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  J M Beal

A guest post about space operas and jibber jabber.

5/22/2015

6 Comments

 
As promised, below you will find a guest post. I could gush on and on about Briane's book, Codes, but that's arguably not what you came to read today. So, check out the post about great books Briane left us, and then stay tuned at the bottom for more news about next weeks Contest of Awesome!
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Last week, JM posted a list of the five greatest books ever written, and as I was getting ready to write this post, I figured I would take the easy way out and do something that’s more or less the same thing see if I couldn’t try to come up with my own list to spark debate while also providing a little insight into what makes me, as a writer and a reader, get excited.  And having just written my own [sure to be best-selling have you bought it yet why not?] sci-fi novel, Codes, it made sense to focus on that genre.

I’ve been reading, and writing, science fiction since I was just a kid, starting with comic books and Star Wars novelizations before I was even 10 years old -- materials which spurred me to write my own copyright-infringing space opera, Stardogs, when I was 11.  Stardogs told the amazing story of a young, hotshot fighter pilot who manages to get away from his dreary life on a backwater planet to become a pilot for the Space Rebels, and near the end of the story the hero uses his piloting skills to blow up a space station.  My mom, my earliest fan/critic, read it and said dryly that she was pretty sure she’d seen that plot somewhere.

I eventually got a little more creative in my writing – Codes hardly steals from George Lucas at all! – but that early attempt at creating my own (?) universe shows the effect great stories have on me: when I’m reading a truly excellent story, half of me is thinking oh man I’ll never write anything this good and the other half is wanting to rush to my laptop to see if I can’t after all come up with a story at least that good. So when I sat down to come up with a list of sci-fi books that are the all-time greatest, a bunch sprung to mind as either inspiring me to want to write something at least that good, while some of the others simply stuck out as great stories.  I listed all the greatest books I could find, and then whittled them down and down as far as I could.  I wanted to get to five, but in the end, I just couldn’t pick any that I didn’t think deserved to be on a list of the greatest books ever.

Enough with the jibber-jabber! Let’s get to that list, beginning with:

6. John Dies At The End (David Wong): 

First off, this book should be an inspiration to every person who ever posted their stories on their blog and hoped for the best. (It’s not just me, right?) Wong began writing this story as a serialization, and then it got picked up by a publisher, and then he wrote a sequel which was nearly as good as this one and almost made this list in its own right, and then the book got made into a motion picture, only because it didn’t feature soft-core bondage nobody really paid any attention to it.  Also, the movie was terrible. Don’t see it. Read the book, though: the story of two guys fighting weird animals coming through from another dimension into their town is hilarious, sad, dramatic, weird, and overall a rambling fun time that gets really really freaky at the end of the story. 

How it made me a better writer: 

Reading John Dies and it’s sequel This Book Is Full Of Spiders Seriously Dude Don’t Touch It helped me remember that stories ought to be fun, and that science fiction can literally go anywhere and do anything and you can bend the rules in all sorts of ways and still have a great story.

5. Startide Rising (David Brin): 

David Brin is one of my all-time favorite sci-fi writers. Without making a big deal of it the way some writers do (Larry Niven *ahem*) Brin manages to write the kind of science fiction I think of as “hard” sci-fi, based on what seems to be fairly realistic science, but he keeps it relatable and doesn’t overwhelm you with math and engineering and the like.  Startide Rising is the first in his “Uplift” saga about humanity venturing into the wider universe after having helped make dolphins and chimpanzees sentient starfaring races in their own right, and it manages to be a massive space opera spanning an entire system (if not a galaxy) while also feeling intimate and close-up.  What’s most amazing about the story is that Brin’s dolphins and chimps and aliens aren’t just humans with fins: they manage to have unique personalities that fit together with the species they are.  That’s actually rare in sci-fi.  Too many times, nonhuman species are more or less just regular people in a costume, acting the way a human thinks an alien would act.

