Anyhow, I’ve got vamps on the brain, and I’m still kind of wistful about Italy, so I figured I’d do a little combo post. One of my kind of back-of-the-brain things the whole time I was 0n vacation.

So of course the Italian word for Florence is Firenze–the outdated version being Fiorenza. In the books, the growing “family” of vampires would be the Fiorenzas, which if you’ve seen the website will be abundantly clear. A lot of times I just pick names because they sound right, but that one was deliberate. They’re from Florence originally–which is pretty rare in the US, as most of the Italians who came in the early 1900s were southern or Sicilian. A namechange at Ellis Island was standard (see the “O”s and “Mc”s getting dropped off Irish names and Italians ending up named after their hometown all over the place), but combined with their weird provenance, probably indicative that they weren’t your average immigrants, this well-dressed guy in his late twenties and his three-year-old nephew. Not just looking for a new start, but running from old troubles.

This is not why I wanted to go to Florence, for the record–I’m sure when I made up this whole backstory, I had no idea I’d ever actually go there, though I totally wanted to. I was living in a shitty frat house (no really), surviving on ramen and Camel Lights, and pretty sure it was going to stay that way until I dropped. But that didn’t stop me giggling when B told me the name of the place he wanted to stay:

Anyhow. There’s not much about it in the books because Gianni has been long-forbidden by his uncle to go back to Italy, let alone the actual city. (Why, and why he actually listens, well, all will be revealed. Eventually.) But like all Americans, there’s a certain amount of clinging to “home” as somewhere else. So every now and then in Italy I’d see something  that’d make me stop and think of them. Because this is what being a writer is, and we all know it: random imaginary friends invading every aspect of your life, to the point where sometimes you can’t even watch TV or look at a painting without thinking, “Huh, bet Liam likes this.” Insert-your-character-name.

19th C. Copy of Francesco di Lorenzo Rosselli’s Pianta prospettica della Catena, c. 1471-1482 in the Museo Firenze com’era.* If you click to enlarge and look really close, you can even see the names of some of the landmarks written on it. “The so-called Pianta della Catena, attributed to Lorenzo Rosselli, is the first known exemplar in the history of cartography which is intended as a complete representation of the city with all its buildings and the dense network of streets and squares.”**

In Liam (and all subsequent books), there’s a wall-hanging in the Fiorenza living room in New York that’s meant to be a map like this, almost exactly. I wrote it before I even knew this painting existed and was semi-famous–in Florence, anyhow. So you know when I saw this thing on every damn coffee mug, mousepad, and everything else ever while wandering around on vacation, I stopped and grabbed the prettiest print (at the Accademia, as it happened) I could find, brought it back here, and looked that shit up.

So one of the fun things I got to do with my Liam runthrough was describe the wall-hanging much, much better than I had originally.

Yeah, I don’t know, I thought it was fun.

I bought this little map too, which is super cool, but wasn’t precisely what I needed for the book. It’ll look kickass framed on my wall, though.

Okay, I’m off to WV for the weekend. Happy mother’s day, all y’all moms out there. <3

*I didn’t go to that Museum, so I had to come home and research the fuck out of it to figure out what it was and where it was from. That sounds like I’m complaining, but no. This is my idea of a good time.

**Source: Official site of the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, which I did in fact visit and adore, as I may have already mentioned.

Yeah, so, if anyone happened by here over the last few days, they may or may not have noticed that I accidentally killed the site. Like, Thursday morning or Wednesday night. I was trying to figure out how to host multiple domains with my single hosting account. First I screwed up by accidentally changing my hosting to windows, which tanked my wordpress installation apparently. Except I didn’t know because I went to see The Avengers with Hayley. And we spent the whole day before watching Avengers movies. So the next morning I woke up and my site was dead, and probably had been all day. Which is always hilarious when you have no idea why.

And by hilarious I mean it makes me shouty and stabby. So, hilarious in an impotent rage kinda way, which is awesome.

