Sorting out the subgenre- Street Level Fantasy

I'm still dissatisfied with subgenre definitions in the Fantasy genre.  Specifically, where work like Thorn of Dentonhill, Holver Alley Crew and Maradaine Constabulary fit in the grand scheme.

Take, for example, the Genre Map they use over at Book Country.  The Fantasy section has nine subgenres, though three of them (Horror, Weird Fiction and Slipstream/Interstices) are really separate from Fantasy, and are jammed in there for convenience.  This leaves six: Traditional, High/Epic, Urban, Contemporary, Historical and Comic. Though the distinctions are vague, if you ask me. I'm not entirely sure where the lines between "Traditional" and "High/Epic" are, for example, or between "Urban" and "Contemporary".  ("Comic" and "Historical", though, are somewhat easier to suss out.) 

Now, I think my books, in terms of subgenre, fit in to the same sort of niches as Douglas Hulick's Among Thieves*, Scott Lynch's Lies of Locke Lamora or Amanda Downum's The Bone Palace.  Of these, only one is used as a "landmark" on the map, that being Lies, which falls under "Traditional".  So that's where I placed my three books when I was using Book Country for critique.  (They are still there, if you hunt for them, though now only the first three chapters.  And said chapters for Maradaine Constabulary are out of date.)  I wasn't crazy about it, but that was the best fit.

I think "traditional" is a misnomer, for myself and for books like Hulick's, Lynch's and Downum's.  But what would be right?

In my gut, "urban" is more correct, since all those books deal with the confines of an urban environment.  But "urban fantasy" is not about fantasy in a city setting-- it's about fantasy tropes set in the "real" world, even if your setting isn't remotely urban. (I'm looking at you, Sookie Stackhouse.) And if that's "urban", what's "contemporary"?

I've heard "low fantasy", as an opposite of "high fantasy", but I don't like it.  It sounds vaguely insulting. 

So here's my suggestions, and I'd love it if people out there helped brand it: Street Level Fantasy.  Fantastic, secondary-world fiction, where the stakes are defined as personal and local. 

Who's with me?

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*- As far as Hulick goes, I'm making some assumptions of how the whole book goes, as I didn't finish the book.  Yes, I suck.  I had other things I needed to read. But for all I know it ends with gods walking the earth and huge armies clashing across continents.  So I could be wrong placing it in with the other books.

Hey, look. A milestone of sorts.

So, it's more or less been a year since I decided to write in this blog twice a week every week.  And what do you know, a year later, I've held to that plan.  Admittedly, I've had a few days where my entry was a bit on the late side (by hours, mind you, not days or anything), but I can point to the whole years worth of Monday-and-Thrusday posts and say, "Yup, I did it.".  It's been a useful exercise.

In that year, I've noticed a steady and solid build in readership.  Nothing huge yet, mind you, but a build nonetheless.  No posts have really been huge barnstormers (the one with the biggest numbers is the Worldbuilding Link Post, but even that isn't exactly setting the internet on fire).  This is probably because I'm not exactly writing things that are controversial or even search engine candy.  (Next week, I discuss how Harry Potter and Lady Gaga connect to Justin Beiber's kitten-eating fetish, and start online feuds with Neil Gaiman, Scott Lynch and John Scalzi AT THE SAME TIME.)

And, frankly, the last year has been pretty good to me.  A year ago I went to the DFW Writer Con, with the hopes of pitching to agents.  Now I have an agent (although not from DFW), and through him, I have two manuscripts shopping around, and one more that should be making its journey soon.  Three novels on the market?  Can't be too shabby.  I'd love to be able to announce that I've signed a deal, and with any luck that announcement will be coming this year.  But this business moves slowly, and I've made peace with that.  I believe it will happen, and I can continue to be patient.  The point is this: I'm pleased with the progression I've made so far.  More to the point, I'm pleased with my writing, and what it's evolved to. 

This past year has been a useful exercise, and like any exercise, I'm going to continue doing it for as long as I'm seeing value.  And I definitely still am.

So, of to the word mines.  I've got another book to write.

Austin Theatre Announcement, and the "Process Play"

I received this in my email last week:

At long last, selections for the upcoming ScriptWorks 10-minute play showcase have been made!

SOFTLY AS IN A MORNING SUNRISE - Bob Barr
UNFAIR PRACTICES AT THE DPS - Elizabeth Cobbe
THE MANY SUICIDES OF MOLLY McVEIGH - Trey Deason
OCEAN SONG FROM A DESERT PLACE - Amparo Garcia-Crow
MS. EDWINA BACKLE'S APPOINTMENT - Aimée Gonzalez
SLEPT THE WHOLE WAY - Marshall Ryan Maresca
THE NORTH STAR TRANSGALACTIC - Anne Maria Newsome
THE GREEKS - Colin Denby Swanson

The plays will run April 19-21 and 26-28 at the Blue Theatre.

