Three Awesome Reads

These three books have nothing in common except that I read them all recently and I think they're all great. Maybe there's something in here that appeals to you?

→ ANCILLARY JUSTICE by Ann Leckie has been earning many awards, and that's no surprise. The world of the novel is built on an epic scale, with a story that spans planets, an empire that rules much of the universe, and huge armies and spaceships for conquering and occupying planets that aren't yet part of the dominant civilization. Like all the best science fiction, the book adds new elements to these familiar tropes, most notably the form taken by our narrator, an artificial intelligence embodied simultaneously as a spaceship and as the soldiers of a conquering army. It's a strange and clever concept, and Leckie executes it with skill. What really makes the whole book work is that despite the epicness, this is one character's very personal story of loss and vengeance.

As you might guess from that description, there's a huge amount of complexity to the world and the story. I appreciated how carefully information was doled out. The plot never became bogged down with exposition, and sometimes by design I didn't yet have quite enough information and had to keep reading to piece together the puzzle, which is something I enjoy. This is the start of a series, but the first book does come to a satisfying conclusion, so it's possible to read it as a standalone. I'll definitely be continuing on, though.

Leckie has written a couple of thoughtful essays in which she discusses the multiple identity of her protagonist and the choice of gendered pronouns in the novel. Both of these contain some information that you might prefer to encounter first in the course of the story unfolding, but you could also safely read them in advance.

→ EVERYBODY'S BABY by Lydia Netzer is a novella about a couple trying to conceive who raise the money for their expensive fertility treatment by using Kickstarter. To attract publicity, they offer donor perks like cutting the cord and naming the baby, but they never imagine strangers will donate at the levels required for these absurd gifts. Naturally, though, the campaign is successful beyond their wildest dreams, and the results bring chaos to their lives.

This story is the perfect mix of lighthearted and emotional. While the events are hilarious and often over-the-top, I was frequently struck by just how plausible it all seemed. Netzer has done a great job of imagining the consequences that might arise if someone went through with this scheme. The main couple is lovable, and their relationship is sweet but not always easy. The book left me sobbing happy tears, which is always a plus for me.

Netzer's debut novel, SHINE SHINE SHINE, came out two years ago, and I loved it. I'm eager to read her next novel, HOW TO TELL TOLEDO FROM THE NIGHT SKY, which will be released on July 1. This novella served as an excellent appetizer.

→ VALOUR AND VANITY is the fourth book of Mary Robinette Kowal's Glamourist Histories, and it's another excellent read. I'm always happy to be back in the Regency-era-with-magic setting, spending time with these great characters.

This time, the plot involves swindles and heists, which are movie genres I love but that seem difficult to pull off in novel form. Kowal does an impressive job, constructing a twisty plot that kept surprising me. And while that's going on, another equally engrossing story is unfolding, about the toll that difficult circumstances take on even a very loving marriage. Kowal wrote an interesting essay about combining these plots.

You can read this book without having read the earlier ones. Or if you're interested in the series but Austenesque plots doesn't appeal to you, read the second one and then this fourth one for the maximum amount of adventure and magic and the minimum time spent in drawing rooms.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At The Airship, George Dobbs explores The Origins of Literary Cliches: "The phrase 'little did she/he/they know' has plenty of history. The question is, when did it start being used for cheap suspense? The inversion of subject and verb sounds stilted and melodramatic, so the obvious culprit would be 19th century fiction. But perhaps not everything is as it seems." (Thanks, The Millions!)

Summer Reading Bingo

Most summers, I don't think to undertake any specific seasonal reading project, though I encounter plenty of talk about summer reading in the various book media I follow. I usually have a bit of time to read on airplanes during the summer, but other than that, my reading habits aren't much different from the rest of the year.

However, when the great podcast Books on the Nightstand announced their summer reading bingo challenge, it struck me as such a fun idea that I immediately decided to participate. The podcast hosts, Ann Kingman and Michael Kindness, have come up with a set of book categories and plugged them into a bingo card site that lets you generate a card with a random selection of categories. Each card is likely to have one or two genres, such as "science fiction" or "cozy mystery", descriptions of story elements ("set in another country"), ideas about where to get recommendations ("that you saw someone else reading"), and some esoteric items like "with a red cover".

