Not Your Mama's Magic System

After reading a stellar exploration of magic systems and what makes them work from author J.S. Morin, I decided to stop kicking around the idea of blogging about a few of my favorites and actually do it. While I obviously love me some good ol' Wingardium Leviosa, these are magic systems that appealed to me for sheer imagination and oddity, and went far beyond the wand and the incantation and into some truly unique territory. An early and easy favorite when I first started thinking of writing this was Garth Nix's spectacularly grim and lovely take on necromancy in The Abhorsen Trilogy, and, most recently, Clariel. Not only do the Abhorsens channel their magic through eight bells, the mythology of how it's done, the ancient history behind the efficacy of the magic, even the meticulous descriptions of Death itself and the spell-worked perils therein - it's all truly mesmerizing stuff. Dive just a single chapter into Sabriel and I expect you'll be as deeply under Saraneth's control as I am.

Most recently I was seduced by Naomi Novik's Uprooted. Her descriptions of magical workings from the perspective of someone who isn't native to it are positively enchanting. She captures the essence of the magic through a narrative lens, and each spell is almost like a little story within the story. It's also interesting to see how she pairs a novice caster with a seasoned one, providing the reader space to appreciate how the same magic in one world can still be very different. Did I mention there's singing? Because there's totally singing.

Lastly is a little known folksy steam punk gem, The Native Star, by M.K. Hobson, whose magics are as organic, physical, and irresistable. Credomancy depends upon belief, such that the stronger one believes a spell to be, it will be, and seeing the sangrimancers at work in blood... well. It's grim and glorious and honestly I don't even know why this book isn't a movie yet. One of the best steam punk books I've read, ever, and far worthier of your attention than some others that have gotten a whole lot more press.

There's a special place in my heart for the world-building that goes into magic systems, especially when those systems seem to underpin the world, when they can be appreciated both for what they are and for the incredible and terrible things a good character can do with them.

Play Like a Girl

My husband recently acquired The Witcher 3, and has been on me to make time to play. He insists it's just the sort of game that I like: immersive, open world, story-rich. Despite being pretty deep in the game himself, he's even gone so far as to entice me to the couch, start up a new game, and pass me the controller. But while I'm content to watch him play for a bit, or hear his stories about particularly well-executed plot lines, I just haven't felt the itch. Is it lack of time? Lack of interest? Lack of desire to really lose myself in a proven stellar game? Nope.

It's because I can't play a girl.

Despite growing up with Link and Mario, I didn't really get into gaming until college, when Morrowind blew. My. Mind. And guaranteed I'd spend the entire day in my pajamas monopolizing my then-boyfriend's Xbox, stopping only to take the stereotypical pee and Ramen breaks. The customization was laughable by today's standards, but carefully crafting an avatar, another self, and pursuing my wildest questing dreams in an open world was the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

And that's just my marriage.

But truly, I was hooked. Over the years my favorites have always been those games that allowed for me to really immerse myself not only in a killer story, but also do so in a very personalized capacity. If there's a game with an algorithm that allows for it to accommodate <Insert Name Here>, chances are I've played the hell out of it. Knights of the Old Republic I and II, Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect, Fallout 3. I probably spent as much time in graduate school playing World of Warcraft as I did writing papers.

My desire to play a female avatar, to play through a story that doesn't assume I'm a dude, doesn't come from a place of just wanting to snog Alistair's face off - though I totally do. It has a whole lot more with feeling culturally like I'm always coming up against a male narrative as a universal narrative, which I feel like I shouldn't have to say isn't true, and because the very best games give the player the opportunity to forget they're playing, just like reading a good book. These are RPGs. Giving me the space and imagination to assume a role is what they're supposed to be doing. And if I'm constantly being reminded of my non-maleness by rescuing a princess, or visuals that are clearly designed to arouse your typical heterosexual dude, I'm pulled out of the story and reminded that this wasn't made or meant for me, at least not wholly.

