Victoria Janssen

Spotlight on Shveta Thakrar

Posted on November 4, 2010 by Victoria Janssen

I first met fantasy writer Shveta Thakrar when her writing group invited me to give a reading or talk about my writing. I chose to answer their questions about writing and my experiences with publishing, and a good time was had by all. My life is the richer for the friends I made that day.

I was thinking about Shveta’s journal recently as I gave advice to someone about their blog. Shveta sometimes posts interviews with other writers, like this one with Amal El-Mohtar. If blogging is community as well as personal platform, I can’t think of a better way to show that than to establish new links, new connections, like when friends of friends of friends meet at a party. I’ve often found new blogs to read in that way, and even made new connections.

I’ve been thinking that, after I’ve done the major promoting for The Duke and The Pirate Queen, that I should work on my skills as an interviewer, perhaps featuring some of the people I’ve met over my years online.

For those who are interested in non-Western folklore, I highly recommend Shveta’s article In Search of Apsaras in Cabinet des Fées. “I love faeries. I grew up reading all about them, believing in them, dreaming about them. I collected all the drawings, books, and winged figurines I could, I gobbled up lore like forbidden faerie food, I made wings out of poster board and glitter. I could rattle off bits of trivia like how the use of iron kept away unwanted visitors, that the fey inability to lie didn’t preclude trickery, and that a brownie accepted gifts of food in return for cleaning a house. When things got bad, I told myself I was fey. It wasn’t until I was in my early twenties that it even occurred to me there might be faeries outside Western Europe–specifically, outside the Victorian take on the Celtic and British traditions.” Go, read!

Posted in blogs, sf/f | Comments Off

Reading Lessons

Posted on November 3, 2010 by Victoria Janssen

One of the reasons for my reading vacation was to refill my brain with stuff that I will, eventually, use to write. Letting new water seep into the well, as it were. Eventually, I will write again, and I don’t want to have to dig that writing out of the dry and cracked ground of my brain with a pickaxe.

(Another reason was that if I didn’t get some hermit-time, I was going to start banging people over the head with whatever I had to hand if they so much as looked at me funny, which tells you something about me and reading.)

I read a lot of books during that week, and skimmed through some that I didn’t feel like reading in their entirety, and I tried not to think too much about writing. I did write, on Friday–I had an idea, or part of one, that I burned to put on paper, so I allowed myself to do that, but I didn’t finish the short story I began, I only wrote until I came to a logical stopping point. (I didn’t finish the story yet, anyway).

But back to the reading. A large portion of what I read were books from series that I had followed for years, one of them even before it was sold. I realized what I cared about, far more than the ongoing plot, was the characters. They’d appeared in more than one book, so I had a better acquaintance with them than characters who only appear in a single novel. Sometimes it only takes one book to love a character, but there are other things you can do with them when they appear over and over. I am thinking about that now. Not very hard. But it’s in my backbrain.

I already knew I loved character-driven novels and series even more. It seems a silly thing to need to be reminded of. But I think I did need to be reminded. Now I’m thinking about why I like series so much.

Posted in reading, writing process | 5 Comments

Linkgasm of Fun

Posted on November 2, 2010 by Victoria Janssen

…sounds naughty, doesn’t it?

It’s been a while since I posted a linkgasm, and in keeping with my recent week of vacation, here are some fun websites.

Paula’s Art and Illustration includes links to a large number of Flickr groups for vintage photos and illustrations.

Old Time Candy from the 1950s on. I haven’t yet ordered anything from them, but I have been tempted. It could be research.

Radio Guy. Just go look at all his pictures of cool vintage scientific equipment and masks and automobiles and, yes, radios.

Cool Tools. A blog, about exactly what it says.

Accents and Dialects of the UK has sound recordings of various United Kingdom dialects, some recent and some older.

Posted in images, links | 2 Comments

Books Books Books

Posted on November 1, 2010 by Victoria Janssen

I had the most awesome vacation ever. Also, it was cheap!

I traveled in my imagination, just like those library posters always told me I could. For an entire week, I did nothing much but read.

I could very easily do it again. Right now.

I began with White Cat by Holly Black, which I think is her best book so far (Though Valiant remains my favorite of her novels.) For such a short novel, it packs in quite a lot of worldbuilding and thematic depth. It’s an exemplar of why I love speculative YA fiction.

