A New Genre??????

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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 This is either hysterically funny, or excruciatingly wince-making.

A tweet from Terry of BabelClash fame (see Borders.com) sent me to have a look at the NPR site and Librarian Nancy Pearl talking about “under the radar reads”.

Under HeavenOne of the books she talks about is Guy Gavriel Kay’s Under Heaven and one of the things she says is:

It’s a shame this book will be shelved in the fantasy and science-fiction section of bookstores and libraries, because that inevitably makes it highly unlikely that fans of historical fiction will find it on their own. (That’s a good example of one of the many reasons that I dislike our reliance on genre divisions in describing fiction)… 
Which comment I might just shrug off, except that elsewhere in the same article she says she wants to name a new genre:
I only recently realized that many of the works of fiction that I most enjoy are those that push genre boundaries. I especially like fiction that is mostly realistic, but every once in a while zigs confidently into fantasy. We tend to call such works “magical realism” 
…
I’d love to come up with a one- or two- or possibly three-word label for such works that captures their essence (something other than “unclassifiable”), but so far I’ve drawn a blank. Anyone care to help? Have at it — I’ll give you some examples of books that fit what I have in mind — Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker, Under Heaven or The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay, and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke.
Yeah. This is where I give a heavy sigh,  as I suspect she wants to rename the fantasy novels – the ones she likes, that is – because well, respectable mainstream readers don’t want it known that they (gasp) read fantasy. Because we all know fantasy is trashy.

Ms Pearl, we have a name for these novels already. We call them fantasy. Or SF. Or, if you must, speculative fiction. We don’t need another name to hide the fact that we write fantasy, ok? We aren’t ashamed of writing it, why should you be ashamed of reading it? 

If that’s not the reason you want a new genre, I still say forget it. It’s fantasy. The moment you start dividing it up into sub-genres, you are going to hit a minefield, and I bet one of the first things you’ll do is throw up your hands in horror when someone tells you that urban paranormals fit the definition of your new genre. 

You, as a reviewer/librarian, can point people in the right direction to get books you think they may like. Come to think of it, you don’t have to call them anything except great reads.

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Over the past year….

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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  • …20,100 people from 125 countries visited this blog, according to ClusterMaps. (I’m not going to rock the world with those figures, am I?)
  • Google Analytics has a higher number, almost 23,000, of whom  9,657 were distinct visitors from 122 countries…
  • Australia and USA together accounted for 52% of visits and those two countries plus Malaysia and U.K. made up 80% of visits.
The keywords over the past year that brought folk here, 
(after the obvious ones of my name and the blog name):
  • Top of the list: Stormlord Rising. By far!! I’m really chuffed! That means that folk are really hanging out for this one!!
  • The Last Stormlord was high up there too, along with “Ryka Feldspar”. 
  •  So was “whose”  “whom” “who’s” in various forms, linked to grammar questions; “fantasy tropes” “First person novels” etc

 And here are a couple of funny ones I cannot explain:

  • “I raise my eyes, and there is Kinabalu, presiding over the forest” (74 visits)
  • “if you prune my orchid, I will pay you rs.600 a day for the work, as soon as you have finished it.” (14 visits)
Huh??

On feeling unsufferably smug…

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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 Re the photo from B&N I posted yesterday, it seems this was the front-of-the-store display. What you see as you walk in the front door. Right next to Margaret Atwood’s latest too…

And just after I posted yesterday’s blog, feeling frightfully smug, I followed a link tweeted by a Twitter friend about author expectations on a blog by a literary agent, Rachelle Gardner.

Here are a couple of extracts:

But there are many writers who hold on to unrealistic expectations long after reality should be setting in. This is an ongoing concern for agents, editors, and publicists who constantly find themselves not living up to writers’ expectations. In many cases (and yes, there are plenty of exceptions), the writer’s hopes and beliefs were simply too idealistic to begin with.
and then this about one of the common unrealistic expectations:

“I’ll go with the publisher who will commit to putting my book on the front table of Barnes & Noble.” I’m sorry to say that this is highly unlikely if you are a first-time author without a huge platform or marketing hook. Now, I’ve had clients whose books have been on the front table of B&N and other exciting places. But it’s more the exception than the rule, so enjoy it if it happens, but don’t expect it as a matter of course.

