Lilith Saintcrow

Cross-posted to The Midnight Hour.

It’s Friday again. (Where the nutting hell did the week go?) So it’s time for another post about writing! I think you’re going to enjoy this one, dear Reader.

It’s about smut.

Due to the volume of mail I receive, I often can’t respond to fan letters–or I’d spend the day doing nothing else. But often, fans ask Questions, and I do my best to answer those questions in a blog post. A Reader sent a particularly intriguing question a little while ago, and I beg indulgence for only now being able to get around to it.

The question was, don’t you get embarrassed when writing sex scenes? As a fellow writer I often do. How do you overcome that embarrassment? And as I started writing my response, I got into a whole-enchilada post about sex scenes in general.

Ahem. Enjoy.
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First, a small correction: Wolfinthewood gently told me that the Carnivalesque wasn’t something she had linked to yesterday. She’s right–it was the someone at the Medieval Studies group who had given the link. Sorry about that. (I plead lack of caffeination.) But Wolf is always worth the read too.

Next up, if you live in the UK, there’s a chance to win one of five ARCs of Night Shift, the first Jill Kismet book. Just hie yourself hence to My Favourite Books and rustle up some crossword puzzle skills. Big kudos to the fantastic and irrepressible Liz, who put this whole shebang together. I don’t know what I’d do without the mods on my message board. They are, as my grandfather would have said, Good People.

And since Liz has put together that contest, I’m going to dip my toesies in the water too. I have two Night Shift ARCs I can sign and send to the continental US or Hawaii. If you’re in that geographic location (dudes, I’m sorry, but I can’t mail out of the US; I’m on some sort of List) now’s your chance to score.

Drop me a line and 1) tell me why you should win an ARC or what you would do for an ARC. Or you can 2) write me an short, short original piece of fiction in the Watcher or Valentine worlds. Deadline is Thursday, May 29.

If nobody chooses to do #2, I’ll take the two winners from those who do #1 and make me laugh the hardest. (Sorry, this is a subjective contest.) If we get entries from #2, I’ll pick one of each. Winners will get a signed Night Shift ARC. (And please, no death or suicide threats for #1, even if funny.)

Now, if you have a blog etc. and would like to review Night Shift, pop on over here and drop Orbit a line. They’re usually more than happy to get review copies out, and since the book comes out on July 1, now is the time to get ‘em.

Whew. I’m exhausted just looking at all that.

I’m currently reading Mao, The Unknown Story. It’s well-written and very interesting. Reading so much about Stalin (you can’t read about WWII and the Eastern Front without bumping up against him) and other historical tyrants and “leaders” makes me wonder how far sociopathy is a prerequisite–not a necessary one, but a damn helpful one–for political power. There seem to be two different types of leaders: the idealists, who generally get assassinated; and the sociopaths, who seem to thrive in creating fascist dictatorships. *sigh* Of course I’m boiling things down to generalities, and I realize the imprecision of such.

Still, reading true crime and history does kind of make one wonder if lots of political leaders, especially ones who are successful in building dictatorships, are just functioning sociopaths. It’s a chilling line of thought and one I don’t enjoy very much. But I went from reading some Crime Library stuff about serial killers to the biography of Mao, and some of the similarities are…well, thought-provoking. And to top that all off, I had been rereading bits of The Stand, especially the bits where Glen Bateman, the sociologist, lays out some rules of human nature. Part of the thought experiment part of The Stand that I really enjoy is the look at how politics might function in a post-apocalyptic society, and there is much Food For Unpleasant Thought there.

I love me some Stephen King. And as Norbert Keene is described in IT, I find much to wonder about and very little that is uplifting in the human condition. I suppose that could describe the way my thoughts are tending today. Not exactly the most optimistic subject in the world, but heigh-ho-the-dairy-o, I’m going to read some more of Mao’s biography today and work on Weasel Boy for hours in between. Dinner is mostly already prepared and in the crock pot, and I might actually get a lot of work done today.

So with that, dear Reader, I’ll bid you adieu. Pardon my wandering, I’m in an itchy and uncomfortable mood, and a good scratching with the comb of fiction is in order. Off I ramble.

Since it’s Wednesday and I have my head buried in The Left-Hand Consort (Weasel Boy having taken a slight powder, as is his wont) I thought I’d just throw a bit of random out there onto the waves and see if I get bread back. Already this morning I’ve made toast for a recalcitrant six-year-old (”Cinn’mon sugar on bof pieces, Mum!”) and told a snarling, up-before-noon teenager he’s a pretty one, yes he is. (”If you weren’t so cool I’d hurt you.”) They are BOTH ungrateful children and shall be punished with peanut butter and jelly for lunch, cut vertically, NOT diagonal, and NOT with the crusts trimmed off.

That’ll show them.

So. Random.