The rest of the week was devoted to finishing series, or at least finishing the books I had in them; it was sort of like going to visit a lot of very old and dear friends. Tuesday was Corambis by Sarah Monette, which I saved for so long that it’s now come out in paperback. I was sorry this series, The Doctrine of Labyrinths, is over. I could easily see a fifth book, based on character changes that happened in this one, that might have taken the story in an interesting new direction.

Wednesday, I read Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold, which just came out this month. It’s the last in the Vorkosigan series, which I’ve been reading for over twenty years. *boggles* The ending was both painful and fitting.

Thursday, I started and then skimmed a YA novel I didn’t get into, then went on to Where Serpents Sleep by C.S. Harris, fourth in a series of Regency-set mysteries. The fifth one is out now and there’s a sixth out next year, I think. I didn’t enjoy this one as much as the previous three, I think because it’s a sort of interim book, right after a major change in the series setup. I think the fallout from this one might be more fun, so I plan to read the next one.

Friday was Tongues of Serpents by Naomi Novik, newest of the Temeraire books. This one, also, felt to me like a bit of an interim book, setting up a great deal of conflict perhaps leading into the final three books of the series.

Finally, I read Jane and the Damned by Janet Mullany. Much as I scoff at fiction that has Jane Austen as a character, I really enjoyed this; I enjoyed Mullany’s portrayal of Jane and her sister Cassandra as much or more than I did the interesting vampire plot with its snooty aristocratic Damned. I particularly loved that the vampires never “ate” or “fed.” They only “dined.”

Mmm, books. So delicious.

Posted in reading | 3 Comments

Reading Vacation!

Posted on October 25, 2010 by Victoria Janssen

I am on vacation this week, and so is my blog. (Its first vacation ever!)

I’ll resume posting on November 1. If all goes well, at some point during November, the blog will migrate to my website URL as part of the website reorganization. I’ll put pointers here for a bit after that happens, so hopefully there won’t be too much discombobulation.

I’m not going anywhere in particular for my vacation, but I do plan to read. A lot. Also drink tea and walk around Philadelphia. I might go up to New York City and drink hot beverages there, too. Bliss.

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"Only a Boche," Robert Service

Posted on October 23, 2010 by Victoria Janssen

Only a Boche

We brought him in from between the lines: we’d better have let him lie;
For what’s the use of risking one’s skin for a tyke that’s going to die?
What’s the use of tearing him loose under a gruelling fire,
When he’s shot in the head, and worse than dead, and all messed up on the wire?

However, I say, we brought him in. Diable! The mud was bad;
The trench was crooked and greasy and high, and oh, what a time we had!
And often we slipped, and often we tripped, but never he made a moan;
And how we were wet with blood and with sweat! but we carried him in like our own.

Now there he lies in the dug-out dim, awaiting the ambulance,
And the doctor shrugs his shoulders at him, and remarks, “He hasn’t a chance.”
And we squat and smoke at our game of bridge on the glistening, straw-packed floor,
And above our oaths we can hear his breath deep-drawn in a kind of snore.

For the dressing station is long and low, and the candles gutter dim,
And the mean light falls on the cold clay walls and our faces bristly and grim;
And we flap our cards on the lousy straw, and we laugh and jibe as we play,
And you’d never know that the cursed foe was less than a mile away.
As we con our cards in the rancid gloom, oppressed by that snoring breath,
You’d never dream that our broad roof-beam was swept by the broom of death.

Heigh-ho! My turn for the dummy hand; I rise and I stretch a bit;
The fetid air is making me yawn, and my cigarette’s unlit,
So I go to the nearest candle flame, and the man we brought is there,
And his face is white in the shabby light, and I stand at his feet and stare.
Stand for a while, and quietly stare: for strange though it seems to be,
The dying Boche on the stretcher there has a queer resemblance to me.

It gives one a kind of a turn, you know, to come on a thing like that.
It’s just as if I were lying there, with a turban of blood for a hat,
Lying there in a coat grey-green instead of a coat grey-blue,
With one of my eyes all shot away, and my brain half tumbling through;
Lying there with a chest that heaves like a bellows up and down,
And a cheek as white as snow on a grave, and lips that are coffee brown.

And confound him, too! He wears, like me, on his finger a wedding ring,
And around his neck, as around my own, by a greasy bit of string,
A locket hangs with a woman’s face, and I turn it about to see:
Just as I thought… on the other side the faces of children three;
Clustered together cherub-like, three little laughing girls,
With the usual tiny rosebud mouths and the usual silken curls.
“Zut!” I say. “He has beaten me; for me, I have only two,”
And I push the locket beneath his shirt, feeling a little blue.

