The Twenty Percent True Podcast
Season 3: Chicago Center for Supernatural Support
Episode 7: August
August 28, 2018
Chicago Center for Supernatural Support, Episode 7: August
The Twenty Percent True Podcast
Season 3: Chicago Center for Supernatural Support
Episode 7: August
August 23, 2018
I read Listen to Your Heart
This week's novel is Listen to Your Heart by Kasie West.
Kate's whole goal in life is to take over her parents' marina on the lake. She thinks of school as the time between lake trips, and she's not excited about how her best friend, Alana, has talked her into taking a podcasting class with her. She's even less excited when she ends up the host of their podcast, and the topic for the year is "advice," and her co-host keeps calling her "Kat." Alana is crushing on a guy named Diego, and Kate is helping her gather information and low level stalk him. So when he starts calling into the podcast for advice about "a girl he likes" it seems like Diego and Alana are going to ride of into the sunset. Highjinks ensue.
This is a cute book. There are several points where I, the reader, said, "Oh no. That's going to be misunderstood." And sure enough. But the cool thing was that even though the book is a series of misunderstandings, the characters all handle their disappointments and confusion really well. You get the impression pretty early on that Diego might be into Kate, but he's friendly enough with Alana that it is kind of hard to tell. He takes what he assumes is Kate turning him down like a champ and doesn't get openly upset about it.
In general, I appreciate how friendly everyone is to each other in this book. Alana and Kate and Diego and Other Guy all hang out and are friendly, even when maybe they all like each other. There's no petty bickering over guys. There's no hard feelings when who really likes who is revealed. They're all friends first and kissy-friends second, and it felt more real to how I remember high school than anything I've read in a while.
Also, what kind of school has a podcasting class? Is this a thing the kids are doing these days? I feel like I missed out. I also like how bad Kate was at podcasting at the beginning, and how she got better and how she took every bit of faint praise as a sign she was horrible. That felt real too.
***
Next week: Crooked Kingdom, the sequel to Six of Crows, by Leigh Bardugo.
Kate's whole goal in life is to take over her parents' marina on the lake. She thinks of school as the time between lake trips, and she's not excited about how her best friend, Alana, has talked her into taking a podcasting class with her. She's even less excited when she ends up the host of their podcast, and the topic for the year is "advice," and her co-host keeps calling her "Kat." Alana is crushing on a guy named Diego, and Kate is helping her gather information and low level stalk him. So when he starts calling into the podcast for advice about "a girl he likes" it seems like Diego and Alana are going to ride of into the sunset. Highjinks ensue.
This is a cute book. There are several points where I, the reader, said, "Oh no. That's going to be misunderstood." And sure enough. But the cool thing was that even though the book is a series of misunderstandings, the characters all handle their disappointments and confusion really well. You get the impression pretty early on that Diego might be into Kate, but he's friendly enough with Alana that it is kind of hard to tell. He takes what he assumes is Kate turning him down like a champ and doesn't get openly upset about it.
In general, I appreciate how friendly everyone is to each other in this book. Alana and Kate and Diego and Other Guy all hang out and are friendly, even when maybe they all like each other. There's no petty bickering over guys. There's no hard feelings when who really likes who is revealed. They're all friends first and kissy-friends second, and it felt more real to how I remember high school than anything I've read in a while.
Also, what kind of school has a podcasting class? Is this a thing the kids are doing these days? I feel like I missed out. I also like how bad Kate was at podcasting at the beginning, and how she got better and how she took every bit of faint praise as a sign she was horrible. That felt real too.
***
Next week: Crooked Kingdom, the sequel to Six of Crows, by Leigh Bardugo.
August 21, 2018
Chicago Center for Supernatural Support, Episode 6: Jasmine
The Twenty Percent True Podcast
Season 3: Chicago Center for Supernatural Support
Episode 6: Jasmine
August 16, 2018
I read Of Fire and Stars
This week's novel is Of Fire and Stars by Audrey Coulthurst.
Princess Dennaleia is betrothed to the crown prince of Mynaria as part of an alliance between their two countries. She also has fire magic, which is seen as heresy in Mynaria. When she arrives in Mynaria, there are a series of assassination attempts on the royal family that threaten to draw Mynaria and Danneleia's home country into war with a third nation. She also discovers that her magic is much stronger in Mynaria, and that people with magic are treated very poorly. On top of this, she finds that he's more drawn to her betrothed's sister, Mare, than the prince.
