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The illusion of reality.

That’s kind of what fiction is, isn’t it? Only the author gets to say ‘My reality came in a bigger glass! And it was brim-full!’

And if he or she is any good, they make it so, at least for the duration of the book, and, just every now and again, with knock-ons through life. I have to wonder how much Jack Vance’s BLUE WORLD (the first sf book I read) shaped me, let alone my fiction. I mean, it’s a book about living on what essentially are islands (made of floating weed), where an obstinate (and sometimes not too bright) hero solves problems and builds things.

No similarities there at all, right?

And there’s nothing in the fact that it’s good satire about perspective: The people living on the floats consider themselves upright, moral and good, and are organised into guilds (with great pride in membership) named after the professions of the original survivors of the star-ship crash that marooned them there…

The reader gradually realizes it was a prison ship. And yes, ALL of the guilds’ founders claimed obsessively to be fine, upright and innocent people – which might indeed describe some of their descendants, trying to live up to that ‘saintliness’.

Generating that illusion is of course the skill that sets the popular author apart from the Chavez award winners. It’s a skill, part of the craft of writing, which one can have innately – or learn to do. The good news is learning does improve anyone’s writing. The bad news is some people will still probably be better at it than you.

A big part of this is writing believable characters – people who behave like real people, fill the roles of real people within the setting you create. This is difficult if you’re playing ‘insert the correct PC tokens’ because most readers who live in the real world struggle to accept an illusion that in no way mirrors their reality.

I have found two things make or break character. Firstly, motivation. If a character responds consistently to circumstances in the way the character you have built plausibly would – that is natural and so un-noticed that it is right. If your gung ho action man hero suddenly has a three page fit of angst about whether he’s offended someone, or your fainting violet who spends hours in angst about whether to have Chamomile tea or Earl Grey suddenly displays the capacity for unthinking action… well, you better foreshadow a split personality.

Secondly, consistent and recognizable patterns of dialogue. I’d hold Mary Ryan – Tim’s Grandmother, in CHANGELING’S ISLAND as one of my better efforts at that.

(the picture is a link) BTW the paperback of CHANGELING’S ISLAND is being released on the 28th. I’m sure you saw the publicity guys at Baen letting all of you and the world know. Read the many pieces in the blog tour they organized and took advantage of the pre-order bookbub specials etc… which would be a surprise to me. (Sigh). One day publishers may learn, but the above is an example of ‘out of character’ behavior, which would break the illusion for the reader (at least the reader who is a writer).

Another useful technique used by such masters as Tim Powers and Neil Gaiman (Gaiman is not one of my favorites but he’s good at this) is the foundation – in fiction – of successfully writing ‘secret histories’ is using part of the real truth. A selective part which gives veracity. In my opinion no-one does better than Tim Powers in ‘The Anubis Gates’. You KNOW you’re being swept along for the ride, but he’s good at it.

It’s a common feature of modern journalism: take elements that are obviously plainly true, leave out the bits that would spoil the spin you want to put on the individuals, and apply bias particularly in ways at least some of your audience are likely to want to believe. The attack on Milo Yanniopolous was a masterclass in this. It is long-term destructive if you’re supposedly writing fact, not fiction, but it is very useful for suspending disbelief in fiction. If you’re writing fiction and want to suspend disbelief it’s particularly instructive to see how the background was crafted.

It was no use having its source as a left wing website: the left has been trying to ‘normalize’ pre-pubescent paedophilia for generations, let alone post-pubescent sex. In sf – Delany has been a darling of theirs, the activities of Breen were well-known, and they tried to whitewash Marion Zimmer Bradley back into favor. They love Polanski and adore Dunham. It’s the right and center who regard it with disgust. A left-source of the carefully selectively edited material would have been treated with the disdain that the left wing would have treated right wing evidence of Hillary Clinton breaking security regulations or laughing at getting a rapist to walk free. So: they faked a right wing site… And of course there are parts of the US right (I believe that neo-Nazi fellow was delighted by it) eager to believe the worst of a flamboyant homosexual, from that sort of source.

