The Plague Episode

Have you noticed in series that are longer than trilogies, the authors seemed stumped for that many sub-villains and minor conflicts and will throw in a plague, just to change things up?  Generally of a magical cause, and the hero traipses about the countryside some more until he finds the cure, and everything's fine by the time the next book rolls around.  Unless there has been a token death in the party.  Surprisingly, this is not a trope - there is a "Plague," a "Mystical Plague," and a "Find the Cure," but none are quite what I am talking about here in terms of the episode.

As anyone who has read Albert Camus' The Plague or has a decent knowledge of history (or even current events) is well aware, plagues...don't exactly work like that.  People get sick.  And they go to the resident witch-doctors, who are stumped, but do the best they can.  More people get sick.  The town goes into quarantine.  Fear.  Boredom.  More fear.  More boredom.  Unless you're actually a doctor, but even then finding treatments, cures, and vaccines is really tricky even with modern medical technology.

There is no magical cure, because there is no magical cause. That does not stop people from trying.  The Jews got blamed for the Black Death in Europe - partly because they were the only people washing their hands and so weren't getting sick right away.  This led to lynchings and hate crimes.  After all, what is a hate crime but fear+boredom?  Nothing like a crisis to fuel xenophobia.

The miracle cure is pure wish-fulfillment; sickness is an enemy we cannot fight, and we humans don't deal well with helplessness.  Even in modern western society, we have flus and cancers - we can take preventative measures, but sometimes not even that is enough.  Illness is something universal that has a profound impact on the human psyche - and yet much of modern fantasy literature boils it down to a cure-Macguffin.  This happens in part because the plague is a single episode, not the story in itself as Camus made it.  It lessens the impact.

Dear fantasy writers, if you are going to write a plague story, read Camus and not any of the following.  While Novik is a historian-goddess and has probably read Camus and more, I am still approaching the fourth Temeraire book with caution, as it seems to be that series' plague-episode, and this is usually what Plague Episodes look like:

Plague Episodes in Fantasy Literature:

Temple of the Winds (Sword of Truth book 4) by Terry Goodkind – a witch releases a magical plague from a box to mess with the hero.  The hero and his girlfriend are forced to marry other people in order to cure the plague.  It doesn’t really make sense in context.  The hero gets the plague in the end, but he gets better.  One of the token lesbians dies.

Briar’s Book (Circle of Magic book 4) by Tamora Pierce – a careless witch dumps some magical toxic waste in the sewers, starting a plague. Luckily, the plucky kids notice things that lead the cleverer adults to a cure.  They’re healer-mages, so it works.  A friend of the main character who only appears in that book dies.  The main character mentor gets sick, but he calls her back from the edge of death.  It’s a kid’s book.  Curiously, this breaks my aforementioned pattern by being the last book in the quartet, but the stories are self-contained and switch viewpoint character for each.  Also interesting that there seem to be a lot of book fours.  "Four" is a homonym with "Death" in Chinese.

Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods (Underland Chronicles book 3) by Suzanne Collins – yes, that Suzanne Collins.  Gregor and his companions go on a quest to find a plague, then find out someone dropped a test tube in a lab where the “good guys” were designing a bioweapon.  Gregor’s bat and mother get sick, but neither die (it is Suzanne Collins though; it’s just that she saves the heartbreaking death for the last book).  No named characters die of the plague that I recall.

The Lost City of Faar (Pendragon book 2) by D.J. Machale – turns out to actually be a mass poisoning by the villain intending to start a war.  Only book two so plot is still formulaic.  Secondary character’s parents die, but he’s supposed to be an orphan because of his destiny, so they would have vanished somehow anyway.

The Keep of Fire (The Last Rune book 2) by Mark Anthony – a plague that causes people to burst into flames is affecting both worlds.  Hero and companions travel to title location and send the radioactive magical rock that is causing the plague into space, thus ending the plague.  It makes sense in context.  Main character’s bestie in our world dies, which is sad.  Other plot-relevant people get sick and die.

