She talks to wolves...

Merry Yule, Happy Hogswatch, Merry Giftmas, and Happy Life Day. A Io! Saturnalia for the Classical student in me, and Merry Christmas to my family. Also: Happy Alvismas!

We’re eclectic around here. Whatever winter holiday you celebrate, may it be a merry one – and if you don’t celebrate one, have a wonderful winter anyway!

Mirrored from geekdame.com. Please comment there.

Welcome to the first installation of the GeekDame’s Guide to Holiday Gift-Giving for the Discerning Geek! Today, we are focusing on BOOKS, BOOKS, BOOKS and what you should be giving the bookish geeks in your life.

For the purposes of this post, I should specify that we mean SFF geeks! If they are biology geeks or computer geeks or immunology geeks, they may look at you funny upon receipt of the following volumes. Well, the immunology geeks would probably find Mira Grant’s work quite engaging. But still. SFF geeks. Get it? Got it. Good.

URBAN FANTASY FOR THE ONES WHO READ FAST OR DON’T FEAR COMMITMENT:

The October Daye Series by Seanan McGuire.

This series represents some of the best urban fantasy around, starring a changeling private detective in San Francisco. I know that sounds pretty textbook, but Seanan McGuire will blow you away with the depth and breadth of her worldbuilding – the urban isn’t just window-dressing in this urban fantasy – while also treating you to flawed characters who actually grow and change from adventure to adventure, leaving you very invested and heartbroken at the inevitable tragedies. Nothing is black and white, Toby is an excellently wry narrator, and there are plenty of laughs among the gasps, shrieks, and occasional tears.

There are currently five books out, but the first three should be enough to get your giftee hooked and they can spend their ubiquitous holiday gift cards on Late Eclipses and One Salt Sea.

Purchase @ Amazon: Rosemary and Rue | A Local Habitation | An Artificial Night.

The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher.

I’m well aware that actually giving the entire extant series to someone might break the bank, and that’s why I recommend the more moderate first four volumes. Yeah, you heard me: four. I say this because the first book is absolutely not representative of the series, but a necessary evil to introduce you to Harry Dresden and get you rolling in his world.

The Dresden Files series is for anyone who enjoys fundamentally flawed characters trying to do their best, becoming progressively more badass, and building complex relationships along the way. It’s also for anyone who enjoys the more horror-oriented urban fantasy, along with messy mysteries. I’m nine books in and loving it more with each subsequent volume.

Purchase @ Amazon: Storm Front | Fool Moon | Grave Peril | Summer Knight.

(I did a video review of the first eight books, but it has spoilers. You’ve been warned.)

FANTASY FOR THE ONES WHO DON’T FEAR COMMITMENT AND WANT SOMETHING TO SAVOR FOR YEARS, THE MORE THE BETTER, NO SERIOUSLY:

The Discworld series by Sir Terry Pratchett.

The Discworld series is a brilliant institution of SFF satire – incredibly humorous, and both lightly and seriously critical of an incredible bevy of tropes from the mystery genre to rock ‘n’ roll to the press (and more!), with fathoms-deep thoughts and wise observations on  the nature of humanity, family, storytelling, and – seriously – more. With ubiquitous footnotes as humorous as the text itself, and unforgettable recurring characters in the witches of Lancre, the City Watch, Death himself (and so on!), I want Discworld to last forever, and am sad that it must eventually be a finite collection. Start your giftee out with The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic, and Equal Rites this holiday season.

Purchase @ Amazon: The Color of Magic | The Light Fantastic | Equal Rites.

Mirrored from geekdame.com. Please comment there.

Terri Windling, Faerie Godmother of the Mythic Arts, needs our help.

Here are some things you likely already know about Terri Windling: she’s a fantastic artist, creating captivating sketches, paintings, and collages of tree-people and rabbit-people and fairy tales and faerie creatures and more. She’s a distinguished editor, responsible for co-creating Bordertown, co-editing The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (with Ellen Datlow), and a great other fairy tale anthologies and novels besides. She’s the author of The Wood Wife and more, the mother of Endicott Studio, and a gracious, generous woman.

Here is something you don’t know: Terri Windling’s work helped save my life.

