Well, I’m headed back to Appalachia for Thanksgiving. To all you Americans about to do anything remotely similar, please enjoy this opportunity to bask in the glow of our national habit of super-consumption! I know I will!

In that spirit, please enjoy these Thanksgiving wishes, from me to you.

No seriously, I like Thanksgiving because it’s mostly football and wine at our house, and my mom is an amazing cook (and rightfully proud of her “Katey Versions” of typical Thanksgiving fare. She’s been stockpiling vegetable broth for a month, I think. So exciting). But I don’t do Tofurkey, don’t worry, I’m not that crazy. I had a friend home with me once for this particular holiday, also veggie, and she brought one. It was probably one of those most awful things I’ve ever eaten in my life.

This trend of trying to make veggie products taste and look like meat is disturbing to me. I guess I see the point if you’re off the meat for health reasons, but some of us have a little PTSD here. (Just to deal with the questions now, no, I don’t care what you eat any more than you care what I eat. See how PETA makes me look like an asshole? RAWR!)

Speaking of PTSD, let’s hope my dad and the old boys have the deer processing operation in the garage cleaned up by the time I get there tonight. Wish me luck!

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Now playing: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – The Marriage of Figaro: Overture
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I’ve been in recovery from the Nanowrimo brain melt all week, and it took some doing, but I think I’m back. I managed to get out a short story that I don’t suppose will see the light of day, but that made me very happy all the same. (Character backstory from another novel—my first!) Nice to know my brain has finally dislodged itself from Crazed Appalachian Murderous Faerie. It’s not really a healthy place for it, after all.

The reading has helped. I re-read The Great Gatsby this week, and it was so comforting. Meghan (I’ll get to her in a minute) says it’s like visiting an old friend, but less awkward. That’s almost right, except that Nick Carraway is an awkward, ineffectual, washrag of a little man. (Which might explain why I kinda like him. I do love main voice characters who have no idea how lame they are, but make it clear to the reader all the same.) So that has me wanting to go and find copies of other old high school books and see if they’re still as fun—or like this one, even more fun—a decade later.

Then I picked up McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men, which my husband has been on me to read since last year. I wrote about the movie in one of my first blog entries here—I liked it quite a lot, but I like pretty much everything the Coen brothers do. I now understand why they would choose this particular book to translate to the screen, though. There’s a weird lack of balance in McCarthy’s prose that’s unsettling in a very good way, not dissimilar from their brand of unsettling. It’s super visual and stark, only allowing you into heads when you absolutely need it to string you along. Or not even then in Chigurh’s case, which is another brilliant tactic. His use of PoV is a lesson in itself.

I liked it. There were things I didn’t get about it—scenes that went on for no reason, and even the spot-on dialect couldn’t disguise his affection for over-worked philosophy and heavy comebacks masquerading as snappy dialogue, the kind that just doesn’t happen in real life. But it was good enough to make me take all those things on faith.

I’ve also been privileged to get to see some of Meghan Brunner’s latest draft for her third book lately, so I’ve been re-reading the first two in her Pendragon Trilogy. I see a lot of people complaining lately about things they’re sick of in speculative fiction—urban fantasy in particular. Too many vampires (dude, is that even possible?), too many werewolves (again, I ask you?), too many kick-ass heroines who actually suck, too many this, that, and the others. I’ll tell you what you have not seen too much of right now, though:

Renaissance Faires.

No, seriously. Think about it. A whole world, an entire culture, right under our noses. We walk through them for a day or a weekend and watch people gnaw on turkey legs and play Dunk the Maiden games, and then we leave. But it’s all about living a fantasy for a few hours. So what goes on after the last patrons slog out the gate and head back to their minivans, and the cast and crew are still there, left with all that for themselves? It might be the single easiest premise to accept for the presence of fantasy-type magic in the real world, to think it could be there. Why has no one else been doing this? (Other than the fact that it’s clearly viewed as a niche subculture kind of market.

What, like vampires? Yeah, someone needs to get on exploiting this, quick.)

So these books are like the Secret Life of Faires, focused through the eyes of the two main characters and their story. Not only is it about a hot girly couple (what, me, shallow?), but it has crazy Fae, everyday magick, peasants doing privy humor, Gypsy caravans, loud music, and the Cult of the Great Naked Potato.