For more details, visit the BOTNS blog. Ann and Michael have defined "summer" as running from Memorial Day to Labor Day. By the time I listened to the episode and printed my card, it was a couple of weeks into that period, and I was pleased to discover that I could already fill in several squares. So far, I'm finding that my card has enough categories with enough breadth that I've been able to match every book I read to a square, with the exception of one that didn't fit any category.

Rainbow Rowell Backlist

In early July, Rainbow Rowell's fourth novel, LANDLINE, will be released, and I can't wait. Rowell has been receiving much attention since last year, when she published two YA books that were wildly popular with both teens and grown-up readers. Her earlier novel, and the forthcoming one, are aimed at adults, with older characters and concerns. Since January, I've devoured all Rowell's published work, and she has become one of my favorite authors.

→ I started with FANGIRL, and I loved it right from the start. My full review is here. The brief version is that I found unexpected depth, intriguing characters, and clever plotting in the story of an anxious college freshman who would much rather be writing fanfiction than venturing outside her dorm room.

→ ATTACHMENTS took a little longer to charm me, but once it did, I fell in love with Rowell's writing all over again.

In this adult novel, Beth and Jennifer work at a city newspaper, where they spend much of the day exchanging email about problems with their relationships and families. Lincoln works in the IT department at the paper, and it's his job to read the email that gets flagged for inappropriate language or suspicious frequency. (Also, it's 1999.) Beth and Jennifer's exchanges keep ending up in Lincoln's monitoring queue. He ought to send them a warning about using the office email system for personal communication, but he's grown to like them through their messages, so he doesn't want them to get in trouble. And he doesn't want the messages to stop.

It's a cute, funny premise that sounds like it will lead to a cute, funny story, and it does, in part. But the actual novel that eventually develops is rich, unexpected, and sometimes quite dark. Rowell excels at crafting substantial, unconventional stories out of elements that could be fluffy and predictable in other hands.

At times the storytelling in ATTACHMENTS is a little constrained by the structure, and the style of the email messages sometimes stretches credibility. Overall, though, this is a wonderful book, packed with great characters, brilliant lines, and touching moments.

→ ELEANOR AND PARK is an excellent teen love story, but it didn't connect with me as deeply as Rowell's other work. Because FANGIRL and ATTACHMENTS both surprised me in how their stories unfolded, I was expecting the same thing here. Instead, the romantic plot is fairly standard, though well-rendered and with atypical protagonists.

The book is really all about the atypicalness of the characters. Eleanor dresses weird, has too much red hair, and is fat, so as a new student, she's an immediate target for the mean popular kids. Park doesn't fit in either -- he likes comics and the wrong music, and he's half-Korean -- but he grew up in the neighborhood and is tolerated as long as he doesn't attract too much attention. When Park lets Eleanor sit down next to him on the bus, it put unwanted attention on them both, and they try ignoring each other to avoid making the situation worse. But over time, they notice each other more and more. The result is an emotional romance that brings them both joy and pain.

Real teen emotions tend to be extreme, and an accurate portrayal in fiction sometimes irritates me as an adult reader, but in this case I found myself able to identify with Eleanor and Park's feelings, even at the most angsty. I can see why this book has been so successful with readers of all ages.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ In the New Yorker's Page-Turner blog, Akhil Sharma relates his difficulties writing a novel based on a tragedy in his own family: "There was a third technical challenge to writing the book, and this last one was what I found hardest to solve. The story I was planning to tell had very little plot. A truly traumatic thing occurs to the family and then the family begins to unravel. The misery of this family's daily life takes a slow toll. Real life is plotless, but the experience of reading books that replicate this can be irritating."

An Untamed State

In Roxane Gay's debut novel, AN UNTAMED STATE, the narrator observes "the startling contrasts" of her parents' native country, Haiti -- "so much beauty, so much brutality." This is a perfect description for the book as well. The novel is deftly written by a writer of great talent. It's also deeply upsetting, and that's the point. This is a story about terrible things happening to one woman, and it provides an uncomfortable reminder that terrible things happen to women all over, every day.

