The Sugar Festival

I picked up Paul Park's The Sugar Festival back when I went to Clarion, but never read it (he was one of our instructors that year - I read The Gospel of Corax instead, which I enjoyed). Mainly, I didn't read it because the first few pages... few, man, at least 25 or so, were really tough to get into.

The primary POV, the one that's supposed to slide you into the story, is that of an antinomial, one of a "race" of religious heretics who broke away from the mainstream many seasons ago. The viewpoint is utterly alien. These people have renounced love, emotions, thought, anything but selfish present, the here and now. They are a proud, strong people. So proud and strong that many would rather die than accept help from others. Accepting help from others, they believe, would make them slaves. Questioning the past, the future, all these things would make them slaves to thought, to reason. Only the present moment, the self, is real.

There's a telling line when a city woman says to one of the antinomials, "Stop it, you're hurting her," and he says, "I can't feel it."

If he can't feel it, how could it exist? How could it matter?

You can sort of see up front why this is a troublesome way to start a novel. It's like Ayn Rand jacked up on crack and set on fire.

But there was something in the story this time around that peaked my interest, something I was too young and impatient to catch the first time. And that's the complexity and depth of the world, and the way the seasons work, and how the entire story, its characters, its events, are built beautifully around that.

Because seasons here are not three or four or six months long. They aren't even the 10-15 year span you see in Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. No, these seasons are a generation long. Someone born at the end of the winter may - may - live long enough to see the beginning of summer. Winter is long and brutal, and spring is the starving time, the long, hollow season when you wait for the rain, for the sugar rain, the heavy, sugary, gasoline smelling rain that falls from the sky and brings life back to the world.

The depth to this world is just astounding. The world is ruled all winter and spring long by a harsh, restrictive religion, by priests and a ruling class family of "Starbridges" who call the rain the semen of their god-prophet. The bizarre seasons have shaped the religion, the stratification, the entire society, to a lovely, intricate level that left my head spinning.

Because not many writers will do this. Not many writers will say, "OK, my world does X. How different would things REALLY be if life were like X?"

Park does that here. He explores this world in depth and detail. Every spring, the city burns. Every summer, a new religion of loving kindness and joyous fertility springs up, and the rigid, angry, penile cult of the current set of priests goes dormant. It happens every turn of the seasons, for the 16 seasons of the recorded calendar. Not that anybody alive has ever really *seen* what it's like before. They just have the histories, the stories, the myths. Myths of their own seasons, a summer they have never seen. An autumn they will never see.

There are nods to the idea that these folks are the descendents of some space travelers - probably criminals - abandoned or exiled to this world, so long ago that nobody knows the real story, just the myths. But not cheesy myths. For me, that's the key. It's not like, "And they say he came down in his god-ship and took out his com-pu-ter and announced that he had claimed this land for Earth. And would call it after that world." You don't get it shoved in your face. You get the people's understanding of it.

The ruling family has the name Starbridge. The Starbridges are "different." Literally, there blood looks different?? There are people with tails, and most folks seem to have a lot of body hair, and at one point there's this throw away line where he's like, "The girl in the photo only had ten fingers." These little teasing places in the narrative where you're like "WTF???? SRSLY???"

I love that stuff.

It's a good thing the world building was amazing, tho. Watching the roll of the seasons, and the predictable (to that society) roll of its politics to match ("He believed in the equality of women, but it was still a little early in the season for that") is a total trip. And, again, a good thing.

A good thing because I had some of the same issues with this one as I had with A Princess of Roumania, in that is was terribly difficult to like any of the people (and that opening, I think, may have cost a lot of readers who weren't willing to get past it). Unlike Princess, however, I saw a lot of that unlikability as justified. In this kind of inexplicably cruel, harsh, constrained, stratified world, whaat kind of people would you end up with? Who would they be? Who would survive, season after season, when every spring 80% of the people starve and the cities burn down?

Not great folks, let me tell you.

I think it was that realization that made me love these books, because Park did that thing that I always accuse so many writers (including me) of not doing. He wasn't lazy. He took a world and ran with it. There wasn't a lot of shorthand garbage. There wasn't one monolithic religion. The world wasn't static. The characters lived and breathed and grew out of their world. They weren't transplants from the MTV music awards or some Dragonlance novel. They belonged there. They were shaped there, utterly and completely.