I'm sure The Witcher 3 is stellar; I've heard and seen enough about the story to feel pretty confident in recommending it. But I've also heard just about every female character the protagonist encounters proposition him, so I feel pretty confident, too, about my decision to invest my time elsewhere.

For the Love of Podcasts: Part Two

I promised more podcasts, and while I aimed to deliver rather sooner than I am, I hope it's like a belated birthday wish - sweeter for not having been expected. You should start listening to Lore straightaway, and not just because it's nearly Halloween and it's the best and creepiest thing ever. Host Aaron Mahnke truly delivers on the podcast's premise that "sometimes the truth is more frightening than fiction." It's like what I imagine the child of The X-Files and Unsolved Mysteries would be like if they were sentient beings and, you know, into it.

Mystery Show's handful of episodes are responsible for making me giggle my way into profound feeling, and my trying desperately to think of something I want to know that I can't Google my way into knowing. There's a whole episode about how tall Jake Gyllenhaal is that I swear you won't be able to stop listening to, and Starlee Kine's voice half-tells the jokes for her. She's lovely.

And while it's definitely the one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other of the group, Ask Me Another indulges my every geeky whim. Puzzles and word games and nerd references and Jonathan Coulton. It never fails to delight.

Now, get to subscribing and never suffer another irritated run through your radio's presets only to hear commercials on every station because they're all owned by the same vile conglomerate.

For the Love of Podcasts: Part One

It's always been a rare treat of a weekend when our outings coincided with a Radiolab or This American Life broadcast, so I am not entirely sure why it took me so long to start downloading podcasts to listen to throughout the week. I've  been lovingly complaining of NPR for years that it really ought to be weekend public radio all week long.

Now I feel pretty confident admitting that I am a podcast junkie.

But, I can only really dig into certain kinds, and I realized recently that there's a common element. Though I enjoy the occasional Geek's Guide to the Galaxy if I'm really interested in the guest, my taste in podcasts don't really follow my tastes in genre fiction. I enjoy curiosities and vulnerable human things, science and strife and storytelling. I can't get behind a couple of folks behind microphones just chatting about things - unless one of those two people is Neil deGrasse Tyson, because I could listen to him all day - but I love, love, love a good podcast whose hosts act more as curators for the bold, human stories of others.

Radiolab is the first and best. I can't get enough of the quirky, adventurous stories they collect, so much so that I get irritated when one of their shorts is less than twenty minutes long. Given I have about fifty episodes on my iPod at any given time, this is an unreasonable response. I've listened to this episode about autisim several times, and this one about professional wrestling, too - I'm as shocked as you are, seriously. These really never get old.

Recently I haven't been able to get enough of Snap Judgment. I love the humor and the gravity and the variety, how the stories Glynn collects really have the power to surprise me. Storytelling with a beat - couldn't be truer. The first story in the "Caught Up" episode will blow you away.

There's only one season of Invisibilia, which means it should be no trouble at all to get caught up on every single, amazing episode. Alix and Lulu have such energy, and they're fun. "The Power of Categories" is a must listen, if you can make time for just one.

Now that's a lot of links. I'll leave you to it and be back soon with more.

Eiren Lives and So Does My Pathetic Sense of Humor

Two quick, glorious, gorgeous things. First, are you ready for a cover reveal?

Because I am.

And I'm feeling coy.

Not so coy as to use elipses to excess...

But maybe the enter key.

Because this is worthy of a little silliness.

And a shameless Rocky Horror reference.

Especially when a killer cover waits in store for the patient scroller.

Alright, forgive my old school web games. At least I don't have a glittery tail on the mouse arrow. But it's gorgeous, right? I wish my monitor had a curtain so I could draw it back over and over again in a sort of weird, writerly game of peek-a-boo.

With the cover comes confidence to share the re-release date: September 1. As in, six days from now. Less than a week.

Excuse me while I marvel at my fortune. And work on affixing that curtain in between rounds of edits of The Hidden Icon's sequel.

Good News, Everyone!