I’m mostly dis-interested, except in the ‘when they came for the Jews I said nothing, because I was not a Jew’ sense. I’ve got a short called ‘BOYS’ (which is actually about topology, but I daresay it could be selectively edited from maths to under-age sex by cutting and re-arranging the words or the letters.) I suspect it’ll all work out just as well as their attempts to de-platform Vox Day or President Donald Trump.

Which leads back to using this in writing fiction – when working on building that framework of pseudo-reality, you have to consider what your audience could believe, AND who they could believe it from. Fortunately, people do accept our work to be fiction, and are usually willing to help us along.

Talking of fiction – I had a free giveaway with my newsletter, which is now up for sale (broad hint, I will be doing this sort of thing again. Signing up has advantages for people who like my writing). As usual the picture is a link.

Now, With Added Children!

It’s not my fault. I have littles, and the littlest little (that’d be Wee-er Than Wee Dave Dave, for those keeping track at home) woke up. That wouldn’t sound like an issue, but it’s a delay of at least half of a clock rotation. If you dig on analogue. Which I do. And them there’s the fact that Senior Plague Rat brought something home from Sunday School (I think, coulda been the winter market at which Mrs. Dave hawks the jewelry she makes for fun. Regardless, Wee Dave brought the crud, the crud has been broughten, shared with Junior Plague Rat, and passed on to yours truly. So no Daves slept well last e’en.

Second Coffee come early, and be ‘lert to me.

I love my littles, despite their habit of preventing paying work. They’re adorable, which is a survival mechanism for the small and vexing. And that’s more pleasant than it could be. Also, they generally smell good, which I’m given to understand is some kind of spiffy evolutionary marker. BZ, evolution. Well played, that mechanism.

They’re also helpless, which is useful to you, the writer.

I’m reading through several of Dave Freer’s offerings (I highly recommend Changeling’s Island. Point of fact, I have recommended it, and I’ll be pushing it at pretty much anybody with any interest in reading, young or less young) and a recent scene had a pair of sometime allies worked together to prevent a rather hard-to-kill magical hybrid from re-kidnapping one’s toddler daughter. Two highly skilled swordsmen should have been more than equal to the creature. Would have been. If they hadn’t had a small child to worry about.

Kids are physical complications. They just get in the way. They’re always underfoot, and, especially at certain ages, innocently suicidal. Almost *anything* can hurt or kill an infant. Or a toddler. Really, humans are just fragile. It’s a good thing we heal well, though both of those are subjects for future posts. But the physically immature are worst off. Lousy mobility, terrible coordination, and they all use everything as a dump stat. No strength or dexterity, no constitution worth mentioning, and let us not even speak about their wisdom scores! Kids just get in the way of doing. The littlest one is doing her darnedest to prevent me finishing this post, for example.

They’re always under foot and demanding attention. “Watch this!” “I’m cooking the food you were in tears for not having two seconds ago, Child.” “Yeah, but stop that and watch what I’m doing now! And then play with me!” And Dave’s veins start to throb. Or playing with suburban expedient caltrops in the kitchen. That’s a favorite. A Duplo took a nickel-sized chunk out of a buddy’s foot not that long ago. And then there are the miniature wheeled conveyances.

And they have needs. Changing, feeding, playing. Lots and lots of cuddles. And where does all of that come from? Yes, I hear that voice in the back! It comes out of Dave’s writing time!

And this is just in the mundane setting of the contemporary home. In a less advanced milieu, you have the added adventure of medical danger. Any cough or cold can become a raging fever, which can easily kill in a pre-industrial society. Or in many industrial ones for that matter. A nice stressor to heap on your characters. Good for relational stability, that.

Or suppose your characters are fugitives. Maybe the authorities view them as kidnappers, whatever they or the reader believes. They have a vested interest in staying undiscovered. Well, and has anybody let the child know that? And would a toddler even care? What about a babe-in-arms? How do you convince the tired, cold, angry, hungry, and now damp and souled infant to stop squalling before so the magically equipped tracker doesn’t discover them? Asking for a friend.

