The Twenty Percent True Podcast
Season 1: Modern Monsters
Episode 2: Demons
April 13, 2017
Modern Monsters, Episode 2: Demons
The Twenty Percent True Podcast
Season 1: Modern Monsters
Episode 2: Demons
April 11, 2017
The Reader Review
This week's novel is The Reader by Traci Chee. This one was on NPR's list of best books of 2016.
In a world where reading is magic, the world's only book is a closely guarded secret. The books ends up in Sefia's possession after her father is murdered by a mysterious organization. Sefia's on the run with trackers and assassins on her tail. She's determined to find her kidnapped aunt, avenge her father, and find the book's secrets,teaching herself to read and use magic as she goes. She finds help from a mute boy who was forced into gladiatorial battles, and a famous crew of pirates.
This is the first book in a trilogy, and it does not stand alone. The story of finding Sefia's aunt and discovering who the mysterious organization is and what they want are resolved, but the later is clear well before the end of the book. The book ends with the rest of the story arcs (probably) about a third complete: the story of the pirate crew's famous trip to the Western edge of the world, their current endeavor to find the Tomb of Kings, the boy coming to terms with what he's done and who he is, Sefia's quest to stop the mysterious organization and end the war that is coming. Since these all only get about a third of the way through, it feels like this book is a lot of set up and like the story doesn't get started until towards the end. I'd recommend waiting for all three books to come out and then reading them together, because it will probably feel less slow if it's packaged differently--as one long story instead of three shorter stories.
That said, I like all the characters and I appreciate how much time they got to spend forming their relationships. I liked the ships and the sailing and the fantastical high seas adventures. It felt real and kept an edge of excitement even though it's a travel story (and we know how I tend to get bored with travel stories because I am a plebeian). But the world building of cultures with extensive trade and complicated politics who have not invented writing rings a bit false. The world is too advanced for no one to be keeping ledgers.
***
Next Week: A Thousand Pieces of You, YA dimension jumping sci-fi by Claudia Gray
In a world where reading is magic, the world's only book is a closely guarded secret. The books ends up in Sefia's possession after her father is murdered by a mysterious organization. Sefia's on the run with trackers and assassins on her tail. She's determined to find her kidnapped aunt, avenge her father, and find the book's secrets,teaching herself to read and use magic as she goes. She finds help from a mute boy who was forced into gladiatorial battles, and a famous crew of pirates.
This is the first book in a trilogy, and it does not stand alone. The story of finding Sefia's aunt and discovering who the mysterious organization is and what they want are resolved, but the later is clear well before the end of the book. The book ends with the rest of the story arcs (probably) about a third complete: the story of the pirate crew's famous trip to the Western edge of the world, their current endeavor to find the Tomb of Kings, the boy coming to terms with what he's done and who he is, Sefia's quest to stop the mysterious organization and end the war that is coming. Since these all only get about a third of the way through, it feels like this book is a lot of set up and like the story doesn't get started until towards the end. I'd recommend waiting for all three books to come out and then reading them together, because it will probably feel less slow if it's packaged differently--as one long story instead of three shorter stories.
That said, I like all the characters and I appreciate how much time they got to spend forming their relationships. I liked the ships and the sailing and the fantastical high seas adventures. It felt real and kept an edge of excitement even though it's a travel story (and we know how I tend to get bored with travel stories because I am a plebeian). But the world building of cultures with extensive trade and complicated politics who have not invented writing rings a bit false. The world is too advanced for no one to be keeping ledgers.
***
Next Week: A Thousand Pieces of You, YA dimension jumping sci-fi by Claudia Gray
April 9, 2017
Camp NaNo Letter to Home
This week I hit a scene that sets up the stakes and the main character's motivations. It turned out to be a delicate balance to have his motivations seem justified and his actions not seem like he's making a really stupid decision because he's a stupid guy. The whole novel falls apart if this initial buy in falls flat. There would be little reason to continue if I can't get this part. So I ended up working it and reworking it over the course of the week, and I've got it where I'm pleased with it (for a first draft). The down side of this is that I'm way behind my word count goal, but I don't feel terribly bad about that.