Terri Windling has been through some shit in her time, and she’s turned those experiences around into both overt and embedded outreach in her work. An especially potent example is an anthology entitled The Armless Maiden and Other Tales for Childhood’s Survivors. Reading that collection gave me the wherewithal to break down some walls, battle the monsters that plagued me beyond them, and emerge from my inner-labyrinth a stronger, more capable person. Terri Windling is one of those amazing creators, women and men I have never met, who have built this sword in my hands through stories of strength, grace, and survival.

I’m not the only one. She’s helped people professionally, of course, but I’ve also heard from no few others about how she’s helped them personally through her creative works and endeavors.

Now it’s our turn. To quote The Color of Angels, a fundraiser to benefit Terri Windling:

Terri Windling and her family have been coping with health and legal issues that have drained her financial resources at a critical time. Due to the serious nature of these issues, and privacy concerns for individual family members, we can’t be more specific than that, but Terri is in need of our support. As a friend, a colleague and an inspiration, Terri has touched many, many lives over the years. She has been supremely generous in donating her own work and art to support friends and colleagues in crisis. Now, Terri is in need of some serious help from her community. Who better than her colleagues and fans to rise up to make some magick for her?

A truly staggering number of Terri’s friends, colleagues, and fans have gotten together and put together a fundraiser of equally amazing proportions. This fundraiser already offers a custom poem by Jane Yolen, character-naming rights in Catherynne M. Valente‘s next Fairyland novel, a personalized story of how you survived the faerie apocalypse by Janni Lee Simner, an original painting by Brian Froud, an original handmade doll by Wendy Froud — I would go on, but the sheer wonderment of it all has made me quite dizzy.

The fundraiser is growing with every passing moment as more people flood in with offers of baked goods, signed books, fandom portraits, and more. In the days to come, auctions will go up from Neil Gaiman, George R. R. Martin, Amanda Palmer, Emma Bull, Alan Lee… Honestly, there’s just more awesome here than you can shake a stick at. Two sticks, even.

So, please, come down to the Goblin Market – come buy, come buy! Help Terri Windling, get yourself something beautiful or unique or delicious. If you can’t buy, offer something of your own.

Terri Windling is definitely a woman who deserves it.

We close now with a word from the auction’s mascot, namely Tilly (Terri’s beloved black labrador):

Note: The quote in the subject line reads, in full: “Fairy tales were not my escape from reality as a child; rather, they were my reality — for mine was a world in which good and evil were not abstract concepts, and like fairy-tale heroines, no magic would save me unless I had the wit and heart and courage to use it widely.” From Terri Windling’s essay, “Surviving Childhood” in The Armless Maiden: And Other Tales for Childhood’s Survivors.

Mirrored from Deborah J. Brannon.

I am delighted to present to you my very first video review, which is rather more of a ramble on the first seven books in The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher:

A few notes:

1. THERE ARE SPOILERS HERE. This rambling review covers Storm Front, Fool Moon, Grave Peril, Summer Knight, Death Masks, Blood Rites, and Dead Beat.

2. The actor’s name I was reaching for is Paul Blackthorne.

3. Both of my lovely cats decide to make guest appearances, so keep an eye out for Tiger Jack and Kaylee. Of course, you really can’t miss them.

4. This video is dedicated to Teresa and Daniel Anzulovic, my dear and tireless friends who insisted I really would enjoy these books if I gave them a chance.

As this is my first stab at this thing, comments are keen. Or little thumbs-up thingies. Especially on YouTube.

Enjoy!

Mirrored from geekdame.com. You can comment here or there.

Human Tales, edited by Jennifer Brozek, is an anthology of stories revolving around a simple, yet provocative concept: what are the cautionary tales that the supernatural tell their children to warn them against humans? So many of our fairy tales illuminate how dangerous dealing with the fair folk and others of their ilk can be – how they diabolically bargain for children when a person is in dire straits, how they do not lie but neither do their words add up to the complete truth, how they’ll lead you astray or drown you in deep waters. Of course, these are all from the human perspective.

Human Tales are, to quote the back jacket of the anthology, “[t]ales of warning and terror… of those who break their vows and kill for no reason other than malice. Tales of saving the lovely princess from a prince that is much less than charming… and what it takes to bring her home, of rescuing babes from parents not fit to raise them, and the reason no supernatural can truly win a bargain with such vile creatures.”

