One Door Closes, Another Opens

So, today is the day that Wotmania.com dies. Wotmania was at one time the single best community on the web devoted to the late Robert Jordan’s series, The Wheel of Time. Unfortunately, it suffered management problems – the guy running the site just didn’t seem to have the time, energy, desire, or whatever to help Wotmania become what it could have been. Thankfully, the community there kept it alive.

I care because Wotmania is the place that got me started on all this. Back in about 2001 I discovered Wotmania when I was looking for information about the next Wheel of Time book – I liked what I saw and lurked for many months. Then I started posting, then I became more active. Somewhere along the way, the OF Board was started and I became introduced to SFF authors beyond Robert Jordan. Authors like Neil Gaiman, George RR Martin, Steven Erikson, China Miéville, Scott Bakker and many, many more. I became even more active and then I became an admin as well. Somewhere along the way I started writing reviews, then I created a blog to store those reviews at. And now…

So, I owe my being here to Wotmania and I’m sad to see it close. And I’m not alone – Larry, Pat, Adam, and others were all there in the beginning. Wotmania influenced a lot of us who have greater visibility now. In reality, I’m also very angry at how and why it is closing and I lament the website it could have been if were allowed.

But the music never dies and some faithful members have started RAFO.com. The intent is to center things on discussion of SFF books (like the OF Section at Wotmania). The admin are all fresh and enthusiastic. The community is invigorated (if a bit smaller). The message board is still archaic (as the community wishes). So, join me in welcoming RAFO.com to web – I sure hope it’s a success.

The Passing of Age

I would not be here if it weren’t for Robert Jordan.

Growing up, I was always an avid reader, but the tastes of my youth were more attuned to action-adventure, spy thrillers, and horror best sellers – I read very little in the way of true SFF. Shortly after I went away to college, I finally bought The Eye of the World after seemingly every member of my extended family recommended it to me.

I was completely and totally hooked. This was reading unlike any I had ever experienced before. I immediately bought all the books that were available in The Wheel of Time series to that point (The Lord of Chaos had just been released in mass-market paperback). Then I re-read them just in time for the release of A Crown of Swords – the release of which first brought me to the internet world in search of books.

As the years have passed, I continued to read and re-read the series. In 2000 I once again searched out information on the web for news of the soon-to-be released Winter’s Heart. This was neither the beginning nor the end of my SFF journey, but a beginning as I became a true internet SFF geek shortly thereafter. The culprit was the huge on-line community at Wotmania that celebrates and discusses the books of The Wheel of Time endlessly. This eventually led me to the newly-formed OF Section of Wotmania. This was yet another beginning in my life as a reader.

By this time I had of course read Tolkien and a handful of classic sci-fi, but through the guidance of people more knowledgeable and better-read than myself I had a whole world to discover. I was introduced to the likes of George RR Martin, Steven Erikson, Neil Gaiman, Charles de Lint, Kim Stanley Robinson, and so many others. I even picked up the Harry Potter books as early as I did in part due to my involvement with on-line communities.

The rest, as they say, is history– I was off. I’ve since read hundreds of books recommended to me and have become one of those more knowledgeable and well-read individuals (though I’m still way behind so many others out there). In early 2006 I decided to start a blog to catalog some of the few reviews I had written. And now my blog has had over 30,000 visitors and I’m constantly surprised and amazed at just how many ‘industry insiders’ and authors are familiar with it. All of this is due to my love of The Wheel of Time books.

Thank you Robert Jordan for writing The Wheel of Time and having such a positive impact on my life. I’m just one of your many fans, and the way my life has been touched is just one of many. I struggle to find the right words of gratitude.

My voice is only one of many celebrating the life you lived.

James Oliver Rigney Jr. (a.k.a. Robert Jordan)
October 17, 1948 – September 16, 2007

Book Giveaways – Everywhere!

I love books; I really love free books, so it’s no surprise that I love all these book giveaways going on.

