My Consumption: Entertainment not TB

BROM: Lost Gods (a novel with illustrations)

Man, I love some of the topics my fellow bloggers choose.

"Books vs Comics vs Movies vs Games"

Yes, please. I'll take a bushel from column A and a tower from column B and...

It should be no surprise I love books. Hello, author here. Historical fiction, spec-fic, romance, gimme All The Books. Movies, I prefer action flicks but I won't turn down a good sci-fi. Mysteries and magical-realism? Yep, my ass is warming the seat. As for games, I can't call myself a "gamer." I'm more a Cribbage and Quiddler kind of gal. I've never played D&D (Gasp! I know! I think I lose my fantasy-author credentials for that.) Video games? Uh, no. I don't have the skills. Or the patience. Or the dexterity.

Now, comics...comics....~rubs hands with glee~

My love of comics/graphic novels comes from the evolution of learning to read. As ankle-biters, we start with picture books. Big pretty pictures and a dozen or so words per page. Comics have more pictures and about the same number of words on the page. I went from The Littlest Raindrop to Archie to Classics Illustrated. My Flash Gordon (the movie) comic survived traveling the world and my childhood. Asterix & Obelix taught me German. Monstress shares a shelf with Sandman and Snow, Glass, Apples. I really want to build out my mythology collection with more non-Western sources. (If you have suggestions, drop them in the Comments, please!)

I'm the fangirl who keeps checking my favorite webcomics to see if/when they're going to end up in paperback. So yeah, you could say I like comics. I am in awe of the talent of the artists, the colorists, and the letterers. My not-so-secret author wish is to collaborate on a graphic novel series. (Yo, Universe, puttin' it out there!)

Then there's the middle ground between the novel and the graphic novel: the illustrated novel. Has the word count of a novel, but way fewer pictures than a comic. Regardless, the illustrations are amazing. The Hour of Meeting Evil Spirits and The Child Thief are glaring across my living room at The Fairy Bible.

So, uh, there you go.

Hope you all are staying healthy, washing your hands, and practicing physical distancing. We like our readers and want you to hang around for a long time.

Which Should Jeffe Vote For?

Our topic here at the SFF Seven this week is: books vs movies vs games vs comics.

I suppose that, with everyone hanging out at home, social distancing all responsibly, we've all been indulging in our media of choice.

For me it's books and movies. I tried comics - grudgingly - and they just never quite grabbed me. In college a couple of my artist friends set to convincing me to love graphic novels. I still have the copy of Maus by Art Spiegelman that one gave me. I found the combination of drawings and stories powerful. One of my roommates took me out for dinner at our favorite Chinese restaurant as a bribe for me to sit and read a graphic novel. (One of the Dark Knights? I don't remember.) I enjoyed it, yes, and groked why he loved it. (Plus, the crab Rangoon was amazing.) But it never led to me picking up more.

Much later in life, I acquired the Sandman Box Set by Neil Gaiman, which I also love. At least, I love the first book, Preludes & Nocturnes. I confess - with a fair amount of chagrin - that I've never gotten around to reading the rest. It's not that I don't want to, it's just that... I haven't felt compelled. I've found it takes a while to wrap my brain into reading text that weaves around images. I enjoy it, but I love plain reading more.

Because it's not that I don't read at all. I've read 41 books so far in 2020, and I've read all or part of all the 2019 SFWA Nebula Finalists for Novels. (I'm still reading as I have until the 31st.)

Games... I just have never gotten into them. I don't know why. Could be for the same reason as graphic novels? I'd rather have text than images. Even with movies, I think I don't appreciate them visually like many film buffs do.

In fact, this is where you all can help me. I have no idea which game writer to vote for in the Nebulas, and have no way of deciding. Which should I vote for from these?

Best Game Writing 

Outer Wilds by Kelsey Beachum, published by Mobius Digital
The Outer Worlds by Leonard Boyarsky, Kate Dollarhyde, Paul Kirsch, Chris L’Etoile, Daniel McPhee, Carrie Patel, Nitai Poddar, Marc Soskin, and Megan Starks, published by Obsidian Entertainment
The Magician’s Workshop by Kate Heartfield, published by Choice of Games
Disco Elysium by Robert Kurvitz, published by ZA/UM
Fate Accessibility Toolkit by Elsa Sjunneson-Henry, published by Evil Hat Productions

Feel free to offer suggestions in the other categories, too. Cheers to you all!

Now Look What You Made Me Do

Funny. I'll tell you I am not at all a sports fan. But I've come to appreciate the vast and deep ocean of sports metaphors sloshing around in the English language - no matter which side of the pond you're on. I think I even put one in the first book - something about feeling like a puck in a hockey game, only my hockey game was played in three dimensions in low or no gravity. You're probably never going to see a game inside the series. Mostly because war, but I'm not above borrowing a few drops from the metaphor ocean.

Actually putting team sports into a story is right out of the question for me, though. The last team sport I actually enjoyed was kick ball with all of the neighbor kids. Organized sports in school? Complete 180. Aversion therapy to the extreme. So yeah. Not likely. Unless I'm also trying to torture a character. But individual sports? You may be able to guess from Enemy Within that I fenced for a few years and enjoyed the heck out of it. Had all the gear and several blades - at least until we went to move aboard the boat. Sigh. It's not something I can do now with a bum hip, alas. So I have to get my jollies writing it into fiction. I made Ari and her hero into fencers - though with energy blades and the whole thing is supposed to be more like staged combat in that you don't fence a line. So long as you stay in the grid, you can fight in the round. Not that it matters - it was only useful in the story as a means of breaking through Ari's conditioning. 