Today, April 9th: I have 8,156 words
Next week, April 16th, I will have 19,818 words for a first goal
26,666 words for a second goal
In other news, the first episode of the The Twenty Percent True podcast went up on Thursday. The sad news with that is that while it went up here on the blog on time, I underestimated how long it would take to get it approved by iTunes and Stitcher. It is now up on Stitcher (where I'm having formatting problems that should be fixed shortly), so you can subscribe, rate and review there. But I'm still waiting on iTunes. All in all, kind of a deflated opening.
I was also a guest host on my friend, Jim's, podcast NaNoWriPod. We talked about Camp NaNo and our projects. Check it out if you have time.
Today, April 9th: I have 8,156 words
Next week, April 16th, I will have 19,818 words for a first goal
26,666 words for a second goal
In other news, the first episode of the The Twenty Percent True podcast went up on Thursday. The sad news with that is that while it went up here on the blog on time, I underestimated how long it would take to get it approved by iTunes and Stitcher. It is now up on Stitcher (where I'm having formatting problems that should be fixed shortly), so you can subscribe, rate and review there. But I'm still waiting on iTunes. All in all, kind of a deflated opening.
I was also a guest host on my friend, Jim's, podcast NaNoWriPod. We talked about Camp NaNo and our projects. Check it out if you have time.
April 6, 2017
Modern Monsters, Episode 1: There's Nothing but Bass in the Lake
The Twenty Percent True Podcast
Season 1: Modern Monsters
Episode 1: There's Nothing but Bass in the Lake
The blog: Twenty Percent True
Twitter: @CaryAndTheHits
April 4, 2017
The Rithmatist Review
This week's novel is The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson. I found this one recommended on a list of books about magic schools.
Joel is obsessed with Rithmatisits, people who can draw lines in chalk that have magical properties. Although he goes to one of very few schools that teach Rithmatists, none of them will give him the time of day, and he's taken to sneaking into Professor Fitch, the only friendly Rithmatics professor's, lectures so he can learn. When Fitch is challenged and loses a Rithmatic duel to an up and coming faculty member, he loses his teaching position and Joel loses his only way to study Rithmatics. Except that now Fitch has the time to be assigned to investigate the disappearance of Rithmatics students and Joel is now allowed to be his research assistant.
The magic system is new and refreshing. Rithmatists draw circles of warding, with bind points at select places where they can attach defensive or offensive chalk monsters or lines that block or more warding circles. But the circle has to be drawn exactly right or it will be weak where the curvature is off. The binding points have to be in exactly the right place or it will make a weak point. And some of the positioning of the binding points require a fair bit of geometry involving the altitude of a triangle. All this in itself wasn't new, but the fact that the functioning of the magic was explained was new. This is done with illustrations at the beginning of each chapter that are pages from Joel's notes, so it made sense and the characters could talk about the pros and cons of each variation and about why some drawings went wrong.
Maybe this would be boring for people who don't breathe in math, but I loved it. I wanted it to be even more complicated. I doubt it could have been done without illustrations, which isn't something you see often.
There was also an emphasis on how little people actually understood Rithmatics. This comes across in that Joel loves the math and the rote procedure and logic behind drawing, but he can't find this kind of quantitative analysis when dealing with chalklings, defensive of offensive monsters that the Rithmatist draws. Joel makes friends with a Rithmatist student named Melody, who is terrible at drawing perfect circles and finding bind points, but draws amazingly detailed and well behaved chalklings, which Joel can't make sense of because it's not like "more detail=stronger" it's more like "more beautiful=stronger" and that's subjective and it drives him crazy.
It comes up again in that the kidnapper is using new Rithmatic lines that no one has seen before and no one knows what they do. There are wild chalklings, with which the Rithmatists are constantly at war (they get shipped off to the front when they're done with high school), and no one knows where they come from or how they work. It sets up a great dichotomy when the Rithmatists act like know-it-alls who are revered by normal people, and at the same time it's a science of which they understand very little.