Lady Friday (Keys to the Kingdom book 6) by Garth Nix – embarassingly enough, I don’t really remember.  I think the title character was causing the Sleepy Plague, and once she was defeated…there was an extra step in there.  It didn’t just go away.  Main character’s friend got sick, but got better and rallied the defense in our world and took care of the plague victims.

Salamandastron (Redwall) by Brian Jacques – the inhabitants of Redwall abbey get sick with a mysterious illness, and Thrugg the otter journeys to a mythical mountain to find a mythical flower guarded by a mythical eagle which is the only cure.  He finds it of course, and the eagle is nice enough to fly it back for him.  It’s Redwall, so there is some token death, though the token death occurs in a different subplot.

Warriors by Erin Hunter – a recurring subplot where it is actually done well.  Cats get sick.  Sometimes a lot at the same time.  Sometimes they die.  Sometimes there are herbs.  Sometimes the herbs are not enough.  No questing for a special cure to a special illness.

Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner – as a joke when people would ask her “What happened next?” she would say “Oh, the next year there was a diphtheria outbreak and they all died.”  Which, in a pre-industrial pseudo-medieval society, is not entirely unlikely.  Though she did eventually write a sequel that was devoid of a diphtheria outbreak.

"Frostfire" by Kai Meyer, Chapter 3 Part 5/7

            She still had the faint hope that the prank had lasted long enough.  That the door would swing open again at any moment.  That someone would pull her back into the warmth, indoors, and chase her down the halls amid peals of laughter.  But the door stayed shut.

            And Mouse was alone in the open.

            She stood there and shivered, though the cold was only partly to blame for that.  It seemed like someone was tightening a strap around her chest, she could hardly breathe.  Her stomach wanted to turn inside out.  Everything about her trembled and shook, her voice failed her.  The tears froze on her cheeks, were thawed by ones flowing after, and solidified anew.

            It was so dark that she could only with difficulty make out the top step of the iron stairwell.  But in any case, it was unthinkable for her to set foot on it.  She could not.  The emptiness of the outside world hardened around her like a resin, held her fast, let her stiffen into motionlessness.  Her muscles cramped and refused to obey her.

            She did not know how long she stood there like that.

            As she finally overcame her paralysis, and very, very carefully placed a foot on the top step, it was as though she had to break through an icy armor that had laid itself around her body.  She stood standing once again, grabbed hold of the coat and pulled it on.  It was much too big, a garment for a grown-up.  The hem dragged on the ground, and her hands disappeared deep in the dangling sleeves.

            Her movements were so shaky that she nearly slipped and fell.  Again she had to hold fast to the icy railing, and even through the cloth of the coat, the cold was gruesome.  She had spent her whole life in the heated rooms of the hotel. Only now did it become clear to her that she had not known at all what true cold meant.

            Her gaze searched the sky, but there, too, was only blackness and millions of damp-heavy snowflakes that fell noiselessly to the ground.  Down looked like up to her, everything dark, everything empty, everything frighteningly wide and boundless.

            Her eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom, and now she saw that the stairs were situated in a narrow alley.  A brick wall rose into the sky right across from the back wall of the hotel, high up to God knew where.

            With her back to the wall, she began her descent.  One step after the other.  Not even the terrible cold could bring her to go faster.  She had greater and greater difficulty drawing breath.  The panic nested in her ribcage, threw out tentacles that laid themselves over her muscles and imposed their own motions, like the threads of a puppeteer’s marionette.

            Stumbling, she moved down the stairway into the depths.  Four stories could be an endless abyss, when they led through ice cold darkness with snow driving about.  But it was neither the blackness nor the height that affected Mouse so.  It was the awareness of being outside.  In the open.  She had often spoken with Kukushka about her fear of the outside world, but not even he knew an explanation for it.  Something in my head, she had thought then.  Now, though, now that it was so wide, she thought no more.  In her mind was only emptiness, just like the sky above her.

Tardis Legwarmers!