Mireille is the daughter of a wealthy Haitian family. She grew up privileged in America, is happily married to an American, and has a successful career as a partner at a law firm. Before the events of the story, Mireille has moved through life fairly easily. I have that in common with her, and so I was as unprepared as she is for what happens after she is kidnapped outside the gates of her parents' estate, in broad daylight and in front of witnesses. She soon comments on how little she previously knew of suffering: "I had never felt anything so off-putting but then, I was only beginning to catalogue my discomfort. I had an inadequate frame of reference."

Mireille's father refuses to negotiate with the kidnappers because his experience of Haiti is that paying the ransom will only result in more family members being taken. So Mireille remains captive, and she is subjected to unrelenting sexual violence. Gay doesn't let the reader shy away from the horrors that Mireille endures. Fair warning: This novel will take anyone outside of their comfort zone. Readers will have to decide if they're able to face that challenge.

The brutality of the kidnapping story is broken up by flashbacks to Mireille's life before. The memories of her childhood and marriage contain both happy and difficult incidents, and we get a picture of the complex woman that Mireille has always been. Nothing in this story is simple or generic, and that's what makes the book succeed. Mireille is an individual in the way she copes with every event in the story. She has a unique strength and some very specific flaws, and all of this comes through in her amazing narrative voice.

Mireille's captivity ends after thirteen days (she tells us this on the first page). Though Mireille is free at that point, she's not free of what's happened, and the second half of the book charts the aftermath with just as much beautiful, painful detail. Her recovery doesn't come easily, but there is ultimately hope in this story.

The novel grew out of Gay's short story, "Things I Know About Fairy Tales", which relates the same tale in capsule form. You could read the story first to get an idea of Gay's writing style and the content of the novel, though the short piece is far less explicit.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Brendan Constantine tries to answer a question from The Rumpus about where he writes: "I don't know where I write. Couldn't begin to tell you. I'm not being coy, I'm serious. I look at my books, the piles of uncollected work, and they just seem to have appeared. I can't create any images to go with my sense of ownership." (Thanks, The Millions!)

News Is No News

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about writing a new short story. The other day I finished revising it, and then I submitted it to a literary magazine. This is my first time trying to get a story published. It will be pretty cool if it's accepted, but it's also been neat just going through the process. If the story isn't picked up by the first magazine, I'll try some others, and maybe I'll start submitting stories more often.

In novel news, there isn't any. I've been continuing to research the next novel, but I'm getting sort of bored with that stage and feel like it's time to move on to writing soon. There are still some major story details that I need to figure out, but idly pondering them hasn't been productive, so I'm ready for a more aggressive tactic like writing things out in a format other than Post-Its.

That's about all there is to report at the moment. Of course I've been reading a lot, too, but that goes without saying.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ In the New York Times Bookends column, Zoë Heller and Mohsin Hamid consider the adage Write What You Know: "The first mistake I made as a schoolgirl was to assume I was being asked to write exclusively about things that had happened to me. In fact, the injunction is only to know; the business of how you come by your knowledge is left quite open. You can mine your own life, yes. But you can also sympathetically observe other people's experiences. You can read and research. And you can use your imagination."

Sleepless in New Releases

This spring saw the release of two unrelated books in which a plague of terminal insomnia wreaks havoc on America. The two take very different approaches to this scenario, and based on the descriptions and early reviews, I was eager to read them both. Each book has some admirable features, but ultimately both of them disappointed me.

In BLACK MOON by Kenneth Calhoun, almost nobody can sleep anymore, and the prolonged insomnia results in madness. Within a few months, this leads to your standard breakdown of society: telecommunications and other utilities no longer function, cities are full of abandoned cars and looted buildings, and chances of survival aren't good for the small minority who are still able to sleep. What makes continued existence especially dangerous is that insomniacs are driven into a lethal rage by the sight of somebody sleeping.

The story switches between several protagonists who hold on to the ability to sleep while those around them become afflicted. This lets us watch the effects of the epidemic from several angles: an urban dweller goes searching for his missing insomniac wife, a suburban child is left on her own after her parents succumb, and scientists at a sleep lab desperately work on a cure. These plotlines also begin at different points in the crisis, including beforehand, which gives us a wider view on the situation.

It all seems like a strong concept for a novel, but I was never particularly engaged. I like post-apocalyptic settings, but this one felt generic. Some of the characters and storylines interested me, but I found others sort of annoying. So while I really expected to enjoy this book, it turned out to be merely so-so.