I think I started advocating for book giveaways as a way to reinvigorate the Wotmania OF message board in early 2004 – at this time there were only the occasional sweepstakes programs here and there. Now, if you know what you are doing, you can find seemingly countless book giveaways that really don’t have any strings attached – all you need to do is supply an email or private message, sometimes with a name and address, that actually isn’t used for anything other than getting you a book in the case that you win. There really is no reason not to sign up.

Excepting bookstore and publisher sweepstakes, I think I first noticed on-line giveaways sometime in 2003. At that time, it was limited and author sponsored – I think the giveaway was a R. Scott Bakker book at Wotmania OF, and not really a true giveaway, but more of a contest. Starting a few years later, Pat over at Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist really got book giveaways going – he has them all the time. Other places like FantasyBookSpot had occasional giveaways, but nothing like Pat. Now it seems that everywhere I look there are more – SFF World, Wotmania OF, SFX, Fantasy Book Critic, Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review, My Elves are Different, SF Signal, The Fantasy Review, etc… And you can find many other sources for free books such as the reader review programs at many of the major publishing houses, bookstore giveaways at places like Waterstone's, publisher direct contests at their own blogs (such as Orbit), other blog contests (like what Carl sponsors at Stainless Steel Droppings), and even the occasional giveaway from the authors themselves (such as this one from Tobias Buckell).

Clearly the combination of every fanboy/girl out there getting into blogging and the realization by publishers of the power of on-line marketing through the fanboy/girl is making these giveaways even more popular. And why not – it makes good marketing sense (to me anyway). Even this survey indicates as much. Now the specific category of contests is really low, but if the winner of the contest starts recommending it to friends, or writes a review on a blog, or talks it up on a message board or a book club, the chain reaction starts and the cost of that single book has more than paid for itself in more than one way.

And who doesn’t love free books – I am a bona fide bibliophile and I sure do love these contests. I almost compulsively enter just about every one that I see, even though in many cases I could request said book from the publisher or I may even already have a copy. I don’t care, I get selfish, gimmeee books, gimmmeee more books. And if I don’t win, I often do buy that book.

So, my little blog is pretty successful – I’ve had over 20,000 visitors (not counting RSS views) and at a rate of several thousand per month, that’s growing fast. But I haven’t done any giveaways – should I? Perhaps I should declare my blog giveaway free just to be different. Well, that sounds good to me – Neth Space is and will remain giveaway free*.

*this is mostly due to laziness rather than any actual principled stand or desire to be different. In fact if offered giveaways, Neth Space would happily reverse this stand almost instantly – after all, I do love giveaways.

Interview with David Anthony Durham

Here is an interview with David Anthony Durham that was put together by Pat over at Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist with contributions from myself, Rob of SFF World, and Larry of Wotmania OF. It is a very long and in-depth interview that offers a lot of insight into Durham and his newly released book Acacia (my review). It was a fun one to be a part of.

In Defense of Escapism

Ahh…here is another one of those great internet discussions, spilling over from message boards to blogs about an issue that’s been discussed to death. This time it seems to have started with M. John Harrison posting this about the sin of worldbuilding, it was followed up with some message board discussion at wotmania and ASOIF. Then Larry/Dylanfanatic/Freebird posted this blog, Pat at Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist followed up with this entry with Gabe Chouinard responding here. And several others have weighed in as well.

Fine, I’ve said what I have to say about worldbuilding elsewhere, so this is not really a direct response to any of that above, just an extension of my reaction to that discussion.

For whatever reason, admitting that you read for any sort of escapism is akin to admitting you like country music, Nascar, Natural Lite beer, live in a trailer, etc. You are immediately regulated to being less intelligent of a reader and just not getting it. Suddenly, you are less than respectful.

Well, I read for escapism – it may be the biggest reason why I enjoy reading as much as I do. It’s almost certainly the biggest reason why such a large proportion of my reading is in speculative fiction.

Let’s face it – reality sucks a lot of the time. I spend 9, 10, sometimes 12+ hours, 5 days a week working. I like my job, but I won’t pretend that I’d keep working if I won the lottery. Beyond that, it’s hard not to take a cynical view of the world today – there’s terrorism, unnecessary war, an idiot running the most powerful country in the world, religious extremism, global warming, etc. If I allow it to sink in it’s hard to not get angry, depressed, and unhopeful. Then, when I get home it’s time to various chores and projects, and of course there are family relationships to deal with.