Despite all this pervasive, nuanced magic system, there were aspects of the world building were just THERE. I've discovered that I can usually suspend disbelief for one big thing (magic chalk drawings). Then here there were related additions: North America was uninhabited when the Europeans arrived because the wild chalklings prevented anyone from settling or drove them out. Europeans came to the New World to escape from the invading forces of Asia (what part of Asia? Who knows). For me, this is stretching it, but it turns out that the English King who came to America discovered Rithmatics there, so it's related to our main source of suspension of disbelief and there's also some neat world building where they have a much more British culture and are part of the Church of England (of which Rithmatics is a major part). Also "Italian food" is eaten with chopsticks, and spaghetti is noodles with Chinese spices.
But then there's the fact that North America is an archipelago, with most islands more or less corresponding to states. But why? This relates to nothing and has little to no influence on the story or the characters. It's just there. And that's odd to me.
I've heard Brandon Sanderson talk about how there is no upper limit on cool things to add to a story, and if he has an idea, he'll throw it in. But that turns into a problem when it doesn't affect anything. The geography of North America is too big of a deal to have no bearing on the story.
***
Next week: The Reader, YA high seas, magical adventures by Traci Chee.
Joel is obsessed with Rithmatisits, people who can draw lines in chalk that have magical properties. Although he goes to one of very few schools that teach Rithmatists, none of them will give him the time of day, and he's taken to sneaking into Professor Fitch, the only friendly Rithmatics professor's, lectures so he can learn. When Fitch is challenged and loses a Rithmatic duel to an up and coming faculty member, he loses his teaching position and Joel loses his only way to study Rithmatics. Except that now Fitch has the time to be assigned to investigate the disappearance of Rithmatics students and Joel is now allowed to be his research assistant.
The magic system is new and refreshing. Rithmatists draw circles of warding, with bind points at select places where they can attach defensive or offensive chalk monsters or lines that block or more warding circles. But the circle has to be drawn exactly right or it will be weak where the curvature is off. The binding points have to be in exactly the right place or it will make a weak point. And some of the positioning of the binding points require a fair bit of geometry involving the altitude of a triangle. All this in itself wasn't new, but the fact that the functioning of the magic was explained was new. This is done with illustrations at the beginning of each chapter that are pages from Joel's notes, so it made sense and the characters could talk about the pros and cons of each variation and about why some drawings went wrong.
Maybe this would be boring for people who don't breathe in math, but I loved it. I wanted it to be even more complicated. I doubt it could have been done without illustrations, which isn't something you see often.
There was also an emphasis on how little people actually understood Rithmatics. This comes across in that Joel loves the math and the rote procedure and logic behind drawing, but he can't find this kind of quantitative analysis when dealing with chalklings, defensive of offensive monsters that the Rithmatist draws. Joel makes friends with a Rithmatist student named Melody, who is terrible at drawing perfect circles and finding bind points, but draws amazingly detailed and well behaved chalklings, which Joel can't make sense of because it's not like "more detail=stronger" it's more like "more beautiful=stronger" and that's subjective and it drives him crazy.
It comes up again in that the kidnapper is using new Rithmatic lines that no one has seen before and no one knows what they do. There are wild chalklings, with which the Rithmatists are constantly at war (they get shipped off to the front when they're done with high school), and no one knows where they come from or how they work. It sets up a great dichotomy when the Rithmatists act like know-it-alls who are revered by normal people, and at the same time it's a science of which they understand very little.
Despite all this pervasive, nuanced magic system, there were aspects of the world building were just THERE. I've discovered that I can usually suspend disbelief for one big thing (magic chalk drawings). Then here there were related additions: North America was uninhabited when the Europeans arrived because the wild chalklings prevented anyone from settling or drove them out. Europeans came to the New World to escape from the invading forces of Asia (what part of Asia? Who knows). For me, this is stretching it, but it turns out that the English King who came to America discovered Rithmatics there, so it's related to our main source of suspension of disbelief and there's also some neat world building where they have a much more British culture and are part of the Church of England (of which Rithmatics is a major part). Also "Italian food" is eaten with chopsticks, and spaghetti is noodles with Chinese spices.