I have a story in this anthology – “A Tithe for Homecoming,” being the life and times of a woman named Laura Jane and a grove of elm dryads. It’s set in 1950′s rural Alabama, with all the kudzu-choked highways, ingrained spirituality, and folk songs that suggests. It’s about changelings and paying for things taken and finding comfort where we may.

I hope you’ll give the anthology and my story a try – there are many excellent pieces in the collection, including a desert-bright story about sphinxes by Seanan McGuire, a disturbingly beautiful revision of Rumpelstiltskin by Ivan Ewert, the horrifying betrayal of an aquatic savior in “The Human and the Sea Sprite” by Dylan Birtolo, and others.

There have also been a couple of reviews of Human Tales within the last two weeks, with Steven Saus over at ideatrash having the following to say about “A Tithe for Homecoming”:

Dark, mysterious, and twists a few concepts together into a nice interaction of the modern world and the ancient tales.  Tree spirits, changlings [sic], and revenge all fall naturally together like leaves on the forest floor.  Potential trigger warnings for child abuse.

About Human Tales in general, he says:

Graded as a solid B.  Some really good stories, and a lot of pretty good ones.  It’s a bit uneven at times, and probably should not be read straight through.  Several stories have small missteps, either because of the method of telling the story or because they don’t have enough of a punch at the end.  Despite these small flaws, it’s a good anthology and worth the price of admission.  A few potential triggers exist for child abuse and those who have dealt with attachment disorders.

You can read the entirety of his review here at ideatrash.

A. Rose also reviewed Human Tales earlier in the month, commenting “… the caliber of writing on the whole is above par and the concept irresistible to those of us who enjoy peeking behind the curtain of a story to see what it looks like from behind.” Find her full thoughts here at her Livejournal.

Human Tales is published by Dark Quest Books, and is available via Amazon – both in traditional print form, and as a much-discounted Kindle book. (The collection is also available via Barnes and Noble, and likely anywhere else you can order books. Pick your purveyor!)

Mirrored from Deborah J. Brannon.

I never realized there was a hole in my media-loving life where a webseries concerning the times and trials of a group of socially-stunted (or just twisted) guildies getting into all sorts of shenanigans should be – not until Cyd Sherman, more commonly known as Codex the party’s healer, sat down in front of me and launched into her video diary:

“So, it’s, uh, Friday night and still jobless, yay. Haven’t left the house in a week. My therapist, uh, broke up with me. Oh yeah, there’s a – there’s a gnome warlock in my living room, sleeping on my couch.”

So Season 1 of The Guild opens, drawing us into the interpersonal drama of The Knights of Good. A guild of six not-quite-friends, their in-game connections drive them to meet in real life: social awkwardness ensues, the guild drama escalates, and they ultimately come together to take down a real-world boss. All with blue roses, snappy dialogue, high-level moms, and shockingly inept parenting.

For some wholly mysterious reason, I didn’t discover The Guild until March 2010. Don’t look at me like that; I honestly don’t know what rock I was under either. The first season of the webseries was one of the first programs I watched on Netflix Instant, and I became an avid fan of The Guild within five minutes.

Five minutes was all it took for me to recognize pieces of myself, my friends, my family, and the gamer culture I’ve moved through all of my adult life. Codex is my neurotic tendencies cranked up to 11; I lived with a Vork-wannabe; I’ve known Zaboos beyond counting. My personal guildies may have been my brothers and a couple of best friends (most of whom I lived with), but I’ve been privy to a stupid number of guild dramas. Like many of my friends, I’ve let entire days vanish because I was too busy following a quest line. I’ve participated in those conversations where it was much easier to talk about the Game and what loot dropped than to make awkward social conversation.

The Guild is worth so much more than that self-recognition, though, and evokes much more than quote-fodder for that special brand of geek-conversation (you know, the sort that is almost entirely made up of reenacted dialogue from favorite media). The Guild transcends niche humor into satire.

With this webseries, Felicia Day and company have managed to deconstruct the stereotypical idea of the dedicated gamer. This series isn’t about a host of neckbearded manchildren living in their parents’ basements: it shows that gaming can be at the heart of the lives of adept college students, directionless 20-somethings, cheapskate adults, socially stunted males attempting to escape their mothers, and stay-at-home moms. There is no stereotypical gamer, only people looking for entertainment, escape, and connection.