The slow burn romance between Dannaleia and Mare in this is very good. I get why they both like each other. They have great chemistry. The challenges to their relationship are logical. And the story gets bonus points for having a lesbian couple front and center.
Also, all the names are excellent. I love them. They're great. Names are hard and these all made me want to live in a magical place where I would have a sweet, long name.
But the rest of the plot was frustrating. There are four assassination attempts, of which a few are successful, and security around the castle is never increased and everyone still thinks it's a good idea to sneak around past the few guards that are there. When they find evidence that the country that welcomes magic users is not responsible for the assassinations, but is being framed to start a war, all the leaders of Mynaria together decide that, nah, it's probably that evil country of magic users and it's not worth checking to see if they're going to war with the wrong people. Characters uncover a part of the mystery, and then don't share what they found with anyone and then fifty pages later they uncover the same thing again and then fifty pages after that put together what I understood a hundred pages ago. It makes the non-romance part of the plot feel stgnant. Everyone in leadership is so incompetent that I found it really hard to worry about them being assassinated.
I found myself much more interested in the magical people who live in Mynaria and the problems they faced. Ambient magic builds up in the air like gas out of a stove, so if no one is using magic to burn it off (if, for example, all the magic users that can be found are rounded up, thrown in prison, and drugged) the magic will build up, so if one person (like, say, Dannaleia) uses magic by accident, it will explode in a big ball of fire. It turns out that there's a temple in Dannaleia's home country where magic users regularly go to burn off the ambient magic and keep everything in balance, but by the terms of the new treaty, magic users are no longer allowed in the temple. There's a lot to get into here about the dangers of keeping information from people and the dangers of fearing whole groups because you don't understand them. This is high-stakes and interesting and I want to know more about it. But we don't get much of that.
Furthermore, since I sympathized with the magic users so much more than with the people oppressing them, pretty early on I wanted the alliance to fall apart. That also made this a frustrating read, since Dannaleia spends so much time and energy trying to hold the alliance together.
So if it were a straight up star-crossed romance and all the other plot threads were removed, would I have liked it more? If these threads had been fleshed out and if characters had done a better job leading the nation they were supposed to be ruling, would the romance have fallen into the background? I don't know.
***
Next week: Listen to Your Heart, contemporary YA by Kasie West.
Princess Dennaleia is betrothed to the crown prince of Mynaria as part of an alliance between their two countries. She also has fire magic, which is seen as heresy in Mynaria. When she arrives in Mynaria, there are a series of assassination attempts on the royal family that threaten to draw Mynaria and Danneleia's home country into war with a third nation. She also discovers that her magic is much stronger in Mynaria, and that people with magic are treated very poorly. On top of this, she finds that he's more drawn to her betrothed's sister, Mare, than the prince.
The slow burn romance between Dannaleia and Mare in this is very good. I get why they both like each other. They have great chemistry. The challenges to their relationship are logical. And the story gets bonus points for having a lesbian couple front and center.
Also, all the names are excellent. I love them. They're great. Names are hard and these all made me want to live in a magical place where I would have a sweet, long name.
But the rest of the plot was frustrating. There are four assassination attempts, of which a few are successful, and security around the castle is never increased and everyone still thinks it's a good idea to sneak around past the few guards that are there. When they find evidence that the country that welcomes magic users is not responsible for the assassinations, but is being framed to start a war, all the leaders of Mynaria together decide that, nah, it's probably that evil country of magic users and it's not worth checking to see if they're going to war with the wrong people. Characters uncover a part of the mystery, and then don't share what they found with anyone and then fifty pages later they uncover the same thing again and then fifty pages after that put together what I understood a hundred pages ago. It makes the non-romance part of the plot feel stgnant. Everyone in leadership is so incompetent that I found it really hard to worry about them being assassinated.
I found myself much more interested in the magical people who live in Mynaria and the problems they faced. Ambient magic builds up in the air like gas out of a stove, so if no one is using magic to burn it off (if, for example, all the magic users that can be found are rounded up, thrown in prison, and drugged) the magic will build up, so if one person (like, say, Dannaleia) uses magic by accident, it will explode in a big ball of fire. It turns out that there's a temple in Dannaleia's home country where magic users regularly go to burn off the ambient magic and keep everything in balance, but by the terms of the new treaty, magic users are no longer allowed in the temple. There's a lot to get into here about the dangers of keeping information from people and the dangers of fearing whole groups because you don't understand them. This is high-stakes and interesting and I want to know more about it. But we don't get much of that.