I loved this book. And it's generally very difficult for me to say that about books full of people I don't particularly like. Yet, to see a world fully realized and built and set into motion like that, man...

Talk about sense of wonder.

And yes, the third and last book is on my wishlist.

Things Which Should be Invented Just For Me

A pop delivery service.

Seriously, people.

A Princess of Roumania

This is a page turning, readable little book...

But I won't be buying the sequel.

Why?

Because these characters are all IDIOTS. And they talk all about how they are IDIOTS.

Unlike the brilliant The Sugar Festival, which also had unlikable characters, the world just wasn't amazing enough to keep me going through all the idiocy.

Granted, again: I kept thinking about the book. It was great to read on the bus in the morning and read before bed. It was really marketably written.

But I didn't like even one of the characters. Not even one. And they weren't even interesting or smart enough to make up for the fact that I didn't like them.

In fact, it wasn't even that I HATED them. That would have been some emotion, at least. I felt this sort of vague annoyance every time they did something idiotic, which was often.

I can understand that it makes more sense to write about people who do dumb things, who don't follow the prophecy, who make "wrong" or at least "unexpected" choices, who are selfish, confused, and make mistake after mistake. We all do these things. We encounter incompetence all day.

But this level of incompetence? Consistence incompetence? I mean, from more than just a couple of individuals? It's just staggering.

Mistakes are fine. But people with absolutely no redeeming qualities who aren't interesting enough to be evil but without the spine to be heroes are just annoying.

Screw this, I'm going to write about The Sugar Festival, which was way better.

Fit Test Results

Had our quarterly fitness test at work today.

I am full of awesome!

My blood pressure and heart rate improved, and my measurements overall stayed about the same. I did 50 timed pushups, up from 46, and 51 timed situps, up from 48. So, whoo!

My dougheyness seems to be caused by a mere 4 extra pounds, which also makes me happy. Not cause I'm all excited about weight numbers, but because I was pleased that I was able to note that I was feeling doughy and lethargic at such a low additional weight number... and kick my butt back to the gym.

I like the idea that I'm a lot more aware of my body, how I feel, how it works, than I used to be. It used to be 15 lbs or more before I started going, "Gee, I haven't been feeling so great lately and I don't have any clothes to wear."

Shit Lucky, and Back at the Gym

Probably one of the most frustrating things about being me (besides the whole insulin thing) is the fact that I have to go to the gym 4-5 times a week just to, like, maintain my current weight.

I get lazy, I slack off and just do two days a week, I play a few video games, and 8 weeks later my clothes don't fit as well and I'm starting to feel doughy.

This annoys me.

It annoys me because I do 15 min of free weights every morning, I'm not allowed to food binge anymore, I miss doughnuts and pasta and bread, and still. 4-5 days a week, or it's back to doughy. And you know, I'm not a small person to begin with. So just to stay intimidating as opposed to doughy, I have to invest... time. Also, there's that whole, I don't feel like buying new clothes thing. So.

I could wish for all sorts of things. Like a body that was better regulated, more interested in exercise and less in food, or more interested in running than more sendentary stuff like, well, writing.

But that's like wishing that I could make insulin. It's like wishing that I wouldn't be me.

And this is what I am. So this is what I have to work with. This is how it rolls, so you have to roll with it.

Part of growing up has just been accepting that this is me. This is how I work. In some areas of my life, I have to work harder than other people just to look "average." And sometimes I have to work really hard just to appear "passable."

Other times, of course, I am just shit brilliant.

But the trickier stuff, the bullshit that annoys me (boo hoo I have to work so hard), it's really not worth fighting, or bitching about. You just pick who you want to be, and you act like that person. You do the things you need to do to get there. 30-50 on the elliptical 4-5 days a week, plus my two days of weight training at work, and the free weights in the morning, is what it takes to be where I want to be.

So that's what ya do.

In any case, it's been back to the gym this week, which is good in a lot of ways. My mood was starting to take a nose dive again, and I was having trouble staying motivated at night (hence the lack of proper writing, too). Gym time gets me out of the house, away from the computer, and away from my sugar free, fat free chocolate pudding and flourless peanut butter cookies (mmmmmm cookies!).