BUT! I did actually win that battle. Then made the mistake of updating wordpress, which decided to take issue with a twitter plugin I don’t even use and tank the site again. This problem solved…

I finally got to do what I’d been trying to do for the last three days. And so now, I have it. No longer exiled to a single lonely page at kvtaylor.com, Liam and co. now have a real space. I am super excited about this fabulousness:

 http://fiorenzafamily.com/

It’s not done, but it’s got the skeleton in place and some fun character bits for the moment. More when the time draws  nearer, but I couldn’t have that beautiful art and not do something with it straightaway. Even if this isn’t your kind of book, you gotta see Courtney’s Liam drawing. Yes, barring disaster, it will be used for the cover — though not as is. But seriously. Dude looks rad.

And now back to combing through his dirty manuscript so I can have a nice shiny version for the Belfire folks to work from. Yay!

To gear up for the latest print release from Morrigan Books, author Carole Lanham is sharing 31 secrets in 31 days from her collection of award-winning stories, The Whisper Jar.  On May 31, 2012, The Whisper Jar will be available for purchase in paperback, and this is one secret that both Carole and Morrigan Books hope you’ll whisper far and wide.  In the meantime, if you’d like to read the book before the end of the month, please pick up your copy of the ebook today at Amazon.

Secret # 3

It all begins and ends with a leather book, twenty-five significant pages asmudge with jelly thumbprints, pasted valentines, and knee blood. Childhood, if you will, saved on wrinkled paper. You know the stuff: the feathers you collected, the cigar ring the neighbor kid slid on your finger behind the snowball bush, that snotty smear that was once a frog’s heart… KEEPSAKES. That’s what the front of the leather book says, written in curly gold letters more flowery than flowers. Real gold letters, probably, and worth a small fortune each. Be it a shoebox, a hope chest, or a dresser drawer, one should always have a place to keep what must be kept.

The Turnbull brothers had a leather book…

~ Keepity Keep

Carole Lanham is made entirely out of awesome. The Whisper Jar is packed to the lid with dark magic and whimsy, while bearing an ominously old-fashioned touch that might make Edward Gorey feel right at home. It deserves to be ranked as a modern classic.

~ Brian Hodge, author of Mad Dogs and Picking The Bones

]]> http://kvtaylor.com/2012/05/03/31-days-of-secrets-with-carole-lanham/feed/ 2 http://kvtaylor.com/2012/05/02/so-long-firenze/ http://kvtaylor.com/2012/05/02/so-long-firenze/#comments Wed, 02 May 2012 17:05:53 +0000 Katey http://kvtaylor.com/?p=3529 Apologies for all the automation and lack of attention to bloggy goodness these past weeks. I’m back, and now that my time is my own again, I’m back on it. Red Penny Papers, Fae Awareness prep, fundraising, and certain submissions that have left me feeling like I ripped my own heart out–more on that next time–demanded immediate attention upon my return. And apart from that last thing, they were all rather delicious, so there are no complaints here. Hell, that fundraiser actually restored some of my faith in humanity. Props, humanity.

Italy was, of course, wonderful. I say Italy, I should say Florence, because that’s all we saw. We had vague intentions of taking a side trip to Rome, but failed to tear ourselves away. There are a million and one reasons I chose Florence as my very first time ever Europe trip. (Yes. I have been to Tibet, but never set foot on the European continent–which is, incidentally, much easier to get to. Who knew?) I’d be lying if I said an affection for Tuscan wine wasn’t one of them, but we all know I drank my way through the vino della casas of Florence, I’m sure.

Honestly, though, it was the art and the Medici. I took a class on early Italian renaissance when I was an undergrad and sort of scoffed at the idea. God, Italian ren, it’s all been done, change the fuckin’ record. Yeah, obviously I fell in love with it, in spite of it being rather an early class and my professor having a low, soothing radio announcer’s voice that made me want to fall asleep in the dark of the museum auditorium. Convention says that the renaissance was initiated with the contest to decorate the Baptistery doors in Piazza del Duomo, just before the big old cathedral.

Ghiberti's Baptistery Doors, Piazza del Duomo, Florence. Click to embiggen.

Yeah, that’s B in the yellow jacket. He was following along with the little guidebook, reading the panels like a comic. (Life of John the Baptist. Of course.)

Extra cool points: two panels from the competition survive, those submitted by Ghiberti and Brunelleschi (who famously designed–well, everything, but the cathedral’s dome is a big one) for the honor of decorating these doors are in the Bargello, so we saw those a few days later. I remember writing an essay comparing and contrasting them in class and talking about why Ghiberti’s was so important from a compositional point of view. Ah, memories.