But then there's the fact that North America is an archipelago, with most islands more or less corresponding to states. But why? This relates to nothing and has little to no influence on the story or the characters. It's just there. And that's odd to me.
I've heard Brandon Sanderson talk about how there is no upper limit on cool things to add to a story, and if he has an idea, he'll throw it in. But that turns into a problem when it doesn't affect anything. The geography of North America is too big of a deal to have no bearing on the story.
***
Next week: The Reader, YA high seas, magical adventures by Traci Chee.
April 1, 2017
Camp NaNo Begins
Today is the first day of Camp NaNo. For those of you that don't know, NaNo (or NaNoWriMo) is short for National Novel Writing Month, a writing challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. Camp NaNo is similar in that it's a writing challenge to write a novel in a month, but you can set your own word goal and it's camp themed. It was originally made for kids to do NaNo over the summer, so it's more lax, the forums are less extensive, and people get less dramatically enthusiastic about it.
I'm keeping my word goal at 50,000 and giving the Firebird story a re-write. I'm giving it one more shot and if I don't like where it's heading at the end of the month, I give myself permission to let it go and move on to something else. That said, I have some ideas for how to fix it--ideas where the clouds parted and the sun shone down on me and my eyes widened as I said, "Yessss. That will solve that problem. And that problem. And that problem!" I'm condensing the time frame a great deal, and piling the complications on top of one another, overlapping and never letting up. I'm giving it less room to breathe to keep the main character's anxiety high, and so his revelations come out in explosive spurts instead of ruminations while cooking. I think this piling on will also allow for the many different strands happening in this story to feel more like this guy has a lot going on at once and it's wearing on him, instead of that I have too many ideas. That said, I'm also giving myself permission to drop unnecessary threads. If they don't fit in this re-write, I'm not married to them and they can get lost. This has dropped some of the themes that I was leaning on heavily in earlier attempts, and dropping them has been shockingly freeing.
I managed to have good timing, because I have Modern Monsters in good shape, and I'm ready to turn to something different and ready to write.
Yesterday, I spent a few hours getting a sketchy outline together. Scene will set up the emotion for scene Y, so scene Y makes sense. And since scene X is part of story thread 1 and scene Y is part of story thread 2, their interactions will connect the two threads. That kind of thing. In a few places I have blank boxes where I need an event to set wheels in motion and get everyone where they need to be in their character arcs, but I'm not too concerned right this second that I don't have those pinned down yet. They'll come to me when I get closer, and the important part is that I have a sense that something needs to be there.
Today, I cleaned up the first chapter and a half of what I wrote for the last iteration, which is all still usable as long as I shift the emphasis. It's sort of cheating, because I didn't write a lot of new words today, but 1. the next scene that I write will be all new and 2. it's Camp NaNo and cheating is relative. I'm getting work done.
On day 1, I'm at 4,486 words
On day 8, I should be at 13,333 words as a low-level goal
and 16,153 words as a mid-level goal
I'm keeping my word goal at 50,000 and giving the Firebird story a re-write. I'm giving it one more shot and if I don't like where it's heading at the end of the month, I give myself permission to let it go and move on to something else. That said, I have some ideas for how to fix it--ideas where the clouds parted and the sun shone down on me and my eyes widened as I said, "Yessss. That will solve that problem. And that problem. And that problem!" I'm condensing the time frame a great deal, and piling the complications on top of one another, overlapping and never letting up. I'm giving it less room to breathe to keep the main character's anxiety high, and so his revelations come out in explosive spurts instead of ruminations while cooking. I think this piling on will also allow for the many different strands happening in this story to feel more like this guy has a lot going on at once and it's wearing on him, instead of that I have too many ideas. That said, I'm also giving myself permission to drop unnecessary threads. If they don't fit in this re-write, I'm not married to them and they can get lost. This has dropped some of the themes that I was leaning on heavily in earlier attempts, and dropping them has been shockingly freeing.