On the upside, children can make excellent comic relief. Wee Dave makes some pronouncements that have Mrs. Dave and I rolling. I’m given to understand this is normal. So pit that in your story, too. Is the plot getting a little too thick, with the darkness that makes your reader wonder if the kid is going to make it? Toss in a kids-say-the-darnedest. Maybe a mouthing off to a minor villain moment.

And then there’s the demideus ex machina moments. Characters – and more importantly, author – wracking brains trying to come up with a solution to one problem or the other? Out of the mouths of babes… Seriously, have the kid toss off a line that shines a light in your hero’s foggy thoughts. Great fun, especially if you can then twist it into a plot-advancing failure.

Everything always costs more and takes longer, and such is especially the nature of reality when dealing with children. So complicate your story, and your characters’ lives, and make them responsible for a child. Best way I know of to force them to grow.

The Inadequacy of Silence

I am an author. I’m not a warrior. Sarah has described me as possibly the most conflict-averse person she knows – and she’s not wrong. I do not like fighting and I do not like starting arguments for the sake of it.

There are, however, limits.

You see, as someone who knows what it is to have people lie about you to not only take away any support you might currently have but eliminate any chance that anyone will ever support you, I decided some time back that I will not stand back and allow that to happen to anyone else. Ever.

So when a controversial figure’s book deal is suddenly canceled because of a manufactured furor (not even over the content of the lies used to create that furor because the publisher has printed and supported far worse from those who happen to have not had the howling mobs roused against them) it impacts all of us readers and authors.

For the record, I don’t give a flying fuck what that – or any other author – does in privacy with consenting partners. Even if I would be squicked to high heaven by the details if anyone was crass enough to tell the world. I don’t care what he – or anyone else – believes as long as it’s not being shoved down my throat and nobody is being damaged by it. If I don’t like the author’s behavior or politics I don’t have to buy their books and I certainly don’t have to read them. I am sufficiently mature that I do not see the need for a legion of sensitivity readers to take their works and massage them into bland, tasteless pap.

What I care about is that someone who has – objectively – done not one damn thing wrong is the subject of a coordinated effort to not merely silence him, but disappear him. I’ve seen this happen in the past. It happened to Larry Correia. To Brad Torgersen. I didn’t get the full force of it last year, but instead got the cold shoulder of people doing their best to pretend I’d already been disappeared.

Just because some degenerate prick who wouldn’t know a moral if he trod in one edits over an hour’s video to make it look like an author is endorsing one of the few reliable hot-buttons remaining (mainly because that prick’s fellow army of degenerate pricks have abused the other ones to such an extent people yawn when the old standbys of ‘racist’, ‘sexist’, or anythingelsist get aired) does not mean that a) the degenerate prick in question actually disapproves of said hot-button the way most folk with some notion of morality do; or b) that it is true.

It isn’t.

When people listen to lies like this and swallow them, they become the useful idiots who allow evil to happen.

Consider this: think of the most vile, disgusting book you have ever read. Would you ban it?

I wouldn’t. Let it find its audience and be judged on its merits – or lack thereof. The only time I would argue for something to be taken down is if it is a lie masquerading as truth, and in that scenario I would replace the lie with the truth and let the light of truth show the lie for what it is.

Because if we do not stand up for authors – or anyone else for that matter – when some excrement-laden offal tries to destroy them with lies, sooner or later our silence will be taken for disagreement, and we will be targeted.

Do not blame those who speak out when that day comes. The fault is in those who were silent in the face of evil.

Fractured Mirrors and the Point of Pain

There are many theories of what makes a good book.  The most prevalent/strongest one in our day is the social justice theory.  No, I don’t mean the one propagated by social justice advocates, though they’re linked.