While simultaneously undermining the assumed identity of hardcore gamers, The Guild amps up the social failures of people who spend all their time immersed in MMORPGs and does so in wildly disturbing and entertaining ways. The satire here is for us, the gamers, those saturated in the culture. Through a series of largely unlikeable individuals with self-sabotaging character traits, The Guild illuminates that connection – reasonable, rational, compassionate connection – should be integral to the gaming life and not a neglected side-component. This point is made with humor and a deft touch, and the series doesn’t feel as if it has an agenda. The Guild simply revels in hyperbole and enables us to examine our behavior with a wince and a giggle.

It’s a brilliant comedic webseries, well worth the community support it has received over the years. Several of the episodes in the first season were fully funded by fans, which The Guild shows appreciation for in the credits after Episode 10, “Boss Fight,” and it won the YouTube Video Award for Best Series in 2007.

You can watch The Guild via their website (which is fed by MSN and Bing), YouTube, Hulu, X-Box Live, and Netflix Instant. It’s also available on DVD via Netflix, and for purchase at Amazon.com. Watch it, dig it, and – if you’re like me – realize you probably live it.

Mirrored from geekdame.com. Please comment there.

Diana Wynne Jones died last weekend, surrounded by loves ones. Her death was not unexpected – she had been coping with lung cancer for some time. However, no forewarning could prepare her friends and fans for this serious loss: by all personal accounts, she was a generous friend, and creative, fierce, and clever. These qualities also permeate her books; she stands a wondrous titan in the contemporary fantasy genre.

I always meant to read more of her novels, and had not yet gotten around to it for all that The Dark Lord of Derkholm and The Tough Guide to Fantasyland and the Chrestonmanci books sounded extremely up my alley. I would have liked to have been more familiar with Diana Wynne Jones before she left us; it saddens me to know that we now have all the books by her that we’re going to get.

Gorgeous, touching or just heartfelt things have already been said by a number of people:

Neil Gaiman – “Being alive. Mostly about Diana.”
Pamela Dean – “I want to tell of our journey down the river.”
Delia Sherman – “More Precious was the light in your eyes that all the roses in the world.”
Marie Brennan – “A Seed of Hemlock.”
Robin McKinley – “Diana Wynne Jones.“

In memoriam here, I now give you the story of the first and only Diana Wynne Jones book I’ve read, a theatre-outing to see Haoru no Ugoku Shiro, and two silly gaijin.

I am an ardent admirer of the Studio Ghibli films directed by Hayao Miyazaki, most prominently of Mononoke Hime (Princess Mononoke) and Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (Spirited Away) at the time this story takes place in late Fall 2004.

At the time I moved to Tokyo, I actually had no idea that Miyazaki would soon be releasing his newest offering: Haoru no Ugoku Shiro, or Howl’s Moving Castle, inspired by a British author’s book of the same title. A fantastic girl I worked with – Becky, who would soon resolve as one of my fastest and best friends in Tokyo – clued me in to the forthcoming Studio Ghibli feature, and soon we were both intrigued by the film’s premise and eagerly awaiting its release.

One problem: neither of us spoke more than a few phrases of Japanese.

To counteract our ignorance, I hied myself to the nearest bookstore after work one day and purchased a copy of Diana Wynne Jones’ novel. I figured we could both read it, and then follow the basic story as it unfolded in Miyazaki’s film.

I didn’t expect to fall head over heels into such a marvelous narrative. I didn’t expect the sly humor, the meta-inclusion of fairy tale tropes, the urban fantasy mixed in with secondary world fantasy and a dash of portal fantasy. I didn’t expect this novel to push so many of my buttons, indulging my fascination with the heart and witches and fairy tales. And strong women: in a time when I was often feeling vulnerable and lost, Sophie’s irascible strength filled me with a sympathetic conviction.

We saw the film in the theatre at Roppongi Hills a couple of weeks later, reveling in super-plush seats and the fact we didn’t have to wait ages to see it in an indie theatre back in the States.

For the first five minutes, the fact that we understood none of the film’s dialogue wasn’t a problem. (Especially considering there isn’t any dialogue for the first several minutes of the film.) We were armed with our knowledge of Diana Wynne Jones’ fantastic book. We were prepared!