I managed to have good timing, because I have Modern Monsters in good shape, and I'm ready to turn to something different and ready to write.
Yesterday, I spent a few hours getting a sketchy outline together. Scene will set up the emotion for scene Y, so scene Y makes sense. And since scene X is part of story thread 1 and scene Y is part of story thread 2, their interactions will connect the two threads. That kind of thing. In a few places I have blank boxes where I need an event to set wheels in motion and get everyone where they need to be in their character arcs, but I'm not too concerned right this second that I don't have those pinned down yet. They'll come to me when I get closer, and the important part is that I have a sense that something needs to be there.
Today, I cleaned up the first chapter and a half of what I wrote for the last iteration, which is all still usable as long as I shift the emphasis. It's sort of cheating, because I didn't write a lot of new words today, but 1. the next scene that I write will be all new and 2. it's Camp NaNo and cheating is relative. I'm getting work done.
On day 1, I'm at 4,486 words
On day 8, I should be at 13,333 words as a low-level goal
and 16,153 words as a mid-level goal
March 28, 2017
The Forgetting Review
This week's novel is The Forgetting by Sharon Cameron. This one was a page turner. I was so absorbed in this that I didn't notice my son scribbling on the windows in crayon until there was purple on three different panes of glass.
Every twelve years in the city of Canaan the Forgetting takes place. Everyone loses their memories and has to rely on books that they keep with them at all times, where they've written the truth of what happened to them and who they are, who their family is, where they live, and what their professions are. Nadia is the only person who did not forget at the last Forgetting. She knows how much people have lied to change their lives after the big reset. For instance, her father isn't dead as it says in her family's books, but rather changed his identity to marry someone else and start a new family. She knows that people go crazy right before the Forgetting, believing they can get away with anything. She knows that no matter how much she loves her mother and sisters and anyone else, they will forget her, so she holds herself at a distance. With the next Forgetting on its way, Nadia starts to uncover the truth of Canaan, desperate to find a way to protect her family.
It was a very well balanced mystery, where I figured things out at the same speed as Nadia. I'm one of those people who usually figures out the twist on page twelve and then has to sit through the characters being slow, so this was refreshing and enjoyable. It kept my interest by introducing several mysteries, some only related to each other, interconnected once I had every piece of the puzzle, some on the grand scale of the city as a whole and some more personal mysteries of why individual people acted the way they did. All of these mysteries were answered in satisfying ways that fit together, fit with the world building, and fit with the characters' motivations. The world building influenced the characters and the history, characterization influenced the characters' actions. It all fit together beautifully.
And the characters were interesting and engaging. One of Nadia's sisters doesn't like her and can be downright cruel in significant ways. But instead of her being a two dimensional bitch, it comes out that she thinks that Nadia wasn't their sister before the last Forgetting, she doesn't belong there and she's a liar. She thinks that Nadia's behavior is hurting their mother (which is arguably true). She wants to protect her family, and she is willing to work with Nadia to achieve that goal.You understand where she's coming from and that she is her own person with her own sympathetic agenda. And the book is full of these flushed out side characters, turning each characters' motivation into its own mystery that gets answered in "ah ha" moments.
It also kept my interest by never letting up on the conflicts. As soon as one fire was put out (once literally), Nadia would have to run to the next crisis without time to revel in minor victories. Every time one mystery was solved, it would reveal two more or her family would have a crisis. I heard recently that thrillers follow a format of "yes, but..." and "no, and..." meaning that our hero succeeds in deactivating the bomb, BUT in deactivating it they alerted the terrorist to their presence and made the situation worse. Or, the hero doesn't succeed, the bomb goes off, AND NOW half a building is missing and our hero has blown out his hearing. This story does this really well, keeping the story clipping along and maintaining tension.