We also got to compare Michelangelo’s powerful David, famously ensconced in the Accademia gallery, but once placed before the Palazzo Vecchio as a symbol of the Awesome of Firenze, with Donatello’s smaller, sweeter one, which is considered to be the first nude figure of the renaissance. I thought I knew these two sculptures. Okay, I thought everyone did. But I gotta say, even knowing how huge Michelangelo’s was, I was still extremely O.o and way more impressed than I thought I’d be with how perfect the thing is. That said, I prefer Donatello’s, which B considered blasphemous.

Entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio in the Piazza della Signoria. Copies of Michelangelo's David and Bandinelli's Hercules and Cacus.

Fun fact: this is also the piazza where the Bonfire of the Vanities was held. I found a good book about Savonarola last year on the sale table at the National Gallery, which is the only reason I know this. I’m sitting there staring at this after a long ass day at the Uffizi (in which I saw every awesome painting ever, kinda) and suddenly thought of that and was like, “Holy fuck, I’m in FLORENCE.”

Anyhow, I was never much of a sculpture person when it comes to western art, more into paintings. But all the gorgeous Donatello was a highlight, and I consider myself a convert.

(And yes, I was singing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme a lot. “Leonardo leads, Donatello does machiiiiines… Raphael is cool, but rude, Michelangelo is a party dude!” I so so much stuff by all of them omg. Er, not the turtles, I mean–oh, nevermind.)

The other big highlight for me was the whole area around San Lorenzo–which was my favorite church of the whole visit, but it also helps that this spot, moreso than the rest of the city, is super heavy in Medici awesome. And yes, another historical obsession of mine, the Medici family, because they were fucking boss. The Medici Chapels are really popular and groovy, but there’s also  the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana on the second storey of the cloister at San Lorenzo, which is one of the coolest places I’ve ever been, or ever will be. It’d be hard for any book person not to get excited over a 500 year old research library with manuscripts of  The Divine Comedy (Dante being a favorite son of Florence) and Horace as annotated by Petrarch (another favorite son).

Desk label with Petrarch and Alighieri mentions. Yes, I searched them all for this. I admit it.

And there was much more Medici awesome to be had, but the thing I think people probably miss out on if they only have a day or two is the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi. The supposed improvements committed there by the Riccardi family, who owned it later, are super florid and uninteresting to me (B: “It looks like the conference room at the Hilton…”), but it’s right across the square and totally worth the entrance fee just to see Gozzoli’s frescoes in the Magi Chapel. It’s this wonderfully intimate little room, somehow preserved through all the meddling in the centuries after the Medici moved to the Palazzo Vecchio.

I admit that I did a lot of amusing myself by reconstructing historical events in the courtyards and crap like that–hell, the whole time I was in the duomo all I could think of was Giuliano de Medici getting stabbed to death during high mass and  bleeding out on the floor. But that’s what I get for reading a book about the Pazzi conspiracy on the plane, I reckon. What can I say, that ugly bastard Lorenzo is another of my historical boyfriends.

Me chillin with Lorenzo de Medici "Il Magnifico" outside the Uffizi.

In spite of being there for eleven days and ten nights, we didn’t get to see everything. But the souvenirs are nice. If you’ve ever had a letter from me, you might know I’m obsessed with Italian paper, particularly that popularly exported from Florence, so I had a field day there. Also, I now smell like Catherine de Medici. Otherwise, most of my souvenirs consist of guidebooks from various museums and churches… and a bunch of AC Fiorentina stuff. See the above picture for me with my scarf.

Also, I am not sure I can ever eat pizza again. Florence spoiled me utterly. God, the food. THE FOOD.

We did have one night in Milan–we got there early enough in the afternoon to walk down to the cathedral, passing La Scala and walking through the Gallery on the way, all of which were magnificent. But the highlight there was totally getting to have dinner with Zoe Whitten and husband.

And now back to your regularly scheduled diet of mean fairies, thirsty vampires, and similar nonsense.