So when I get some free time I absolutely want to escape this reality and fully immerse myself in some alternate world. I don’t need much; I just crave something that is different from my perspective, something that might require a suspension of belief. Speculative fiction of all sorts is where I most often turn to for this. This is what I enjoy; this is my hobby.

Am I looking for cliché, epic fantasy that is pure escapism – usually not, but sometimes I am. I do enjoy books that contain depth – that are thematic, metaphorical, political, great statements on the human condition, etc. I also enjoy books that are just plain fun, while not being particularly deep. And yes, in almost all cases, escapism is still the biggest driving force behind my enjoyment of reading. Loosing myself in the story, the world, or the language – yes this is an escape.

For whatever reason, it’s assumed that if you read for escapism, you must be reading some 10-book series of epic fantasy, something that is poorly written, easy for others to dismiss. I don’t get this – I can escape just as easily into something by Jeff VanderMeer, Haruki Murakami, Graham Joyce, or Hal Duncan. Escapism equating to bad writing is fallacy.

Perhaps the issue starts in the way people define escapism differently from one another. Maybe people deny things in themselves and others. Maybe people are just different.

People read for lots of reasons. Denying that escapism is one of the biggest is a mistake – it should be embraced. Looking down on anyone for their own reasons for reading is horribly short-sighted. Look, if escapism is an evil word to you – fine, just don’t tell me how wrong I am for embracing it. I can accept that you read for reasons different than my own; can you do the same?

Edit: Gabe adds another post and Tobias Buckell jumps in (thanks for the link).

Edit 2: Dylanfantic/Larry/Freebird reflects some more - some interesting ideas to think on, but ultimately I'm not sure he 'gets' it.

Edit 3: I think I'll stop adding edits after this, but there is some great discussion on this happening at The Lotus Lyceum. Deep Genre offers something tangental to the issue, and The Lotus Lyceum discusses that also.

Crossing Over to the Dark Side

Mixed emotions often follow ‘big’ announcements, and my emotion is in the minority (or seems to be) for one of the latest. As anyone who is familiar with the name George R.R. Martin has surely heard by now, it has been announced that HBO has picked up the rights to film Martin’s landmark A Song of Ice and Fire series – and it seems that things are progressing rather quickly in terms of production. Translation: this sounds like it’s for real. So, what’s the reaction from Martin fans – shouts of joy, unintelligible glee, proclamations that HBO is the only place that can do it ‘right’, etc.

My reaction – irritation, some anger, and now disappointment. While there are loads of good arguments for why it’s good when a work of one media crosses over to another, I’m ignoring them all and concentrating on how I feel about this. It saddens me that what people are treating as the greatest thing to happen to this series is its cross over to visual media – it will be watered down, loose its magic, and ruin my imagined interpretations and people scream in joy. What is it saying about books and the written word when such a reaction occurs? Is this indicative of people believing that a work is ‘incomplete’ if it’s only in the written form? Has imagination been monopolized by the huge, visual media conglomerates? Could these joyous revelers survive a week, or even a day without their TVs and video games?

As most of you know, I’m a regular poster at several message boards. One – Wotmania OF, where I’ve been a member for a long time now is the perfect example of how the written word seems to be fading in significance. Over the past 5+ years that I’ve been active in some form at that board I’ve seen it regress from a place of great discussion to one where a forum originally intended for book-talk has the majority of its activity talking about TV shows. What the fuck is up with that! TV shows? Come on, even the best TV show can’t stack up against a merely mediocre book. It seems that the visual media market has made the imagination an endangered species, and is working hard towards its extinction. I know there are others who think the same – speak up. Write, talk – be more intelligent and eloquent about it than I am (or less – whatever works).

I think I'm starting to get a handle on why the internet and such scares the publishing industry so much.

Saddened has grown to real anger, so I’ll stop here. /rant

PS – These related posts talk about books that just can’t be made into movies.

Related Rants: Can’t a Book Be Just a Book?

