Today’s post can be found at http://magicalwords.net, the group blog on the business and craft of writing fantasy that I maintain with fellow authors Faith Hunter, Misty Massey, A.J. Hartley, C.E. Murphy, and Kalayna Price, among others. The post is called “On Writing: Character Dynamics,” and it is about developing relationships among our characters. I hope you enjoy it.
This morning I drove with a friend to do some birdwatching at Radnor Lake, one of the birding hot spots in the Nashville area. Nashville is about 90 miles from where we live, so this was no small undertaking. It turned out to be a quiet day. We saw a few things at the end of our walk — a singing male Prothonotary Warbler, resplendent in brilliant yellow; a furtive Northern Waterthrush, which is not an easy bird to find; a singing male Summer Tanager, bright red and very cooperative. But we had hoped to see more. This is the height of Spring migration, and Radnor is known for turning up rarities. We didn’t find any.
It would have been easy to feel that we had wasted the day and the long drive. But it was a beautiful morning, breezy, warm, sunny. There were Wood Ducks all over the lake. We saw thrushes and managed to find Scarlet Tanagers — common but gorgeous — Swainson’s Thrushes with their ascending, ethereal, flutelike song, Nashville and Blackburnian and Yellow-throated Warblers. I had some nice time with a good friend. And I was outside, smelling wild roses and the sweet scent of Sycamores.
There was nothing wasted, no reason to be disappointed. Sometimes adjusting expectations is the key to enjoying oneself. Today was a perfect example.
A New Post About Characters Run Amok!
Today’s post can be found at http://www.sfnovelists.com, the group blog on speculative fiction that I maintain along with a group of over one hundred published authors of fantasy and science fiction. The post is called “Characters Striking Out On Their Own,” and it’s about those characters who surprise us by becoming more than what we as authors originally intended. I hope you enjoy it.
Spring bird migration has come early to the Cumberland Plateau. Usually mid-April is when birds start trickling in — swallows swoop and dart across fields, gnatcatchers and White-eyed Vireos scold from overgrown thickets just beginning to leaf out, the first warblers — Black and Whites, Black-throated Greens, Yellow-throated — sing from still-bare branches of oaks and poplars.
This year, though, is different. With the uncommonly mild winter and early spring, everything leafed out early — most of the flowering trees are done flowering; nearly all of them have leaves. My wife’s garden is weeks ahead of where it normally is. And the birds, somehow sensing this on their wintering grounds in Central and South America, have already started streaming through in earnest. Tanagers and orioles, grosbeaks and buntings, thrushes and several species of vireo — all are here. And in the past few days the warblers have arrived in numbers. Hooded, Tennessee, Nashville, Yellow, Cape May Palm, Prairie, Blackburnian; Ovenbirds and Waterthrushes. I’ve seen more than twenty species of warbler already this year. No doubt more are on the way.
If you’ve never seen a warbler, you owe it to yourself to look for them, or at least Google “Blackburnian Warbler” (as a for instance) and look at the photos that pop up. These are gorgeous birds, decked out in smart suits of yellow and black, blue and gray, green and brown and red. They winter in the tropics and even the dullest among them look exotic. They are tiny — each could fit in the palm of your hand. And their songs — they offer a repertoire of trills, sweet whistles, chips, and bouncing melodies that, for me at least, is the true herald of spring’s arrival.
But this is a limited time offer. The birds pass through on their way to their breeding grounds in the northern forests of New England and Canada. So look for them soon, or wait until next year.
Today’s post can be found at http://magicalwords.net, the group blog on the business and craft of writing fantasy that I maintain with fellow authors Faith Hunter, Misty Massey, A.J. Hartley, C.E. Murphy, and Kalayna Price, among others. The post is called “On Writing: Characters to Love, Characters to Hate,” and it is about finding the right balance between “too nice” and “too dark” in our protagonists. I hope you enjoy it.
Another Post About One of My Kids. So Sue me.
My younger daughter, who is in seventh grade, is playing middle school volleyball this year. She is quite an athlete. She’s a truly gifted swimmer, and has been playing soccer since she was four years old. But this is the first year she has played volleyball, and frankly I didn’t know what to expect. I played volleyball in high school; I always enjoyed it. When my daughter started working with the team, she and I spent some time working on technique. But until this afternoon, I hadn’t seen her play in a match.
What gets me though, is that I didn’t know she could do the things I saw her do this afternoon. I had no idea. She blew me away. Her team lost a very, very tight match, and she was there at the end, a leader on the team, consoling the girl who let up the final point — that might have been the most impressive thing I saw her do, actually.
She’s the younger of my two kids, and in some ways I still think of her as younger than she is. That’s a mistake that will be much harder to make after what I saw today.
New Book From Mary Robinette Kowal!
Today is book release day for my wonderfully talented friend, Mary Robinette Kowal. Her second novel, Glamour in Glass, is out today from Tor. And oddly enough, if you buy the book soon enough, you have an opportunity to own an instant collector’s item. Yep. Mary explains here. You see, Tor, in one of those strange and unfortunate convergences of circumstance that sometimes mar the publishing process, printed the first run of Mary’s novel without some final corrections, and without the novel’s first line.
Even so, this promises to be a terrific book. Mary is a Hugo and Campbell Award-winning author whose first book, Shades of Milk and Honey, earned critical acclaim and several award nominations in its own right. Glamour in Glass promises to be one of the most important releases of this year. So pick up a copy, and own a collector’s item.
Today’s post can be found at http://magicalwords.net, the group blog on the business and craft of writing fantasy that I maintain with fellow authors Faith Hunter, Misty Massey, A.J. Hartley, C.E. Murphy, and Kalayna Price, among others. The post is called “The Writing Life: Fear, Want, Dissatisfaction, Defiance,” and it is about the roiled emotions that drive me to work and write. I hope you enjoy it.