Welcome, brave denizens of the year 2008, to Fantasy Friday! Every week, you are invited to write and post anything having to do with fantasy, science fiction, etc., right here in the comments: a true tale of geekdom, a bit of a story you’re trying to write, a review of anything from the Blade Runner box set to the latest undiscovered fantasy artist you’ve seen on DeviantArt. At 5 p.m. PST, if we’ve got at least ten participants, we’ll choose the day’s most entertaining writer and PayPal them $10 on the spot. Go start your weekend off with a cold one on us! (Minors, make it a root beer. Organic, preferably.)
How to make it rich as a writer:
1. Kill Harry Potter.
2. Grind his bones to make your bread
3. ????
4. Profit!
I couldn’t decide between a rant and a piece of fiction. Also, please forgive any html messiness; the italics are kind of necessary to the story and there’s no way to go back and edit this post.
Happy Hour
Time moves strangely in Faerie, they say. Bulls**t, he says, and sips a beer.
It’s just relativity. Very special relativity. Magic dilates time just like extreme gravity or light speed travel—you just don’t need an event horizon or Flash Gordon rocket to get there. Faerie’s always closer than you think. Try Dagda’s Cauldron on Bowery and Third and you’ll know what I mean—ask for the Eggshell Brew. I don’t have the heart to tell him we’ve been sitting in Dagda’s for most of the night and it’s nothing to write home about.
The they are “fantasy writers”, he sneers as he rifles through the peanuts at the bar. They can’t bother with honest-to-God research, so they just use “time in Faerie” as a plot device—maybe it moves fast sometimes, or slower, or not at all. This isn’t bloody Narnia, for Heaven’s sake. He finishes the beer with a look of disgust and orders another.
Time moves between the mortal realm and the immortal at a ratio of 34.6 to 1. Yeah, I f**king calculated it. One day in Faerie and a month passes in the “real” world. Yeah, not as dramatic as 100 years for a day, but I just call it like I see it.
And you know what else is bulls**t? If you eat food in Faerie you can never touch mortal soil. I wonder if he’s on his sixth beer or seventh.
Faerie food is just plain better and the buggers don’t want you lot stealing it up.
Foolishly I ask how he knows so much about this stuff. He snorts a laugh and sloshes beer over the table.
Experience! One evening I stumbled upon Dagda’s for a drink. After a few hours of boozing and a few more of sleeping it off in the back—it’s potent stuff—by the time I got home three weeks had passed. Lost my job, nearly got evicted. And I thought, well f**k it. Sold everything and went back to Dagda’s. Every “day” I step out for a bit, withdraw a month’s worth of interest—just enough for a day’s worth of food, bed, and beer—and head back. It’s bloody paradise. No work, no stress, just Friday nights. He looks at his watch and up at me. Hey kid, he says, it’s getting kinda late.
A suggestion for Brandon Sanderson, when he completes the Wheel of Time series:
This will make your job easier, and it’s how the books should end, anyway. Take the prologue to Book 1, and replace the names with those familiar to readers of this series – Lews Therin becomes Rand, Ilyena becomes Elaine, etc…
After all, the Wheel of Time turns, right? This may not be the end you choose, but it is an end….
So, last year, my buddy Scott talked me into doing Ironman New Zealand (now a mere seven weeks away!). As we discussed race prep and travel plans and such, one of us thought, hey, we need costumes. Because, hey, if you’re going to spend seventeen hours beating the hell out of yourself, you might as well look interesting at the same time.
Of course, the costumes that lend themselves to triathlon are those that involve spandex, so it was superhero time. I joke Scott should be Spiderman, while I would be the Flash. Scott rock climbs, so his was appropriate. I’m the slowest guy on the block, so mine was ironic. We clinked our beers, and I didn’t think anything of it until a few months ago when Scott asked me what size I was.
And I didn’t think anything more of it until Christmas, when he showed up at the house with these outfits:
http://flickr.com/photos/rak/sets/72157603613768936/
I hope New Zealand’s ready for us.