Sean Williams Interview

I’m an active member over at wotmania OF message board, and was asked to do a couple of interviews. I sent out a two requests, one didn’t go anywhere, and the second turned out to be a resounding success. So, the interview below is posted here and there. A big thanks to Sean Williams for making this such an interesting interview.


>Let’s get things started with the standard introduction: Who is Sean Williams?

I've been accused of writing boring bios in the past, so I approach this question with some trepidation.

My life for the last sixteen years has revolved around writing, and that hasn't left much time for anything else. Seriously. I've had over sixty short stories published since 1991, and there are 21 novels on bookshelves somewhere out there in the world (some of them in languages sufficiently foreign to me that I can't recognize my own name on the cover). I've written a stage play, some haikus, and fiddled with a few other writing-related areas, like reviews, columns and manuscript assessment. I'm heavily involved in community organizations, such as the SA Writers' Centre (the oldest in Australia) and the Writers of the Future Contest. I specialize these days in space opera and slightly askew fantasy, but I've also written SF thrillers and would like to write a straight crime novel one day.

That's about it on the writing front. Now I'm beginning to bore myself. :-)

> Why Science Fiction/Fantasy? How did you get where you are today as a writer?

I've been reading SF/F most of my life, ever since my mother handed me a children's edition of Sinbad. The love affair was instantaneous and shows no sign of passing. I find mainstream and capital-L literary fiction much more introverted than its more speculative cousin, which is not to suggest that's a bad thing, or that I don't read and enjoy mainstream fiction. Realist fiction strives for wonder in smaller, more difficult ways, and I just find it doesn't often push my buttons the same way. Naturally, when I write, I pursue stories that reflect the way I prefer to read, since in a very real way I'm my own first reader. So SF/F it is.

(For more info on this topic visit Sean's livejournal.)

As far as the direction my writing has taken down the years, it's been a fairly long and winding journey in search of a clearly-defined goal. I wanted to be a novelist from a very early age, and apart from an ill-advised stint at uni back in the 1980's, that's pretty much what I was working towards. In 1990, I decided to give my dream a good, solid bash, so started writing short stories with a view to learning the basics and building up a profile, then moved into novels a few years later. Now, I have my dream job, and life is good.

Looking back over that paragraph, I sound almost glib about the process of getting from then to now. Make the decision; start writing shorts; sell a book or two--easy! In fact, as with every writer I know, it was incredibly difficult. There were lots of dead-ends and disappointments. I've had hundreds and hundreds of rejections. But I do have a lot to be thankful for, and I wouldn't give it up for anything. I honestly don't think I'm qualified for anything else.

> You have co-authored a number of books with Shane Dix, how did this collaboration come about? Are there plans for future collaborations?

Shane and I met through each other's writing, specifically the short stories we'd had published in Australian fanzines in the early 1990s. I'd barely met a single other writer when he got my address from one of our mutual editors and wrote me a letter suggesting me got together for a coffee. (That's my current version of events, anyway. Shane gets to give his here.) We became firm friends, bonding over pizza, computer games, and the number 23. Collaboration was an obvious next step.

We've written 12 books together, if you count The Unknown Soldier as a separate entity to Evergence: The Prodigal Sun. A lot of single authors don't manage that, and I am amazed every time I think of it. Collaboration may be just as much work as a solo project, for half the money, but neither of us would've had it any other way. To be described as "the new Niven and Pournelle for the 21st Century", as we were once by Paul di Filippo, is an incredible buzz.

We would definitely like to write more, but are on hiatus at the moment while we recharge our batteries and get busy with solo projects. I have a ton of things going on at the moment, as does Shane. We'll get it together when the time is right, perhaps for that sequel to Evergence we've been talking about for, like, ever...

>Wow, 12 books is a huge number to write with another author – I’ll bet you two bicker like an old married couple ;-). How do you guys go about making it work so well?