Excellent news!  I always enjoy being part of this yearly production.  This year was the 11th time I've participated, and the 7th time my play has been chosen.  It's a fun experience, and a fun process.

I've often heard the term "process play" used for this kind of production.  A "process play" doesn't have a specific definition, but in my mind its a play that invites the audience to look under the hood to get a better appreciation of what's going on in the production.  At its best a process play is something where an additional level of understanding enhances the enjoyment of something that's already enjoyable.

In the case of Out of Ink, I think it works well because the process is front-loaded in the writing phase.  We write the plays in a specific time frame, within a specific set of rules, and then eight are chosen.  Do you need to know that, in order to enjoy the show?  No.  But in knowing it, your experience changes.  Case in point, in my piece from last year, there's a laugh line when one of the characters mentions Finnegan's Wake.  This isn't because Finnegan's Wake is inherently funny, but because the audience knew that including Finnegan's Wake was one of our rules.  But the play stands on its own without knowing that.  The scripts are developed via the process, but the production of the show itself is straightforward.


"Process play", though, can be used as a pejorative. At its worst, a process play becomes a masturbatory exercise where more emphasis is put on how the performance got put together over the performance itself.  I've known a few actor friends who have used the phrase as a backhanded knock on shows they were in.  "How are rehearsals going?"  "Well, it's a process play."  Code for, "The director doesn't have a plan and we're meandering and wasting time."  I've been involved in shows like that.  It's no fun.

But with Out of Ink?  I've always had fun.  I've always found it a fun show to watch.  If you're in Austin the last two weekends in April, come check it out.

PSA: In which I am grateful I'm a freak about backing things up

As I mentioned earlier this week, my laptop died on the way to Boston.  Just dead.  Kaput.  Hard drive shot, apparently.  But it is under warranty, so I should be getting it back, good as newish*, some time today.

Which means I've got a fair amount of work ahead of me setting it back up.

Fortunately, I've been exceedingly anal about backing up non-replacable files.  Namely, anything to do with writing and worldbuilding.  I don't use any sort of automatic service for this.  It's just me, manually and actively backing things up on a regular basis.

This is a habit borne from necessity, from hard lessons.  I've had two other laptops die on me, but fortunately they both had lingering, sputtering deaths, and in both cases their replacements were in hand and loaded with their data before they shuffled off.  But those two were not the hard lessons.

Rather, the hard lesson was one of my own stupidity.  This is when I had my old desktop PC, which I had purchased in 1998.  By 2005, it was slow, outdated and a bit sputtery.  We called it Tortuga**, and when my wife was bringing in a new desktop***, she wanted it GONE.  The day came**** when she decided she would tolerate no further nostalgia for Tortuga on my part.  I needed to save all my data (burning it to CD, because this is 2005 we're talking about) and put the computer on the curb.  Which I did.

A few months later I was caught with a bit of a bug to dig up some old work, namely a novel I had started back in the 90s called "Convergence of Angels on the I-35".   Don't ask me what that title means, because I really couldn't tell you.  I never got far enough into it to figure that out.  This, by the way, was pretty well in the height of my "I'll just write and see where things take me" pantsing delusions.  I had no plan, other than writing in purplish prose about diners, miracles and broken people.  But mostly diners.  Hell, the thing was originally written on a yellow legal pad while seated at the counter of a greasy spoon diner, drinking obscene amounts of coffee.  I was deep in a Tom Robbins phase at the time.

I digress.  I looked for that file in my archive CDs.  Nowhere.  Checked older archives.  Nope.  Checked all over the place.  Not to be found.  "Convergence of Angels on the I-35" was lost to history, since I was terrible at backing things up.

(This is kind of a lie, as I do, in fact, still have the handwritten yellow legal pad.  It's actually in my hand right now.  I could, if I really wanted to, re-type the thing.  And given that its been 16 years since I wrote this, and I'd like to think I'm a much better writer now than I was then, said re-typing would probably be a significant improvement over whatever I had typed before.  Maybe it might be an interesting experiment.)

____

*- The CD/DVD burner had been glitchy for some time, and they're replacing that as well, so it's not that much of a tragedy.

**- Spanish for "turtle".

***- Which she named "Coneja", Spanish for "rabbit".  Our current computers are Cheetah, Dolphin and Coneja II, which is the machine that just died this week.

****- If I were to guess, it would have been September 18th, 2005.

Post-Con Report

So, I spent the weekend up in Boston for Boskone, and the whole weekend was something of an up-and-down experience for me. 