For Christmas this year I decided to crochet a pair of legwarmers patterned like a TARDIS for my friend who loves Dr. Who.  I was able to find several patterns for plushie TARDISes, knitted socks, a hat, even a David Tenant - but no crochet legwarmers.

I have never made legwarmers before, nor have I designed a pattern, so please forgive the flaws.  For instance, I assumed that legwarmers were supposed to be worked in the round, but then I actually looked at legwarmer patterns and found that most of them weren't.  Oh well.  One day I might go back and try to fix this, but for now, here it is:

TARDIS Legwarmers

I used a size H hook, Wool-Ease blue, Caron black, and TLC white.  Kind of a hodgepodge, I know.

Also, the friend I made them for has a very slight build, so you may want to scale up.  They are, unfortunately, not bigger on the inside than on the outside.

With blue, chain 36.

Row 1-5:  Sc around in the back loop of each st (all stitches are worked into the back loop unless otherwise specified.

Row 6-8:  Change to black.  Sc around in back loop.

Row 9:  Change back to blue.  Sc around.

Row 10-11:  Blue, white, white, blue. 

I'd also never changed color mid-row before, and there are probably tutorials online somewhere, but after quite a bit of trial and error I came up with:  With blue, pull up a loop.  With white, pull yarn through both loops.  Sc completed.  Sc white.  Pull up a loop, change to blue.  With blue, pull yarn through both loops.  Repeat around for 2 rows.

Row 12:  With blue, sc around

Row 13-14:  Repeat rows 10 & 11.

Row 15:  With blue, *5 sc, 1 dc (in front loop).  Repeat from * around.

Row 16-18:  Repeat row 15, adding one more white box one more white box, 3x3.

Row 19:  Repeat row 15.

Row 20:  *5sc in front loop, 1 dc in front loop.  Repeat from * around.

Repeat rows 15-20 three more times, skipping the white box.

Sc in back loops 3x around.  Of course I haven't lost count of the rows.  You can do math yourself, can't you?

Embroider "POLICE BOX" in white on the black stripe.

Now make another.

Congratulations!  You can now show off your Dr. Who fanaticism while keeping your legs nice and toasty.

I will try to link this to my Ravelry account (where I am known as "Haekelerin" - yes I know very original) as soon as I figure out how.

If you find any problems with the pattern just leave them in the comments.

(Top) Five Books About Griffins

Why am I doing all these lists?  Because I'm bored!  And I read too much!  And I've been watching a lot of Nostalgia Chick videos!  And because I can!  And because I just finished a griffin book.

I like griffins.  You may have guessed from the title of this blog, even though it is a word I got form watching a spelling bee years ago and apparently means messy handwriting and has nothing to do with griffins.  The thing is that griffins are way underdone, especially compared to, say, dragons, or wolves.  So instead of being a "Top" Five, this is really just a list of the five books about griffins that I've read and ranked.

5.  The Griffin Mage Trilogy - Rachel Neumeier

This one I only read a couple years ago, but I had to do a library search by "griffins" because I could remember neither title nor author, nor the names of any of the characters, nor exactly what happens.  I only read the first book, Lord of the Burning Sands. So let's see.  There's this girl, who's an orphan, and lives on a horse ranch (points for not making it a generic farm) and then a bunch of griffins swoop in and make the area a desert because they have some kind of Grogromon effect on the environment.  And then they kidnap the girl because she has some special magic.  And...stuff happens, and there's a big fight at the end.  Oh, and there was some sub-plot with this soldier boy, and apparently certain humans have a kind of magic where they can control a particular type of animal, and the big twist at the end is when the soldier boy discovers he can control griffins.  Which makes them animals or what?  They seemed pretty sentient.

What I did not like about Neumeier's griffins is that she focused on making them savage and unhuman, which to me made them uninteresting. 

4.  The Fallen Moon Trilogy - K.J. Taylor

I was at the new bookstore, and I felt like I had to buy something, so when I saw The Dark Griffin  I was like "Hey!  I like griffins.  It can't be too bad."  And it wasn't.  More on that later.