The other notable thing about this story is how it transitioned seamlessly from a second world fantasy where they live in a city surrounded by walls with limited technology, where one sun rising and setting lasts 150 "days" and everyone forgets everything every twelve years and carries around books to hold their memories. That sounds like a fantasy setting to me. But as Nadia investigates, she uncovers technology that's familiar to the reader, and she finds evidence that this civilization is set far in our future. The boundaries between fantasy and sci-fi are ambiguous and arguable, but I found it really cool how this book slipped from the tropes and stylings of one to the tropes and stylings of the other. It worked because the world as you understood it at the beginning made sense as a partial view of the world as you understood it at the end. This story felt built from the ground up, with an understanding of the wider world, history, and conspiracy, and presented the world at the beginning as a product of that, rather than the sci-fi portions tacked on as a separate entity.
It was a lot of fun.
***
Next week: The Rithmatist, YA with chalk drawing, geometry magic by Brandon Sanderson.
Every twelve years in the city of Canaan the Forgetting takes place. Everyone loses their memories and has to rely on books that they keep with them at all times, where they've written the truth of what happened to them and who they are, who their family is, where they live, and what their professions are. Nadia is the only person who did not forget at the last Forgetting. She knows how much people have lied to change their lives after the big reset. For instance, her father isn't dead as it says in her family's books, but rather changed his identity to marry someone else and start a new family. She knows that people go crazy right before the Forgetting, believing they can get away with anything. She knows that no matter how much she loves her mother and sisters and anyone else, they will forget her, so she holds herself at a distance. With the next Forgetting on its way, Nadia starts to uncover the truth of Canaan, desperate to find a way to protect her family.
It was a very well balanced mystery, where I figured things out at the same speed as Nadia. I'm one of those people who usually figures out the twist on page twelve and then has to sit through the characters being slow, so this was refreshing and enjoyable. It kept my interest by introducing several mysteries, some only related to each other, interconnected once I had every piece of the puzzle, some on the grand scale of the city as a whole and some more personal mysteries of why individual people acted the way they did. All of these mysteries were answered in satisfying ways that fit together, fit with the world building, and fit with the characters' motivations. The world building influenced the characters and the history, characterization influenced the characters' actions. It all fit together beautifully.
And the characters were interesting and engaging. One of Nadia's sisters doesn't like her and can be downright cruel in significant ways. But instead of her being a two dimensional bitch, it comes out that she thinks that Nadia wasn't their sister before the last Forgetting, she doesn't belong there and she's a liar. She thinks that Nadia's behavior is hurting their mother (which is arguably true). She wants to protect her family, and she is willing to work with Nadia to achieve that goal.You understand where she's coming from and that she is her own person with her own sympathetic agenda. And the book is full of these flushed out side characters, turning each characters' motivation into its own mystery that gets answered in "ah ha" moments.
It also kept my interest by never letting up on the conflicts. As soon as one fire was put out (once literally), Nadia would have to run to the next crisis without time to revel in minor victories. Every time one mystery was solved, it would reveal two more or her family would have a crisis. I heard recently that thrillers follow a format of "yes, but..." and "no, and..." meaning that our hero succeeds in deactivating the bomb, BUT in deactivating it they alerted the terrorist to their presence and made the situation worse. Or, the hero doesn't succeed, the bomb goes off, AND NOW half a building is missing and our hero has blown out his hearing. This story does this really well, keeping the story clipping along and maintaining tension.
The other notable thing about this story is how it transitioned seamlessly from a second world fantasy where they live in a city surrounded by walls with limited technology, where one sun rising and setting lasts 150 "days" and everyone forgets everything every twelve years and carries around books to hold their memories. That sounds like a fantasy setting to me. But as Nadia investigates, she uncovers technology that's familiar to the reader, and she finds evidence that this civilization is set far in our future. The boundaries between fantasy and sci-fi are ambiguous and arguable, but I found it really cool how this book slipped from the tropes and stylings of one to the tropes and stylings of the other. It worked because the world as you understood it at the beginning made sense as a partial view of the world as you understood it at the end. This story felt built from the ground up, with an understanding of the wider world, history, and conspiracy, and presented the world at the beginning as a product of that, rather than the sci-fi portions tacked on as a separate entity.
It was a lot of fun.
***
Next week: The Rithmatist, YA with chalk drawing, geometry magic by Brandon Sanderson.
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