Those exercise minutes are also good book brainstorming sessions. I'm trying to think through how the end of book 2 gets me through book 3 (yes, I have synopses, but I need to fill those in in my head), and I have a lot of character sketches to work out. The trouble with trilogies is that the best kinds are the ones that look like you knew what the hell you were doing when you wrote the first sentence of the first book.

I did not, in fact, have any idea what I was doing when I wrote the first sentence of the first book.

But if I can knock out book 2 and have a lot of book 3 in my head when I start editor revisions on book 1, I can give the illusion that I was really brilliant when I was writing the first sentence of the first book.

As opposed to just shit lucky.

So that's what I'm up to.

Wild times, I know.

Bugpunk

Used in conversation with the web designer working on the GW site, while brainstorming some themes:

"Retro-cyberpunky"

It's funny, when you don't have a word that describes exactly what you want, you sort of just cobble them together from existing words. Because I think what I meant was, you know, steampunk without the steam, but with a little cyber, only organic-cyber.. er, organic punk? er....

Ok, let's be honest. What I meant was:

Bugpunk.

Which is a subgenre of the New Weird.

Trust me.

One For the Road

Joy Nash

Still my hero.

Where Do Your Ideas Come From?

I got my first book-specific "Where did your ideas come from?" question at lunch with the rest of the marketing department yesterday.

Sure, I've gotten this question before, but it was always really general. That one's easy. You just say, "From living."

Which doesn't make great interview copy, but it's true.

But this question was in specific reference to God's War. "Where did you get the idea for the book?"

I mean, how do you answer a question like that? It really did stop me cold, though it's the hugest cliche question in the field and I should have been over prepared for it (well, the biggest cliche question other than, "My aunt/cousin/niece/nephew/friend's brother's dog wants to be a writer could you read their stuff/meet with them/send them an e-mail and tell them if they're any good/how to "break in"/read some of their stuff?" I've gotten that one loads and loads of times and whenever people ask it, I'm still dumbfounded that they don't know what a tired cliche that request is).

Where did I come up with the idea for God's War?

Schenectady.

The real answer would take me half an hour, and you'd hear all about South Africa, and bugs, and dying for a year, and getting an IUD, and chronic illness, and being weak, and kickboxing, and failed relationships, and heartbreak, and fear, and personal disaster. The real answer would mean reading four years worth of blog entries and only getting a sliver of the story. The real answer isn't the answer anybody's looking for.

The real answer is life, a life that's not ours, and we don't have enough head space or time or patience to get a grip on something like that.

Which is why we read books.

And why I write them.

In Which the Protagonist is Pissed Off

I hate it when I wake up pissed off for no reason. I think it's just a weird feeling because I've been in such a state of zen for the last two months. Being pissed off first thing in the morning at old hurts and bygones is such a waste of time.

Good thing there's pancakes and MST3K.

More line edits today.

Buried in Bills

Living on your own is fucking expensive, yo.

The bare facts of this were nicely camouflaged when I lived in Chicago, as Jenn would just give me the total bill for the month, so I'd write one check, not 8. Totalling these all up separately makes you realize just how much... stuff there is to middle-class living.

Granted, a lot of it is still catching up on various and sundry medical payments (I got a $50 refund from one of the ones I'd overpaid. I've spent so long not paying these that now when they come in for the 85th time, I try to pay them if I can, and there's some bum accounting on my part).

Only $800 to go, once I can get my old insurance company to admit that they're responsible for paying the $700 one.

I look at what I'll be making this year, including book money, and I'm thinking, "How is it possible I'm still in so much debt?" and then I look at the pile of unpaid medical bills leftover from last year's three emergency room visits.

Ah.. that's right!

I also try not to think about the fact that I'd be a lot closer to being COMPLETELY DONE with medical debt if I would STOP GOING TO CHIPOTLE.

I'm on the 5 year plan here, folks. One day at a time. Things get better, including me. I just take a frickin' long time.

So long as I'm an adult by 30, I figure I'm doing pretty well.

Transformers

That was pretty fucking awesome.

Brain Death

I'm starting to think that work has eaten my brain. That, or cozy apartment living.

I don't know what it is. Things just feel... nice. The problem with me feeling nice and content is that everything just sort of stops. I do a lot of cooking and reading and play some video games and watch some shows and work out and sleep and take showers and use perfume that won't kill anyone and tidy up and it's all very cozy and.. nice.