SLEEP DONATION, a novella by Karen Russell, starts out promising, with a lot of clever worldbuilding and the makings of an intricate plot. In Russell's version of the insomnia epidemic, a large portion of the population is affected, but enough people are left untouched that it's been possible to develop treatments for this ultimately fatal condition. Donations of sleep collected from healthy sleepers, in a system much like a blood drive, are used to prolong the lives of insomnia sufferers and in some cases cure them.

The main character is a recruiter for the Slumber Corps. She's great at appealing to donors with the heartbreaking story of her sister, one of the first victims of the insomnia. One of her recent recruits is an infant known as Baby A, whose sleep is so pure that it can be distributed unfiltered. Baby A is the only discovered universal donor, which means there's a desperate need for her sleep, and her parents are starting to have misgivings.

I enjoyed most of this novella. The idea of sleep donation is a neat one, and the concept was explored pretty well. Several good complications arise early in the story, and I was looking forward to watching the plot come together in what would surely be a mind-blowing way. Then the story just ended, with nothing really explained or concluded. I don't demand to have all stories neatly tied up, but this ending was so unsatisfying that it made what came before it feel pointless.

It's unfortunate that neither of these books really worked for me, but it was interesting to be aware of their serendipitous publication and to compare different ideas of how an insomnia epidemic could play out.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ In The Atlantic, Chris Beckett champions The Underrated, Universal Appeal of Science Fiction: "Modern realist novels--the kind that would most often be categorized as 'non-genre'--make up characters and situations, but set them against a backdrop that purports to be the world we actually live in. This allows writers to explore the psychology of different characters and allows us to look out of eyes other than our own. I like to make up situations and characters, too, and for the same kinds of reasons, but I also like to go an extra step and make up the world as well. This allows me to reflect on the way we relate to the world, and on society." (Thanks, Lauren!)

A Few Words

For the early months of this year, my writing activities consisted mostly of composing blog posts and query letters. I was thinking a lot about fiction (specifically my next novel, which I've been planning and researching), but I wasn't writing any.

Recently I became fed up with this situation and decided that it was time to produce some fiction. I'm not ready to begin writing the novel, so I started thinking about short stories, as I do from time to time.

I wrote two short stories last year (and read a great many). I haven't done anything with either of them, but since I've received feedback on both (one during my workshop at Squaw Valley), I could potentially turn my attention to revising them. That idea wasn't very appealing, though, and I was more interested in writing something new.

So I set out to write another short story, but this time, I gave myself a challenge to go even shorter. (Actually, the biggest challenge was to focus enough to create anything at all, since I'm out of practice.) After some brainstorming and playing around with a bunch of half-formed ideas, I found myself with an odd little story that's only five paragraphs long. And I liked it quite a bit.

There's certainly something refreshing about writing such a bite-sized piece of fiction. The last story I wrote took weeks of thinking before the idea gelled enough for me to write a rough draft. With this story, I typed a first line with no plan for what would come next, and about twenty minutes later, the whole piece was done. It still needed work after that, but I figured out all the details during another productive swim and then rewrote in an hour or two.

I sent the story off to some critique partners, and getting comments on a work this short was also pleasantly straightforward compared to the novel feedback I'm usually asking for. So little to read meant my critiquers were able to mention all their thoughts, down to the word level, without an unreasonable investment of time. (Thanks, guys!)

Now that I've collected their clever insights, I'm ready to revise. And for once I can feel confident in predicting that I'll be done with revision any day now.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At The Guardian, Alison Flood tries to identify the earliest ebook: "One journalist even took his computer on a wheelbarrow to the beach, along with a generator, to read Host in his deckchair."

More on Novel Research

On Wednesday, I wrote about the different stages of novel research. Today I have a few more research tips to pass on, based on what I've figured out through many drafts of many manuscripts.

The single most important thing I've learned about research is to record every piece of information the first time I discover it. While revising THE EXTENT OF THE DAMAGE, I wasted untold hours looking up facts that I almost certainly verified two drafts ago but couldn't be sure of. Now everything I research, I immediately type or copy into a file, along with a reference to where the information came from, whether it's a URL or a page in a book. Treat your research as though you're going to have to provide footnotes to your story, and you'll be ready when you doubt yourself later or you get questions from a critique partner or editor.