And here comes soapbox bit. I think the thing that makes me happiest about these books is that they’re not just about the magic, the struggle between good and evil, the tangled relationships, the road and weekender rennie culture, and the otherwise strange and fascinating life they live. (Let’s face it, they live every kid’s dream, pretty much.) But they’re also about a place, which I think is missing from a lot of fiction these days, sort of thrown off in favor of some pointless sex scene or random violence that’s supposed to pass for action. (Okay, there’s a lot of sex and violence in these too, but you know, it’s not pointless!)

You get all this fantasy set in these richly imagined, fabulously detailed worlds, but it seems like they’re most often just a backdrop or an excuse to make someone cold, hard, and mean, or warm, soft, and trusting. As plot and character devices go, they tend to come off as too obvious—more of a stereotype than anything terribly believable or interesting. “It’s cold in his country, so he’s cold and hard. They’re all cold and hard! They must be uniformly cold and hard to survive! Rawr!” Every now and then you get a Frank Herbert who goes so far into the ecology of their invention that it makes your head spin and that’s pretty cool, but I’m talking about sacred geography. Not sacred to any god, but sacred to a people—the places and things around which societies are built and lives are ordered.

Most of the time it just springs up—places like Tibet, the Middle East, India, the American Southwest, Peru—but it can also be built into the fabric of a city intentionally—Washington, Madurai, Paris, Athens. It unconsciously shapes life, and it rarely has anything to do with climate or neighboring friends and foes. You catch hints of it with some of the greats, but for the most part I think it’s very glossed over in a genre that should really be down with the concept. And I love that Meghan takes the time and energy to bring that to life and really show how it shapes and holds the people who call it home. Even after they’re long gone, in some cases.

Wait, I was talking about the books and then I got all crazy art historian on you, didn’t I? Sorry. Leftovers from my Indiana Jones days, I guess. I made icons to express my love, and I’ll add some to my sidebar over there… er… tomorrow. Because apparently it’s 3am, and I failed to notice.

Whoops. The good news is that I’m about to shut up, though!

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Now playing: The Smiths – This Charming Man (New York Vocal)
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Right, so, I’m a nerd.

I grew up religiously watching Star Trek with my dad, but obviously The Next Generation. I loved the older one too, though, as ridiculous as it struck me sometimes (as ridiculous as early TNG strikes children right now, no doubt), there was always something amazing and fresh about it, decades after the whole thing began. There’s still a bumper sticker on my bedroom door at my parents’ that says “Starfleet Academy”, and I had a poster of Geordi LaForge (my favorite character!) on my wall next to the Beatles/Stones/etc. ones.

So when I say that I was hesitant about the idea of a Star Trek prequel-movie, you’ll understand that it was with a touch of that deep and abiding suspicious, protective fangirl/fanboy fear. (Thank you, George Lucas, for proving that sometimes that’s very well founded. You jerk.) Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean. But after seeing the proper trailer before Quantum of Solace yesterday, finally, I gotta say that I’m a lot more hopeful. To use comic book terms, it strikes me as being a bit like the Marvel Ultimate Universe… if there were actual continuity between Ultimate and 616, anyhow. Ultimate in feeling, back before Ultimate-verse got just as jacked as 616.

It’s not my dad’s Trek, is what I guess I’m saying. But I bet he’s going to like it as much as I do, no matter how much that turns out to be! Here, have a bootlegged trailer:

There’s just no saying no to Simon Pegg as Scotty, though, is there? I mean, really.

(Quantum of Solace = score 2 for Craig As Bond. I did miss Eva Green though. Oh man.)

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Now playing: Siouxsie & the Banshees – Hong Kong Garden
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I hit 50k today and, amazingly enough, my Nanowrimo novel, Camp Town is finished. That extra 10k exploration I took ended up being way more than filler, as expected. Even if it doesn’t end up staying completely, chunks of it certainly will, and god knows it made the epilogue, which happens 10 years after the meat of the story, that much more grounded for me.

I was only at 41k as of midnight last night. I sat down right about then and started to organize the last bit, really figure out what I needed to draw it all together, and then finally wrote about 1k before I realized it was 4am. Today I started working at noon and ended at about 6pm. I pretty much want to curl up in a ball and finish this bottle of Black Bush at this point, but…

Also, yay! In celebration I updated my Nano page with the finished table of contents. I actually used chapter names, which I don’t usually do. Now with more (also obligatory, though I thought I got out of it on my playlist entry, no dice) Manic Street Preachers reference! But I left the old excerpt since it’s pretty representative of the particular brand of weirdness I’m selling this time around.