Okay, so I’ve mentioned several times that Liam is the first in a series. This is currently called The Family because, while these vampires aren’t particularly clannish, the events in Liam start a chain reaction that lead to, naturally, a lot of blood and mayhem. But there’s also another force working  to bring them together in a way that isn’t terribly natural to lone killers. It has its own reasons for making a family of them. That’s another story for another time. (Meaning, of course, book four or five.)

The second book is called James, the title hero being Liam’s little brother. Yeah, woo, you heard it here first! Well, at least, those of you who haven’t been listening to it for the last decade heard it here first. James has some issues that are hinted at in Liam’s book, and that come to a head three years later in his own. They sort of force big brother’s hand about that whole coming out thing.

Awkward.

So here’s a little snippet from my rewrite, which I’ve been pecking away at intermittently for some months now. Unseen by editorial eyes, so this is me in my proverbial writer underwear. Here’s James. Ta-dah!

“Yes. I’m coming. And I’m going to watch you vamp the fuck out on someone. And then I’ll be sure you’re not out of your goddamn mind, and I’m not out of my goddamn mind, and I can get on with deciding if I want to hate you or not.”

Liam winced.

So sensitive for a monster, right? Next thing, he’d be crying into his blood wine and eating rats or some stupid shit.

But even while I was making up these mean, sarcastic scenarios in my head, the truth was that my heart fucking ached. All I could think of were all those nights he’d kept me from crying. All the times I’d come to him and he’d made me feel better. All the secrets and laughs and, I mean, eighteen years of him being a dependable bright spot in — okay, my life hadn’t been a bad one so far, but there had definitely been rough, dark patches.

My point is that most kids scream for their mother when they have nightmares. I screamed for Liam.

I fucking loved him. This guy.

This unrepentant monster. He never apologized to me, never even looked sorry. Oh, about upsetting me, sure. But not about the murder.

So, fine. Bring it, monster boy.

He sighed. “James. I don’t — Fuck, I’m sorry. I never thought you’d have to know.”

“That’s supposed to make me feel better? Knowing you planned to lie to me my whole life? Really?”

Another wince. “You really want to do this?”

“No, I do not fucking want to do this. I want it all to be a bad dream, this and the last three years of mass fuckery. But it’s not, so I’m gonna do it anyhow, and you’re gonna help me and like it, you prick.”

He clicked his keychain. The car unlocked.

And we endured the most awkward fifteen minutes in the car ever.

Normal service should resume soon. Thank you for enduring my random ass WiP rambles this month, but I couldn’t bear the thought of the blog being barren, and all my vacations are working vacations, with loudmouths like this in my head. <3

So I figured why not post some vampire-ness. This is a scene I wrote for the first time… longer ago than I’d like to admit. Of course it’s gone through some major changes, but it’s still a fun one for me because it manages, in just one page, to say everything about both main characters. For me, the biggest manifestation of a vampire’s personality isn’t their weird vampy superpowers (though those certainly contribute, though Liam doesn’t have his yet here), but in how they kill.

And so, with Liam’s very first solo kill, he begins to find out just what kind of monster he is.

Time stopped, and I closed my eyes. There was no thought, no control. I spun and grabbed him by the throat before he could flinch. Oh fuck yes, the thudding pulse, the rush under my fingertips as I slammed him against the tree one-handed.

Effortless.

His knife clattered to the ground, and he scratched at my jacket, trying to get a grip.

I leaned close, breathed deeply–Christ, the fucking smell of it made my brain go numb. The jugular thumped visibly as I held him by his neck. He kicked at me, and his windpipe popped and gave a little. Slow, too slow, painful, but all I felt was the desire to tear him apart and get at what was inside. Scared eyes, dark, terrified. Looking at me like I was the devil.

I buried my face in his neck and sunk my teeth in. Closed my lips around the wound, tore deep. Flattened him to the tree with the first rush of blood. Waves of alive, swallow after swallow of him, so good, hot, fast, that same whiskey burning in my middle, into every corner of me.

When it was over I pulled away, staggering with the heady drunken feeling. The newness of being alive radiated out from my center, tingling through my limbs.

He slid to the ground, landed with a boneless thud.

I remembered where I was. I turned, and there Gianni stood, the dirty woman’s knife at his feet, and her in his arms. She had her head on his shoulder; her eyes were closed, and she was smiling.