Of the good: Boston is a gorgeous city, and this weekend was perfect walking-around weather.  As much as I love Austin, it's not a city that's visually inspiring on an architectural level.  Boston-- there are parts of Boston that look almost exactly how Maradaine looks in my head.  (If you take out the cars and traffic lights and such).  We got to visit with my sister and her family, and my parents came up as well, so that was nice.  I live 2000 miles away, so everyone being in the same place for something that's neither wedding nor funeral is a rarity.

Also of the good: I met my agent face-to-face for the first time, which I was quite pleased with.  Especially since one of the first things he said was, "By the way, I absolutely loved the Holver Alley Crew rewrite you did."  So that's making its way out in the world.  Hopefully Maradaine Constabulary will follow shortly. Also, he highly praised my beta-reading people, and I can't help but agree.  They're an awesome group.  Another bright spot, connected to meeting with my agent, is when the editor from Baen saw my nametag and said, "Oh, yes, you're his new guy."  Editors recognizing your name are rarely a bad thing. 

Of the not-as-good: This is more my own issue, but being at a con where I don't really know people is something of a challenge for me.  Yes, my agent was there, and he introduced me to people, and that was great.  And Elizabeth Bear, whom I've met before, was very friendly.  But I didn't have people, if you catch my meaning. I didn't have comfort-zone-familiar-faces to gravitate towards.  It was a different experience for me last year at DFWWriterCon.  I mean, there, I knew NO ONE, but at the same time, EVERYONE there was in the same boat: we had books written, and we were there to pitch to agents.  We were kindred spirits, and it was simple to bond.  I'm sure there were people in the same agented-but-not-sold position as me, but there was no badge color or hand signal to recognize fellow travelers in the last miles of the marathon.

But, like I said, this is probably more my own imposter-syndrome issues above and beyond anything else.

Of the REALLY-not-good: My laptop died.  Horribly.  Fortunately, I backed up ALL my writing stuff the night before I left, AND the machine is still under warranty, but it was still annoying.  I feel kind of hobbled, writing-wise, until I get it back up and running.  Even though I could use the desktop I'm writing this on.  I'm strange like that.

First Plug at ArmadilloCon Writers Workshop 2012

It's time to start thinking about ArmadilloCon 34, especially since this year it will be at the end of July instead of the end of August.  You don't want to be sitting around mid-July and think, "Oh, yeah, I should plan to go to that" and then realize it's next weekend.  That would be bad.

And, of course, I'm plugging the Writers' Workshop. It's not hard to see why, especially since this year I have full-fledged "Workshop Coordinator" status.  No "Assistant" on my title this time around!  (Note: I don't think my actual duties will change in the slightest.  But who doesn't love a title bump?)

So what's it all about, if you don't know already?  Check out this post by the fantastic Stina Leicht*, the head coordinator of the workshop. 

And then go sign up.

___

*- Really, fantastic.  Of Blood and Honey was one of the best books I read last year, and with her upcoming And Blues Skies from Pain, she's got some serious Campbell Award buzz.  Which I fully endorse.

Is It About Books, or Is It About Novels?

The ground is shifting under our feet, as the publishing industry is still dealing with the biggest shift in production and distribution since Gutenberg.  This is not news, of course.  We all know that Things Are Going To Change.  It's just anybody's guess as to exactly how.

Rachelle Gardner wrote an interesting piece today touching on this point, comparing where the book industry might be headed to the recently-filed-for-bankruptcy Kodak.  Her main point was Kodak focused on selling the physical printed image of a photograph, and not on the real content people were most interested in: the image itself.

The same applies for novels.  While there are, and will continue to be, die hard real-printed-book lovers, the important product is the content, the novel itself.  People who want to read a novel will read it in the format that is most convenient to them, period.   If that's in a printed book (purchased at brick-and-mortar, shipped via website or borrowed at a library), or a Kindle or Nook or other reader, it doesn't REALLY matter.  The thing that matters the most is the content, and as long as the content-delivery system is convenient, the reader doesn't care as much.

Does this mean I'm saying Real Books are out and E-Books are in, so everyone should get with the program?  Not at all.  As of right now, my primary goal is "traditional" publication.  That means printed books in book stores. 

Is that out of some sort of psychological need to, say, have a real printed book that I can hold in my hadn?  I won't deny there's an appeal to that.  You work hard to make something, having that thing you can actually hold, point to on a shelf, hand over to another person-- that physicality has meaning.  Impact.  But that's not the only reason.  It's not even the primary reason. 

At least right now, E-Books are only 5-10% of the book sale market. (From what I understand- please correct me if I have my numbers wrong).  So putting out your book exclusively in a format that ignores 90-95% of the current reading market is ridiculous. This is the key reason why I'm not so keen to stampede over to ePublishing my work.

Now, these numbers may change, and when they do, the industry needs to be moving with it.  One has to ride the wave of the sea change or drown.