The Poppet and the Lune (2011) by Madeleine Claire Franklin is a novel in the style of a fairy tale, with fantastic elements like witches, werewolves, spells, and a girl created from dead body parts.

Full disclosure, I got this book in audio form as a complementary review copy. About a year ago the narrator Elizabeth Basalto's sister was handing out audiobook review credits on the books community, and I finally listened to the book last month because I had such a massive audiobook backlog to go through. This is my promised review.

Overall impression: the story was pleasant enough and the narration was okay. There are a lot of fantastic elements, as mentioned above, and there were genuinely clever and moving moments. However, I don't think the story followed through on what should have been its emotional core, and there were some Unfortunate Implications as a result. I will go into more detail on the story below, and there will be spoilers.

As for the narration,jeweledeyes who gave me the audiobook credit said this was her sister's first audiobook narration and it showed. Ms. Basalto's voice is nice and the delivery earnest, but I noticed some technical flaws and tics that I don't see with more experienced narrators. The performance, to my relief, was more solid than in the trailer video for the audiobook; however, it had the same airy quality that could be grating after a while. The repetitive intonation she used when she said "the patchwork girl," a very common phrase in the book because it refers to the heroine, was something of an annoyance. Still, I thought the voice and story were a good match, and wish Ms. Basalto well in her narration career.

( In which I demonstrate why you shouldn't give me complementary copies )

In the end The Poppet and the Lune, despite clever uses of fairy tale elements and entertaining plot developments, undermined its own power by hollowing out what it held out to be its own emotional core. It is many things, fun, colorful, romantic, action-packed, and is also, ultimately, forgettable.

Following on the discussion of the highly rapey Sky Maiden and Woodsman story, I looked through my niece's copy to see it for myself. It was just a standard telling, but there was a page at the end of the book talking about the "lessons" for children. I read it, wondering if it put the problematic elements of the story in perspective.

I don't have the book with me anymore, but here's the general gist of the note:

( Rage. So much rage. )

This is just one book among thousands, of course, and it does not by itself create culture. I wouldn't even care if it weren't part of a consistent message we are bombarded with, over and over from all directions. There is no need to censor the media we consume, but there is a need to question them. The only harm is in pretending that stories told to children are apolitical, because acceptance of the status quo as "harmless" is itself political.

I'm reading Story Engineering by Larry Brooks--almost finished it, in fact. The good news is I found it pretty helpful. I'll probably review it later on, and will use the method described in the book to outline my novels in progress.

The bad news is that the book has its share of fails when it comes to sex and relationship in stories. One of these moments involves Thelma and Louise and the others involve romance in fiction. I figured I'd get my complaints out of the way before I discuss the rest of the book later on.

( I don't think that expression means what you think it means )

The point of this post isn't to say "Larry Brooks is a terrible human being and no one should read his books!" In fact, I started out by saying his book is pretty good. Rather, this post is my attempt to unpack my own reactions. Unless I work through them thoroughly I'm going to find the ignored feelings of fear and anger coming out in other, sneaky ways, so I wanted to confront and deal with them first to give the book a fair shake.

Also, tempting as it may be when I'm feeling angry or threatened, I don't think Larry Brooks is a bad guy, either. I don't know him, but he seems to love his wife and is in most likelihood a decent guy like most men are. It would be so much easier if sexism were a matter of a few "bad apples" as some would like to believe. Instead, sexism is a hard problem precisely because it's a systematic, not personal issue--so pervasive that it sneaks into all sorts of media like this book, and because good people internalize these ideas not out of bad intentions but out of inertia. I know I'm not free of sexist ideas myself because I live in a system that perpetuates these ideas. The best I can do is critically examine and evaluate them, both in myself and it others. This is one of my attempts at that kind of critical examination.

