Katherine Kerr at DeepGenre points out yet another slap in the face of fantasy fans administered by intellectuals who should supposedly know better. Apparently London Times reviewer Alex Burghart and author Veronica Orgenberg are under the mistaken impression Lord of the Rings takes place in the Middle Ages, and that its fans think medieval times were really like that, or some similarly ridiculous notion.

Not only is this unforgiveably shoddy scholarship, but one wonders: why bring us into it at all? It seems the intelligentsia can’t resist dragging us dreamers through the mire every so often, just as a reminder that only Naturalism is “literary”.

I’m catching up on my newsfeeds today since I’ve been ripping CDs so I can put the hardcopies in storage, and I found this article by Morgan J. Locke on art and the risks we take to create it via an older post at Kate Elliott’s Livejournal. Enjoy.

From anna louise’s recent Q&A:

I suggest that you don’t get too tied to doing a trilogy. If you want a trilogy, plot it out and write a synopsis for each book. Then write the first book. Stop there. Try to sell the first book. If no one likes the first book, you haven’t wasted your time writing the other two! Even if the third book in the trilogy is the best work in the world, and would rival classics in its brilliance, no one is going to read the first two books to get to the one brilliant part.

I always suggest to new/unpublished writers that they start with a standalone novel that could be expanded into a trilogy or series or group of connected novels.

This makes sense to me.

I think subconsciously this may be one reason I keep going back to Trouvere whenever I feel like it’s time to buckle down. Even though it occasionally threatens to become a duet or trilogy when I become obsessed with the hero, it’s really the most “standalone” thing I’ve got. I could technically set a standalone in Searoyal and it would work, but the setting isn’t really ready. I’ve got a plan for a story set in a Searoyal culture that is quite unrelated to the main setting, so I’ve never been sure I wanted to put that out there as my first foray into that world.

Kate Elliott has some interesting things to say about writing burnout.

Personally, I think I’m suffering from points 2 and 3 of Kate’s own burnout causes. While my personal situation is currently not fit to print (oh, believe me, I would if I could. I would go on and on and on . . . ), my ideas, and my difficulty in implementing them, are the most obvious source of trouble.

As usual, it’s my heroine. Female leads always give me trouble, but I’ve been staring down the heroine of Trouvere for literally years now, and she keeps changing ranks, nationalities, dispositions, marital statuses, locales, amount of participation in the story, parentage, fashion sense . . . everything down to her hair colour. I’ve been trying to put her aside while I work on world-building, but I always have this nagging feeling I’m ignoring something, and I know it’s her. Still, my only choice is to keep on ignoring her for now, and hope I have a sudden epiphany before it’s time to do the character profiles. I think Kate Elliott is right, at least in my case, when she says, “Sometimes there is no way out but through.”

Deadline: 3 weeks

1 World Map
1 City Map
3 Major Culture Descriptions (with religion, language and history notes - three single-spaced pages per culture)
Flora and fauna list of 25 interrelated species with descriptions

I’m not able to photocopy the world map just yet, but I’ve still got it handy, so I’m calling it done. I finished a map of Dürnstein village as I imagine it in the 12th century. I really don’t know what it was like, but the odds of my visiting and finding out for myself are pretty slim, so I did the best I could using maps and photos of “modern” Durnstein (it’s still pretty medieval, really). I may do some more detective work and add to it, but for now I’ve got enough to go on, I think.

Deadline: 3 weeks

1 World Map
1 City Map
3 Major Culture Descriptions (with religion, language and history notes - three single-spaced pages per culture)
Flora and fauna list of 25 interrelated species with descriptions

Okay, I’m trying something different here. It’s time to set some goals, with deadlines. I don’t normally like to work under deadlines, but I’ve gotta do something different.

Since this is a historical fantasy, I was lucky enough to find the perfect world map in one of my research books. All I need to do, in that case, is get access to a photocopier and copy away. So that’s done. I’m currently researching a village that’s important in my story so I can make a map of that. The three cultures and the flora and fauna list will likely take the longest, but will be extremely helpful. The cultures I’m choosing to profile are Northern French, Austrian and Saracen. Because I’ve done so much research already, I expect to be done faster than three weeks, but I’m giving myself ample time, just in case. Depending on how much time I have left over, I may make a map of medieval Paris.

Today I gave in and started up notes for a Gilmore Girls fanfic. I’m not planning on writing a long one, just one that will tie up the loose end I wanted tied up, that will never be resolved in the series since Milo Ventimiglia is never coming back. Yes, it’s fanfic, and no, it’s not what I’m supposed to be working on, but you know what? When you’ve had a creative dry spell as long as the one I’ve had, you take what you can get. It’s always seemed like writing fanfiction gets my creative mind working even when it’s started to atrophy; at this point, writing is writing, and I just want to feel the wind in my literary sails again.

I’ve started reading Alanna and it’s getting pretty entertaining. At first I was disappointed, because I’d heard such good things, and it was written for a younger audience than I expected; the setting and characters were sketched in pretty vaguely and the dialogue struck me as generic pseudo-medieval talk for kids. I have to say though, now that Alanna has arrived at the castle where she’ll be trained as a page, and getting to know the other pages, I’m enjoying it more, and the setting has been revealed more completely by increments. We’ll see how it goes.

So the book I’ve been working on is tentatively titled The Moonlit Hunt. It’s not entirely new; it’s the book that Scorpion and The Steward (aka Motte & Bailey) synthesized to become. There are two interesting points about this novel that make it different from previous projects I’ve worked on:

First, I’ve started with theme, completely unintentionally. It started while I was planning Scorpion, really. Normally, my focus is on characters, setting, motivation, interesting scene ideas . . . you know, all the things that it makes sense to start with. This time, themes I wanted to explore came to me first. They sprang from character and setting, yes, but the characters were still just images and vague ideas at that point. I am as yet not sure how I feel about this.

Second, I’ve come up with the villain’s motivation first. I don’t think that’s happened to me, ever. Almost always, the hero is first in line for motivation, I have trouble with his lady, and the villain is to be avoided at all costs. I know that’s a bad idea, and it certainly isn’t on purpose. This time, however, the villain began to come alive before I knew it.

I hope this means that this is “the one”, the book I’ll finally finish. Don’t know how I’ll do a repeat performance in that case, since this mode of planning is so contrary to how I normally work, but I’ll deal with that when the time comes.

Here is a totally inspired project: Loganberry Books is not just a used book store; their site can help you figure out which book you’re looking for. Perhaps you only vaguely remember a cherished book from your childhood; you can play Stump the Bookseller, and from just your recollections (for instance, “a little guy, I can’t remember what he’s called, who likes to smoke a pipe, travels with a bunch of dwarves to a dragon’s lair”) the bookseller or the site’s visitors can help you figure out the name and author of the book. Brilliant, I tell you!

Playing costs $2 (which can be used toward the purchase of the book once it’s solved), but in reality, you may not even need to send in a question: I found the title to the exact version of the Welsh fairy tale “Elidor and the Golden Ball” that I remembered from my childhood, 70s-style art nouveau illustrations and all, just by searching in Solved Mysteries.

Amazon has opened up preorders for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in Standard and Deluxe versions! Be smart and do what I’ve done in the past: pick up a copy of the deluxe version for yourself, and a standard for your significant other, so you don’t have to share. ;)