Kristy S. Gilbert

Leaflet Review: The Hum and the Shiver by Alex Bledsoe

January 9, 2012 by Kristy S. Gilbert 1 Comment

No one knows where the Tufa came from, or how they ended up in the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee, yet when the first Europeans arrived, they were already there. Dark-haired, enigmatic, and suspicious of outsiders, the Tufa live quiet lives in the hills and valleys of Cloud County. While their origins may be lost to history, there are clues in their music—hints of their true nature buried in in the songs they have passed down for generations.

Private Bronwyn Hyatt returns from Iraq wounded in body and in spirit, only to face the very things that drove her away in the first place: her family, her obligations to the Tufa, and her dangerous ex-boyfriend. But more trouble lurks in the mountains and hollows of her childhood home. Cryptic omens warn of impending tragedy, and a restless “haint” lurks nearby, waiting to reveal Bronwyn’s darkest secrets. Worst of all, Bronwyn has lost touch with the music that was once a vital part of her identity.

With death stalking her family, Bronwyn will need to summon the strength to take her place among the true Tufa and once again fly on the night winds. …

The Hum and the Shiver had me excited: it has an interesting premise, an interesting context, a killer title, and a visually appealing cover (can you believe it’s just straight-up photo-manipulation?). My little brother sent it to me for Christmas, because he is an awesome brother, and I read it in about two days.

Delicious Tidbits

The book has plenty of things going for it: an interesting take on contemporary fantasy (it’s definitely not urban, and none of the characters are cliche); the main character grows into a unique type of inner strength; the worldbuilding elements are delightfully fresh (music-based magic in rural Tennessee!). The elements of mystery surrounding the Tufa draw you through the book, and the cast of characters is very dynamic.

One of my favorite characters in the book was Craig Chess, the Methodist minister who has recently moved to Cloud County to work among the notoriously nonreligious Tufa. He’s awesome. He is a man who acts on his faith, who suffers fits of temper and temptation but always finds a way to deal with it, and who, although he earnestly wishes others to find the truth he holds dear, doesn’t need you to be in his congregation for him to wish you the best. He stands in stark contrast to the likes of Dwayne Gitterman, Bronwyn’s ex-boyfriend, who really doesn’t wish anyone well but himself.

Hangups

So I enjoyed the book. But I couldn’t wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone. The book’s charm very much hangs on its milieu—the unique setup, context, worldbuilding, and small-town characters. In my opinion, the plot was not particularly masterful. Some of the conflicts, like Bronwyn’s inability to play music when she first returns home, are solved with surprising ease. The viewpoint is almost confusingly omniscient (to be fair, I haven’t read an omniscient POV since I read Dune, so my distaste for this technique could just be because I’m out of practice reading it). Plot-driven readers may take issue with a character or two who have more page time than their plot purpose warrants.

After reading the last page, I put down the book and said, “Really? Really that’s how you end it?” The ending didn’t resonate with me in a meaningful way. For a book that has so much heart, it felt surprisingly hollow.

Even so …

I still enjoyed it. Knowing what I know now, I’d still have read it. It’s a rich and textured novel with plenty in its pages that will please. Its heroine has a very interesting growth trajectory that I found satisfying. Alex Bledsoe recently announced that there will be a second book in the same world called Wisp of a Thing, and I’ll likely read that book as well. It’s not a perfect piece, but like I said, it has a lot of heart, and I’m glad I had a weekend to spend on it. If only for Bledsoe’s beautifully imagined Tufa culture and folklore and they way he put magic into the mundane, I’d gladly read the book again.

Content warnings: Language, sex, discussions about sex, mature themes, some violence (but not much).

Weekly Roundup: 12/31–1/6

January 6, 2012 by Kristy S. Gilbert 2 Comments

The Rook Trailer

You all know how excited I am about The Rook, which comes out next week, right? Then you’ll all want to watch the book trailer, right? Of course you will!

MTV Shows

Kristine Kathryn Rusch: Writers: Will Work for Cheap

Kristine Kathryn Rusch looks at the money writers make. As you might expect, she tears down certain traditional publishing standards, but she hardly leaves self-publishers unscathed. If you write, regardless of how you intend to publish, you should read this. Afterward you might still have the mentality Rusch attacks (i.e., it’s better to be read than paid), but you’ll be more aware of the choice you’re making.