* First prize this morning goes to Ellen Datlow, who gets the most amazing slush. This particular short story submission blends terrifying slush not even fit for toilet tissue with a combative, highly aggressive cover letter, for the grand prize out of all slushy slush I’ve ever read. And I’ve read a lot, mind you. This one takes the cake–but please, it is not work safe, so be careful, my ducks. Hilarious and eye-bleachingly bad, but so not safe for the office. Don’t read it aloud to your boss. Unless, you know, your boss appreciates that sort of thing.

* Yet another study proves meditation makes you more compassionate and empathetic. I have this theory about the state of creation being a kind of meditation, but I’ll leave that for another day.

* If I don’t say it enough, GOD BLESS THE INTERWEBS. Only on the Internet would you find a medievalist’s blog. Not just any old medievalist’s blog, either, but one full of pure crack for writers. Big kudos to Wolfinthewood, who linked to it this morning. (Who is also, incidentally, full of cool things and writerly crack.) I consider it pure fate that Wolf mentions the Carmina Burana the very week I break down and buy a CD of it.

* A glossary of falconry terms, since Tristan is making falconry metaphors left and right while trying to explain to Vianne why he’s been lying to her this whole time. I have the next few scenes in my head. While I have time today I’d better get them out, to salve my conscience so I can go back to Weasel Boy.

* I should stop now, because the only thing that wants to come out of my fingers is bad-tempered weirdness. The above is good-tempered weirdness, but I’m quickly going downhill. Time for more coffee and to get back to work. Because work is, really, the only cure for this tpe of nasty sharp-edged mood I’m developing. I should do a whole blog post about that itch to write and how bad-tempered I get when I don’t–or how bad-tempered the Muse gets when I don’t Obey Her Highness.

But that’s for another day. Happy Random Wednesday, everyone. Enjoy.

Last night I went with MakeMe and the Selkie to see Prince Caspian. You can find the Selkie’s review here. All in all, I rather liked it, for a number of reasons.

The director(s)/producers are staying true to Lewis’s overarching symbolism and storyline, and they have remained faithful to a great deal of what I loved about the Narnia books. I read them before I could even pronounce the words “extended Biblical allegory” (thanks, Selkie) and have adored them for most of my life, even as I’ve gotten old enough for the blatant Christianity to grate. Still, sometimes Lewis was of the Old Religion’s party without knowing it (to coin a phrase) and one gets the idea that he was a reasonable Christian, something that seems in shorter supply today.

Anyway, the movie! Basic plotline: it’s been a year for the Pevensie kids, and 1300 years for Narnia, which has been invaded by the Telmarines. The Telmarines have driven the indigenous Narnians into the woods and almost to extinction, and their ruler, Miraz, is a Machiavellian tyrant/regent. The movie opens with Miraz’s wife giving birth to a son, which means Prince Caspian, his ward and the rightful heir to the throne, is in danger.

If you get a chance, do go see this on the big screen. It is total spectacle. The battle scenes are done very effectively, both in terms of size and in terms of the filmmakers not flinching away from a central theme of Lewis’s work, which was the horrific, terrible cost of war. In the assault on Miraz’s castle, particularly, neither the scriptwriter nor the director looked away from the cost of a guerilla army in a battle gone terribly wrong.

This is the reason I’d counsel discussing some things with kids under twelve if you take them to see the movie. I’m certainly going to take the Princess after I prepare her for some of it–like the fact that people die in war, like the meaning of the word hubris, and our favorite mantras when it comes to movies, “this is only make-believe”.

A slight digression here. There are very, very few movies I will not let my kids watch–WITH ME, all of us actively engaging in questioning what we see on the screen. I feel the lure of “forbidden” fruit is lessened when the fruit itself is no big deal. A movie with adult themes that I discuss with the kids and give them some frame of reference for is in no way as damaging as a movie with adult themes that make kids Wonder, especially when a Wondering Child Has Nobody To Ask. End of digression.

A huge theme of Prince Caspian, along with the cost of war, is hubris. Time and again in Lewis’s books he returned to the idea that pride causes a tumble, and the movie is beautifully illustrative of that. Younger kids will get the message that fighting is not the glamorous activity some TV and movies make it out to be; older kids may get some of the finer points of learning to sometimes just walk away. (In particular, Lucy functions as Peter’s conscience in this film, which isn’t part of the books but is nicely done.)

There is some grist for adult watchers of the film too–the themes of treachery (in particular, Glozelle and Sopesian, who were wonderful characters in the book) and the very, very lovely CGI. The film’s visually stunning.

There are definite weak points, though. First of all, the Telmarines all have an Accent. Now, you couldn’t very well have them sounding like the Pevensie kids, I understand that. But it got bad enough that I leaned across to the Selkie and whispered that “CS Lewis probably did have them as Italians because Italians were part of the Axis, for Chrissake.” (No, I understand the Telmarines were supposed to be Greek. They all sound like bloody Mediterranean caricatures, though. You get the idea.) But really, did it have to be so…well, to give you an idea, one of the big reveals is that Miraz killed Caspian’s father, which puts actor Ben Barnes in the position of playing Inigo Montoya in a kid flick. You just expected him to say, “I am not left-handed!” right afterward.