Oh, it isn’t cheerful to see a man, the marvellous work of God,
Crushed in the mutilation mill, crushed to a smeary clod;
Oh, it isn’t cheerful to hear him moan; but it isn’t that I mind,
It isn’t the anguish that goes with him, it’s the anguish he leaves behind.
For his going opens a tragic door that gives on a world of pain,
And the death he dies, those who live and love, will die again and again.

So here I am at my cards once more, but it’s kind of spoiling my play,
Thinking of those three brats of his so many a mile away.
War is war, and he’s only a Boche, and we all of us take our chance;
But all the same I’ll be mighty glad when I’m hearing the ambulance.
One foe the less, but all the same I’m heartily glad I’m not
The man who gave him his broken head, the sniper who fired the shot.

No trumps you make it, I think you said? You’ll pardon me if I err;
For a moment I thought of other things… Mon Dieu! Quelle vache de guerre!

–Robert Service

Via Tim Kendall at War Poetry.

Posted in service, wwi poetry | Comments Off

My New Socks!

Posted on October 22, 2010 by Victoria Janssen

A friend knitted me these socks. I am so excited. For many months, it was only one sock (she has two small children, and I was impressed she even finished one of them). Then I mentioned my sock again, and she finished the other one. Aren’t they beautiful?

The socks are relevant because I plan to wear them while sitting at home writing. I think they will make me an absolutely brilliant writer.

Also, I have already discovered they are excellent to wear while reading. I never have to think about my toes growing cold while I’m busy turning pages.

In other good news, there’s a lovely review of The Duke and The Pirate Queen at Culinary Carnivale this week.

I received my copies of The Duke and The Pirate Queen on Thursday. I will try to take some amusing photographs of them.

Posted in images, reading, the duke | 3 Comments

Staying on Top of Blog Reading

Posted on October 21, 2010 by Victoria Janssen

I could easily spend hours every day reading other people’s blog posts. Plus, I’m always finding new blogs, often through interesting links I’m given on Twitter or LiveJournal. After a long weekend, where I may or may not have gone online, it gets worse.

I add links to my blog reader probably a lot more often than is good for me. Luckily, not every blog has a new post every day, or even every week. And I have a few strategies for staying ahead of my blogroll.

1. If a blog loses my interest for several posts in a row, I ruthlessly cut it from my regular list.

2. I try not to read too many blogs on the same topic. This is tricky for some categories, such as book review blogs. But for, say, blogs about World War One, I stick to two or three of my favorites that seem to offer the best content the most often.

3. Of the blogs I follow, I skim before I read. That way, if a blog is reviewing a book for which I want to avoid spoilers, I can skip the post until I’ve read the book. Or I can skip reviews of books I read but don’t care to hear further opinions about. Or I can skip posts about news items that I’ve been hearing about all day.

Got any good blogs I should follow?

Does anyone follow blogs on their e-reader? How does that work for you?

Posted in reading | 4 Comments

Talent versus Marketability

Posted on October 20, 2010 by Victoria Janssen

All of us are good at something. Sometimes the hard part is recognizing what we’re good at, and not only what we’re good at, but what we’re really good at.

You can be good at a lot of things, but only one or two of those things sing.

For a writer, fiction that sings is the fiction that engages and involves people on a deeper level than most of their everyday reading. Naturally, that varies person to person. But there is still an indefinable something that some writers seem to have and some don’t.

Even if you have that something, it isn’t necessarily present in everything you write. Think of a favorite author who has more than one series, one of which is on your ultimate keeper shelf and another which you traded away on BookMooch. What did the keeper have that the transitory read did not?

The reader who can figure that out can save herself a lot of money and time on books she won’t adore. The writer who can figure that out might be on the path to selling a lot more books.

I think a way to go about finding what sings for you is to think about market categories. This serves two purposes. First, it helps you narrow down story elements and plot structures that particularly work for you. Second, it helps you think about how salable what you’re good at might be. I don’t think there’s any shame in trying to make your work marketable. After all, after you’ve written it, don’t you want a lot of people to read it? Not to mention money (but if writers only wrote for money, there would be a lot fewer of them!).

What reader reaction did you get from your contemporary romance versus your historical suspense novel? Did readers fall in love with your spaceship captain heroine but feel nothing for the vampire? And what did you love most? Did that translate into your writing? What lives in your writing, and what is limp and dead?

I’m going to keep thinking about this. I’d welcome input!

Posted in business of writing, writing process | 2 Comments