Funny, too, I would have told you I hadn't invented any kind of martial art system, but I guess I did. Jayleia, the heroine from Enemy Games, has a particular set of martial training that marries gymnastics and kicking the crap out of someone who never sees you coming. While I don't codify the moves in the story much, the point of the system is to keep Jay out of range of whoever she engages - dance in, strike, GTFO, dance back in for another strike, rinse, repeat. It was something she had as a secret from her past - something that she had to reclaim. Again, it was useful as a plot device to force a character to change. 

Games? Funny. You'd think I'd have all kinds of games in my books. We spend so much time as a family unit in games - whether MMORPGs, board games, or having friends over for Munchkin or Exploding Kittens. Or going to the local Sunday night D&D league at the game store. But so far, while you know there are games - mostly gambling type games - on Silver City, say, you don't see them much. How interesting that my characters spend most of their time fighting their separate bad guys rather than having actual lives or down time. Now I'm thinking that maybe I'm going to see about building a game of some kind into book 4 of this series. Cause that book might just be a tiny bit intense and it might need something to pave the way between the hero and heroine. Hmmm. Help me out here. I'm going to want something deceptively simple but that's layers and layers of deep. Maybe a puzzle of some kind that doesn't get solved until the very end of the book and means the arcs have been achieved. 

Thanks a lot, you guys, I wasn't ready to start plotting that book yet. 

Devising a gamer girl's latest thrill

Gotta confess, I skimmed through most of the quidditch scenes in Harry Potter. Sabbac continues to bore me in every Star Wars book, comic, or game that seeks to implement it as a look!fun!thing. And Casino Royale almost put me to sleep, despite the fact that I love me some Daniel-Craig-as-Bond.

Which, you have to admit, is all so crazy for a gal who has a gaming addiction plays games as much as I do.

So if I had to make up a sport or a game for a book I was was writing, I...

Oh crud. I sort of do. Right now. With a thing I'm writing.

The heroine in this story is hard-core gamer trying to wean herself from the lifestyle. (No, this is not a memoir.) My first thought was that she'd be a guildmaster from an MMORPG--something that would not require me to research much--but alas, base-building kill-your-friends games seem to be the affliction du jour, and mama's gotta keep up with the times.

Okay. I downloaded the mini version of Fortnite. It's on my phone and Switch. Just sitting there. Because I don't have any friends who are playing and also have a great desire to be killed.

Turns out, no one in my household can stand PvP. We're a cooperative family. Also, most of my actual friends dig, you know, living. Therefore, if I'm gonna come up with a Fortnite clone for this story, research will most likely be like pulling hair. (Which, incidentally, is lots less painful than pulling teeth but way more annoying.)

Switching tracks, then, what about a role-playing group? Dungeons & Dragons is making a comeback, maybe thanks to Stranger Things, and hey! I didn't even get bored during that opening sequence of season 1. I could totally sit my characters around a table, feed them bad food, and encase them in a made-up world and awesome magical armor!

Okay, so I think this is the way it'll roll up: tabletop role-playing, old-school with paper-and-pencil and hand-painted miniatures, and the setting will be ... epic fantasy? Cyberpunk? Berserk computers and happiness officers a la Paranoia? Space pirates with questionable ethics? Robotic farm animals defying the farmer patriarchy?

All right. *rubbing hands together* Now it's getting fun.

Strategy Games and Martial Arts in SFF Worldbuilding

When I was in Denver for the RWA National Conference, my friend and writing buddy, Darynda Jones, and I took a lunch break at Ship Tavern in the Brown Palace Hotel. While there, I spotted this guy and snapped a pic. It seemed like a good omen, because I finished THE ORCHID THRONE during our mini-writing retreat there, and now (finally!) am going back to THE ARROWS OF THE HEART. This image is highly relevant to the story, for those of you who've studied the cover. 

Once I finish this blog post, I'm diving back into THE ARROWS OF THE HEART. It gave my own heart a little stab to see I haven't opened the document since March 20, 2018. That's over four months ago. A third of a year! Where has it gone??? I have no idea. 

Anyway, our topic this week at the SFF Seven is: If you had to invent a sport or game for your novels (or ever have), what would it be?

It's probably telling about me personally that I've invented several games, and a couple of martial arts systems, for my books - but never any sports. I'm so not a sports girl. If I were to invent a sport, it would probably be something forced on children where they're forced to deal with objects flying at them at speeds as fast as the scorn of their peers is scathing.

Not that I'm scarred or anything.

Despite my early clumsiness in all things Phys Ed, I later discovered Chinese martial arts - and studied with a school for over fifteen years. I drew on that practice in Tai Chi Ch'uan, Pakua Chang, Hsing-I, Shaolin Temple Boxing, and others, to build the martial system that's part of the worship of Danu in The Twelve Kingdoms, The Uncharted Realms, and even in The Chronicles of Dasnaria. (Fun fact: Jenna's dance, the ducerse, is a modification of a Pakua form that can be performed as a slow dance with saucers of water or lit candles.)

Invented martial systems are a terrific way to flesh out a world in SFF. Many draw on religious or philosophical tenets (as mine do), along with the physical training and more aggressive applications. A character devoted to a martial practice like these will have their entire worldview and choices informed by that. 

I've also invented a few strategy games, such as kiauo in THE PAGES OF THE MIND. That game serves several purposes in the story. The shape of the game board and the pieces give important clues to the culture and what they hold sacred. The game itself allows communication between two people who don't speak the same language - and they build an understanding of each other through it. Also, a strategy game gives character insight in the same way martial systems do. Strategic thinking occurs in more places than on a battlefield. 

Sports can do this, too - JK Rowling's famous sport of Quidditch being a prime example. Come to think of it, it IS a way to torture children and subject them to the scorn of their peers, isn't it? TOLD YOU.