Furthermore, since I sympathized with the magic users so much more than with the people oppressing them, pretty early on I wanted the alliance to fall apart. That also made this a frustrating read, since Dannaleia spends so much time and energy trying to hold the alliance together.
So if it were a straight up star-crossed romance and all the other plot threads were removed, would I have liked it more? If these threads had been fleshed out and if characters had done a better job leading the nation they were supposed to be ruling, would the romance have fallen into the background? I don't know.
***
Next week: Listen to Your Heart, contemporary YA by Kasie West.
August 14, 2018
Chicago Center for Supernatural Support, Episode 5: Craig
The Twenty Percent True Podcast
Season 3: Chicago Center for Supernatural Support
Episode 5: Craig
August 9, 2018
I read Shadow Scale
This week's novel is Shadow Scale,
the sequel to last week's novel, Seraphina, by Rachel Hartman.
Seraphina gets word that the half dragons can all work together to form a kind of energy net that will stop dragons in mid air, which could come in handy when the dragon civil war finally makes its way to their kingdom. She sets out to round up all the half dragons, traveling from country to country. Along the way, she clashes with Jannoula, who can invade people's minds, go through their memories, and take control of their bodies.
Although the sequel didn't have a lot of the things I loved about the first novel, it was still fun and well executed. I especially liked the world building that went into the different countries Seraphina visited. The history and geography of each area directly tied to how each nation dealt with and thought about dragons, and therefore half dragons. For example, while Seraphina's home country of Goredd is directly south of dragon territory and--up until the peace treaty--was regularly burned to the ground by dragons so everyone had to live underground, the countries to the south used Goredd as a buffer, and they were able to create elaborate cities and art. Each culture is distinctive, which makes it fun when Seraphina travels into somewhere new and fresh and completely different.
Along the same lines, even though there are seventeen half-dragons, they all have distinctive personalities and experiences. Not only do they all look different and have different abilities, but they all interact with their world and react to Seraphina's plan in different ways. Furthermore, their actions make sense given the cultures in which they were raised. Some of them have been outcasts so long that they latch onto the constructed half-dragon family, while others are so jaded by their persecution that they refuse to have anything to do with the plan. Still others already have loving families, so they don't really see the point in helping Seraphina. Everything flows from world building to characterization.
***
Next week: Of Fire and Stars, YA fantasy romance by Audrey Coulhurst
Seraphina gets word that the half dragons can all work together to form a kind of energy net that will stop dragons in mid air, which could come in handy when the dragon civil war finally makes its way to their kingdom. She sets out to round up all the half dragons, traveling from country to country. Along the way, she clashes with Jannoula, who can invade people's minds, go through their memories, and take control of their bodies.
Although the sequel didn't have a lot of the things I loved about the first novel, it was still fun and well executed. I especially liked the world building that went into the different countries Seraphina visited. The history and geography of each area directly tied to how each nation dealt with and thought about dragons, and therefore half dragons. For example, while Seraphina's home country of Goredd is directly south of dragon territory and--up until the peace treaty--was regularly burned to the ground by dragons so everyone had to live underground, the countries to the south used Goredd as a buffer, and they were able to create elaborate cities and art. Each culture is distinctive, which makes it fun when Seraphina travels into somewhere new and fresh and completely different.
Along the same lines, even though there are seventeen half-dragons, they all have distinctive personalities and experiences. Not only do they all look different and have different abilities, but they all interact with their world and react to Seraphina's plan in different ways. Furthermore, their actions make sense given the cultures in which they were raised. Some of them have been outcasts so long that they latch onto the constructed half-dragon family, while others are so jaded by their persecution that they refuse to have anything to do with the plan. Still others already have loving families, so they don't really see the point in helping Seraphina. Everything flows from world building to characterization.
I
also appreciated that most of the weeks of traveling were glossed over
in a couple paragraphs. The destinations, the stops in capital cities
where she would poke around trying to find people, were the important
parts and the narrative reflected that. I've talked before about my
personal preferences and how I don't care about long journeys on
horseback or cooking out on the trail. Those sound boring and smelly
and tedious. So I appreciate stories that feel the same way.