I'll admit that optimistic though I was for a future for my writing eventually, I was ready to pack it in for a bit when my publisher closed their virtual doors. There was a whole heckuva lot going on in my personal life that required my attention, and most evenings all I could manage was popping a bunch of popcorn I had no intention of sharing and re-watching Veronica Mars or Enterprise for the zillionth time. I was still writing, sure, but I'd moved on to tinkering with a different project and dreamed of taking it just a little bit easier on myself.

But a fellow author and friend and generally fang-tastic guy Bill Blume was kind enough to offer me an introduction at the press he'd recently signed with, Diversion Books, and I suddenly found myself scrambling to polish the draft of the sequel to The Hidden Icon when they offered to re-release not only the first book, but to publish the next as well.

So this is me formally telling you that there's more to the story, and you get to read it, likely sometime next year. The Hidden Icon has a tentative re-release date much, much sooner, which I'll share once I've got a swank new cover to reveal and all of the semi-certainty that goes with it.

In the meantime, if you, like me, identified more with these guys than this guy when you were a teenager watching Lost Boys, check out Bill's Gidion Keep, Vampire Hunter series. I won't tell you to sink your teeth in because that would be lame, but know that I am totally thinking it.

Feel free to harass me to edit a chapter every time you finish reading one.

Listen Up

I often write to music, and the right song is sometimes the only way to slip into a place where I can actually forget the mundane and drift into the fantastic, the otherworldly, the weird. It's why most nights you'll find me at my little writing desk, studying a screen and a jam jar half-full with wine, ear buds firmly plugging me up against distraction.

What do I like to write to? Here are a few of my favorites.

There's an energy to the Yoshida Brothers' music that just makes me feel like I'm whipping over some wild and unknowable landscape.

Loreena McKennitt  is an oldie but an oh-so-goodie. "The Mystic's Dream" transports me into the secret places of Eiren's world. I actually listened to her a whole lot while writing the draft that grew up to be the first draft of The Hidden Icon. It was a different story with the same heart, but trust me when I tell you that it was a mess and you never want to read it.

If I find I need to feel some feelings, Damien Rice rarely lets me down. The Avett Brothers are pretty good for this, too.

Bonobo is another that pulls me instantly out of myself and into the narrative.

And because it just wouldn't be right not to mention it, Gannet actually has his own song: Beck's "Nobody's Fault But My Own." It has some of the same haunting quality of other things that I listen to, and it just speaks to that secret, troubled dude.

Also, that hot mess of a draft? I was so young. Forgive the dance scene with a strange variation of this tune to inspire me. There's a reason it was cut, even if I do fancy it now and again when I've drained that jam jar.

The Chosen One

I've written about the pleasures of re-reading before and, given the mounting madness of our present lives - attempting to find a new home for my work, a move, a new day job, and the unexpected closure of our child care - I've dived right into a forever favorite: the Harry Potter series.

I'm not sure there's a single reader or writer of my generation who hasn't been influenced by J.K. Rowling, whether it's losing themselves in her work or wishing those of who can would just get lost. I began reading when I was in high school, the spring prior to the release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I was working in a library at the time, and I remember getting on the wait list for the fourth book and marveling at the hundreds of names ahead of mine... and the hundreds of copies the library had pre-ordered. Harry's pursuit of the Triwizard cup has always been my favorite of the seven, and I can only liken it to my childhood love of the Baby-Sitters Club Super Specials - that's blasphemous, right? But, really. They were bigger stories and different; familiar faces, unique challenges.

In the years since I read these the first time, I'd forgotten just how truly sly the Weasley twins were, how really awful Ron could be (and how easy he is to forgive), Hermione's unapologetically dogged nature... what a prat Harry sometimes could be. My love for Minerva McGonagall will go on and on, and while I'm no more sympathetic towards Professor Snape, I am considerably less willing to trust Albus Dumbledore.