How It Made Me A Better Writer: 

Brin’s science is a good example of “show, don’t tell.” The science-y talk in Brin’s stories fits in well with the plot and doesn’t drag or slow it down.  Whereas some writers (Niven, again) will spend pages explaining something they find interesting, Brin works it into the story in a fairly organic way.  It makes reading his books less like reading a technical manual and more like reading a novel.  It’s going to be necessary, in speculative fiction, to explain some things, but if you can do it without resorting to putting a teacher in a room with a chalkboard, so much the better.

4. The Sparrow (Mary Doria Russell): 

This was recommended to me by author Andrew Leon (The House On The Corner, Shadow Spinner), and I’m glad I took his advice.  The Sparrow tells the story of humanity’s first contact with aliens, on another planet – but the mission is undertaken by the Jesuits on behalf of the church, rather than by a government or corporation.  I was initially concerned that the story would be preachy – aliens and God are a tough mix – but The Sparrow managed to be philosophical and weighty without ever becoming didactic or ponderous, and was one of those rare books that had me anxious to keep on reading it.  I’d actually regret it when I got too tired to read it at night.

How it Made Me A Better Writer: 

I’ve always thought writing should have a point – not necessarily a moral, but something to say, a reason for telling the story.  The Sparrow was perhaps the first book in which I thought the point, the thing the author was trying to say, was just: think.  I’m sure Russell had some idea of her own themes, but the overarching idea I got was that she just wanted people to ponder the ideas she’s wrestling with.  Sometimes, writing about things you don’t yet understand is more compelling.

3.  Stranger In A Strange Land (Robert Heinlein): 

Valentine Michael Smith might be the single most memorable character ever created, and this weird, wonderful book, which I first read when I was about 19, has haunted me for nearly 30 years.  Haunted in a good way.  Smith’s human-raised-by-Martians-come-back-to-Earth character manages to upset the entire world, one person at a time, enraging people and making them fall in love with him as he tries to understand our society.  The ending of the book is somehow both peaceful and disturbing in ways that make it stick with you.  It’s the kind of book that just pops into your mind at odd times of the day or night.

How it Made Me A Better Writer: 

Stranger is more or less the Platonic ideal of how to build a complete story out of an elevator-pitch concept.  The thesis statement for this book is that simple: Imagine a human raised by Martians, come back to our society as an adult: what would happen? Everything in the book, from the simplest to the most outrageous moments, seems to flow organically from that idea. There isn’t a single moment in the book that doesn’t seem a natural next progression.  It’s a work of art.

2. Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut): 

I don’t have to say what this one’s about, right? Everyone’s read it, or hopefully will.  Billy Pilgrim’s travels through time, to World War II and then to Ilium, New York, and then Tralfamadore, are a funny, sad, sweet story that has weight well beyond the slim novel.  I read Slaughterhouse when I was in high school, and I’ve never forgotten it.  I remember it almost verbatim, even though I’ve never gone back to re-read it.  I’m not even sure I could, as it’s devastatingly sad in its simplicity.  Plus, it has the single saddest scene I have ever read in a book: the part where Billy goes to a cave with his parents, when he’s a kid.  I know there are sadder things that have happened, both real and imagined, and there are even more terrible things that happen to Billy, but that’s the scene that gets me, every time I think of it.

How It Made Me A Better Writer: 

Vonnegut’s stories are so sparse as to be almost nonexistent; he uses a paucity of words and just enough “science” to make his books sci-fi rather than fiction, but somehow the books add up to more than the sum of their parts, primarily because of the emotion Vonnegut conveys.  Using minimalist techniques, Vonnegut communicates a wealth of sadness, in that good kind of way: sadness because people are what they are, and the world is what it is, even in a made-up futuristic society of aliens.  Reading Vonnegut helps me realize that books should convey a sentiment as well as a story: they can tell how you as the author feel about something, without being direct about it.