Shane and I are both pretty even-tempered so we get along just fine. We knew from the outset that collaborating would mean having to give ground every now and again, otherwise what would be the point of doing it? In general, we agree on the story first, then I go away and write a first draft in a couple of months. When Shane gets it, the ms can be in pretty rough shape, but fixing text is Shane's specialty. When that's done, it comes back to me for a final polish. Technically I'm the one who gets the final say, since there always has to be someone playing that role, but I don't remember ever having to exercise my veto power. As with editors, if one of us doesn't like something in the final book, it's for a reason, and neither of us is the type to hang onto something in the face of good sense.

> As a science fiction writer, you often explore the evolution of human nature in its past, present, and future. Do you ultimately take an optimistic or pessimistic view of human nature and its direction? What makes you feel this way?

I tend towards being optimistic and pessimistic at the same time. The future is going to be a mixture of good and bad, just like the past. Some things will work out; others won't. We may not have got the robot butlers and flying cars we all hoped for, but we didn't get the World War Three either. And there's all the stuff we didn't see coming, like the Internet and global warming. I think it'd be slightly naïve to take a stance either way.

>Sounds like a rather logical and pragmatic approach to me.

I agree! But the lens of logic is just one through which we view the future. Most people, myself included, tend to assume on a gut level that 2046 will be much like 2006, because that's an emotionally safe reaction to a very complex issue. If we spent too much time wondering what the future might actually be like, we'd never get out of bed of a morning.

>Lately, there has been another round of internet debate bemoaning the death of SF and why it appears to be loosing readers. It seems to me that the loudest voices often take a very narrow view of SF as a genre and forget that these complaints are not new. How do you feel about the current state of things?

I think it's understandable that those speaking most stridently about their particular corner of the fuzzy set that is science fiction are those most heavily invested in making their corner the centre, but that doesn't make it right. In a contentious mood, I'd go further and say that it's a very non-collegial or even ungenerous writer who goes around building up his or her work at the expense of anyone else's. Yes, it's important to analyze and attempt to understand the genre and its place in the broader landscape of writing in general, but the moment you start drawing lines and declaring what's IN and what's OUT I reckon you've moved beyond analysis and into much riskier territory. It's like looking at a rainbow and filtering out everything but the blue end of the spectrum. You're not seeing a rainbow any more. So if you're ignoring the media end of SF, say, in your analysis of the genre, then I think you're inevitably going to come to skewed conclusions. Same with "category fantasy" and paranormal romance. Ultimately, I think it hurts writers to function this way.

But then I would say that, since an open, all-inclusive vision of the genre works to my benefit. I'm also a big believer in community. So who knows? I'm just smart enough to admit that I don't. :-)

> Correct me if I’m wrong, but I get the impression that your work with Shane Dix on the Force Heretic series in the New Jedi Order of the Star Wars expanded universe was a big break in your career. Often media tie-ins are looked on with a certain amount of disdain in spite of their economic success. What are your thoughts on this?

Working in the Star Wars universe undoubtedly increased our exposure, both here in Australia and in the US. Sales of our back-catalogue went up eightfold overnight, and that's never a bad thing. Me, I've always been a reader of tie-in novels alongside "real" books, having cut my teeth at a young age on Dr Who novelizations, Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot mysteries, and books like Treasure Island and Roots. Am I a lesser writer for reading Dr Who? I don't think so. Does writing tie-ins in the current market change the way people think about my "serious" work? Maybe. But honestly, I'm a writer who writes fantasy as well as SF, books for kids and young adults as well as adults, and the market seems to cope with that. I don't expect the readership to cross over all the time, though. That's perhaps asking too much. :-)

>Well, I certainly believe that cross-over occurs – I’ve got two boxes full of my Star Wars books that served as a sort-of gateway for me to get to the really addicting stuff. The general consumer isn’t concerned about tie-ins vs. “serious” work vs. YA fiction – they just want a good book to read. Anyway, as an author that can successfully maneuver through a variety of audiences you must be doing something right.

I certainly hope so. Of course, there's a risk of spreading oneself too thin, in both creative and marketing senses. I'm nearing a point, I think, when the time to experiment will be over and I'll decided to concentrate on one (or two) particular modes of storytelling. That'll make it easier for my publishers, who are constantly juggling release dates and target audiences. Mind you, variety is the spice of life, and I doubt I'll ever settle on just one particular mode. My writing reflects my reading, and at present mainstream outnumbers genre by 2:1.