He petted her hair, but his eyes were on me. “Perfectly done, Liam.”

I looked back at the dead body, then to him again, not understanding, but not really caring. Being blood-high is a feeling you only get in dreams–standing at the top of a tall building, certain that if you jump, you’ll fly.

Except for real.

Understanding Gianni wasn’t my first priority, just then.

“Better wipe your mouth, bello.”

I licked at my lips, tasted blood. I suppose I was vaguely horrified, in the most academic sense.

“Ready in a moment.” Then he looked down at the woman, and she looked up at him like he was her knight in fucking shining armor. Like he was her long lost love, her father, her brother. Anyone she’d ever wanted to see again. He tilted his head, looking like he might kiss her. Her eyes closed, and he went for her neck. Gorgeous bastard didn’t lose a drop of blood.

I looked down at my hands, one of which was smeared with red. I squatted and wiped it on my victim’s coat.

It came off easily.

None of this “take a sip and throw em back” thing. Though I dig that, it’s all or nothing for these vampires. Balls to the wall, man.

So yeah. Fun. Monsterlove.

I promised a war and politics excerpt from my weird epic fantasy/clockpunky Plaguebringer, I know. Thing is, most of that stuff won’t excerpt properly, so I went for a sort of subsidiary issue: Nieva Zarathas (why yes, yes she is the hero of “The Silver Quarter”, along with swordboy from last week’s excerpt–that story is their shared history) and her quest for ET.

No, this is not sci-fi. Emergent Technology, of course. A mercenary outfit like the Company of St. Rage needs to keep ahead of the weapons curve, after all, and who better than their very own mechanical genius to manage things? And so she returns to her home country of Navaquin with a powerful contact (Ciprian) and a fellow mercenary (Ruarigh) in search of something new. But women can’t just go wandering around these places…

The Hornet Club, hub of leisure for the sons of these rich Navaquin lords, was several steps above everything else. Apart from the real estate itself, in the coveted center of Corteva Gates, very near the Palacio Corteva itself, and the sheer incomprehensible size of it, the interiors were overblown. Never had she seen such a profusion of rich textiles, both Navaquin and Senecan, of plush carpets and hand painted tile-work, of arched doorways made from ancient mahogany and soaring ceilings. A small ensemble of guitarist and singer here, dancers there, and all of it drowning in Senecan cane liquor — the latest fashion, so Ciprian had told them — and illicit Valdonian l’anisea.

That, Ciprian seemed to think, was how they would recognize the room in which they ought to look for his contacts. Where l’anisea went, one could generally expect a tattoo-sporting Valdonian blackwood runner. In this case, one also running weapons.

They wandered through crowds of sweet-smelling men, no one over thirty-five years of age, no one with less of a fortune than a duke’s heir, whether he was or not. Here and there was a blond head or white face of a Minaddon or Fearghan boy sent for educational purposes to Corteva Gates, the heart of continental politicking. Ruarigh, who had cleaned up very prettily in Navaquin leathers, drew very few stares apart from appreciative or respectful ones. Nevertheless he hung back, allowing Ciprian and Nieva to make way for him.

Ciprian shot her an irritated glance as he snatched two glasses of cane liquor off a passing servant. He handed one to her. “That disguise is idiotic.”

“It’s not a disguise.” She accepted the liquor and breathed deeply. Smelled good, but then, alcohol made from sugar. What was not to love?

“You look ridiculous.”

“I look exactly how I always look, but with no boobs.”

“That’s what I said, Nevian, you look ridiculous.”

She hardly had any boobs, so she wasn’t sure how biding them made much of a difference. And she always dressed like a boy, anyhow. “You can’t come in here with boobs, Ciprian.”

“You could if you said you were with me. We’re surrounded by sheepfucking sons-of-whores, perhaps, but they won’t fuck with a DaCorteva’s girl.”

“Thanks for the offer, Ciprian, but I’d rather die in a fire.”

He finally shut his mouth there and led them toward the back of the club.

So I chose that little excerpt because it proves that Nieva is fairly unchanged from the adolescent depicted in “The Silver Quarter”, and realized it also refers to the other story I have out there from this world. “The Runner” is about a “tattoo-sporting Valdonian blackwood runner”. But I’ll come back to Cami later.