1. Angelmaker (Nick Harkway): 

I had trouble deciding which of Harkaway’s three books to put on here, but there was no doubt that one of them should be.  Harkaway might be the best pure writer I have ever read, by which I mean that every single word he uses counts.  I have no idea how he does it, but Harkaway writes these big sprawling books that go off on seeming tangents for pages, if not chapters, and introduce a willy-nilly of characters and ideas and then bam! They all come together like a jigsaw puzzle made of magnets.  Angelmaker features a watch/clock repairman who is called in to work on a bit of steampunk-ish beehive-esque art, and who then unwittingly turns the thing on, learning too late that it might be a doomsday device.  That description in no way does this book justice, though.  Harkaway’s stories are outrageously entertaining, his characters are memorable, his language is phenomenal, and the books deserve to be read, then cast in bronze and put on a pedestal, and then read again, in front of large crowds of people cheering him on and urging him to write another book.  Read Angelmaker, and then read his other books (The Gone Away World and Tigerman) and see if they don’t ruin you for most other books.

How It Made Me A Better Writer: 

Forget it. It didn’t. There’s no way anyone can do what Harkaway does.  We can try, and plenty of people can write great stories or books, but nobody will match him.

Briane is the author of Codes: Robbie had an ordinary life, until she walked into Gravity Sling. Now he’s seeing coded messages everywhere, being chased by shadowy big-corporation goons, and questioning literally everything about the world as he knows it. Some questions need answers. This Phillip K. Dick style debut science fiction novel raises questions about how people use technology and each other.

Links:

Follow Briane on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrianePagel

His blog: Thinking The Lions: http://www.thinkingthelions.com

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So many new books to read that really should not be new...

Anyway, are you excited about the contest? I'm excited about the contest. Also, I might be mildly panicking about AwsomeCon still. As one does. 

Update about the Contest of Awesome (which I shall call it from now evermore) I'll be posting the first scavenger hunt clue/trivia question Monday morning! Then, I'll post it again about noon because I know sometimes feeds are strange, strange creatures. As soon as we have a correct answer I'll tweet, but I won't announce the day's winner until the end of the day. That way I can check and make sure the first correct answer I see is actually the first correct answer. 

Now I just have to go decide what Monday's prize is...
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Arg, let's do this!

5/18/2015

0 Comments

 

Announcement Time!

Treasure Map
That's a pretty awesome map up there, isn't it? 

So, it's book promotion time, and nearly summer and I'm actually pretty excited about both of those things. Are you excited? Would it help if I promised you free stuff?

Yeah, I kind of thought so. Which should we do first, carrot or stick? Right, cause your gonna bother to read the rules if I don't tell you the cool stuff first. Sure.

Carrot:
Next week (May 25th through 29th) here on Words and Wanderings we're going to do a scavenger hunt/trivia contest. During those five days I will give away 5 books (two print, three digital). Not all of them will be mine. I haven't even decided which will be which yet. Mystery is exciting, right? Then, on the 30th and the 31st we'll do something special with an extra special giveaway to celebrate the fact I'll be at AwesomeCon all weekend. There'll be pictures of that one come Wednesday. Sound good?

Stick:
Rules. Right. Um... 
1) For physical rewards you have to live in the continental United States. 
2) You don't have to follow me on Facebook or Twitter, but you're going to have a hard time getting all the clues if you don't. 
3) Winners must furnish me with one of the following: an armadillo pup that has been certified leprosy-free, roughly twelve hours worth of life-force, or milk taken from an enraged salamander on midnight of the vernal equinox.
4) I don't really want #3 (particularly not the animal, much as I'd love an armadillo) but I feel like a list should have more than two things on it. 

FAQ (I'm guessing)
How do we play?
Every day I will set a task--either a trivia question or a scavenger hunt clue--and the first person to answer me correctly wins for that day. I'm keeping this simple, none of us need more stress in our lives.