>Let’s drop a few names – what are some of those books you’ve been reading lately?

This conversation has made me look more closely than usual at what I've been reading in the last twelve months. The list is definitely more skewed to the mainstream than usual, thanks in part to judging a major literary award down here early this year. In fact, my top five books are all Australian and all marketed as "literary" titles, although one (John Harwood's The Ghost Writer) is overtly gothic in nature. (See here for the full list.) Maybe that reflects where I am at the moment in terms of my own writing--looking for gothic and literary allusions for the new space opera, learning how to write sparely but evocatively for the kids' books, etc. That said, I have read some very good speculative novels this year, by Tim Powers, Scott Westerfeld, Justine Larbalestier, and Philip Reeve, to name just four, and my to-read shelf is groaning under the backlist. I'll get to it at some point.

> I very much enjoyed The Crooked Letter, the first installment of The Books of the Cataclysm. In particular, I found it to be a fresh approach to some old ideas, including sibling rivalry, religion and mythology. Where were the origins of this series? How much of it was planned vs. taking on a life of its own?

Thanks. I'm always pleased to hear that people have enjoyed The Crooked Letter because it was so difficult to write, perhaps the most difficult project I've undertaken so far. But in lots of ways it was the most rewarding, too. I have a fascination with religion that goes right back to Sunday school, when I persistently queried theological points that didn't make sense to me. When I was in High School, my father had just started studying for the priesthood, so I was exposed to nuts and bolts of theology from a practitioner's perspective, as well as a parishioner. Later, I realized that any faith I had once had in Christianity had evaporated, and I became an atheist, where I've been comfortable ever since--but my fascination with religion has never gone away. There's an awful amount of energy invested in world-building and story-telling behind every religion. It's not so different from science fiction, in that sense, if you look at it long enough. So wanting to devise a natural system that might be the big picture lurking behind all human religions was a perfectly natural step. The world behind the Books of the Cataclysm was the result, in which there is a form of reincarnation as well as an afterlife (in fact there are two afterlives, which reflect the belief of some cultures that we have two souls), and there is an almost-supremely powerful deity ruling over a lesser pantheon. Magic used to work, but does no longer. The world has undergone several apocalyptic changes, and might yet go through another one. As theological world-building goes, this one has everything.

But it needed a story as well, and that's where the twins come in. I went to school with identical twins, and I guess my fascination with the subject stems from that early exposure. We relatively discrete individuals can be fascinated with and unnerved by the existence of identical twins; just look at the debate over cloning, and how threatened it makes some people feel. Mirrors, twins, reflections, doppelgangers...they've been the source of many stories down the years. In a sense I'm tapping into that grand tradition, but I'm also trying to do something uniquely my own too.

The idea that the psychic link some people believe exists between identical twins could link one twin to his dead brother in the afterlife was also too good an idea to let slide. It was optioned some years ago by a film company, but never amounted to anything. I was relieved when the rights reverted so I could tell the story the way I wanted to.

>It’s funny how most of the atheists I know often have given religion much more thought and objective study than the most ardent believers I know.

My best friend's mother, a Christian, delights in telling me that nobody thinks more about the Bible than an atheist. That shocks me, in a way, until I remind myself that thinking about religion is something of an oxymoron for those with faith. That's not to say that those with faith are stupid or anything remotely like that. My father was a very smart man, and so is my best friend's mother. And I too have philosophies or opinions that aren't as considered as I'd like to believe. We can't think about everything all the time, and that applies to the nature of the universe as well as the future. Until we find a way to expand our cognition, we will always think this way.

>I particularly enjoyed the twin aspect because my father is an identical twin. I’ve asked him in the past about a psychic link or private language between him and his brother (if you knew my father you’d know how awkward a conversation that was ;-). He replied that he didn’t think it was a psychic connection, but that there are plenty of times where they are clearly thinking almost exactly the same thing and that communication becomes unnecessary.