Be organized with all these research notes you're diligently keeping. For DAMAGE, my computer has one folder of files divided up by major topic, including "earthquakes", "aerospace industry", and "babies". Additionally, in my SuperNotecard story notes, each chapter has a card with references for specific facts in that chapter. This slightly obsessive method of documentation is what works for me, but you'll have your own personal record-keeping strategy.

As with any research, when you're acquiring information for a novel, you need to consider all the types of sources that are available to you. Primary sources from within a time, place, or culture are extremely valuable but sometimes easy to forget about. A cool but tricky thing about fiction research is that other fiction can often be used as a source. A novel by an author with firsthand experience may be even more revealing than a work of nonfiction if you're looking for everyday details of an experience you can't have yourself. Novels, movies, and TV shows that are about a certain era, location, or industry but were written from outside may also be useful, but tread carefully and consider the work's reputation and biases.

In general, be thoughtful about sources. Not everything on the internet is true, and the same goes for books. If a fact seems questionable to me, I try to verify it against a second, independent source. Because part of DAMAGE takes place in the 1960s, I'm always eager to watch movies made during that time to notice details like a washing machine in a family's kitchen or people smoking, well, everywhere. But movies aren't a pure reflection of reality, and I have to keep that in mind. Similarly, while the television series MAD MEN has a reputation for extreme accuracy in its 60s-era period details, I recognize that it's a work of fiction by writers with a twenty-first century perspective, and I only trust it up to a point.

Finally, remember that the research you invest in a novel is to improve your story, not to insert directly into your story. When you become intimately familiar with the world of your novel, that will show in how well and seamlessly you bring it to life. Rarely is this accomplished with paragraphs of dry explanation or awkward dialogue in which characters tell each other facts about their setting. Resist any urges in that direction, and keep your meticulously organized research notes to yourself. (Or maybe you can share them online as background information or bonus material for your readers.)

That's the end of my novel research advice, at least for now. I still have a whole stack of library books to get through.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At io9, Charlie Jane Anders offers 10 Can't Miss, Surefire Secrets Of Torturing Fictional People: "Suffering that happens because of your characters' decisions is way more interesting -- and often more painful, because of remorse. A lot of the most powerful fictional torment comes as a result of people's terrible decisions, but it's also really poignant to see someone stick his or her neck out for justice, and get dinged."

On Novel Research

As I've mentioned, I'm currently deep in the research phase for my next novel. I enjoy the various aspects of research: the obtaining of new knowledge, the tracking down of obscure facts, the delaying of actual writing. In the course of many years and drafts, I've refined my research process through trial and error, and I thought I'd pass along some strategies and techniques.

Much of novel research is similar to any other research, including the work you probably had to do for term papers in school. While I still find it ludicrous that in sixth grade, each student in my class had to create a box of index cards filled with details of every major battle of the Civil War, I will concede that this project gave me a strong foundation in research skills. I was fortunate to receive an education that helped me refine these skills as I got older, and later I worked at jobs that gave me further practice. As with any research task, when fact-finding for your fiction, spend time thinking up relevant keyword combinations to run through a library catalog or web search, and always remember to judge the quality of sources. It's also useful if you have an ability to skim information to find the sections that are worth reading carefully.

I do novel research at several different points in the writing process. The initial stage, before I start a first draft, is my opportunity to get an overview of major subjects in the story that I don't know much about. This is where I am right now with INCONCLUSIVE, and one thing I need to learn about is life in a biology lab, so I've been consulting a ton of library books on this topic. I also anticipate plenty of online research, but books tend to be a good place to start for in-depth, curated information.

The advance research stage is the time to immerse yourself in whatever parts of the world of your novel aren't familiar to you, whether it's a time period, geographical area, culture, or career. (If your novel is set in a world of your own invention, you might be doing more world-building than research at this point, but most likely there are reality-based aspects you'll need to learn about.) This is also the part where it's really easy to get trapped forever and never begin writing the story, so it's advisable to give yourself a research deadline. (Note to self: Set a research deadline.)