My first big hurdle reading this was when I realized that people are riding these griffins.  They're  bond creatures.  But it is fairly integral to the plot, so I got over it.  And I mean, I had a griffin-rider fantasy when I was, like, twelve, so I can't really judge.  The prose isn't the best - it reads like a draft, but a draft by a rather good writer.  It's like in the original draft she wrote "And then the baby griffin grew up on its own" and by the final draft had to wrack her brains for details that really didn't matter to the plot overall.  And there there was the food.  Literally.  Her characters always eat "food."  As in:  "The food was plain but nourishing" or "His house had been ransacked, the food trampled into the floor."  Again, it seems that she put it in as a placeholder, and by the time she got to later drafts was like "Crap.  What do they eat instead of pizza and ramen?"  Her answer:  Bread.  Cheese.  Dried meat.  Apples.  Oh, and cabbage.  That was the one original item mentioned, only the thing is, you don't eat cabbage raw.  You have to cook it.  So what do they do with cabbage in...whatever the country was called?  Steam?  Boil?  Bake?  Fry?  Pickle?  Or do they eat it raw?  At one point the main character eats stew at an inn, and that's as excitingly detailed as it gets.  Read Redwall if you need inspiration, girl.

The only real problem I had with the book, though, was the characters.  They were so flat I could not tell that the one chick was the main character's actual established girlfried until they were having sex.  This was about three or four conversations in, and I had been wondering if they were a pre-couple.  There were so many times during the book I was practically shouting "Why are you doing that?  You have no motivation!  Real people don't talk like that!  Real people don't act like that!  Real people aren't motivated like that!"  Namely the part where the main characters friends all try to help him feel better after his griffin dies (oops, slight spoiler, but it's fairly early on).  And I'm thinking Dudes, his bond creature just died.  Some 'verses don't have people survive that, though that's usually the telepathic ones (points for no telepathy).  And the friends...you don't get any real sense of friendship.  The author was just "Hey, main character must have social life (insert friends here)"  None of them have a distinct personality and one can tell their only purpose is to be the failed support network.  They are characters playing a role, not people.  Also, more amusing than anything else - the one friend seems to be the only cop in town.  I mean, it's implied that it's kind of a bigger city, but every single time the cops show up, Bran is there.  Every.  Single.  Time.

I will give credit where credit is due, though, and say that the book has a very good plot.  As in I want to read the sequel even though the characters are flat as paper.  It's a Martinesque rather than a Tolkienesque story, meaning (I think; I'm just making this up and I've only read about three chapters of GRR Martin) that it is a human story with twisty political gimmicks, rather than a quest to destroy a Great Evil*.  The main character is sent to capture a wild griffin and told "Oh yeah, you'll be fine"  when really that sort of operation takes a specialized team, but he manages it even though his griffin partner dies.  And there's a mini-conspiracy against him, and this racism subplot that makes it really obvious the writer is white.  The second plotline follows the titiular dark griffin that he captured.  On the whole though, it's a really intriguing story despite the blandness of the chracters.  Plus there are references to Diana Wynne Jones, I swear there are.  The oranges.  The arena that is totally Costamaret.  You don't...?  Oh never mind, just keep reading.
(*Just read on author's website that it is supposed to be a villain origin story.  I am intrigued.  Library, y u no have sequels?!  I don't like it so much I want to spend more money on it.)

3.  The Black Griffin - Mercedes Lackey

Yes, I ranked a Mercedes Lackey book this high.  I actually kind of like this one.  Mostly because of the griffins.  This book is about...um...a sort of masseuse/psychotherapist/companion who hangs around an army camp in the middle of a war.   And so do a bunch of griffins.  Okay, they're fighting in the war, but I think the reason I actually like this book is because it is more character driven, rather than trying to destroy the Great Evil.  The war is there, but it is background to the story until the very end.  The other books in the trilogy are meh at best - the second book could show them rebuilding after the war, except by then everything's kind of rebuilt and Lackey has to introduce a new conflict from the Other Continent.  And the third book is a Disney sequel where the offspring of the main cast go off on adventures that are not nearly as interesting as the parents'.  But the first book is solid.