Of course, then Miyazaki took us for an utterly fantastic ride away from the source material and into his own, equally genius vision. We were soon utterly lost, but it didn’t matter. The intoxicating imagery moved us, the music enthralled us, and I sat transfixed as even more of my thematic fascinations played out on screen: fallen stars, the lure of power, the glory of flight.

I may have missed all the nuance of Miyazaki’s concept in that first viewing, but I had a wholly complex two hours there in the dark: Diana Wynne Jones’ narrative and Miyazaki’s vision collided in my heart, leaving me immersed in an artistic experience beyond language that enthralled much deeper than either the novel or the film could have on their own.

It’s an experience that has stuck by me, and it need not have happened at all. The theatre we visited apparently also does a small number of showings of Japanese films each day with English subtitles. We had just missed that detail, and didn’t realize what the beleaguered ticket lady was trying to communicate to us before she just gave up and sold us tickets to the Japanese-only showing.

Still, I’m glad Becky and I were such silly gaijin. Otherwise, I would have missed out on a potent experience.

If you’re not familiar with Diana Wynne Jones’ work, do yourself a favor – find her books and read them.

That’s one of the best memorials such a fine writer could have.

Mirrored from Deborah J. Brannon.

I haven’t yet had a chance to read the full issue, but have instead sampled here and there as fancy took me. There’s a new poem by Catherynne M. Valente – the first in nearly two years! – that makes me want to amble on the range and shed fierce tears and laugh in the seized grasp of truth. “The Secret of Being a Cowboy” is powerful, and the accompanying audio recording by SJ Tucker in an Arkansas accent brings that point well home.

Sonya Taaffe’s “Persephone in Hel” is a paragon of macabre beauty and leaves me both delighted and creeped out. A startling juxtaposition to be achieved by one poem, but it’s true! Jo Walton’s “The Weatherkeeper’s Diary” is a slow little bit of cloud-gathering, equal parts pragmatism and whimsy. The timbre of Walton’s poem suits this issue of Stone Telling entirely, and adeptly strokes the reader’s imagination.

Beyond these, there’s a pantoum inspired by mathematics, a haunting prose poem concerning Lot’s wife (who deserves a name), kaleidoscopic poetry invoking the chaos of cities, and several other pieces as unlikely and surprising. The accompanying images are deftly chosen by Rose Lemberg, and there are audio recordings of the poetry where available.

Stone Telling is also unique among poetry zines in its inclusion of nonfiction columns. In this issue, you can find an article by Nin Harris on Muhammad Haji Salleh’s Sajak-Sajak Sejarah Melayu, as well as one exploring the pantoum that I am honored to have contributed.

In “There is That Line Again: Revealing the Pantoum in Context,” I explore how the pantoum emerged into the Western poetry scene from the Malay pantun. I included quite a few examples of Malay poetry, French poetry, and poetry in English, along with the historical context and an expanded definition of the pantoum form. If you have any interest in poetry, I hope you’ll read it – if you do, tell me what you think!

After you’ve read this fantastic issue of Stone Telling, be sure to continue on to the roundtable led by Julia Rios – this is another unique aspect of Stone Telling, and one that never fails to foster important conversations.

This issue of Stone Telling can be discussed at stonetellingmag, the zine’s Livejournal community. Also, if you’ve enjoyed the publication and are interested in supporting the arts, please consider leaving something in the tip jar at the bottom of this page.

Mirrored from Deborah J. Brannon.

We begin with Neile Graham’s “Nightfall on Orkney: A Glosa,” and what more perfect invocation could there be than a poem that slides between lines of established poetry, teasing forth a new language from the voice of another? Graham’s poetry captures a darkly-limned and yet cheerful picture of peasant life in the Orkneys, deep in winter, spinning the raucous winter storm away from George MacKay Brown’s heart-rending shipwreck and bringing it instead to beat against a protected communion: beauty and intimacy in the heart of the storm, instead of death. Her integration of Brown’s lines from “The Wreck of the Archangel” is seamless, and a gorgeous recycling of poetry.

