Thanks A Lot

It's been another two months since I posted about the slow and steady progress I'd been making on my novel draft over the prior two months. Past Me, never able to avoid hubris, said "I have hopes about speeding up," and I am here to laugh ruefully and report that certainly wasn't the case. But I'm also here to issue some qualifications that Past Me neglected to mention, maybe because she didn't consult our shared calendar.

It's been a busy two months in the non-writing department, all for lovely and pre-planned reasons (the best kind of busy-ness). Both sets of my parents came to visit (during separate weeks), and I took two trips (during other weeks). It was all lovely, but it didn't leave a lot of room in the calendar for writing days, especially nice long strings of consecutive writing days. So the progress I've made in these two months is far less than the previous two, but the excellent news is that it's far more than zero!

Of course another thing that happened during this time is the election. I wrote a post in November 2016 that more or less covers anything I might have thought to say now, and then some. Past Me occasionally has some good insights.

Relatedly, I'm on Bluesky now, along with millions of other new users. Way back in the olden days, I used to love Twitter for the fun community I had there. Then the platform went through a series of changes that caused some people to leave, others of us to stick around uncertainly, and the whole thing to grow decidedly less fun. Now enough people are on Bluesky that it has at least some of the old Twitter feel. If you were never drawn to this style of social media, there may be no reason to add it to your life now, but if you're interested and have questions, I'm happy to help.

I'll try not to set up any novel progress expectations for Future Me with this update. Our calendar indicates it's almost the end of another year, and that means more breaks and distractions, and fewer writing days in the weeks ahead. It's also one of the common occasions for gratitude, and I have so much of that. I'm grateful for the time and opportunity I have to write, for family and friends and the time I get to spend with them, and for all the ways I'm fortunate. And I'm thankful to you, for reading!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Charlie Jane Anders considers whether and how to write for this terrible time: "So now I have to think about the meaning of Lessons in Magic and Disaster in this new context, and whether people will find it meaningful during such a dark time. I think the book does have something to say about the tug of war between living your dreams and healing your wounds. I think it speaks to our need for literature and poetry and the humanities generally, at a time when those things are under attack. And even though it is not a book about capital-p Politics, I think it is animated by a unquenchable thirst for queer liberation. It's definitely a book about building better families and learning to survive."

→ At Wired, Meghan Herbst profiles author Martha Wells: "Wells, who is 60 years old, has averaged almost a book a year for more than three decades, ranging from palace intrigues to excursions into distant worlds populated by shapeshifters. But until Murderbot, Wells tended to fly just under the radar."

October Reading Recap

I've been keeping my mind occupied this past month with plenty of reading!

→ THE GOD OF THE WOODS by Liz Moore: In 1975, at a summer camp in the Adirondacks, a camper goes missing. And Barbara isn't just any camper—she's the daughter of the wealthy family who has owned the camp for generations. Even worse, Barbara's parents lost their first child 14 years earlier, when he disappeared into the forest and was never found. As the search for Barbara begins, the narrative shifts between characters and times to connect earlier events of the summer with clues that surface. Soon the investigation reopens questions about the previous disappearance, the family, and the camp staff, introducing more time periods and perspectives.

This is a well-written and suspenseful mystery that kept me up late reading for many nights. I was as interested in getting to know the characters as I was in finding out the answers to the many questions raised. The story unfolds at an exciting pace, with information parceled out in a way that lets the reader form and test theories along with the investigators. If you like complex thrillers and can handle stories where children are in peril, I definitely recommend this.

→ THE SINGER'S GUN by Emily St. John Mandel opens in New York City with a federal agent investigating a mysterious phone call connected to women smuggled into the country in a shipping container. Her inquiries lead her to the parents of Anton Waker, a man who's gone missing and may be dead after last being seen on a Greek island. Earlier, Anton arrives on that island during his honeymoon, and he decides to stay there, alone. The wedding was postponed twice, so perhaps the marriage was doomed before it began, but Anton won't give his new wife a clear explanation for why he isn't returning to New York with her. There's a lot Anton hasn't explained, including that his job has recently unraveled, his background isn't what he claimed, and his whole family's history is shady and criminal.