This post is longer than those on most other blogs, but it’s well worth the read.

Daisy Whitney: 7 Best Practices for Building an Online Presence

Author Daisy Whitney looks at some best practices in the online world. I’m a big proponent of authors figuring out how to be in the internet’s eye before they really dig in to blogging and social media as marketing platforms, and Whitney does a good job of giving you a foundation.

Villainous Characterization Techniques

January 4, 2012 by Kristy S. Gilbert 3 Comments

A couple weeks ago I wrote a post about humanizing your book’s villains. Today I’m going to analyze some humanized villains and talk about the specific traits and techniques that make those villains more human and interesting—I’ll even show a humanizing element that can save your villain from being completely flat. Because any villain’s characterization can span an entire book or series, let me preface this post by saying it’s probably full of spoilers. I’ll keep them as mild as I can, but if you want any of these books to remain completely unspoiled, avoid reading that book’s section and skip to the technique summary at the end.

Lord of the Rings: Gollum

I’ll start with the book most of you won’t mind having spoiled. Gollum from Lord of the Rings is the most humanized villain in the trilogy (some might even argue that he’s not much of an antagonist because he helps so much). J.R.R. Tolkein humanizes Gollum by making him utterly pitiful. The heroes of not only Lord of the Rings, but also of The Hobbit pity Gollum, and the reader does too. He’s a lonely, mostly deranged creature that is driven by something other than his own rational thoughts. His addiction to the ring has made him less than his own halfling. Because the reader can feel sorry for Gollum, it’s hard to hate him completely, and his villainous actions are more impactful. When he falls back into actions driven by his addiction, the reader aches a bit because he couldn’t resist it forever.

Villainous technique: Make your reader pity the villain.

The Last Unicorn: King Haggard

Through much of Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn there is no physical antagonist impeding the unicorn’s quest to find the rest of the unicorns. Once King Haggard arrives on the scene, he fills that role. Haggard lacks the human ability to be happy, which you might think would make him less than human, but he lacks this ability because of a common human failing: he doesn’t know what would make him happy. This selective ignorance drives Haggard’s deepest flaw, and it’s also something many people in the world share. Lots of people don’t know what will make them happy. Many of them spend years in pursuit of something they think will make them happy, but because they didn’t know what would make them happy, they end up unhappy, just like Haggard. Haggard’s ignorance is his most endearing factor (and it makes you pity him a bit, just like Gollum).

Villainous technique: Give your villain some ignorance your audience shares or sympathizes with.

Blackdog: Tamghat

Tamghat in K.V. Johansen’s Blackdog isn’t exactly a poster boy for a humanized villain (although I loved the book, I didn’t think he was even that memorable). However, one thing that kept him from being completely flat was Johansen’s use of a foil character. Tamghat is the villain, but he shares a lot of backstory with Moth, a character who the reader is supposed to like and sympathize with. Because readers learn Tamghat’s backstory (and thus, much of his motivation) from a foil character they like, it’s easier to understand his motivations and follow his goals.

Villainous technique: Introduce a sympathetic foil character that shares some of your villain’s traits.

I Am Not a Serial Killer: Dan Wells

(Heads up: This is probably the most spoiler-filled section.) Dan Wells’s I Am Not a Serial Killer has a very humanized villain, Mr. Crowley. As the book’s antagonist, Crowley is behind a series of killings in the main character’s home town. However, his motivation is what makes him incredibly human. He kills because he needs to steal body parts so he can stay with his elderly human wife, who he fell in love with even though he’s a demon. He gets caught for his killings because he doesn’t want to have to go far from his wife to harvest body parts. Crowley displays traits that most people would consider admirable: love, fidelity, and consideration for someone he’s been with for a very long time. The fact that these traits drive him to a horrible outcome makes that outcome more powerful.

Villainous technique: Give the villain morally admirable traits (which can sometimes lead to morally reprehensible results).

These are really just a few ways you can make your villain more dynamic. How have your favorite authors humanized some of their villains?

Books to Look for in 2012

January 2, 2012 by Kristy S. Gilbert 6 Comments

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s a new year. That means a whole new year of books! I’ve been trying to keep my eyes and ears open for news of upcoming releases that pique my interest. I’ve got several on my list, but I also have a huge gap in my book year. So I’ll let you know about books I’m looking forward to if you’ll let me know about your go-to list for 2012 (especially if you’re looking forward to books coming out in the spring and summer).