***
Next week: Of Fire and Stars, YA fantasy romance by Audrey Coulhurst
August 7, 2018
Chicago Center for Supernatural Support, Episode 4: Grant
The Twenty Percent True Podcast
Season 3: Chicago Center for Supernatural Support
Episode 4: Grant
August 5, 2018
Editing Exercise
I led the workshop portion of my critique group last week. It was
nearing the end of Camp NaNo, which most of the group was doing, and I
find that at the end of NaNo I have a pile of nonsense where I just dump
huge swaths of backstory and utilitarian descriptions of characters and
things like, "That made him sad." There's a whole bunch of editing
that goes on after NaNo if you ever want to make anything of the stuff I
write, and I wanted to make an editing exercise for my group. I didn't
want us to edit our own stuff, because that would just open a can of
worms. I didn't want us to edit each other's stuff, because that would
turn bitter. So I wanted us to edit something that was already out
there.
Furthermore, a lot of what I see as pitfalls in my NaNo writing are things that are encouraged in middle grade books. I find that middle grade readers are super smart and catch on to so much, but they need really weird stuff spelled out for them.
So I grabbed the first page or so of five different Goosebumps books and presented them to my critique group. I figure R L Stine is too successful to notice, much less take offense.
I didn't tell them what I'd given them exactly, just the first pages of popular middle grade books. And I told them, "Pretend you wrote this for NaNo, and then you took a month away from it, and you're coming back now with fresh eyes." The idea was to elevate the selections from mass market middle grade to a book for an adult reader (which is what we are all writing). The idea wasn't that these books were bad and we needed to fix them, the idea was that this is what we had and we were going to change them. And with that, we took five minutes and marked up what needed to change--not what words we would use to change them, but what we wanted changed. More sensory details in description. Sections cut for repetition. Emphasizing themes. Mixing up the diction. Afterwards, we discussed what we did.
We found that
Furthermore, a lot of what I see as pitfalls in my NaNo writing are things that are encouraged in middle grade books. I find that middle grade readers are super smart and catch on to so much, but they need really weird stuff spelled out for them.
So I grabbed the first page or so of five different Goosebumps books and presented them to my critique group. I figure R L Stine is too successful to notice, much less take offense.
I didn't tell them what I'd given them exactly, just the first pages of popular middle grade books. And I told them, "Pretend you wrote this for NaNo, and then you took a month away from it, and you're coming back now with fresh eyes." The idea was to elevate the selections from mass market middle grade to a book for an adult reader (which is what we are all writing). The idea wasn't that these books were bad and we needed to fix them, the idea was that this is what we had and we were going to change them. And with that, we took five minutes and marked up what needed to change--not what words we would use to change them, but what we wanted changed. More sensory details in description. Sections cut for repetition. Emphasizing themes. Mixing up the diction. Afterwards, we discussed what we did.
We found that
- It was easy to pretend we had written these, meaning that it was easy to take ownership of them. It was surprisingly easy to shift them into our own distinct voices. One woman in my group told us that she would change the selection from the mummy book so that the main character stealthily follows the tourist who bumps into her at the pyramid and stumbles onto an international mystery. "That's...what the main character from your book would do." It was also surprising how easy it was to go after the selections with a red pen. I think this is because in the work we actually write, marking up your first draft is laying out guidelines for the cubic ton of work you'll have to do later, and that's not pleasant. And then, aside from marking up our own work, we often mark up each other's work, and there we have to back off a bit because it's their story and not ours, and changing someone's work to sound like your work--again--turns people bitter or has them ignore what you're saying.
- We all were pretty much in agreement in the broad strokes of what should be changed. This is good to remember when we're getting feedback. On the other hand, we all approached how to address those problems differently, which is also good to remember. I'm reminded of the Neil Gaiman quote, “Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”
- When we read the selections aloud before our five minutes of editing, everyone thought they were pretty good. Charming even. But then when it was time to edit, everyone said, "Who's the main character here?" "Why is this description so boring?" "Why is this character so obnoxious?"
- I emphasized that these were published works--popular published works. And we could still edit them to death. You can always edit everything to death.