So I had to have a bit of a giggle at reading this so soon after seeing the photo…
Stormlord Rising is my ninth book, so it’s taken a while for me to get on to the front table. And now that I am there, I am going to wallow in delicious smugness.


Until reality sets in, which it will.
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Another squeeeeeeeeeeeee for Stormlord Rising…

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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My daughter walked into her local Barnes & Noble bookshop in Virginia last night and was confronted with this on the display – a mix of mainstream and genre…her mum right among them… You know what I will NEVER get used to this. This is book number nine, but still I get this enormous thrill… If you want to buy from B&N, the link is here.  Buy here through Amazon here: Stormlord Rising
And here is my second squee for the day – getting my author copies from Orbit US!! I am one grinning author today.

It’s available!! If you live in the USA!

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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One reviewer called it the best middle-book-of-a-trilogy ever!

See reviews here.
And here.
And here.

Buy from Amazon by clicking on the button above.
Buy from Barnes & Noble here. They say you can reserve and pick up from your local store in 60 mins.
Buy from Borders here.

Cover of the US/UK edition is from Steve Stone (artist) and Peter Cotton (designer). Thanks, guys, I love it! Do click on the link to Steve…there are pix there to die for.

When is a book SF?

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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A look at The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
First, let me get a few things straight. Any attempt to categorise fiction and place each story into its correct genre box is basically futile. Even asking questions like “What’s the difference between fantasy and science fiction?” or “Is this work mainstream fiction or genre?” is pretty ridiculous if you expect a definitive answer. And I am happy with that. No book has to be put into its little named box before I’ll read it and enjoy it. I read at least two books every month which are neither fantasy not SF, usually mainstream fiction, occasionally non-fiction. And all novels are made-up, and therefore unreal, by definition anyway…
So please don’t tell me I am a bit silly to even step into this topic: I know it!
Second: I don’t care whether David Mitchell’s book is SF or mainstream or not – I’ll read anything he writes and love it nonetheless; that’s the kind of writer he is. I read this one and I devoured it. If I have any carping to do, it’s only minor. I did think it a tad uneven, but maybe that’s only because parts of it are brilliant. I did think that a couple of times he lost the narrative drive in order to digress, but the digressions are so interesting, I was willing to forgive them.
For those of you who haven’t read it, a brief recap: it’s set around the late 1790s into the early decades of the 1800s. It’s based on historical fact – the Dutch trading post on an artificial island that is now part of Nagasaki, during a time when the Japanese was trying to keep foreign influence at bay and contact with foreigners to a minimum. Mitchell’s characters are fictional for the most part, but have their historical counterparts. He does mess a little with history, but not much.
So is there anything fantastical in the story? Well, yes, there is. But then, any writer delving into this period of history, or into Asia, is going to have to deal with the fantastic, and I thought he did it very well. Human beings are always seeking explanations for what they don’t understand (perhaps because the science hasn’t got there yet) and their explanations often read more like a fantasy novel. Or sound more like a religious belief. There are characters in the book who see things and read a lot into them; there are premonitions and a spiritual aspect to life.
Perhaps because I live with this side of Asia on a daily basis, I saw Mitchell’s coverage of these parts of his tale as very close to the reality. People here believe deeply in the ghosts and spirits and premonitions. I am constantly praised for my bravery when my job means I sleep in a tent deep in the rainforest or peat swamp. And the speakers are not talking about leopards or bears or malaria or leptospirosis and all the REAL dangers; they are speaking of the spirits. Of the unknown and feared. Of the things that come out in the dark of night. How brave I am not to fear these things! I bask in unearned glory…
To Mitchell’s characters, the oddities they feel or see – or think they see – are real. I thought he captured that side of both Asia and the 18th-19th century period very well. But I never saw the novel as being a fantasy, where these things have real dimension in the context of the story.
So, when I saw that Locus Online had listed the book on their weekly SF/F bestseller list, I tweeted about it, basically saying  “SF/F? No way!”, and followed up on Facebook. 
Now, thanks to pal Cheryl Morgan, I see that David himself said there was an immortal in the book. There was? Help, talk about giving me an incentive to read it again! I totally missed that. (For those that haven’t read it, part of the plot is to do with a particular nasty search for immortality by some of the characters, one of whom claimed to have lived for a some centuries  — but does a claim make it true?) And Cheryl’s blogpost sent me over to Galley Cat, where in turn I was led here, to Capital New York and a post about Mitchell’s future books and a question-and-answer at one of his readings:
…one young man asked about the novel’s villain, a serenely amoral abbot who may or may not have been alive for 600 years. The slightly irritating question—did he really live for 600 years?—elicited an unexpected response. Mitchell announced … that Jacob de Zoet will be followed by two more books dealing with the theme of immortality and delving further into the realm of speculative fiction.