From the tearing winter winds of the Orkneys, we shrug into a cloak of storms and slip into “Strong as Salt” by Rose Lemberg. Upon my first reading, I felt it wandered a bit – although that wandering was through some wonderfully evocative imagery, some of which sears our sensibilities and croons of abandonment or furious life. Yet, when I listened to the poem read by the author, the piece was transfigured into an intoxicating and wholly captivating poem: every word carefully weighed, and woven into a net to catch the listener.

“Callisto at the Corner Coffee Shop” by Michelle Muenzler seems like an abrupt departure from the inchoate cacophony and more intimate, natural settings of the first two poems: in this piece, there is a modern coffee shop, and Callisto declaring quite simply “I was a bear once.” But the shift in gears is perfect after all, spinning from the stars referenced at the close of “Strong as Salt” into those that once winked in Callisto’s star-strewn ursine form. Muenzler’s poem may not be one for the ages, but it’s absolutely a little gem of a coffee shop Greco-Roman mythology poem, and makes me want to snatch it away into my nest of words like a magpie of poetry. Just to make it easier to read, and read again. There is also a recording of this poem, which I found to be much in the same vein as the poem itself.

We’re waltzed from the light canapé of the coffeeshop poem into the dizzying edifice of a feast that is Mari Ness’ “Snowmelt.” My first reading rocked me back on my heels, rightly impressed: she’s crafted a chain poem, from an opening compliment — and such a haunting single line, “[t]he dark blood glittering on the grey snow” (colors so hot while also so muted) — through couplet, through triolet, through pantoum! It is a marvel, full of equally marvelous imagery and skillfully crafted mirror poems. I appreciate that the chain can be taken as one work together, as a hauntingly lovely interpretation of the Snow White fairy tale, or broken into tasty morsels for desultory sampling. For those who may be unsure about what exactly composes a poetry chain, Mari Ness has written a blog post about this one.

“Snowmelt” closes on echoes of flight and masking barriers: tropes which then reverberate though Rose Lemberg’s second poem of the issue, “Three bone masks.” I found the poem fascinating, but in a distant way at first blush: I appreciated the exploration of Inuit shamanism, the evocation of walrus and lemming totems, the references to material folklore. And then, once more, Lemberg’s reading transformed her poetry into something greater: the lines became more beautiful and evocative for me in a way they weren’t when I first read the words. Further, the reading actually transformed my grasp on the poem, and made subsequent readings into something more profound. My gaze sharpened on the ragged lines, saw how each parallel structure fell so carefully into place, and noted the clinging-to and rejection of the body.

The last lines of “Three bone masks” prick like ice on the wind, funneling into “Snow Bees” which howls with midwinter silence. I cannot be rational about this poem. It crawled inside me immediately, playing out in my mind’s eye: my spine straightened from that of a daisy-fed little girl into a Queen’s spine of rigid, latticed ice. Jeannine Hall Gailey's interpretation of Han Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” and the way she painted the relationship between Gerdas and Snow Queens as two sides of the same coin were just masterful. She pushed all my buttons. There is also a reading of this poem available, but it does not match the timbre of the poem in my head.

The glitter and sharp glass of the Snow Queen become the glitter of diamonds emerging painfully with every word a young woman speaks: Christopher W. Clark has taken it upon himself to tell once more the tale of how precious stones are cruel and they cut the throat, while toads falling from the lips compose a relatively much easier curse. There is nothing new conceptually in this poem, but it is beautifully told and Clark’s reading of the poem serves to highlight the angles of the diamond stanza versus the rounded verse of the toads. There’s also a nice tip of the hat to the transmogrification of toads in other tales at the end of the poem.

Leah Bobet’s “Little Songs” carries forth the thread of transformation and development; this Petrarchan sonnet is much like an interlocking puzzle box of references to musical composition, poetic forms, and the cadence of courtship and lascivious union. This sonnet is a jewel that tickles the brain and invites multiple readings.

The last words of “Little Songs” are, appropriately enough, “[s]ing me a lullaby,” and pave the way for Loreen Heneghan’s “Drawn Like Silk.” And, oh, what a haunting lullaby it is: simply lovely in form and word, rustling across my skin with a susurrus of silk and leaving behind the most delicate spine-tingling chill. There’s winter life in this piece: spindly limbs moving in the breath of the coldest wind, making it a suiting coda to this winter bones issue.

Mirrored from Deborah J. Brannon.