor's copy arrives, I'll put it on the shelf and admire the mushroomness.

But back on the word part. My story is called Letters to a Fungus, and is a bunch of letters written to a fungus. Admittedly, I don't get any elaborate title points for that one*. It's also my first published story about fungi, which is funny considering how much I like them.

The basic inspiration was giant fungi, such as the one discovered in Oregon. People tend to assume the mushroom is the fungus, but a lot of the mushrooms in an area may be produced by a single fungus (much as a bush may have lots of berries, but it's still a single bush). As fun as mushrooms can be, we shouldn't ever forget the real body of the fungus is out of sight, and might not be what we expect.

The Fungi website has a short piece on why they picked my story, and my answer to, "Why write about fungi?" (Though I'll note I'm not a gigantic mushroom with a laptop**.) The Innsmouth website has a page with purchase information, including links to online shops and the option to buy directly from the publisher.

There's also a Goodreads giveaway going on, ending on December 31, 2012. It's open to people in the US, Canada, UK and Australia. You can add the book to your to-read list, or review it, from the Goodreads pages: hardback, paperback and Kindle versions.

That's all the linkage. If you get hold of a copy, I hope you enjoy it!

* If it'd been a series of limericks written to a cat, and been called Letters to a Fungus, I could call it surrealism. But as it is, it's one of those stories where people will ask, "What's it about?" because they don't entirely believe it really is a series of letters to a fungus. Maybe they've never written to a fungus. Some people are anti-fungal like that.

** I'm actually a tiny mushroom with a desktop.

# The art is by Oliver Wetter.

Daisies and Hard Science Fiction

noreply@blogger.com (Polenth) — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 02:24:00 +0000

People argue about the exact divide between hard science fiction and other science fiction, but it generally comes down to whether something is scientifically possible. This isn't a bad thing, but sometimes authors get too caught up in whether something is plausible, rather than whether it's possible, and that's when things can run into problems.

What's this got to do with daisies? It starts with Daisyworld...

Introducing Daisyworld

Daisyworld is a simple simulation. A planet has black and white daisies*. As we know from the wonders of science, black things absorb more solar radiation. White things reflect more solar radiation.

And being mean, we start playing around with Daisyworld's sun and changing the solar radiation. It starts low and gradually rises.

At the low end, black daisies thrive, because they're able to absorb the low levels of radiation and stay warm. But it does more than that, because by coating the surface of the planet in black, the entire planet absorbs more solar radiation, and warms up.

As the solar radiation increases, the white daisies take over, because they can reflect more of the solar radiation and avoid overheating. The impact on the planet is it reflects more of the solar radiation, counteracting the fact there's more of it of it.

The result is while the daisies are alive, the planet stays at a roughly stable temperature (around optimum daisy growing temperature).They're not invincible. Mess with the sun too much and they can't compensate. But the planet does a whole lot better at staying stable with the daisies than without.

What's this got to do with hard science fiction? It's all about the odds...

Finding Daisyworld

Daisyworld is scientifically possible. The model is designed to be possible, because it's testing a theory. The real world would have more frills (like an atmosphere and a more complicated daisy lifecycle), but the basics are there.

What it's not is very plausible. It's not completely off-the-scale unlikely. You could terraform a planet and introduce only two daisy species. But the chances of human explorers happening across a planet with a couple of flower species is not very high, to put it mildly.

And that's where the division between possible and plausible is important. Daisyworld is not as plausible as a planet with high biodiversity (like Earth), but the possibility of its existence is fun. There're a lot of stories that can use that idea, and I don't mean they all have to be about daisies. As an example, I wrote one where only beetles survive a global disaster, so they evolve to fill all the niches, including photosynthetic plant-like beetles. Possible? Yes. Plausible? Not really.

There's nothing wrong in writing stories that keep tightly to what we're pretty sure we know. Using NASA reports to design your future spaceships and solar system outposts has its place. I've done it too. But getting too caught up with that can miss pushing the boundaries about what could happen.

The Moral of the Tale

The take-away point is that hard science fiction limits itself if inclusion is based on probabilities. Rather than trying to win the award for accurate future predictions, it can be interesting to ask what would happen if things took a few unexpected turns.

And of course, worlds filled with daisies are nifty.

* There are more complicated forms of Daisyworld, but I'm keeping it simple here.

# If you're reading this on a white background (rather than the original blog background) the picture will look like the daisy is invisible rather than white-edged. But it's really there. Honest.

Story at The Tomorrow Project

noreply@blogger.com (Polenth) — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 12:36:00 +0000

Arc (a new fiction magazine run by the New Scientist people) and The Tomorrow Project are running regular fiction contests. I entered for the theme 'the future of pleasure' and was a runner-up.

"Through the Hoops" follows Shaista and Rita Singh, as they practise a futuristic form of parkour / freerunning. You can read a free PDF version, and comment, on The Tomorrow Project website. Or check out Arc's comments on their Tumblr.

Behind the story...

One of the question posed in the longer description was, What new games will we play?