2.  The Firebringer Trilogy - Meredith Ann Pierce

Yeah, okay, the main focus in this series is on the unicorns, but the griffins are a major subplot, and there's one of the cover of the first book.  They are shown as enemies of the unicorns at first, but then they are shown to have their own culture and traditions, and eventually make peace when the unicorns decide to drive the wyverns out of their ancestral lands instead of squatting on the griffins' ancestral hunting grounds (really, the griffins were only hunting them because they drove out the deer.  It's all just a misunderstanding.).  Only it gets a little weird when the one griffin has a romancey relationship with one of the unicorns, and it's implied that they have offspring, which is like, wut?  I would kind of like to read something about that, though.  The offspring, that is.  Except it would end up being full of race-angst, so maybe it's better she left it at that.

1.  Dark Lord of Derkholm/Year of the Griffin - Diana Wynne Jones

Of course I rank Jones at the top.  Am I biased?  Only because she's a damn good writer.  Was, I mean.  Fuck.

Book 1 of the...duology...introduces Wizard Derk genetic engineering wizard, and his genetically engineered griffin offspring.  Plus the two human ones.  The rest of the plot is about how the pseudo-medieval fantasyland is being exploited for tours from a parallel world.  Wizard Derk is bullied into running the operations for a year, and his kids, griffin and human, all pitch in and help.  The second book is after the tours are abolished, and follows one of the griffin children at college dealing with the aftermath of the tours.  And yes, that makes it sound like a Disney sequel, except 1) Elda was around in the first book, she was just too young to do much, and 2)  Even though it is technically less epic, it is still quite interesting - perhaps even more interesting.  It's not a sequel, it's completely different, slightly related story.  I like these griffins (okay, they were my first impression of griffins) because they are people, not talking animals or mysterious "others."  Lackey actually managed to do that too.  Huh.  Whodathunk?

But I wanted another sequel, dammit!  I wanted to see Elda and Flury hook up!  That would have been so adorable!  And I wanted to see the Other Continent.  And now Jones is dead and there will be no more, ever!

Anyway, we have, in ascending order:  Griffins as Grogromon, Griffins as bond-creatures, Griffins as created race, Griffins as...other race, and Griffins as created race AND other race on the Other Continent.  Griffins as different magic-users from humans, griffins as the ONLY magic-users (I thought that was pretty cool, especially since the didn't spend a lot of time on exposition, just snuck it in there periodically), griffins as the same sort of magic-users as humans, griffins not exactly using magic any more than anyone else, and griffins as mostly the same sort of magic-users with cultural and personal variation.

Shortlist:  Squire by Tamora Pierce, in which there is a griffin on the cover and the main character takes care of a baby griffin for a while which does absolutely nothing to further the plot.  The griffins are just part of a magical ensemble and aren't really important.  And it's Tamora Pierce.

That's about all I had to say about griffins.  Or, well, books.  I realize I may very well be obligated now to read Game of Thrones if I'm going to be making claims like that the Tolkienist movement has now split into Eddingsian and Martinesque factions.  Or maybe I'll just stay with my indie-fantasy.

I like griffins.  I've had a griffin story on backburner for years.  Must write before they become the new dragons...do you think that could ever happen?  There's been a lot of indie dragon deconstructions lately, so they might be on their way out.

Hmm.

Top 5 Best and Worst Books About Dragons

Mostly because I'm bored, and I just found out that Dragon Fate is not even in the library catalogue yet, even though it's been out for over a month.

5 Worst Dragon Books

5.  "Joust" by Mercedes Lackey. 