Once you've decided that you know enough and can start writing, you're going to quickly find out how much more research you wish you'd done. When you're in the middle of a scene and there's some information you want to look up, you're supposed to make a note of it, keep writing, and fix it at the end. That's what everyone says, but I'm terrible about this, because I don't like moving forward in a story if I'm uncertain about what's happened so far. The deal I try to make with myself is that instead of interrupting my writing for a research excursion, I can investigate the question that night, or the next day at the beginning of my writing session, so I feel comfortable knowing I'm not getting too far ahead with a fact unchecked.

There's always the potential for more research, so I always have to exercise judgment about how much to do when, and sometimes I don't get the balance right. I'm sure I've put dozens of hours into verifying details of scenes that I removed in a subsequent draft. Ideally, you'll stick to more general research early in the writing process, when a story is still in flux. Then plan to devote time to another research stage after you've completed a draft or two and have some certainty about both what's happening in your story and what you still don't know.

I'll wrap up my research advice next time with some tips on record-keeping and choosing sources.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Bill Morris at The Millions considers second novels and asks, Are We Entering a Golden Age of the Second Novel?: "There's plenty of empirical evidence to support the claim that the second novel is the hardest one to write -- and that it can be even harder to live down."

Library Love

I want to sing the praises of my local library, because lately I've been making heavy use of its wonderful resources. In particular, I'm grateful for two of those resources, which your local library most likely offers as well: ebook lending and interlibrary loan.

I've known for a while that my library participates in several programs that allow patrons to download digital books, but for a long time, I never bothered looking into the details. In January, though, I wanted to read a book that I intended to get from the library, and since it was fairly recent and fairly popular, it occurred to me that I might be able to borrow it as an ebook and save myself a trip. It turned out I was right, and that I could check out the book immediately.

Since then, I've determined that the list of available ebook titles isn't as miraculously complete as my first borrowing experience suggested, but I've still found enough overlap with my interests that I've read five library ebooks so far this year. At my library at least, ebooks show up in a regular catalog search, listed as "electronic resource". You can also search or browse the ebook catalog separately to see what's offered.

I've put in requests to borrow several more ebooks that have waiting lists. Currently, library ebook programs are constrained to operate as if the books were physical, so each library only owns the right to lend a limited number of copies at a time. This means that if you want a hot new release, you may have to wait months for your turn -- but perhaps not as long as if you're trying to borrow the hardcover, since presumably fewer library patrons are using the ebook resources.

If you've already embraced ereading but haven't investigated your library's digital offerings, I encourage you to take a look at your library's website and see what your card gives you access to. You may have to set up an account with an ebook lending program and download a specific application, so there's a little bit of a technological hurdle to overcome, but clear documentation is probably available. I had to spend a few minutes getting started with each of the programs that my library's affiliated with, and none of them work quite as seamlessly as Amazon, but now that I'm set up, it's easy for me to borrow ebooks at any time.

When it comes to physical books, I'm fortunate that my library has an extensive collection of its own but also offers interlibrary loan that gives me access to nearly every book or subject I've ever searched for. Last week, after I finished looking through the books I'd checked out for novel research, I discovered how much more on the topic was available, and I spent a bunch of time in the combined catalog making interlibrary loan requests. When I started getting error messages, I discovered that I'd reached the maximum number of requests, but I figured that would be enough books for now.

Yesterday I picked up my stack of requests, and it was pretty cool to see that some of them came from as far as Las Vegas. So keep in mind that even if your local library isn't particularly impressive, it's probably connected to a network of other libraries that you can easily borrow from through interlibrary loan.

When I was a kid and consumed books at a frantic pace, my local library was a beloved and necessary part of my reading life. As an adult with the financial resources to support a slower reading habit, my use of the library has ebbed and flowed, but I've always been very glad to know the library is available. This year, since I've had an uptick in reading and new novel research needs, I've really been feeling the library love, and I hope I've spread a little of that to you all.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Daniel José Older covers the Fundamentals Of Writing "The Other": "If your book has two black people in it and both just happen to have superpowers and represent the forces of good and evil, you have a problem. Between these two exceptional, magical characters dwells a swath of fully human, often non-magical but emotionally complex white characters. It doesn’t matter that one of the black characters is a good guy; trust me."