And now I’m ready to shove this thing into the proverbial drawer, pay attention to the odd short story that catches my fancy, and prepare for the madness of the holidays– sure to consume me from about midway through November until after the New Year. I have at least one trip to WV planned, plus some cool friend and family visits (including one for yet another Oasis show on 20 Dec– sorry man, I have an addiction and I have since I was 15, there’s really no point in fighting it now, is there?) and general holiday weirdness. I love Christmas, in spite of my heathen ways, because it gives me an excuse to buy everyone books and pretty things, so it’s hard to be sorry about it all.

Except that I’m already tired of the Christmas music. Thank you, Meghan Brunner, for your renn fest versions of awesome, sure to bring a smile to any weary musician’s face.

So I now bow out of plaguing you with my Nano updates, and officially return to the Reviews of Awesome Stuff in the coming weeks!

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Now playing: Air – Cherry Blossom Girl
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So there was a very, very minor site update last night– if you’re here take a sec and check out the sidebar. If you can’t see the category headings (”info”, “project excerpts”, etc.) or if the title image looks somehow wonky (apart from the quality of the artwork itself…), let me know. If everything’s cool, I’ll, ah, assume it’s cool. I just had an urge to replace some stuff so I did it while I watched the Steelers get beaten yesterday.

But we won’t talk about that any more. :/

Moving on, I did absolutely nothing for Nano this weekend, after clocking out on Friday with over 28k. That felt good, but I’m far enough into the book now to miss the company of my main character when I’m not writing.

I was always very attached to my imaginary friends as a kid. Nice to know some things never change.

And now to the important things! I read quite a lot of good stuff last month, seeing as it was October, but since I’m writing a novel that will inevitably end in extreme depression, I have an urge for things that strike me as fun. Therefore, this tiny edition of Spec Fic Recs is going to use that as a theme. Two stories this time, both of them awesomely fun– no hint of melodrama or despair.

Anyhow, it’s that time of year when there isn’t enough sun to go around, now. So I’d best start this off on the right foot.

The first of my two picks today is The Girl Prince by Merrie Haskell, from the last issue of Coyote Wild. This is sci-fi meets fairy story, a quest to save the princess in the tower, but with space suits and references to giant alien squid creatures. I know, how much more perfect can an idea get? But Haskell writes beautifully, deftly wielding the dual charms of true adventure and utterly disarming combination of practicality in fairy tale romance. (I do mean “romance” in the larger sense of the word, of course.) I’m also a sucker for fun physics and/or superhero science applications in my fiction, and this story is full of those goodies. She takes a good idea and makes it great.

As a sort of side note, growing up a girl who was into speculative fiction was sometimes a real pain in the ass. People would tell me I would love Piers Anthony, and I’d sit there with this look of horror on my face as I choked down the misogyny of the Incarnations of Immortality and wondered what the hell they were thinking. (They meant well, and I still like that concept, but man. The pain.) There were good things about it too– my dad hooked me on fantasy by giving me Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon when I was way too young for it, for example, and it’s still one of my favorite books to this day. I’m not saying that’s a reason to read The Girl Prince, it’s not a feminist story or even trying to beat down that nonsense (except by mocking them to death), but it’s definitely one of the reasons it struck me as so very true and clever as a girl, if not a prince, myself.

But don’t worry, feeling slightly marginalized as a kid isn’t a pre-requisite to enjoying it; it’s fun for everyone. Nobody likes to wait to be forbidden not to do what they really want, after all. (Hm, that makes more sense in context. Sorry.)

And the second fun read for the month is Catherine Schaff-Stump’s The Initiation Rites and Incantations of the Vampire Killers Junior Auxiliary, from the inaugural issue of Drops of Crimson. This is not your typical vampire story by any stretch of the imagination, first of all (not that I’d mind if it was, because, er, vampires!). Instead it’s a groovy slice of an original world, wherein vampires occupy suburbia now and then, and vampire hunting is a real career option. This one follows the fabulous ten-year-old duo of Vince and Abby through a short, weirdly adorable adventure. What I love most about this is the understated prose and extraordinarily engaging storytelling. From a technical standpoint, I could learn a lot here.

From a reader standpoint, ha! That was awesome! I’m such a sucker for a great vampire (okay, that sounds like I’m trying to be punny, but I swear I’m not), any kind of vampire, but this one is just too cool.

So there we have it, some light spec fic to convince us all not to give up hope on our nano novels– or other novels, while the rejections and brain-blocks continue to roll in mercilessly in spite of the fact that this is November, dammit!

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Now playing: Keane – Black Burning Heart
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