Of course this means I can feel the pre-vacation freakout hovering in the air just behind my left ear. As Bertie Wooster says (though about a different sort of bird), “I can feel the beating of its wings.” Therefore I’m bound to be a horrible blogger once more. You know how it goes — the week before, when everything dissolves into nonsense. The travel days, when something must go horrifically awry. The being there, when time moves waaaay too quickly. The week after you come back, when all you want to do is sleep.

In order to fend off blog lethargy, I’ve decided to set up some pretty little WiP Wednesday posts to run while I’m gone. This is appropriate because while my social networking skillz will not be out in force, I will definitely be working on a few projects while living it up in beautiful Florence. Or… okay, let’s be honest: wandering around beautiful Florence utterly lost, which is more likely.

Here is the first, in re a project very near and dear to my heart, which got plenty of air time here while I was drafting it. A little (by which I mean gigantic) epic fantasy called Plaguebringer which I hope to have in submission shape before the end of the month.

It’s actually a book about political plots and, ultimately and unsurprisingly, a horrific plague/war combination. However, I’m going to throw out a bit of the interpersonal stuff that weaves through it today because–well, for one thing, those make for better excerpts. But also (warning: ulterior motives!), it’s actually relevant to my recent story in Niteblade, “The Silver Quarter”. Its hero, a badass little teenage swordfighter called Elanzah, grows up to be an even more badass swordmaster with the mercenary Company of St. Rage. And there are certain words you do not say in his presence–as “The Silver Quarter” explains–unless you want your ass kicked. Even if you’re royalty.

The figure that appeared in the doorway was hooded, and the candle in the hall flickered faint. But Elanzah recognized it perfectly for all that.

His heart fell into his boots.

He stepped in front of Cuinn. “You should go.”

Cuinn looked over his shoulder, but Elan stepped in front of him again, blocking his view. Cuinn’s brow furrowed. “I don’t –”

Elan shoved him toward the stairs, but gently. “Trust me.”

Cuinn’s pale eyes flickered to him, then to the figure in the doorway, but in the end his admirable tendency toward obedience won. He turned, and though he hesitated the whole way, clomped down the stairs.

When Elan turned again, Prince Ronan stood bare-headed and breathing hard, not a foot away from him. He glared like only royalty offended could.

“What are you doing here?” Elan asked. And more importantly: how had he even gotten inside?

The boy sneered. “I might ask you the same, Swordmaster.”

Elan set his jaw. “It’s none of your business.”

“Oh, I think it is. I think I have a right to know if the man entrusted with my education is a boyfucker.”

An icy sensation shot through Elan’s chest, starting somewhere below his left shoulder. Blind to everything but the pain, he grabbed the boy and slammed him into to the wall with a thump.

Elan’s head pounded, the word, that awful fucking word, echoing through it like an empty cavern. He leaned in close, inches from the prince’s livid pink face until he could see it again, still pinning him to the wall. If Ronan was bothered by his compromised position, it didn’t show. His blue eyes, usually so open, had frozen over.

Elan lowered his voice to a growl. “Whatever you think of me, I do not. fuck. boys. And if I fuck men, what does it matter to anyone?”

“It matters to me. How many of my soldiers have you had?”

He knew he shouldn’t, knew it was a mistake to show this reaction. But it came out all the same: “Just the one. So far.”

Ronan’s upper lip curled in what could only be disgust.

The cold stabbing sensation inside Elan was followed by a great crack, and the small part of him still begging for restraint was silenced. All he wanted was to wipe that look off Ronan’s face. To get rid of that word in his head.

Whether he does or not, well, I’ll leave that where it is for the moment. Did I mention that if Plaguebringer has a hero, it’s probably Prince Ronan? Oh yeah. Preeeeeetty much.

Whoops.

Next time, politics and war! Well… sorta.