When I got a 3DS for my birthday, one of the first things I found was Face Raiders*. The game displays the room around you using the 3DS's camera, and adds on dimensional rifts and aliens to shoot. Augmented reality games interest me a lot more than virtual reality, because it's not about locking yourself away in a pod somewhere. It's about getting out and about, only with a slightly different view on the world.

So while thinking about augmented reality, I thought about what you could do in a game the size of a city. The idea of a giant platformer game, by actually having the skills to perform the jumps, was an obvious one.

This has additional conflicts, because the skills needed to navigate a city already exist. Neither parkour or freerunning proponents want it to become a competitive sport. It brings commercialisation and a change in attitude. But with some parkour / freerunning games already existing, it's easy to see how they might be adapted for an augmented reality system, whether people like it or not.

Though gamers don't always play by the rules...**

* More accurately, my critique partner found it, photographed himself very badly as the first alien, and then I took it back. I've refused to delete the bad photo. He'll have to live with me shooting at him.

** How quickly can I kill all the Lemmings? How many Earthquakes does it take to destroy a city? How far can I run through the dungeon naked before a dragon eats me? Let's lock all my Sims in a room and set it on fire!

On Con-Hot Boys

noreply@blogger.com (Polenth) — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 03:44:00 +0000

There's recently been quite a bit of discussion about comic artist Tony Harris, who went on a rant about women going to cons to prey on poor helpless geek men, by wearing skimpy costumes (said costumes being reproductions of costumes designed by men for use in comic books). A lot has been said on this already. Fozmeadows broke down why it's sexist. Nick Mamatas has a collection of similarly lovely anti-women comments (including my favourite: "We are literally afraid women only go to cons to make fun of us" as though women have no hobbies other than laughing at geeky men*, and would gladly use up all their wages to do so.)

Tony Harris's defence was he meant male fakers too, and just didn't say so. I decided to take him at his word, and switch the male/female references. So, to all you cosplaying con-hot boys out there, here's his message:

I cant remember if Ive said this before, but Im gonna say it anyway. I dont give a crap.I appreciate a pretty Boy as much as the next Hetero Female. Sometimes I even go in for some racy type stuff ( keeping the comments PG for my Gentlemens sake) but dammit, dammit, dammit I am so sick and tired of the whole COSPLAY-Roosters. I know a few who are actually pretty cool-and BIG Shocker, love and read Comics.So as in all things, they are the exception to the rule. Heres the statement I wanna make, based on THE RULE: "Hey! Quasi-Pretty-NOT-Hot-Boy, you are more pathetic than the REAL Nerds, who YOU secretly think are REALLY PATHETIC. But we are onto you. Some of us are aware that you are ever so average on an everyday basis. But you have a couple of things going your way. You are willing to become almost completely Naked in public, and yer either skinny( Well, some or most of you, THINK you are ) or you have Big Boobies. Notice I didnt say GREAT Boobies? You are what I refer to as "CON-HOT". Well not by my estimation, but according to a LOT of average Comic Book Fans who either RARELY speak to, or NEVER speak to boys. Some Virgins, ALL unconfident when it comes to boys, and the ONE thing they all have in common? The are being preyed on by YOU. You have this really awful need for attention, for people to tell you your pretty, or Hot, and the thought of girls pleasuring themselves to the memory of you hanging on them with your glossy open lips, promising them the Moon and the Stars of pleasure, just makes your head vibrate. After many years of watching this shit go down every 3 seconds around or in front of my booth or table at ANY given Con in the country, I put this together. Well not just me. We are LEGION. And here it is, THE REASON WHY ALL THAT, sickens us: BECAUSE YOU DONT KNOW SHIT ABOUT COMICS, BEYOND WHATEVER GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH YOU DID TO GET REF ON THE MOST MAINSTREAM CHARACTER WITH THE MOST REVEALING COSTUME EVER. And also, if ANY of these girls that you hang on tried to talk to you out of that Con? You wouldnt give them the fucking time of day. Shut up you damned liar, no you would not. Lying, Liar Face. Yer not Comics. Your just the thing that all the Comic Book, AND mainstream press flock to at Cons. And the real reason for the Con, and the damned costumes yer parading around in? That would be Comic Book Artists, and Comic Book Writers who make all that shit up.

So boys, let that be a lesson to you. Keep your breasts covered and prepare to have the REAL nerds (women) quiz you on your obscure comic knowledge**. If you can't recite your character's origin story from six different reboots, leave the costume at home.

You may also want to bring a measuring tape, so we can determine if your breasts are BIG or GREAT. If they're only big, you should fully expect women to stay away from you and move away in the restaurant like you have the plague. Your breasts just aren't as good as ours, so we don't want them too close.

Finally, what were you thinking, showing your appreciation of comics at a comics convention?! You just hate all the people who do the REAL work in the industry!!!

* Though if you hold these attitudes, women will be laughing at you, but not because you're a geek. And not because they're all-powerful stomping on you as a victim. At the end of the day, Tony still has a job that few women get to have, because it's an industry that discourages women. When women make jokes about this, it's laughing at the bully, because there's nothing else to really do about it.

** This cartoon by Meg / sailorswayze sums it up perfectly.