It's Mercedes Lackey.  What more need be said?  Few writers can pull of such cliche, shallow characters, long-winded monologues, or overly detailed, prettified worlds.  Worldbuilding details are good, but they should always be plot-relevant and not mere decoration.  "Joust" is actually not too bad as far as dragon books go.  The dragons do not talk (At least not in the first two books, and I don't see why that would change), and seem to be on a level of very clever animals with slight telepathic tendencies.  They are fed a fantasyland drug to keep them tractable, though of course un-drugged dragons that bond with humans as hatchlings perform much better.  Really the only problem with this series is that it is by Mercedes Lackey.

4.  "Dragonflight" by Donita K. Paul

This is a kid's book, so I can't really complain of the black-and-white morality, although I would...is that Jesus?  Why is there a Jesus in a dragon book?  Not that there's anything wrong with that necessarily, and kudos for not having a typical vague pantheon, but...the distinction is between a book about religion, a book about religious characters, and religious allegory.  The first is acceptable if it asks more questions than it answers (read:  The Sparrow), the second if the characters behave like actual religious people and not idiotic fanatics (though there are real ones of those, I suppose.  But read:  Firethorn) and the third...if you subscribe to the religion and don't want to have your mindset challenged?  The Dragonflight series, however, uses religion to support its very simplistic and childlike moral structures.  It is a kid's book, I suppose, so I can't really be too hard on it.

3.  Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffery

May her soul rest in peace.  I never got into the series.  I can't remember why; I can't remember many details of what I did read, so I'm going to go out on a limb and claim that the characters and stories were not very memorable.  Everything else I have is hearsay; namely, some very problematic portrayals of gender roles and relationships.  However, since this book is what started the whole dragonrider craze, I shouldn't be too hard on it.  Or maybe I should.

2.  "Eragon" - Christopher Paolini

The fifteen year old kid had enough dedication to sit down and write a novel from beginning to end.  I'll give him that much credit.  I can also list all of his sources:  McCaffery, Eddings, Tolkien, and Star Wars.  David Eddings is the reason fantasy is shit.  No, seriously, he codified if not started all of the needless traditions that the genre bears today, though most writers have the decency to not rip off his dull magic system word for word...Anyway, let's talk about Saphira.  For starters, she has no personality.  A few of the other characters in the books have some interesting quirks, so I'm going to count that as a fault of the character and not the book in general.  Basically, she's only there to make Eragon look cool.  Like a motorcycle.  But for her, Eragon (not quite an anagram of "Garion") is the whiny little bitch hero typical of the Eddings and Star Wars traditions; can't blame Tolkien for that one - Frodo was middle-aged!

1.  Dragonlance - created by Margaret Weis and Terry Hickman

Hoo boy. Where to start?  The plots are based off of D&D campaigns.  No, really, I'm not making that up.  The writing quality varies because there are so many different writers, but the dragons.  Ah, the dragons.  I don't believe they are actually in a lot of the books.  When they are, they are color-coded for your convenience.  Shiny dragons are good, rainbow dragons are bad.  And they talk, but they don't really do much when they're not being ridden around.  The only good part I can see is that since there are so many writers, some have tried to play around with the structure; there's a short story about an awkward misunderstanding with an albino silver dragon, and one where an evil dragon questions his evilness but doesn't actually follow-through (I think he dies, actually...).  On the whole, though, for a serial with "Dragon" in the title, they don't really do a whole lot.  Only ranks above Eragon because it is written by adults who should know better, but let's face it.  They don't.

Now before you start calling me a hater, here are my top 5 good dragon books

5.  "Eon:  Dragoneye Reborn" - by Allison Goodman

Full review here.  If you're too lazy to click on the link, it's about a girl who dresses as a boy in order to get a dragon companion.  Which is a horrible plot, so you can imagine my surprise when it didn't quite suck.  The setting is randomly Asian, and the dragons are life-draining energy beings rather than scaly kittens.  The story isn't exceptional, but it has some good points and on the whole isn't bad.