This is an absolutely fascinating area of human experience. Theories of mind and interpersonal communication are stretched to their limits with identical twins. When you can convince yourself by means of a simple optical illusion that an image of your arm in a mirror is actually your arm, how disorienting must it be to confront a living, breathing, independent reflection every moment of every day? Perhaps it's unfair to ascribe a supernatural facet to people who are perfectly ordinary apart from their possession of a genetically near-identical sibling, but the temptation was too strong to resist.

>I’m happy that this one did not go in the movie direction.

I am too, most of the time. Mind you, I'm a big fan of collaboration, and the script-writer hired to work on the project had some truly wonderful ideas. The core conceit is so flexible and potent it could work in almost any genre: crime, romance, supernatural thriller, even comedy. Sometimes I wish I could peer into an alternate universe and see what someone else has done with the same idea.

> I know that music is a big interest in your life and that you even DJ on occasion. How has this influenced your writing, and is there any example you can give that you found particularly enjoyable to write?

My love of music influences the way I think about writing. That's the most obvious way my two loves intersect. I rarely feature music in my books, although I do frequently refer to it, name-dropping the odd composer or song title along the way. I've yet to find a convincing way to convey the "eargasm" you get when a piece of music breaks you out in goosebumps, for instance, or the moment of creation when, as a composer, everything comes together just right. Maybe it is like dancing about architecture, or maybe I just haven't nutted it out yet. Anyway, I'll keep skirting around the edges until inspiration strikes, turning Edgar Allen Poe's poems into song-lyrics and quoting Gary Numan at every possible opportunity.

>So, what music do you typically listen to while writing? How does it change for various characters, settings, etc.? How about right now – what’s the tune of this interview :-) ?

I listen to a lot of ambient electronic music by artists like Maneki Neko, Biosphere, Gas, Susumu Yokota, Global Communications, Anders Ilar, Andrew Thomas, Donnacha Costello, and golden oldies Tangerine Dream. Some light classical and soundtracks, when I need a change; nothing with lyrics, ever; music that is unobtrusive but redolent with its own kind of energy, basically.

My all-time favorite is, without a doubt, Steve Roach [http://www.steveroach.com/], whose Magnificent Void revealed to me (way back when I was reviewing New Age music for a radio show here in Adelaide) that "ambient" doesn't have to mean static or lifeless. Some of his music, in fact, is quite terrifying, and Void must surely be the best album ever for writing New Space Opera to.

At this moment, the soundtrack is Thom Brennan's "Vibrant Water", which I am finding just a little too calming. Daylight savings just kicked in here, on the spring-forward end of the cycle, and I am even keener to get back to bed than usual. :-)

>Well, ignoring the obvious legal and ethical implications, this final question has become a tradition at the wotmania OF community. So…

>If you were to own several monkeys and/or midgets, how many would you own, and what would you name them?

That is, without a doubt, the second strangest question I've ever been asked in an interview. :-) To answer: my favorite number is 23, so that part's easy. I'd pick a mixture of monkeys and midgets, since the monkeys will need someone to look after them. Furthermore, as a tribute to The Crooked Letter and your father, I'd want the monkeys to come in sets of identical twins. As far as names go, I've always named my pets after people involved in or characters from the work of Frank Zappa (another musical reference), so here goes:

Midgets:
Greggery, Jemima, Kenny, Lucille, Punky

Monkeys:
Alfonzo & Aynesley
Beefheart & Bunk
Bobby & Buddy
Chester & Chunga
Eddie & Evelyn
Emma & Erroneous
Flo & Freddie
Nanook & Napoleon
Ronnie & Ruben

Easy!


Related Posts: Review of The Crooked Letter

Eschatology, Knowledge and The Wheel of Time

Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time is one of the most popular epic fantasy series of all time. Just as many people love it as hate it, I’m not going to defend or praise the series in this post, but I will say that I am a fan.

Anyway, I wanted to link up to a couple of essays that have been written about The Wheel of Time and some the thematic elements within. They are really quite fascinating reads. There are No Beginnings or Endings… The Paradox of WoT's Eschatology and The Price and Prize of Knowledge are both found over at wotmania and are authored by linda_sedai and DomA, respectively.