I also slept for like 20 hours when it was over. I regret nothing. And I have a long and rambly thoughtpost for you, now I’m back.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I have been keeping up with things in my own magpie way, which mostly involves twitter and tumblr, since I can do them on the fly while I’m actually doing work. (Not so much editing, occasionally writing, but promoing is a definite twitter and tumblr friendly activity, I find.) An interesting but unsurprising pattern began forming last week when I saw Ro Smith’s comments on the Stardust movie via tumblr:

I really like Stardust, I just want to see the film where there’s a really pretty guy who’s enslaved by the lead character and whose one strength lies in emoting reallyhard, who is only valuable to others when in love and happy, and who falls in love with the woman who started their relationship by an act of domination…

Which is something I’ve always thought about Stardust. I actually do like the book and the movie (very, very different animals), but the fact is that it feeds into something that makes me desperately uncomfortable about lit in general at times. As she says: even though it’s otherwise very entertaining, and in a world where it wasn’t echoing a history of vast gender bias along exactly these lines it wouldn’t be problematic at all. Yvane is smart and capable and Tristan is sweet and kind – I want to be swept up in their love story, but at the back of my mind, there is always this.

And that’s my problem exactly. I think that was the day Jodi emailed me to let me know Scripped had been recommended to the Tiptree panel (not a nomination or a shortlist or anything — just, they’ll read it, which is super cool) so it was kind of extra weird, because Scripped is what it is for that exact reason. But I’ll come back to that.

Today I saw an NK Jemisin post, There’s no such thing as a good stereotype, linked via Corinne Duyvis’s twitter, and it brought it back to the forefront. That one is talking about the “strong female character” type–which for the record makes me stabby. I will never forget back in like 2005 when I first queried a much, much longer, terrible version of Liam, and was told, “People want kick-ass heroines, not literary-minded boy-vampires!” I threw up in my mouth a little, thinking of what “kick-ass heroine” usually means, and that post precisely nails my reasons why.

Obviously, I love women who kick ass–both metaphorically and physically. But yeah. When a character is wholly defined by qualities that all fall into the “stereotype” category, a writer has officially stopped trying.

Related side note: for this reason, I was really annoyed with the Starz TV show Spartacus: Blood and Sand, which a bunch of friends convinced me to finally watch two weeks ago and to which I am now addicted. The women who were “strong female characters” were backstabbing and hateful toward each other, while the “strong male characters” often formed bonds between them as friends, brothers, even lovers, that were achingly awesome. There was all kinds of meaningless orgiastic girl-on-girl, zero orgiastic guy-on-guy (hey, I’m all for exhibition sex, especially when it’s so historically relevant, but dude, treat it right). The message, though unintentional, was still encoded: women are back-biting snakes who exist to compete for the affections of men. Men, on the other hand, though oftentimes complete dicks, can also be capable of such depth and bonds of emotion that they will die for another man (or a woman, but yeah, we’re talking same sex here), in the right circumstances.

Goddamn, it’s like reading Sir Thomas Malory’s woman-hating Lancelot all over again. Or, wait, half of the shit from antiquity. Nevermind, that’s another blog post.

So yeah, there were some kick ass–and not in the physical way–women, but… they were stereotypes, for all that. And the men, who so often exhibited stereotypical qualities themselves, at least had moments where they got to break those molds.

Even Lucy Lawless naked couldn’t distract me. Guys, this is bad. And only one of the issues with that show, but whatever, it’s effectively softcore and arterial spray and I love it for all that. Um, as Liam will prove, I am the last to judge badly on the basis of softcore and arterial spray.

Season two, Spartacus: Vengeance, blows that out of the water–it’s been much better about it, with the women characters operating on much more than jealousy, lust, and betrayal and being genuinely strong as opposed to catty and mean more often than not. (I haven’t seen the prequel season they did in between, Gods of the Arena, so I can’t judge there.) Cheers to the excellent writing team for stepping up their game hardcore. My point, however, is that though there are many, many other issues there, that one bugged the shit out of me with the first season because it is everywhere in our culture. Everywhere to the point that there are people of all gender identities who actually take it for granted. Many little girls grow up thinking that boys will make better friends because girls are hateful and backstabby because this is what they are fed from childhood.

Um. No. Nonononono. (Also, this is why My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, is the best thing ever. I’m not even joking. It’s brilliant. Thanks again, Corinne <3)

Now, as both Ro’s and NK’s posts suggest, there is nothing wrong with having a hateful backstabby woman character or an emotionally powerful but ultimately submissive girl-hero. Especially when they’re not utterly defined by these things, as Yvaine, just as an example, is not, or when those things are explained as the nuanced and strong characteristics they truly are, as a submissive or supportive (not the same thing!) personality really is. I love many, many novels with these types in the spotlight, because that is not all there is to these characters, and other types are presented alongside them.