4.  "Dragon's Milk" - by Susan Fletcher

I haven't read these books in forever, so I can't give too many details.  It might not be as good as I remember, and if I haven't read it in forever it probably isn't the best thing ever.  But since I kept excusing "Dragonflight" for being a kid's book, here's another kid's book for contrast.  The story is about a girl who ends up caring for three dragon hatchlings after their mother dies or something.  They have to go on the run because people kill dragons in this world.  And there are people in difficult situations making difficult choices and facing the consequences, instead of people in difficult situations making difficult choices and having their problems vanish as a reward for making the right choice.  I think maybe one of the dragons died, too.  Not sure.  Kid's books can be pretty dark, you know.

3.  The Dragon Quartet - by Marjorie B. Kellogg

This series is just frickin' weird.  The first book takes place in medieval Germany, where this girl finds an earth-dragon and goes on this journey with it to find her destiny or something, ends up falling through some kind of time portal where, in the second book, she meets a boy from modern-day Africa who is bonded to a water dragon, and then they go back to medieval Germany for a brief bit and end up in this post-apocalyptic future run by a fire dragon, and the air dragon is really a computer, and the dragons are really transdimensional beings who incarnated at certain points in time in order to save the human race from global warming...or something like that.  I should really re-read those.  They're just so...weird.  And different.  See, that is what fantasy is supposed to mean - creating your own unique vision of a world.  Not pseudo-medieval whiny farmboy kill the dark lord questing. 

2.  Age of Fire - by E.E. Knight

Think "Wicked" for Dragonlance.  The original book, not the musical.  It's a sort of dark reimagining of a familiar world (not Krynn specifically, just the whole freaking genre paradigm).  You've got your elves/dwarves/humans/+2, and all kinds of crazy race relations.  And you have the dragons.  The book is told from the dragon's point of view as hominids try to kill them or enslave them.  They end up sort of turning that around and starting a dragon empire and making it very clear that in the dragon/rider relationship, the dragon is boss.  The characters are all very interesting, and in the latest (well, next-to-latest) I actually started to feel for them a bit (That poor Copper! - oh yes, it has amazing technicolor dragons, but physical appearance does not correlate with moral alignment), and I really want to read the last one, Dragon Fate.

1.  Temeraire - by Naomi Novik

Napoleonic Wars.  With dragons.  It is awesome.  Yes, the dragons tend toward the scaly kitten end of the spectrum, but they are not pastel greeting-card kittens, they are real live animals that poop on your floor.  Metaphorically speaking.  Actually, they are not animals.  They are people, and Novik does well building a subplot of a sort of impending dragon civil rights movement (I'm only about halfway through the series).  Also, historical detail.  England, Africa, China, Ottoman Empire, Prussia...Holy crap, that woman has done her research.  So yes, Temeraire is adorable.  He talks (not telepathic, thank the gods).  He chose his rider from the egg and loves him oh-so-much.  And he is a slave.  And seeing him struggle to compromise that with his love for his rider is so...woobifying.  Squee.

Yeah.  Dragons.  You probably think I think too much about dragons.  Funny that I don't usually write about dragons.  There might be some in my shapeshifter story, but they're not really in the plot.  Dragons just seem so overdone and so rarely done well.  At the same time, all the possible subversions are already being done (and done well).  So for the time being, I remain a dragon appreciater rather than a dragon writer.

Cleaning up the Mess

So, back in November I participated in 30 days of awesome hell called NaNoWriMo.  I ended up with 50,000 words of garbage, and have made it my goal for January - NaNoEdMo - to sort through it and look for anything worth saving.  Well, initially I set out intending to create a readable second draft, but...yeah.  That's not going to happen.

So how do I edit?  I normally don't get this far, so I'm making this up as I go along.  Of course, that's what I did when I first started writing.  Heck, that's what I still do, so I don't know what I'm complaining about.  Anyway, I borrow techniques from several writers I respect (note "respect," not "like").  First step is the read-through.  This is why EdMo is January and not December, besides the fact that in December you are too burned out to even think about writing.  You have to read it as though it is not your own work.  The month-long interval gives you some distance, so that you can read as a reader and not a writer.  Usually it's not as bad as you remember, at this point.