The Rook by Daniel O’Malley (January 2012)

After reading a snippet somewhere (probably in Publisher’s Lunch), I put The Rook on my radar. Then I read the sample chapters months ago. I followed the @RookFiles Twitter feed. The voice has me captivated, and I have the book pre-ordered. I’ve never pre-ordered a book in my life. (My mom pre-ordered Harry Potter books on my behalf, but I’ve never actually felt the need to do it myself.) O’Malley, you better deliver. I expect to enjoy myself between those simple black covers.

Thief’s Covenant by Ari Marmell (February 2012)

Thief’s Covenant is coming out as a part of Pyr’s new YA line. I haven’t picked up a new YA for a while (not since last Christmas when I bought Matchless on a whim), but I’ve been looking forward to this one since I heard about it at WorldCon last year. (P.S. Is the cover not awesome?) The main character is the only remaining worshipper of her household god; everyone else who used to worship him is dead. Now she runs through the city as a thief, trying to keep ahead of the people out to kill her.

Shadow Ops: Control Point by Myke Cole (February 2012)

I’ll let you in on a secret: although I’m a military wife, I’m not normally into military genre books. War literature is something I dig (you might remember that I love Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried), but genre military fiction (military SF, for example) normally doesn’t float my boat. But something about Shadow Ops: Control Point intrigues me. Maybe it’s because it’s military fantasy, which is something I don’t recall running into before. It’s an interesting angle, and I’d like to see where it goes.

Big Gap for Spring and Summer

Please donate your suggestions to fill this gap. Or I could use this time to catch up on some of the wonderful books that are already out that I haven’t had a chance to sample yet.

Six Little Sisters by Garcia McCall (Fall 2012)

This book is coming out from Tu Books, an imprint with a cause. A cause that has led it to introduce me to this very interesting-sounding book, Six Little Sisters. I got this description of it from Tu Books’ editorial director’s blog: “In this retelling of The Odyssey, Odilia and her five sisters embark on a quest to return a dead man to his family and must overcome monsters from Mexican folklore as they journey home.” Sound cool much? If not, maybe you’re just not enough of a folklore junkie yet. Don’t worry. Listen to me long enough and I’ll get you hooked eventually.

Rootless by Chris Howard (November 2012)

Rootless is another book I saw a pitch for in Publishers Lunch. A tree sculptor who fashions decorative trees out of scrap metal learns about the possible whereabouts of a real, living tree. He sets off to investigate. Yes, this is in a dystopian world in which all living trees have supposedly died off.

Your Favorites for 2012

What are you looking forward to in 2012? I’m open to all suggestions. I seem to only have speculative fiction on my 2012 reading list, but I’d be happy to hear recommendations for mainstream fiction, nonfiction, Billy Collins–like poetry, or any anthology with folktales in it. If you’re on Twitter, you can also use the hashtag #books2012 to tell your tweeps about books to look for.

Yearly Book Traditions

December 26, 2011 by Kristy S. Gilbert 4 Comments

Now that it’s after Christmas, I am going to indulge in one of my yearly book traditions. In addition to reading whatever books my family have been so kind as to give me, I’m also going to read Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising. I’m going to read it before January. Why?

Well, primarily because it is traditional. Secondarily, I read The Dark Is Rising every year because it is a book I love dearly. The book, and the whole Dark Is Rising sequence, is something I can easily fall into an immerse myself in. It’s an enveloping kind of book that completely transports me into the realm between its pages. I like to increase that feeling of immersion by reading this book during the time in which it takes place. The majority of the action in The Dark Is Rising occurs in the twelve days following Christmas. Being surrounded by snow while the English countryside of the story descends into winter makes the book that much more powerful. (This tradition isn’t hurt by the fact that my grandma, who has since passed away, was the one who gave me my copies of Susan Cooper’s sequence.)

The Dark Is Rising isn’t the only book I reread every year. I tend to reread The Last Unicorn (I explain that in this post about Peter S. Beagle), The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine, and Night Watch by Terry Pratchett.

Ella Enchanted is pure delight, a smooth read, and it only takes me about one sitting to read it cover to cover. It’s easy to come back to as a comfort read. It’s like good macaroni and cheese.