The Christian allegory is another weak point. Yes, we know Lucy is the embodiment of faith, but having a movie where the young female protagonist is encouraged to wander off in the dangerous woods by authority figures and is constantly having to be Rescued by other, older male authority figures just stuck sideways in my craw. Still, the allegory is refreshingly subtle (just like in Lewis’s books) and can just as easily be subverted, especially once the River Beruna shows up. Oh, and the gigantic yoni at the end, in the middle of a tree trunk, that everyone has to walk through to get back to their own world? Heh. It just goes to show you can’t take the Goddess out. Hee.

And for Christ’s sweet sake (yes, I realize the irony here) did we have to make such a big point of Susan not being eligible for Narnia anymore because she has bosoms? Lewis was one of those misogynist authors for whom girls weren’t good enough unless they were 1. trying to be like the boys but 2. never outsmarting or outstripping the boys, not to mention 3. desexualised and 4. overwhelmingly passive and reactive as characters. But this makes me very uneasy in the films, as it is almost impossible to handle the material without those prejudices shining through. And dammit, why is there the teenybopper love plot between Susan and Caspian? THAT’S NOT IN THE BOOK!

Overall, though, the good points in the movie outweigh the bad, and I think the Narnia movies have been successful because they do have a low BS factor, just as the books did. Lewis didn’t shy away from showing the cost of war or the vulnerability of children in an adult world, or the vulnerability of chivalry when facing an unscrupulous foe. The movies have largely stayed true to that, and they have enough little in-jokes for adults who loved the Narnia series–like Reepicheep’s tail, the Bear sucking his paw, the Hag and the Werwolf (though the movie does play merry hob with the timeline of the book, I can see why)–and then there’s Tilda Swinton, who manages to be utterly chilling in the few minutes she’s onscreen as the ghost of the White Witch. So, Prince Caspian? Worth paying matinee price if you weren’t a fan of the books and have older children, worth paying full price if you’re a fan of the books or really interested in allegory on the big screen, not to mention some very, very good battle scenes. I am looking forward to Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which is apparently being filmed right now.

And now…BEN BARNES, who plays Caspian. As soon as the previews started coming out, I started having a complete and total cow. Because Barnes looks JUST LIKE one of my characters. He looks exactly like Tristan d’Arcenne in The Hedgewitch Queen, which is as yet unsold, and is what I refer to as “my big Alternate France in the 1600s Fantasy Opus”. Tristan is one of my very, very favorite characters, because he is an utterly morally and ethically ambiguous swordsman; and he is the hero (sort of, when I mistreat him badly enough). There was enough Tristan crack in Prince Caspian (oh, the horse racing; oh, the temptation scene with the White Witch; oh, the duels!) to keep the Hedgewitch series at a slow boil in the back of my head for a long while, and make me throw the Space Opera into a deep hole and drag out The Left-Hand Consort (second in the series) to work on during my (very, very small) spare time I reserve for writing what I want instead of what’s under deadline.

So OMFG, I squeed so hard I almost wet myself. It’s not every day you see one of your characters on the big screen, yanno. Especially in costume. And DAYUM but Barnes does the brooding thing well.

It almost makes me regret having two years of work in front of me, because I so want to write both Steelflower 2 and Hedgewitch 2 RIGHT BLOODY NOW.

But if that’s my biggest problem, hey, I’m a happy camper.

This time it’s taking a small article I read about the new Indiana Jones movie getting a good reception at Cannes and turning it into a complete screamfest of a nightmare during yesterday’s short nap; and then taking the book on WWI I was reading, translating it to WW2, and dreaming of zeppelin attacks on 1940s London last night.

My head is a strange, strange place.

On another note, it’s nice to go through the CEs of the print version of Steelflower while listening to ES Posthumus. (The second disk of Cartographer, actually, not the first. Which I am kind of frightened to try, given a friend’s review.) It’s good to see something that holds up, though I really have to restrain myself. A copy edit is not a rewrite, no matter how much I want to make it one.

That’s something about being a writer–the urge to polish everything. Hopefully one should be always growing as a writer, refining one’s craft and grasp of the essentials. But publishing is so slow a game, you get manuscripts that were the top of your game six months ago and suddenly start seeing HUGE GAPING HOLES in their craft.

It’s enough to make one beat one’s head against the wall.

In other news, I have movies to go see. I must see Prince Caspian, and Iron Man. I thought of taking the Prince to see Speed Racer but I think I’ll just rent it on DVD and see how he likes it. And we all know I’m going to see Caspian once on my own, once with the Selkie, and once with the Princess. It’s just the way it’s going to play out.

Yeah. It’s a rough life being me, ennit. (remove tongue from cheek)

All right. Back to the grindstone. If I get in several hours’ worth of work, I might get to play hooky tonight. Which may include dinner and a movie.

*thinks about it* Actually, I am an amazingly cheap date. Hm.

Properly humble, I will now go back to copyedits. Have a good Monday, everyone.