Of course, "not as bad as you thought" is not the same as "good."  On the second read-through, you are allowed to make notes about what needs to be improved - the first time through, you are not allowed to criticize.  I realized very quickly that none of the actual scenes were salvageable.  I had to create a whole new outline for the story I ended up with, rather than the story I began with.  I made notes about which scenes can be used for reference (more just to make me feel that this is a second draft and not a complete overhaul), but over half of it has to be written from scratch, and I have no idea how some of the new plot points are supposed to happen. 

In fact, looking at it all now, I realize I have two choices.  Well, three, but the third doesn't really count.  I can 1)  Add in the new scenes.  Somehow.  2) Cut down what I have and strip it down into a short story.  3)  Toss it all out and give up (You can see why this one doesn't count, but technically it is an option)

I think I might end up going with 2, and possibly taking it a step further and just making it backstory.  You see, my novel did a funny thing this year.  Around page 55, which was about halfway through the month this year, I had nothing left for the story I was trying to write.  So I wrote a slightly related story about witch hunters.  No planning, no prior imaginings, just a desperate gimmick to add words and keep creativity flowing.

Predictably, that is the part of the month I think has the best chance of being saved.

That is what happens during NaNo.  If you look at the pep talk of successful (published) NaNovelist Erin Morgenstern and her novel The Night Circus, her story is that when her NaNovel wasn't going anywhere, she sent her characters to a circus, which turned out to be much more interesting than the original story.  Now she's published and there are over a hundred requests on her book at the library, so I probably won't get to it until after break.  The point is that writing is a process of discovery.  Creation is discovery.  That's what makes it interesting, more so than arranging information into an essay or solving a math problem.  You have control over the novel, but at the same time, the novel has power over you.

Going to stop now before I get too postmodernly semantical.  Have to get back to that editing.  Or possibly that new story with the shapeshifter that's lurking in the back of my mind...

Time

Time is a funny thing.  It is elastic, like a rubber band, so the same length of it can feel very long or very short.  Seconds can grind slow as hours if you are giving a presentation in front of a class, but you can sit down to talk with a friend you have not seen in far too long, and find the hours flying by like seconds.

So whether this was a long year or a short year, I cannot say.  A year ago today I was on a airplane to Germany, somehow convinced I was going to have the time of my life, despite the frightful doubts in my head that I was in completely the wrong place.  Empty lonely hours stretched long in the Scheissburg, but back at school my life was carried away by a whirlwind until I finally took it back by force.  Then stood staring, wondering what to do with it.

One year ago today I took to the air and I still cannot say if I have landed safely. 

There was a lot this year.  I hit the low point of my life, and pray to whatever gods may be that I never go there again.  I have discovered I am not who I thought I was, and though I no longer have the adolescent urgency to figure it out, I am looking down a lifelong road through self-discovery.

This was a year of redefining - redefining of relationships, goals, desires.  And though I don't feel like I have any more answers than when I started, what I have is, I think, enough to carry me through 2012.

These were my goals for 2011:

1.  To no longer be afraid of things that won't kill me.
2.  To stop making things my problems that aren't.

I think I did okay on those.  Certainly not going to leave them behind, but I think I need some new ones for 2012.

1.  Take control of my own life.
2.  Make new friends and take care of the ones I have.
3.  Show someone a story (a real one, one that matters).  Shouldn't be a problem if no one bugs me about it.
4.  Actually learn to play something on the guitar.
5.  Redefine my relationship with my body.

If you know me and don't know what #5 means, don't ask.  I'll tell you in my own time.

(Why do I post things I don't want to talk about?  I guess I feel more comfortable writing than talking sometimes.  It makes me uncomfortable to talk about the things I blog about, which is why I blog about them instead of talking - like they are still being expressed, more than in a private diary, but I don't have to say anything, and I don't get immediate responses.  Things I need to say but can't.  I forget sometimes that real people I know read this.  Like it doesn't exist in the spoken reality.  Ah well.)