What I mean is that for a long time, what made a book “good” and gave serious people permission to like it was that it had classical references.  That’s how you knew the writer was properly educated and thought deep thoughts.  I think that started in the renaissance and before that it was “books that were good for something” the something being propagating the faith.  Well, things go in cycles.

After WWI put vast cracks in the civilizational confidence of the west and we started doubting our roots, classicism because a mark of being “high class” and high class was, aesthetically and politically right out in the early 20th century.  The trusted men from the best families were responsible for making Europe into a vast abattoir.  Which made literary criticism ripe to fall for the then new and exciting Marxist theory of everything.  (Well, it was actually a theory of economics, one that was disproven by the time it was written, but Marx wasn’t an economist.  However people tend to take one lens and view everything through it, even things it makes no sense to do that with.)

So once again, literature became “good” when it did something “good” in the world, in this case advance change towards the perfect socialist state, just like medieval literature advanced our way to heaven.

I’m not sure this was ever okay, not from a ludic perspective.  Most books informed by this perspective are tiresome, even going back to when they were a new and exciting thing, back in the early to middle last century.  I do understand they were “new” and “exciting” to people who had never read the like, but now, almost a hundred years later, the nostalgie de la boue and the obsessive violating of taboos we no longer hold grows tedious.

And that’s part of the problem, you know? It’s that the only way to keep that kind of preachiness new and fresh is to continuously violate taboos, until you get to the point no sane human being would read these books for pleasure.  And then we get a lot of crap about how we should read them because they’re somehow “good for us.”  I’m sure you can find examples.  Seems like there’s a new one every week.

I know that if you don’t agree with the moral aims of the books they sound beyond tedious, and into the lunatic range.  And then the rate of reading and readers falls.  And then everyone laments.

So, what is a good book?

I don’t know.  I’m a libertarian.  I’ve made a whole career out of telling people I’m staying out of their business.  All I can tell you is what makes a good book to ME.

A serviceable book keeps me entertained for two hours or so while I’m cleaning the house or cooking dinner.  (Sometimes audio books, sometimes “disposable paperbacks” bought for $1 at the thrift store.  Why?)  I call these popcorn books.  I read them in chain, because that’s ALL I do for fun.  That’s my escapism.

These books are fungible, but not … uneeded.  If most of what you do is read for fun, you need a supply of these.  I’ve written books like this (Dipped Stripped and Dead under pen name Elise Hyatt is up on Amazon.)  Some would argue that most books I’ve written are like this, but I’d say that my science fiction, and the shifter fantasy, and maybe even Witchfinder rise above that.  Though I’m not going to break your head if you say they don’t.  I just know what I was aiming for.  Like being unable to watch yourself walk down the street, it’s d*mn hard to evaluate your own books, your own heart’s blood.  For instance, Jane Austen’s own favorite book was Emma, a book that makes me want to sleep and kill things AT THE SAME TIME.

It was brought home to me recently the importance of “writing things that matter”, things that rise above popcorn.  Let’s say that finding out you have a brain tumor (non malignant or at least isolated by virtue of position.  The one thing it affects is my vision, and it might be reason enough to remove it, eventually.  We’re monitoring) and that one of your acquaintances/colleagues has cancer, watching one of the first bloggers you liked die, and watching one of your first mentors (Ed Bryant) die too, all bring home to you the fact that this is passing, and you want to make sure amid the “must dos” and “I’ll write that for money” you want to write something that remains.  Something that is heart’s blood, and will make your voice heard throughout the years, if not centuries.

So, how do you know what that is?

You don’t.  It’s how it hits readers.  Some books I consider popcorn; some books I WROTE as popcorn got me emails from people who said the book had been an anchor and comfort to their dying relative.  Plain Jane, written as a work for hire under a house name, for crying outloud.

You CAN’T tell.  All you can tell is what you feel is a GOOD book TO YOU.  And if it does survive centuries, we will know (though if you will know depends on what you think of life after death, likely.)

Books rise above the average to me when I remember them, think about them, or a phrase comes back to me.  Yesterday it was a sentence from Jim Butcher “You know, lying is not a superpower.”