August 2, 2018
I read Seraphina
This week's novel is Seraphina by Rachel Hartman. This one has been
on my to-read list for quite a while, and I feel remiss now for not
getting to it sooner.
Seraphina is assistant to the sickly court composer, meaning she's doing the court composer's job of giving the princess harpsichord lessons, rehearsing the choir, planning the huge state celebrations for when the leader of the dragons visits to celebrate 40 years of peace, and planning the prince's sudden funeral when they find his body decapitated (probably bitten off by a dragon). Her father has long wanted her to keep a low profile and never play music in public in order to protect her terrible secret, but staying out of the way becomes hard when she makes friends with the princess, draws the prince's attention with he knowledge of dragon behavior and protocol, and gets swept up in stopping a conspiracy to end the uneasy peace.
This book dealt with several themes I've been exploring lately in my own writing, so this was a blast to read. Hartman conveys the alienness of dragons quickly and organically. Dragons can take human shape, but they pride themselves on logical thinking, and if a dragon shows too much emotion, the dragon censors show up and give them a lobotomy. It's a mixture of them being mentally unable to express emotion and culturally dissuaded from expressing emotion, so they're very bad at it. Their oddness and inhuman natures were shown in the beginning through dragons walking away when they have nothing else to contribute or gain from a conversation, not saying greetings but jumping straight to the point, and in referring to child Seraphina as "it." These little tricks are expertly deployed and work well from a world-building standpoint.
I've also been interested lately in people who professionally plan and preform music selections, and this fit right in with that. I've been interested lately in cantors and church music for a story idea, and it was neat to see how the court music program in a fictional world aligned with that. It felt real in that most of Seraphina's job was on the frustrating planning side instead of the losing-yourself-in-beautful-music side. There's a moment at the beginning when the scheduled performer breaks a reed and doesn't have a backup reed and the backup performer is sick and Seraphina has to step up and sightread the piece. The part that sticks with me though is a scene right after this, where she's explaining why she had to play and the scheduled performer says, "I did not lose my backup reed. I found it after the show." And I was hooked, because I get this tertiary character, and I get what Seraphina has to deal with on a day to day basis.
***
Next week: Shadow Scale, the sequel to Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
Seraphina is assistant to the sickly court composer, meaning she's doing the court composer's job of giving the princess harpsichord lessons, rehearsing the choir, planning the huge state celebrations for when the leader of the dragons visits to celebrate 40 years of peace, and planning the prince's sudden funeral when they find his body decapitated (probably bitten off by a dragon). Her father has long wanted her to keep a low profile and never play music in public in order to protect her terrible secret, but staying out of the way becomes hard when she makes friends with the princess, draws the prince's attention with he knowledge of dragon behavior and protocol, and gets swept up in stopping a conspiracy to end the uneasy peace.
This book dealt with several themes I've been exploring lately in my own writing, so this was a blast to read. Hartman conveys the alienness of dragons quickly and organically. Dragons can take human shape, but they pride themselves on logical thinking, and if a dragon shows too much emotion, the dragon censors show up and give them a lobotomy. It's a mixture of them being mentally unable to express emotion and culturally dissuaded from expressing emotion, so they're very bad at it. Their oddness and inhuman natures were shown in the beginning through dragons walking away when they have nothing else to contribute or gain from a conversation, not saying greetings but jumping straight to the point, and in referring to child Seraphina as "it." These little tricks are expertly deployed and work well from a world-building standpoint.
I've also been interested lately in people who professionally plan and preform music selections, and this fit right in with that. I've been interested lately in cantors and church music for a story idea, and it was neat to see how the court music program in a fictional world aligned with that. It felt real in that most of Seraphina's job was on the frustrating planning side instead of the losing-yourself-in-beautful-music side. There's a moment at the beginning when the scheduled performer breaks a reed and doesn't have a backup reed and the backup performer is sick and Seraphina has to step up and sightread the piece. The part that sticks with me though is a scene right after this, where she's explaining why she had to play and the scheduled performer says, "I did not lose my backup reed. I found it after the show." And I was hooked, because I get this tertiary character, and I get what Seraphina has to deal with on a day to day basis.
Aside from pinging
with me on these very specific levels, the story also clipped along, the
flirting was good, and it focused on a chipper, smaller story with
daunting stakes lurking just beneath the surface.
***
Next week: Shadow Scale, the sequel to Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
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