But what surprised me most, and probably shouldn't have surprised me at all, was how well these books have weathered not only the years since their publication and my initial exposure, but me growing up. Though I was well past the age when I might have received a Hogwarts letter myself, I was still so young. I connected with the characters, I laughed at their jokes, I cried with them and was frightened with them. That hasn't changed, even though I know that I have. Harry's story is a timeless one, and I hope it's as much of a treat at forty as it was at (a little more than) thirty.

Because I can't wait to read along with my gals when they get big.

Turn and Face the Strange

I'm homeless. Or rather, my book is about to be.

My publisher, Fable Press, is succumbing to the fate that befalls many a small press and closing their doors within the next few months. I'll forever be grateful to them for taking a chance on my work and on me, and for bringing the world within The Hidden Icon to so many new readers.

I took a chance with them, too, and I don't regret it. I don't think it's possible to regret being published, ever, no matter the outcome. I got to feel like a Very Real Writer at Ohioana. The Hidden Icon was featured by my publisher at BEA last year. Friends and family members frequently shared photographs of my book on the shelves of their local libraries, and I scribbled my name in all of the copies at my favorite local bookstore.

People said crazy amazing things about it.

"Jillian is one of those rare writers whose characters communicate with a brush of hands what people in bodice rippers need pages of purple prose to say. The ending brought the house down."

"As a lifelong fan of fantasy, I have learned to settle for quick, flat characterization at times and for shaky or lazy world-building at others. I did not have to settle at all reading this book, and what a joy that was!"

"This book was written with flair, grace, and intricacy; it teased my brain, played with my heart, and left me desperate for more."

So, what's next?

Choosing not to self-publish means The Hidden Icon will no longer be available for sale on Amazon, so, get it while the gettin's good. Or, snag a copy for free. I'll be running several giveaways over the next few weeks on Goodreads. Rights to the book will revert to me soon, so, hopefully it will be out there in the world again someday.

I'll be starting closer to scratch than I thought it would be when it comes time to pitch the second book, but I'm not (too) scared. I can't be. There's too much writing and baking and loving on babies and living to be done.

Write Every Damn Day

As a cat person, I largely ignore pictures of dogs. But a friend shared one the other day that made me giggle, and also cringe. I gringed? Criggled? Anyway.

It was intended to be funny to us writerly types who know what we're supposed to do but don't do it. The picture of the dog was captioned with advice for those who wish to finish a project, and it said simply, "Sit. Stay."

If a dog can do it, why can't I? ^*

When I read Amy Poehler's Yes Please a few weeks ago, I never expected that it would resonate with me in the ways that it did. I knew I would love it, because, Amy Poehler. But as a writer? "The doing is the thing. The talking and worrying and thinking is not the thing," she writes. And it's so damned true I ought to get a tattoo. I stew about projects and that's important, but it's not enough. The hardest, hardest part about the best advice for writers is that it should be easy. But it isn't.

Write every day. Even just a little bit at a time eventually equals a book, but I've been flirting with 50K for far longer than I care to admit. I have reasons - I am married to a Scorpio, I am the mother of two very young children, I work and work and work - but I also have excuses, which I readily employ when given an evening to write and spend it doing other things. I clean out a closet or weed my Facebook friends. I hand wash dishes. I re-organize the playroom. This loathsome stuff can wait. The writing can't, and shouldn't, but it does. Why?

Because it's hard. Because I'm tired. Because some evenings I'm crippled by the thought of being bound to what's out there, what's already written and read by people who aren't my best friend. Readers' expectations can be as terrifying as they are thrilling. But other evenings? Having readers makes it easy.

The zealots of stone and flesh fought on, those who dared come close vanishing in a sickly puff of smoke and oil and ash. I had the power to reduce a score of women to smudges, the stink of grease, but could not save even one. 

Hammering out that little gem today and sharing it reminded me why I do what I do instead of catching up on sleep. I don't write every day. But even getting a two or three-day streak in makes me feel like I could conquer my little domestic round of a world with a jelly jar of wine, a pair of earbuds, and an outdated version of Microsoft Office. I can do it. I should do it. I just need to learn to sit. I need to learn to stay.

^* Maybe because I am a cat person?