And I don't know what to do with myself when things are nice, when I don't hate myself. I tried to stir up some self-hate yesterday when I decided to order some pizza and have a beer, but I didn't eat enough to make myself sick (three pieces is my limit in order to subdue an impending sugar crises), and I played video games all night instead of working because I wanted to feel sorry for myself.

Instead, I woke up the next morning and I didn't feel sorry for myself at all. I tried to start a bit of the old, "Oh, I am such a loser stuff," but it was half hearted, because, what am I a loser about? Because I ate some pizza and played Mass Effect? Seriously.

There are too many good things going on to hate myself over. Thing is, I have no idea what to use to motivate myself at all. You spend so long running on self hate (I need to be a writer, need to publish a book, need to experience things, need to date more, need to socialize, need to have a better job, need need need need need) that when you stop, well... needing things, what are you supposed to do to get motivated again?

I used to have this deep fear of falling in love, because I had this deep fear of loving somebody crazily and them not loving me back, and how that would make me weak and useless (which is probably why, until recently, I always dated people who were far more crazy about me than I was about them. I was too terrified to pursue people I was sick over).

And then that heartbreak actually happened, and yes, it sucked, and I was completely heartsick and heartbroken for months and it still aches a little when I think about it, but like any other hurt, it bleeds and bleeds and then scabs over, bleeds a little more, and heals over. So all you've got to show for it is that occasional dull ache.

And you know, in the face of chronic illness, near death, job loss, and staggering credit card debt, heartbreak really wasn't so bad.

So that's not so scary anymore. Now I have something else to face, which is finding myself without that motivator. I ran a lot on fear. Choking, pulse-pounding fear. Fear of being weak, fear of failure, fear of never being good enough, fear of lost potential, fear of, well, fear of fear. Fear of just not doing enough.

I was in the shower the other day thinking about how I was going to get to Macchu Pichu for my 30th birthday, and I was thinking... this is all extra time. I'm dead already, really. All this is just extra time... so much extra time. What a gift.

One of my coworkers shuddered the other day when I gave myself my daily lunch shot of insulin. "I just don't know I could do it," he said. "Stick myself with a needle every day."

"Well," I said, "the alternative is to die in 72 hours."

Some bad things have happened. Not horrifically bad things. I haven't been beaten, raped, shot, mutilated and left for dead in a ditch or anything, but some things I feared have happened, and I got through them.

A funny thing happens when you face fear. It's not an unknown anymore. There's no anticipation, no buildup. Death sucks. It happens. Heartbreak sucks. It happens. Being poor and homeless, relying on other people, shitcanned and deeply in debt, sucks. And it happens. And you go on. Or, in the case of death, you cheat it just a little bit longer. Never inevitably. Just a little bit longer.

Now, though, I find myself a little directionless. I have a great job, a great apartment, a book deal, an actual mattress for my bed. I'm comfortable with my body and my looks. I honestly have no complaints. I like my coworkers. I have few but good friends.

I just don't know what to do with all this. I went out on the porch this morning and transferred some of my basil seedlings into bigger pots. It made me so happy, that simple thing. Simple things make me so happy. Readying comic books out on the porch. Line editing Black Desert on my big new mattress. Reading The Sugar Festival on the bus.

But it all feels sort of... formless. Without real drive or purpose. There's no gearshift grinding there in the back. Nothing telling me to shape up or ship out. No self-hate, no fear. Just this vast stretch of happy nothingness. Some days, I just drown in it, I just let myself go.

And maybe that's what gets to me, that I just let myself revel in it. It's so strange to not be crazy or unhappy or... driven.

I like to think that I just pushed so hard and long to get here that this is just a lull in... drive, productivity. Life. Because though I am happy, I miss that driving force, that passionate desire to do, to live, to push. I need to find that again somewhere, but it's so nice... so nice to just be happy.

I worry that happiness is a dangerous thing. I worry that it's not something we should strive for, but just something you get periodically, a lull between the long stretches of darkness, like the short, sharp Alaskan Summer. Those three months of intense, gorgeous, beautiful life and sunshine that make the 8 months of winter worth it.