All the other books have a certain way of enveloping me, of making me feel things deeply. They all wound, enlighten, and enlarge me in powerful ways. Along the way, yes, Pratchett makes me laugh; yes, Beagle charms me with his descriptions; yes, O’Brien systematically questions my trust in narrative truth. But the thing they share in common is that these books have heart to them, and I compulsively return to that living heart year after year.

Are there any books you read yearly, or are there just a few books you keep around for rereading? Or do you eschew rereads?

Humanize Your Book’s Villain

December 19, 2011 by Kristy S. Gilbert Leave a Comment

Your book’s villain or antagonist is probably the reason why you have a story to tell. He or she is the one who causes the protagonist’s problems, stands in the way of the protagonist’s desires, and completes the conflict that lies at the heart of your story. Even so, many writers (not always newbies) neglect to make the villain a compelling character in his or her own right. When your villain is a one-dimensional character, your story’s conflict also becomes one-dimensional and you miss out on a prime opportunity to make your book more compelling.

The answer? Humanize your villain.

Humans are complex beings; nobody has only one dimension to them. Even real people you dislike have more to them than that one annoying habit that drives you up the wall. I’d venture to bet that people are so complex that you can find common ground with anyone on this planet if you have a chance to interact with them long enough. So there is absolutely no reason why your books’ antagonists can’t have complex motivations, competing impulses, and maybe even a bit of goodness in them.

An Example: Achebe’s Okonkwo

To illustrate my point, I’m going to use an example of writing that humanizes with painful precision (although the character I’m going to be using is the protagonist, not the antagonist). In Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, the main character, Okonkwo, is a strong and fierce man. I hated him. He beat his wives and killed children. Even though those actions were acceptable in his culture, he did them in ways that discomfited and outraged his peers. Almost everything he did made me hate him more. (So much so that I probably would have stopped reading the book had it not been assigned reading. I came to be very grateful that I read the entire book; it’s on my list of best eye-opening experiences.)

[Slight spoiler] A point came in the novel in which Okonkwo is summarized. A stranger takes one element of Okonkwo’s life and uses it to create a summary and “understanding” of him that supposedly stands for his entire life. [/Slight spoiler]

That moment broke my heart. My heart broke for a man I detested, because he was such a complex person that seeing him reduced in that manner was horrifying.

The key to making me sorry for Okonkwo was the fact that Achebe made Okonkwo a man. Not a straw man, not a cardboard cutout, but a man. Most things in that man irritated me. Some I could understand. Okonkwo was proud and never wanted to be seen as less than a paragon on manhood by everyone around him. I’ve never tried to be a paragon of manhood, but I have felt the pressure of other people’s eyes and the need to look capable. I’ve never felt like those feelings could justify the sort of things Okonkwo did, but I’ve felt those feelings.

Means to a Humanized End

What’s the takeaway from all this? Your antagonist doesn’t have to be one-dimensional to be villainous. I found Oknonkwo villainous, but reducing him to less than he was offended me. Your villain can be a heinous human being, but make him or her a human being. Here are some ideas on how to do it:

Give your villains more than one reason for their actions. We all do things for a variety of reasons. Very rarely does one motivating factor determine all our actions. If your antagonists wants to take over the world—or even just the corner store—give them more than one reason. It will make their goals more realistic and their means more understandable. Okonkwo wanted to look good in front of others, to be a good father, and to defend his culture against invaders. Those motivations all influenced his actions.

Give your villains universal traits. Everyone has felt embarrassed, angry, hurt, and betrayed. All of us may not have felt those things to the same extent, but we’ve all felt them. If your villain can act on traits that your reader understands, even if your villain’s reactions are more extreme than what your reader’s, the reactions will be more human. Okonkwo feared shame above all else, and that’s something I could sympathize with.

Give your villains a reason to think they’re heroes. Everyone is the hero of his or her own life story. When you’re crafting your villains, consider things from their points of view. Would they be able to justify these actions to themselves? Their mothers? Maybe your villain is motivated by love, by family duty, by a desire for security. If your villains are motivated by a goal your reader shares, their actions will be more believable and even more horrifying. Okonkwo thought he was fulfilling his role as a man; the idea that his actions were what it took to be a man made my insides roil.

Your villain’s actions need to be as realistic and as human as your hero’s. When both of them are multidimensional and realistic, the conflict between them becomes more engrossing. The more you engross your readers, the more they’ll keep coming back to hear your stories.