Imagination can be deadly.
When I was young, perhaps eight or so, my brother and I would have swordfights on a regular basis. Being larger and thus longer-armed, my brother would normally win. It didn’t help matters that he would use a sword while I typically reverted to a small dagger.
During one fight, my brother began the countdown for our next battle. As he spoke the final number, I realized I was entering into combat holding my dagger in the wrong hand. I hurridly tossed it toward my other hand, cringing as my brother raised his arm to strike.
And horror of horrors, I fumbled my catch. The dagger flipped through my fingers, fell to the floor. My brother’s sword slashed across my chest.
And I was dead. As usual.
What made it all the more humiliating, though, was that both of our weapons were 100% imaginary. That’s right. 100%. Not even a stick or cardboard tube to represent them.
True story.
There’s been an incomprehensibly cataclysmic tragedy of universal proportions.
Call it the result of poor planning.
You know all those images of Hell? The ones with all the demons and monsters attacking and torturing people for eternity?
Well…
That’s actually Heaven.
There’s a simple explanation.
You see, everyone goes to Heaven. And when I say “everyone” goes to Heaven, I mean everyone in the whole Universe.
That includes extra-planetary alien species. Some of which might not be considered compatible with our aesthetic standards.
And, to be brutally honest, we don’t look too hot to some of them.
To make matters worse for us, as it turns out, we are the demons in some otherworldly peoples’ versions of the Hell myth.
When people get to Heaven, they’re thrust right into the mix — Heaven’s architects never thought to ease the transition with courses in sensitivity training, racial tolerance, or so forth — and everyone tends to freak out and fly off the handle when they see the space aliens … or monsters … demons … whatever. And, so far, nobody’s been able to get in and secure the area long enough to make the needed changes.
Really, it’s all just been a misunderstanding. A very … unfortunate … long-running … misunderstanding.
So — please — when you get to Heaven, try to stay calm.
Try.
Please.
I would like to make a confession. I’m a romance junkie. In high school, I fairly gulped down bodice rippers and Harlequins.
Then I went to college and I became ashamed. I stopped reading books with racy covers in favor of Garcia Marquez and Austen.
But then I discovered the The Smart Bitches and found permission to start reading again.
But what I discovered was that what I truly yearned for, what I wanted to gobble down like potato chips, was Fantastical Romance. I never gave up reading books with faeries and goblins on the cover, and now I wanted the best of both worlds.
So what kind of Fantastical Romance does a junkie like me go for? Well, Vampire Paranormals, of course.
I started with Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series, just because you kind of have to, but gave up after the first three books.
I fell in love with Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse (and still wait with baited breath for each subsequent volume).
Then Robin Mckinley blew me away with Sunshine. (not your average romance, but it hit all those buttons for me nonetheless)
But then I got bogged down in the glut of Erotic/Romantic paranormals that are currently available. And I found myself a little sick to the stomach with all of them. They were romantic, yes, paranormal, yes, but they were also formulaic and sketchily written.
So let me say that after slogging through the Vampire Paranormal swamp for a year or so, there are three new series out there that show promise:
Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson series (more of a werewolf thing, but the second book is about vampires)
Jeanine Frost’s Halfway to the Grave
Ilona Andrews’ Magic Bites
All three of these authors have well-developed mythos, kick-ass main characters who aren’t just all tough bitch, and enough of a romance to satisfy me without going erotically overboard.
I recommend them
I read books in a similar genre to what K. Bird described. The only difference is that I didn’t start with romance books. My first foray into contemporary fantasy began with the Anita Blake series. I stopped reading those when Laurell K. Hamilton stopped writing paranormal stories and started writing pornanormal books. It became too much for me.
I’m also a big fan of Patricia Briggs and Charlaine Harris, in particular the former of the two because I really like books with about 90% paranormal fantasy and just a hint of romance.