Thing is, without the winter, would I have loved those summers so much?

And without the promise of summer, could I have made it through the winter?

I don't know.

I just know that I feel like I'm sinking into a happy life of cozy softness, and part of me wants to just let myself enjoy it because nothing lasts forever, and part of me wants to find some kind of weakness, some kind of fear, some kind of motivation, to make it feel that I'm living on the edge of everything again. To keep me going forward when all I want to do is pretend the world is OK for just a little bit longer

In Which the Protagonist Feels Like a Troll

The work folks like to make offhand comments about my perceived high standards in men (which appears to be the only reason they can comprehend my singledom). Apparently, my inability to sleep with people I find physically attractive but uninteresting sounds pretty weird to some of them.

"I would take interesting over hot," I said to our DB guy this morning. He gave me this look of spurious disbelief, like I'd just climbed up from under a rock, covered in seaweed.

"I don't need to date a traditionally attractive person. At least half of my attraction is mental. If they can't keep up with me, what's the point. It's why I had to stop going on dates with that guy who had the big TV. He was deliriously cute and physically, totally my type, but when we started talking? Nothing. Nada."

Sure, I could have had sex with him. And I wouldn't have gotten off on it.

Maybe that's what most people who worship at the alter of pretty bodies don't get.

Pretty bodies alone don't do it for me. It's just so much meat.

Not that pretty isn't nice, and not that I don't have a type. But there had better be a lot more going on than pretty.

What I didn't tell them is that I think that my singledom has more to do with the fact that I enjoy being single than that I have particularly crazy standards.

But then, maybe that's the rub: I have to be pretty wild about somebody before I switch out my happy single life. So maybe I have some crazy standards afterall.

Just the way I like it.

Conversations with my Coworkers

Went out with my workout group yesterday, and while we walked over to the Y, one of my groupmates turned to me and said, "I had a dream about you last night Kameron!"

"Great," I said. "Was I typing a lot of things furiously?"

"No, it was this post-apocalyptic world and you were this... this avenging angel, and you had this flaming sword and you were leading this army. This whole army! It was so weird. I mean, flaming sword!"

"Are you serious?"

"Seriously!"

"You have no idea how awesome I think that is." Because seriously, people, that is FULL OF AWESOME.

"Maybe I just ate some bad chili," she said.

Ah, bad chili.

I love my coworkers.

Finished my Last Final!

School's out!

Now it's book writing all summer long! Yay!

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

The guys at work helped me price out a new gaming computer for about the cost of my stimulus check. It's an amazing little machine with a flat screen monitor, 8800 GT graphics card, 4G of ram, and a sweet dual core processor.

Turned out the power supply was too dinky to run the stupid video card, so I bought a new one.

I bought a new one and installed it and the ginormous graphics card last night.

By myself.

When I plugged the computer in, it didn't blow up or anything! And I only had to open it back up one more time when I discovered that the CD drive didn't work. I'd plugged the power cable to the drive in, but re-located the data cable somewhere else.

And the fact that I did that, and can talk intelligently about that, makes me immensely proud. I love learning new things, and being able to do things on my own. After watching the not-boyfriend put together Steph's computer, I figured I was up to this bit of PC customization. Sure, I realize it's not terribly difficult, but the idea of it was intimidating, and now it's not so scary anymore.

Man, I love learning useful skillz.

I'm Always Looking for a Challenge...

(click to embiggen)

Writing: Do Not Want

I take my finals for my econ and marketing classes this weekend, and then school is officially over, major work deadlines and raise-related stress are done, and it's full-on book mode for the rest of the summer.

AND YES MY ENTIRE BEING IS REBELLING AGAINST THIS HARSH REALITY.

DO. NOT. WANT.

But it's time to face the facts:

It's time for the deathmarch.

It will not be pleasant.

There will be blood, and sand, and more people will die at the end of it.

But Nyx will learn how to shoot a gun, the red desert will fall into the right hands, and a three centuries old holy war will finally wrap itself up.

Um, this will also ensure than I see two more checks next year.

Let's not forget that there are now checks involved.

Which is probably part of my rebellion.

DO. NOT. WANT.

But it's coming.

Like it or not.

Google Adwords

Today's writing lesson: google adword haiku

I'm developing an incredibly broad skillset here at the dayjob.