For more tips, check out this post about villainous characterization techniques.

Weekly Roundup: 12/10–12/17

December 16, 2011 by Kristy S. Gilbert Leave a Comment

BusinessWeek.com: Publishers Are Still Missing the Boat on E-book Pricing

Mathew Ingram argues that publishers are shooting themselves in the foot with their ebook prices. He makes some strong points, and I’d agree with him that charging more for an ebook than a paperback is a mistake (even if it makes number sense publisher-side). However, as more of the market transitions to electronic, ebooks will be less of an afterthought and their prices will need to carry the costs of editorial and marketing, costs that have stayed more or less static in recent years and have, for some time, been carried by print sales. So I think pricing is a bit of a sticky issue.

Women Fighters in Reasonable Armor

This isn’t something new, like most roundup items are. This Tumblr account has been around for some time, but if you haven’t looked into it yet and you write anything that puts women in armor, you should check it out. It presents exactly what you’d expect: women fighters in reasonable armor. For some thoughts on the issue of reasonable armor with character, you can also visit armorer’s opinion post about reasonable armor in fantasy art (heads up: the examples of unreasonable armor he gives are especially tasteless; good examples, but they weren’t particularly pleasant to see).

ePub: The Language of eBooks—A Primer

If you have experience with HTML, CSS, and other markup languages and you aren’t yet sure how this whole ePub format thing works, this is a great resource for getting started. If you know nothing at all about HTML or CSS, this might not make any sense at all.

Brilliant Book Trailer

Most writers hate self-promotion. Here’s one author who does a very good job of promoting his book without making you feel like he’s being a salesman. (His book is due to release 1/3/2012, it’s called Everything You Need to Survive the Apocalypse, and his last name is Klauss. I remember that off the top of my head after seeing this once, and that’s all the information I need to get his book. That’s how well he did.)

Honest Editorial Feedback without Gatekeepers

December 12, 2011 by Kristy S. Gilbert Leave a Comment

The rise of electronic self-publishing has led many authors to circumvent the traditional “gatekeepers” of the publishing world. In some instances that means a wonderful book with a niche audience or a cross-genre appeal finds its way to an audience even though a large press can’t afford to take a risk on it. Sometimes a great author gets more control over his or her process. Other times it means something awful joins the abundance of books already on the market because the author used self-publishing as a last resort.

Edan Lepucki, a literary fiction writer, recently talked about the issue of last-resort publishing when she wrote an article entitled “Reasons Not to Self-Publish in 2011-2012: A List.” Her reason #5 was “I Value the Publishing Community.” She talks about how she values editorial input and the layers that get added to a novel when an editor works on it. She says:

I know you can hire experienced editors and copy-editors, but how is that role affected when the person paying is the writer himself? What if the hired editor told you not to publish? Would that even happen?

As far as Looseleaf is concerned, the answer to whether or not that would happen is sometimes. It depends on what I’ve been hired to do. If I’ve been hired to copyedit, then I will copyedit. The publishability of the manuscript is not the problem I’ve been hired to solve: I’ve been hired to address its coherency on a grammatical and syntactic level. I will do what I’ve been hired to do. Likewise, the copyeditors at your favorite publishing house probably don’t control what goes to press, just the grammatical state in which it goes to press.

Copyediting is not the only thing you can hire an editor to do, though. Looseleaf offers manuscript evaluations (as do many other editing companies), which are essentially an in-depth way of answering the publishability question. In an evaluation I look at plot, character, and overall coherency, which also means I put myself in the reader’s shoes and analyze whether or not the book in my hands adds anything to the market. In the editorial letter I send to the author afterwards, I include positives, negatives, and an overall judgement on the manuscript.

Lepucki asks how the editorial relationship is affected when the editor is an employee of the author. The truth is that the freelancer–author relationship is not the same as the in-house editor–author relationship. A freelancer does what he or she is hired to do. If you want honest editorial feedback, hire a freelancer to give it to you and you’ll get it.

But Lepucki asks a question I can’t answer: “What if the hired editor told you not to publish?” That is a question for the author, a question that applies to all self-publishing authors. If you’ve decided to publish something on your own and hire someone to offer his or her opinion on your decision, are you going to listen if you get told you’re wrong?

Image by Rawich via FreeDigitalPhotos.net