But how do I answer?
Well, ideally you want to answer privately because then if you're wrong you get more tries and there's less chance of someone else stealing your thunder. So, there's a contact form on this website, or you can DM me on Twitter or Facebook. If you'd like to genetically re-engineer the carrier pigeon, that works as well. You'll probably get some pretty cool stuff from other people too if you do that. 


If the Weekend Giveaway is tied to AwesomeCon do I have to be there?
Yes! 


Really?
No. Obviously. I mean I'd love for people to come see me at AwesomeCon and if you're in the DC area you should just because it's giant and incredible. But no, the only rules are the serious ones up there. 




So. Now that we're all pumped for that, we get to wait a week. I know, I'm evil.


Come back Wednesday, we're going to talk about dynamic women in fiction (I think, unless I wuss out and we talk about something less serious) and then Friday we've got a guest post for Sci-Fi Friday! Also, if you're hard up for stuff to read, it's my week at the Art of Procrastination, and I'm talking about markety stuff and why everyone hates commercials. 


ps. The picture up there is Treasure Map by Jonty, and I embedded it so you could go right there and then I obviously don't own it and it's used under CC 2.0, but I'm not sure it took. 
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Now THAT'S a skipping stone.

5/15/2015

1 Comment

 
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Picture by Sergio Conti, used under CC 2.0
I like the concept of meteors. I'm always a little freaked by them, because I feel like I'm unlucky enough if I'm anywhere near one it's going to land on me, but I still like them. And that one up there, the Hoba Meteorite is special for a couple of reasons. 

First, it's the largest 'naturally occurring' piece of iron at the earth's surface. It weighs somewhere around 60 tons, and it's 84% iron. Which makes a case of it being a little special just because nobody farmed it out and sold it off. 

Second, when it fell to earth (somewhere around 80,000 years ago) it fell unusually slowly. Arguably this is because of it's flat shape, meaning it skipped across the atmosphere until it slowed down enough it landed without shattering into a bunch of smaller pieces. It's always the largest single-piece meteorite on the planet. 

There are all sorts of other cool bits about it on the Wikipedia page here, but I thought it was worth sharing just so we could all imagine watching a giant hunk of metal skipping across the atmosphere like someone's throwing pond stones at us.

We are mostly water. 



Come back next week, we'll have a guest post on Friday and on Wednesday we'll either talk about creating dynamic women in fiction, or creating a bestiary as a tie point for your universe. 
1 Comment

Poking Things With Sticks

5/13/2015

3 Comments

 
It's sort of my fall-back here, to talk about the slush when I'm having an intensive week other places and I can't manage to get off my duff and do posts. 

But today has been a crap-shack all the way around and if I started talking about the slush I wouldn't have anything even approaching nice to say. So positive thinking's a thing, right? 
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Because that's what happens with this, isn't it? I'm exceedingly lucky that right now my core group of writerly friends can have these kind of discussions without it degenerating into how much we can't believe so-and-so doesn't like X or Y or "Oh My God I can't believe you read that." 

So, in the full understanding of how much I'm about to alienate half the world, here is my list of the 5 best books ever written. It'll be broad, some of them might not actually count as books. They aren't in order because I sat here for five minutes trying to figure out which was #1. You are warned.

Fade by Robert Cormier
Guys. I can't even. My obsession with this book is about the closest to actual obsession I ever get. Someone suggested it to me when I was sixteen and my high school creative writing class was going to meet Cormier and we were supposed to read like six of his books. The best thing I can say about it is that it's almost as strange as American Gods without actually being that weird. It's been *cough cough* years since I read it the first time and I still love it, it still fires my imagination in the same way it always has. It makes the list because even more than anything else, Fade is my mental landscape for life in the late 1930's. It's beautifully crafted (which is not usually a think I pick as favorite) and sometimes creepy and often really freaking inappropriate.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Okay, so I have to preface this with the fact that I've read Pride and Prejudice about four times for every one I've read Jane Eyre. And much as I love me some Austen, she's not on this list. If I listed all the things I deeply, deeply love about Jane Eyre it'd take forever. I'll contain myself to the biggest one. By the tenants of little-r romance (to borrow a phrase from John Green) This book should have been simple and sweet. Unattractive girl with no prospects meets Gentleman of Fortune and Property, he sweeps her off her feet, we're done. Elizabeth Darcy is fiery and passionate and I love her, but I want to be Jane Eyre. I want her internal compass, even when she's maybe not the smartest character ever portrayed. 

Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee
Everyone in Freshman English utterly hated this. It was dry and tired, and about crap that happened forever ago, and everybody already knew evolution was a thing, right? Some of you will be remembering right now that I grew up in Kansas and thinking about that statement in light of like...anything from the news involving Kansas and Schools. I probably don't have to explain why this is on the list. The short version is the quiet message I got from this about the evils of zealous, blind belief in pretty much anything. Also, I might be prejudiced because they snuck this in on us the year before we started biology and we voted on which creation/earth-origin stories we wanted to spend the most time on. Yes, you read that right.

A Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling
This is about like Fade. It's grossly inappropriate, and strange, and I love it with every ounce of my tiny, black heart. Also, this is on the list because it takes talent to make me utterly hate everyone in a book, and still keep reading it. The way Rowling strings you along, hoping certain people will get their just desserts, and constantly manages to make you like/dislike/like characters is genius and almost emotionally exhausting. 

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
I have to admit I could only do this one once, and I read it forever ago. I suppose it gets on the list just because I can still, very clearly, remember a specific scene (not one of the bad ones) clear as crystal, and sometimes it sneaks up on me on hot summer days. There's an unutterable power to Angelou's writing I sincerely hope I master before I kick off. 

So there's my list. Come back Friday where I'll manage to pull something out of the ether. And hey, check out my new book Lost and Found if creatures of the night/dysfunctional monster hunters are your thing. 
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It's the Time Warp again...

5/7/2015

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ehehe. I'm afraid to look and see how many times I've used that post title.

Anyway, I won't go into the excuses, we're just going to pretend today is Wednesday and I'm going to do a post about new books because a) NEW BOOKS ARE AWESOME and b) we've all got shit to do. 

We're getting super excited about AwesomeCon, and if you're in the DC area you should totally come see us there. Also, we're doing CapitalCon in June, if that's more your style. Which means we're in a bit of a crunch trying to get things through proof and printed before the end of the month. It's fine. I love spending half my life arguing with the different arms of Amazon.

So, about those new books.

On May 12th we have Guardian’s Circle Book 1: Lost and Found by me, down at the bottom of the post you can see the full wrap book cover. It’ll be available for pre-order tomorrow.

And then on May 19th we have Stars and Shadows Book 1: Sugar and Spice by Kate Ressman. I’ll post her full wrap book cover too, and then you can pre-order Sugar and Spice early next week.

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And while I’m being all flashy and pretty, this next one is out now and looking for a nice home. Click on the cover if you'd like to order. 
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May the Fourth...

5/4/2015

0 Comments

 

A bit of nonsense to celebrate Star Wars Day.

Don't ask me why he's dousing himself in sutter Home wine. He's a Storm Trooper. Is taste really the first word you're going to find? 
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Guest Blog: Women in Sci-Fi by Ashley K Voris

5/1/2015

1 Comment

 
This week's Sci-Fi Friday post comes from Ashley K Voris, who's awesome kids picture book about puppies came out last week. You should totally go check it out, and then scroll down to read about her favorite women in Sci-Fi.

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Hello, everyone. Today's Sci-fi Friday will be hosted by me, your friendly neighborhood Ashley. I have been asked to write a post and so I have. Fair warning, I like to ramble, go off on tangents, and write in ADD. I will try to keep that to a minimum since this is not my blog.