Just to be snarky, I’ll say that doesn’t make The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet SF/F.

And at the same time, I’ll say: Who cares? Go read it. It’s a fascinating book.

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A Bird’s Eye View

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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One of the things that has always fascinated me has been bird migration – and how they find their way over thousands of kilometres of land and ocean. Some birds are born knowing; others learn from their family group – common in big birds like geese. They memorise landmarks such as rivers — or nowadays motorways! Birds have been noted to follow the M3 up from the south, then turn onto the A25 to circle London until they get to the M1, where they peel off again, heading north. I’m not kidding.

And now there’s been some fascinating work on birds and magnetic fields:

Birds use their right eye to see the Earth’s magnetic field and use it to navigate, scientists have discovered.

German researchers found that if a bird’s right eye was covered by a frosted goggle, the birds could not navigate effectively, while they could navigate perfectly well if the left eye was covered instead.
It has long been known that birds are able to sense magnetic fields and use them to navigate, particularly when migrating south for the winter. Snow geese head off on the migratory journey: Scientists have found that birds can actually see magnetic fields…

See the whole article here.Unfortunately, it is rather badly explained, but interesting nonetheless.

The funnel-like cage they are talking about is called an Emlen funnel. Usually it has an ink pad on the base and sloping walls. When a bird is ready to migrate, it faces the way it wants to go — and leaves inky footprints on one part of the side wall, but not on the others. So never fear, they didn’t have to release the birds wearing the goggles to find out whether they would go the right way!!

 

Sherlock with a mobile phone…

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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I loved the 2009 movie “Sherlock Holmes”. But even as I really enjoyed it, I felt a tinge of …what, regret? Regret that this film really wasn’t my idea of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, as per Conan Doyle. There was something missing. It’s ironical then, that I should find my nostalgia for the real thing indulged to the full — in a movie set in the London of today, with handphones and blogs and computers. And yet I did. Along with loads of action and adventure.

If you are in the UK this Sunday night you have a chance to do the same. The film is a 90 min made-for-TV BBC production. It’s called SHERLOCK, it’s on this Sunday night — and it will be coming to other parts of the world soon, so don’t despair if you live elsewhere. And the really, really good news is that it’s only the first one, A Study in Pink. There are at least another two to come, of equal length. The first and the third are directed by the film director (Push, Wicker Park, The Acid House, Lucky Number Sleven, etc) Paul Mc Guigan (see pic) which doubtless accounts for the film quality of A Study in Pink — which I was privileged to get a sneak preview of in post production, thanks to Paul. (I also was on the set of the third in the series too…) It had no music yet and was missing some tweaking, but it knocked my socks off as a drama, as a Sherlock Holmes mystery, as a modern version of something basically Victorian, and as a brilliant piece of directing with a fabulous script and cast.

“Sherlock Holmes”, 2009 film version, was Victorian England with a 21st century feel.  “Sherlock” is 21st century TV with a Victorian feel. Marvellous stuff. You’ll love it. Of course as I happen to think a great deal of Paul, I am probably biased. No, no, I’m not. It’s a GREAT film.

So you know where you should be in UK at 9p.m.on Sunday. In front of your TV set.

Take a look here for more about the cast etc: BBC link.
And here for a fan page: http://www.sherlocking.org
Later: And Cat has just told me about the trailer which can be seen here.
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