I really liked this story and the way it unfolds. There's a mystery established at the start, but much of the mystery is what's even going on, and while certain pieces soon become clearer, others take longer to expose. Anton is hiding a great deal, and so are all the other characters, giving them each a different sense of the big picture. As in every Mandel novel (this is her second), frequent shifts in time and perspective are used to good effect in assembling the pieces. The characters are rendered in full and specific detail (also what I expect from Mandel), and the plot becomes more tense with each new development. I was captivated all the way through.

→ GENDER QUEER is a graphic memoir by Maia Kobabe about the process of figuring out eir gender and sexuality. Kobabe starts with episodes from eir childhood that first introduced em to society's different expectations for girls and boys. Growing up as a girl, e often felt ignorant of these rules and wished to opt out. Adolescence brought more confusion as e developed crushes that weren't limited by gender, but was always most turned on by gay male fantasies and fanfiction. As a young adult, Kobabe tried out different relationships and identities before settling into understanding emself as nonbinary and asexual.

I found this an effective and affecting story that makes great use of the comics form. Kobabe's panels are a pleasure to look at, easy to follow, and often visually witty. I was especially impressed by eir ability to draw nuanced facial expressions with so few lines. Through the combination of art and text, Kobabe reveals deeply intimate thoughts that are sometimes painful, sometimes joyous. It's a beautiful portrait of one personal journey that may also help readers better see themselves or their loved ones.

→ SHANGHAILANDERS by Juli Min: In 2040, the Yang family is coming apart, literally and figuratively, as some members stay at home in Shanghai and others fly off to distant countries. After a quarter century of marriage, Leo and Eko are both wondering if they still have a future together. Their three daughters are growing into young women, all with big problems their parents are unaware of. After an introduction to the family, each chapter takes a step back in time, offering glimpses of earlier and earlier events and expanding the set of secrets.

This is one of those books where I enjoyed the individual pieces more than the whole. I was intrigued by the stories presented by each new chapter and point of view, and I wished they were more tightly connected beyond revolving around the same family. Though the backward structure seems designed to answer questions about the past raised by later events, most referenced situations never appeared again, and that left me unsatisfied. For example, two of the strongest chapters focus on staff members employed by the Yangs, and it felt like a missed opportunity to not see them through the family's eyes at a different time. Min is a talented writer of characters and scenes, but this didn't come together for me.

→ THE FAR REACHES: STORIES TO TAKE YOU OUT OF THIS WORLD is a collection of six original stories (published by Amazon and exclusive to their platforms) by well-known science fiction authors. I was already a fan of some of these writers, and others were familiar names who I'd never read and wanted to try. I enjoyed the collection overall and each story individually, though I wanted more from some of them.

All the stories involve space travel, usually beyond the solar system, so many deal with broad sweeps of time. In "How It Unfolds" by James S. A. Corey, characters from Earth are scanned and beamed as information to distant planets where they might reestablish human civilization. The details set up a fascinating premise at a vast scale, while the story focuses on individual character relationships. "Slow Time Between the Stars" by John Scalzi also involves a long-range search for habitable planets, but the narrator is a solitary intelligent spaceship who spends its slow time musing about its mission.

In "Void" by Veronica Roth, the crew of an interstellar ship has to live outside of normal human time, barely aging on their journeys while decades pass at their destinations. That story is a murder mystery that makes satisfying use of the time dilation. The characters in "Just Out of Jupiter’s Reach" by Nnedi Okorafor are selected for solo space travel, each tasked with roaming the solar system alone for ten years, but they get to meet up for one week of intense human connection.

"The Long Game" by Ann Leckie is narrated by an alien life form interacting with humans. Leckie is always great at imagining alien minds, and this intriguing story is no exception. Aliens also feature in "Falling Bodies" by Rebecca Roanhorse, a bleak story about a human who was adopted by a colonizing species and grew up uncertain about where his allegiance should lie.