I don’t generally have my heart set on a gender identity, be it binary or not, when I first think of a character. But this all made me think, as I say, of Jonah from Scripped. (Me me me–sorry, told you it’d come back to this.) I guess if you’re familiar with him, it won’t shock you to hear that I actually plotted the thing with him as a young woman. The reasons he ended up a man will be kind of obvious after the above rambling, but I’ll lay them out and try to go light on spoilers:

1. I had it in my mind that the female fairy, Sela, must be the kidnapper/captor/torturer. (Yes, I like her best, it’s true.)

2. I had no problem with a woman capturing a woman, and said woman experiencing what amounts to Fairy Stockholm Syndrome–pretty much the whole point of the book–as a result of coming to understand and eventually love her captor.

3. I did have a slight problem with said woman-captive regaining her freedom (that needs air quotes, see also: you can never go home) and self as a result of an independently thinking man’s interference and help.

4. I also had a huge problem with said woman obsessing over… well, with how it ends, which I’d rather not say because that defeats the purpose, but let’s just say there’s a lot of lack of agency going on with Jonah at one point.

I sincerely couldn’t bring myself to write a woman in that situation. There wouldn’t have been anything wrong with it, and I’m sure she would’ve been just as interesting and infuriating as characters go. But that’s all I ever saw, growing up, and I didn’t want to do it over again. It didn’t make a single bit of difference to the plot itself, to the story, to the end result, whether that character was a man, woman, or genderqueered.

But it definitely changes the way it affects the person reading it, which is the most important half of the equation. I chose male because it didn’t rub my sensibilities the wrong way–and because the character was amenable, admittedly. (The bisexuality was non-negotiable, but hey, no complaints.) And though that might seem totally arbitrary, it’s the thing I’m happiest about with that book. And, to bring it full circle, what made me happiest about someone recommending it to Tiptree, because I was like, “Holy shit, they totally felt me, there!” Which is what every writer secretly wants more than anything ever, so yay.

So okay, now I finally come to the point: do you all ever catch yourself thinking about this stuff when you write? I love it; I mean, I feel like the whole point of writing is to question these societal constructs, subvert and challenge them by playing with expectations through fiction. I love this kind of shit, and I know I’m not the only one.

But I know some people will be annoyed by the idea, say it shouldn’t matter, or something to that effect, all of which is cool. I’m just interested in the opinions of the people who actually check out this blog because, well, that means I check out theirs, and I know y’all are smart. So hit me.

If you like.

Oh, and just for the record, I know I don’t get this shit right all the time. But I’m having a good time trying.

Thing 1:

This month’s Niteblade is free now! That means, yes, “The Silver Quarter”, the story for which I brazenly displayed my nerdery in mapmaking last week, is free to read. Teenage swordfighter badass (but not as badass as he thinks)! Young genius behind bars in a brothel! Adventure! Excitement! Hookahs!

Exclamation points!11!!one!!!1!

Thing 2:

Oh hey, new book! Nobody’s Hero! So I’m doing this massively fun giveaway over at Superpowered Love, in which you can win romance by the good me (as opposed to the evil me — this one), plus comics and paddy rock and stuff. It’s a pretty cute book though. Well, cute and hot. Lots of sex. As usual. And alcoholic whipped cream!

Thing 3:

Related — an interview/giveaway with me at the fabulous Joyfully Jay. Some of you darklings have expressed a genuine or morbid curiousity about the sunshinier side of my writing, so there we go — and I talk about evil me there too. Fun times. Free book. Etc. Ohhhh and Jay did a wonderful and thoughtful review of the book the day before, so check that out too.

Thing 4:

Also related — if you follow me on twitter or tumblr, there’s gonna be good old fashioned paddy rock tomorrow for St. Patrick’s. You can hit up the DJ Kellan tag or just… you know. Twitter.

I mean, when you’ve got these guys as characters, this sort of thing is inescapable, right? So even if you don’t want the romance, I must recommend the music, because Kelly knows his shit. Even when he’s been at the Powers…

(Jamie and Kellan by Astro)