That’s the first cut.  The book wasn’t FORGETTABLE.

But how do you make it something else, something that resonates and vibrates within you and others?  I don’t know.  I only know me.  I gravitate towards mirrors and the point of pain.

What does that mean?

I was a freakishly big-headed kid (literally, not metaphorically) who spent most of her time with raw sores all over her face, particularly around eyes and mouth, making me look rather like the joker or something out of a horror movie.  I’m forever grateful they went away with the onset of puberty and that they’ve been only on my arms for the great part of twenty years.

I was also a cherished and loved child, and frankly spoiled by dad and his mom.

Going to elementary school was like a betrayal.  I couldn’t figure out why people recoiled from me, and when I figured it out my world shattered, and was never put together again the same.  My perception of self was destroyed, but also my perception of what mattered about me/what the rest of the world saw.

Some would argue that most of my life is informed by that moment.

I hate sucker punches.  I hate it when people are attacked by people they trusted or had reason not to fear, in their place of safety.

I write people whose world has shattered repeatedly.  I write situations that make me question my own principles, and rebuild, over and over again.

Why?  Because in books that’s what stays with me.  Either books that shatter me and put me back together again, or books in which I get the sense the writer did that to himself/herself.

Your mileage may vary.  And I’m not one to tell you what you should do.  Again, made an entire career of not telling people what they should do.

If you’re writing popcorn books, getting paid, and people like them: well done.  You’re making an honest living.  And some of those books you consider fungible might be the lifeline to someone else’s sanity.  You never know.

But for me, when I reach beyond, I reach for the shattered mirror and the pain.  In real life as in fiction, I fight for the person who was suckerpunched by either people or reality, whose world was shattered and who can never fit the shards together quite the same way again.

Maybe that will resonate through the centuries.  Maybe it won’t.  It resonates with me.

Sense and Sensitivity

Blame Sarah. She suggested I fisk this

As everyone*knows I am a sensitive soul. A virtual princess of sensitivity among the hairy simian kind – yes, I can pee through seven mattresses, that’s how know I’m a sensitive bleedin’ princess, you gormless pile of rancid cormorant fewmets. Look there has to be some measurable test of sensitivity or you’d have every moron and faintin’ blooming vi’let claiming their poor widdle sensitivities offended 24/7. And if you fixed every one of those sensitivities, reducing everything to bland pablum… they’d invent new things. Because being offended is better than being ignored…

No, we need a hard and fast standard of sensitivity! And being able to pee through seven mattress and not get a wink of sleep as a result is the proven test. It has historical President… precedent, and the hallmark of royalty. That’s where the term ‘disdain’ comes from. It should be written ‘dis stain’. Don’t you believe me? My sensitive-ititties are rubbed raw by your disbelief, and can only be soothed by that universal panacea, money. $250. Or I’ll howl and growl and squeal for a boycott…

Ah, money. Amazing how a little (relatively) of this unguent can soothe the most sensitive troubled breast. Sadly, like all forms of danegeld it is addictive to its recipients. You can be sure the Dane (or the monkey) will be back in short order, demanding more, and bringing 30 of his mates along, all wanting their $250.

I’m not going to write about censorship, and the devastating effect that can have on writing, quality and originality. I’m not even going to bring up the fact that in the end, we are all a minority of one. What offends one, may well delight his identical twin brother. I’m going to write about something else about this that probably doesn’t occur to the most well-meaning of sensitivity seekers: just who benefits?

The problem, in a way, comes down to perspective, and is not dissimilar to the issue of migration and the way we tend to see that. The best way I can explain that is to paraphrase a New Zealand Prime Minister, who talking of the flow from his country to the larger Australia was that it was a good thing, because it increased the IQ of both countries. (that flow has been reversed, lately. I leave you to draw your own conclusions). Now why this is apropos is because when we talk of migrants, we inevitably think of the issues of migrants themselves (their welfare, their well-being etc) and of the country receiving them.