I am not the first of my line to write about my heroine's times. The celebrated thirteenth-century writer Lee Gyubo (李奎報, 1168~1241) wrote the Lay of the King in the Eastern Light (東明王篇), an epic poem about the first king of Goguryeoh a.k.a. my heroine's second husband. Lee, also known as Master White Cloud (白雲居士) and Lord of Gentle Prose (文順公), is my distant ancestor and one of the founders of my house.*

( Fully illustrated with amateur photography )

That's how I visited an ancestral grave to pay my respects and ask for help. Yes, I am that desperate. It was nice to reconnect with this part of my heritage, and I know whom to blame if this project doesn't pan out.

Postscript: Another ancestor, the 18th-century academic Lee Ik, came up in my research as a scholar on Yemaek groups and the origins of the Korean people. I appear to have a multi-generational obsession on my hands.

Why turn Backspace off?

Some writing exercises (freewriting is one example) and challenges (such as NaNoWriMo) aim at freeing the mind to produce whatever comes up, and discourage editing at the writing stage. For many of us, however, deleting typos or awkward turns of phrase is a reflex that simple willpower cannot turn off. For this reason the web app ilys (which is crowdfunding via Kickstarter) has proved useful for people who want to turn off their inner editor while writing. Since ilys obscures the text that is being written, others turn to apps like Final Deadline or Momentum Writer.

Those who don't trust their content to an app whose stability they're not sure of, or have another application whose interface they like better, may have wished that the writing software of their choice supported disabling backspace and delete. If you're on Windows and install AutoHotKey, you can get that wish with a few lines of code.

( Background on AutoHotKey, plus the actual script )

So there's your BS Off script. Go to town with it!

I spent July writing the first draft of my Soseono novel via the Camp NaNo challenge. The default challenge is 50,000 words; I met that in the first week, spent four days in torpor hating what I'd written, found a new direction for the story, upped the goal to 100,000 words and met that, too. I ended up with 104,329 words, of which maybe half are salvageable after heavy editing and filling in all the gaps that remain. Let's just say it's more gap than otherwise at this point.

August will be spent on fanfic, to give myself a break from the orig project, plus research on the novel. I never expected that I'd need to concern myself with the Chinese colonies on the Korean peninsula, but that's where the draft took me. Luckily there are some great books on the subject, including the first volume of a full-color illustrated series on the military history of Korea. Squee!

Here's how big a dork I am: As I read 20 Master Plots, reviewed here, I kept pitting it in my head against Plot Versus Character, which I had read and reviewed earlier. The imaginary dialogue went something like this:

( Of characters and writers )


So that's Exhibit One Million and One in my nerd trial, in case anyone's counting. But the juxtaposition was uncanny, and I found myself writing such well-reasoned and thoughtful responses as "A thousand times YES" in the margins as I read 20 Master Plots.

Plot Versus Character by Jeff Gerke is a how-to book for both plot-centric and character-centric fiction writers to integrate these these two aspects of the craft. I have aired my decidedly mixed feelings about Part 1 of the book dealing with character. However, as expected, Part 2 on plot was much more satisfying. Plot is the author's own admitted strong suit, after all. I'll discuss where I found Part 2 helpful and where frustrations and questions still linger for me.

( Some swell chapters and some big problems )

Despite the book's problems, I think Part 2 is still worth a read especially if you keep the book's overall limitations in mind, or have a good internal filter like recommender inkdust does. If you can winnow the chaff from the wheat, discarding the incomplete or flawed parts while internalizing the good, I think this book can serve as a good guide for story structure and how it can integrate with character development.

I've been talking to rejectionchallenge  over on write_away about using Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, the creativity classic about unlocking creativity through spirituality, in a 12-week creativity course. It starts in a week or two and will take place on the community artistsway. Rejectionchallenge has now written a post advertising the impending start of the course, and the artistsway community is coming back on, so I figured I'd give it a signal boost. I've been waiting a while for this to start up, it looks fun. Come join us if you have time!

Bird by Bird was the first book recommended in a thread I started about writing advice books over at thewrite_away community. I've made it something of a project to read the recommendations in my free time. I started with Bird and finished it over a weekend traveling to another city and back.

( Here's what I thought )

So, bumps and all, Bird by Bird is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in a perspective on the ups and downs of a writer's life, especially one that is funny and compassionate at the same time. I liked it a lot.