My Top 5 Favorite Women in Science Fiction

Before we begin, I would like to point out that this list in MY opinion. There are plenty of kick ass women out there in space, but these are the ones that I like. Please feel free to add to the list in the comments. Also, possible spoilers.

1. Captain Janeway- Star Trek Voyager
I love Star Trek. I was introduced to it early since my grandmother was in love with Kirk. (Hey, who wasn't?). My favorite was TNG, and there were plenty of great women in the series that were really awesome, but Janeway was my favorite. She had the best resting bitch face. She was a real leader. She believed and encouraged her crew to do their best with what they had. She picked them up when they failed but did not put up with any crap. She wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty and do work on the ship. She was strong and she could lead.

2. Princess Leia- Star Wars
Okay, so this one is a gimme. But, honestly, though, total badass. She steals plans for the Death Star. Survives torture and her planet being destroyed right in front of her. Gives so much sass to the scruffy looking nerf herder. Yeah, she falls in love with him, but she does it on her terms. She is not afraid to fight for what she believes in and fight she does. She also, eventually, (according to canon that they will hopefully keep) becomes a Jedi. Princess Leia with a light saber? Yes, please.

3. Zoe Washburn- Firefly
How can I have a list like this and not include Zoe? She is a war veteran and second in command of Serenity. She is not one you want to make angry. She is not afraid to call out Mal when he needs it, like in “Serenity” when Mal shot the guy holding on to the vehicle thingie. She can take a bullet and still kick your butt. She was married, but again, it was on her terms. When Mal hired Wash, she couldn't stand him. “He just bugs me.” Even after losing her husband, she still did what she had to do to put the ship back together and protect her crew.

4. Donna Noble- Doctor Who
The thing I loved most about Donna was the lack of romantic attachment. We had to deal with the Rose/Ten love drama that, after a while, was really annoying, followed by the Martha trying to get Ten to fall in love with her while he was still mourning Rose. I mean, yeah, Martha finally realized that it wasn't going to happen and left, but still the constant, “Oh the Doctor doesn't love me boo hoo” made me was to reach through the TV and smack her. It seemed that way with the other companions as well. Sarah Jane, for instance, was rather upset when Ten showed up again and even told Rose to find her if she needed to one day because she understood the heartbreak that comes with falling in love with a Time Lord. Donna, on the other hand, just wanted to travel. She just wanted to see the universe and be a friend. She didn't want anything other than to be a friend. She also wasn't afraid to call the Doctor out, if needed. She had sass and charisma and such a big personality. I adored Donna. I was really upset the way her story arch ended, but that is what happens when you watch Doctor Who. You can't get attached.

5. Samantha Carter- SG1
I just recently discovered SG1 and it makes me both sad and happy. Happy that I discovered it, but sad that I missed out when the series was on TV. From the very first time she came on the screen and gave O'Neil such crap, I was hooked. It was wonderful She was able to hold her own in a cast full of men. She had a Ph.D. in astrophysics, very knowledgeable in quantum mechanics, a Gulf War veteran, and a leading expert on the Star Gate. And...AND....she was blonde and pretty, showing me that I can be pretty and smart at the same time. She had a zero tolerance for chauvinistic macho man crap but handled it with the grace and dignity of a lady or in some cases, with sass and a fist. I love Dr. Carter.


So there you have it. My list. I could go into much more detail about each person, but that would make this a ridiculously long post and turn into a tl/dr post. I would like to add a couple of Honorable Mentions to my list.

Ellen Ripley- the Alien franchise
Sarah Connor- Terminator
River Song- Doctor Who
River Tam- Firefly
Kira Nerys- Star Trek: DS9


What are some of your favorite strong female characters in sci-fi? Other genres?


So great big thanks to Ashley, I'm always pleased to not have to write a post. Come back next week, where I'll find some way to bend an entire week of posts around the book I'm launching in less than two weeks! 
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    There's a link to my bio at the top of the page, but for these purposes it's probably best to just say I'm strange.

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