It’s a rarity for anyone to comment on the effect of migration on the country of origin. When Bob Mugabe started going off the wall in his desire to cling to power, and his actions effectively destroyed the economic infrastructure of his country, migrants in their millions flooded out. Not all those who left sneaked across the border to South Africa, or were landless peasants. Many were also those who could go, legally, and could do well, elsewhere. I became very good friends with a young pharmacist from Zimbabwe. He was a bright Ndebele man, who spoke flawless English (it was his home language) who didn’t want to leave – but could and could do well. Zimbabwe’s loss was South Africa’s gain. When things recovered, he’d married, settled and did not go back. He sent some money to his family – which helped them, but not Zimbabwe as much as he would have. On the other hand there were plenty of poor, uneducated migrants who undercut local labor, and were a net gain for the rich and a loss for poor of South Africa – and put bluntly because they also sent money back, a gain for Zimbabwe, but a loss for South Africa.

It’s always complicated. And there are several sides and points of view. And inevitably there is a strong economic component.

It’s a similar situation with ‘sensitivity’. We’re talking about authors (and publishers, who transfer the cost and blame to authors – every crash in publishing is author-error) and whatever the currently fashionable group-of-offendee de jour is. What we’re not seeing considered… is the benefit to the minor group, and of course the effect on the readership. And we need the economic effects of this weighed sensibly instead of sensitively.

The first question should always be: who are the customers for this book? Who will pay to read it? Will said sensitivity make a positive… or negative difference? And yes, negative is possible. Your STEAK BARBEQUE BIBLE is insensitive to vegans, vegetarians, Hindus, global warming fanatics, atheists, fundamentalist Christians – and that’s just the title. By the time you’ve finished being sensitive to that lot… your target audience has nothing to read. And the offendees were never going to be customers in any substantial numbers anyway.

Let’s be real: most of the vocal angry perpetually ‘triggered’ and ‘micro-aggressed’ are impossible not to ‘offend’: ergo the bribe, to get them to go away – which means the next ten will arrive the next shakedown, before the words are cold. Secondly: in real demographic terms most of the perpetually offended make up a tiny proportion of the population, and in many cases an even smaller proportion of target readership. My wilderness survival novel is of no likely interest to urban Wiccan vegans. If I mention them in an insensitive way, most of the target audience wouldn’t give a shit. In fact they might like the book more. That’s reality, not PC.

It’s a different kettle of tea of course, if the target are pearl clutchers who never found a fashionable offendee-de-jour they didn’t want to signal their virtue by adoring. Paying danegeld is a requisite for that audience. It still won’t stop them turning on you and casting you out, to the shrieked traditional ululations of ‘Racist, sexist, …ist, …ist”. It’s a question of timing there. If you’re writing for that audience, knowing when fold ‘em is a survival essential.

But once again we come back to both sides of the equation – a migrant is loss to their own country as well as a gain to the other country – or vice versa. Because there is no doubt that for many a small group or minority, a sympathetic (not necessarily sensitive or accurate – but I think you will find ‘sensitive’ always means sympathetic not accurate) portrayal in a novel that has entrée to a wider world… is very good for them, doing far, far more for their image, than their image does for the author. In short… the ‘sensitivity’ readers who want their little group portrayed favorably (it’s seldom about accuracy – they may remove un-favorable inaccuracies but I bet never say a word about the favorable inaccuracies) should be paying the author – not the other way around. If an author does it for free – and most of us do, despite most authors being poor… it is gratitude and help that common sense would commend, not shakedowns. And, in point of fact, that really is the case for even merely moderately popular authors like myself. I’ve never had the slightest difficulty in getting volunteer readers in a field of expertise or in a group where I needed to make sure I got it right. They are delighted to have their interest or group portrayed to a wider audience, and want it done right.

I am grateful to them, and from what I can gather, they are grateful to me.

Everyone who is important ** anyway.

**Importance is a question of relativity, rather like the speed of light.