Spoilers

I understand the aversion to spoilers — the revelation of some key plot twist — so long as we are talking about current work, something that’s still in the cinemas, some book that’s barely hit the shelves.

But just where does one draw the line when talking about older works?

In a newsgroup I frequent, recent discussions have centered on the Oz books. Someone asked a question along the lines of “Wasn’t there an Oz book where….?” and someone else answered “Yes.” That was immediately considered a spoiler – a malicious interference with people, destroying the pleasure with which new readers will approach the Oz books.

But the Oz books are aimed at kids and those readers are not on that forum at all – which means that no spoilers have been made for THEM – and frankly, if you’re forty and you still haven’t read all the Oz books and don’t want spoilers *just in case you do* I don’t feel that’s my problem.

Then there’s the Odyssey — yes, that Odyssey, Homer’s — how can anybody, with a straight face, even talk about a spoiler for that? I read it as a child. It was my good fortune to have been steeped in the culture and literature and mythology of the old world and the history at the dawn of time. But even if you are living in a Western civilization, you will have heard of the civilization of ancient Greece and screaming “SPOILER” if someone references a poetic saga hundreds of years old simply reveals an abysmal cultural ignorance.

Just how old does a book or a movie have to be before it can be spoken about in public without someone shutting you up about spoilers? I’ve heard the cry of spoiler go up over “It’s a Wonderful Life” – but for the love of Clarence the Angel, just about everyone involved with that movie has died of old age. I should think that the statute of limitations has run out for it by now.

I just re-watched an old favorite movie, one I know practically by heart. I know the dialogue as it is uttered – know the expressions that will come into people’s eyes – know certain favorite scenes are coming up and waiting for them with eager anticipation. But it is possible to watch/read a story for the Nth time and STILL get a kick out of it…. when it is that good. This movie I am speaking about? The first time I saw it, cold, spoiler free, I cried. I cried every time I have seen it since. And the spoilers have taken nothing away from that. NOTHING.

For myself, I pledge to remain courteous about the issue, and conscious of other people’s desires to experience a movie or a book for the first time for themselves…. so long as it is a NEW movie or a book. Anything older than a quarter of a century has been around plenty long enough to have been “spoiled” by someone other than me a long time ago. If somebody hasn’t “got around’ to seeing or reading a particular elderly work of art… well… that can’t be my problem. We are all guardians of our own cultural universe – and the only way to avoid spoiler talk altogether is simply to withdraw from the real world and lock the doors behind you.

Personally, I don’t really care about spoilers. For me, the lure isn’t the destination; it’s the journey. I don’t care if I know in advance that the Butler Did It. What I want to know is How The Butler Did It, and Why. And for that… I’ll watch the story. A good story will survive any “spoiler”, any day.

Israeli edition

“…and Hebrews learn it backwards, which is absolutely frightening…”

(Leave it to Henry Higgins…)

But seriously folks. My head has just been SERIOUSLY messed with.

I’ve just received copies of the Israeli edition of “Secrets of Jin Shei”.

It’s absolutely “backwards”, in that it’s to be opened and read from left to right instead of vice versa. And aside from the copyright notice, which is in Latin characters in English and consists of the title of the book and my name, there isn’t a single solitary thing in that volume that I can actually recognize AT ALL.

Pretty cover, though.

Award Nominations

The Nebula Award nominations are now open and much to my astonishment I have three short stories that people might want to consider if they feel in a nominating mood…

The first is “End of the World“, the story appearing in Professor Brotherton’s online anthology Diamonds in the Sky, consisting of astronomically correct Science Fiction stories written by graduates of his awesome Launchpad workshop (which I was privileged to attend in 2008). You can read the story here –
http://www.mikebrotherton.com/diamonds/?page_id=28

The second is “Choice“, appearing in the webzine “Edge of Propinquity” edited by Jennifer Brozek, and it is available to read here –
http://www.edgeofpropinquity.net/Guest-Quarters-2009/38—Choice

The third is “To Remember Riobarre“, appearing in the Winter 2009 issue of Space and Time magazine – not available online, but I will be happy to provide a reading copy if anyone eligible for nominating the story can’t find the magazine and is interested in reading this particular offering, just email me and ask.

And, of course, if anyone wants to nominate “Cybermage” for the Andre Norton Award, now’s the time to do this, too…

Evil marshmallows at Orycon

Lightly enough scheduled this year – but this is where you can find me at Orycon:

Fri Nov 27 3-4 pm
Alternate History Fantasy? Fantasy is often written in a pseudo-medieval society. Some authors bring freshness to the setting by traveling the world, while others go backward, or forward, in time or just adopt technology or lack thereof on a secondary world. Lace and blade, prehistoric, and other choices in fantasy, and how magic fits in, if it even has to at all. Panelists: Me and another Alexander, John P. Alexander, no relation; and M.K. Hobson, Michael Ehart, Robin Hobb.

Fri 4-5 pm
Artists, Writers or Loonies? It has been said that writers, artists, filkers, and their ilk are successful because they are wired differently. There are those who will use the word crazy to describe this. How far off the beaten path are they? Panelists: Me (I am MODERATING this one, for my sins… [grin]) and Lubov, Kay Kenyon, Joan Gaustad, Edward Morris, Paul Groendes.

Sat Nov 28 10:30-11 am
Reading from my work

Sat 12-1 pm
Building a balanced mythos. How to balance the mortal, immortal, mythical, legendary and cultural elements when world building. Panelists: Me and Lou Anders, Mary Robinette Kowal, Rebecca Neason, Robin Hobb.

Sat 1- 2 pm
My villain is too mwa ha ha. Help! How to make your antagonists more than a cackling evil caricature without turning them into marshmallows. Panelists: Me and Jennifer Brozek, Christopher Lester, Elton Elliott, Louise Marley/Toby Bishop.

Sat 3:30-4 pm
Autograph session

Sat 4-5 pm
Group 8 Fantasy Novel (writers’ workshop)
Panelists: Me and Brenda Cooper

Also, for those semi-local who may not be coming to the con itself, I will be doing the Science Fiction Signing Extravaganza with a bunch of other wonderful authors at Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing (3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd. (800) 878-7323) on Sunday, November 29th, at 4 PM – so maybe I’ll see you there (stock up on signed books! Christmas is coming!!! [grin])

Chaining Your Muse

Somebody is advertising a product absolutely guaranteed to kill writer’s block. You’ll get chains that will keep your muse bound in your basement to do your bidding. Words, muse. I want words. Deliver. And it can be yours for just a Tiny! Small! Fee!

For heaven’s sake. Writers’ block isn’t a disease that needs a cure. It may come and linger temporarily in all of us, like a summer cold, but the cure is passion, and dedication, and determination, and stubbornness, and need, and love.

For myself, I write because I have to, because it’s such a fundamental part of who I am. For those who dabble because it’s fun, and then run smack dab against this particular brick wall, I have one piece of advice – when it stops being fun, quit, and go do something else.

Chained muses eventually die, wrung dry, abandoned, ignored, forgotten. Getting a new one, if you go this route, is going to cost you far more than you ever bargained for, if you can do it at all, and THAT is a guarantee. The only way that a muse will help you is if you allow her to do it because she wants to, because she loves you, because it is a gift. You cannot coerce that, and keep it alive.

Writing is harder for some than for others – but more than that, writing is hard for ALL of the people some of the time. Trust me on that. Sometimes the muse goes on vacation. If you have the passion and the love and the need, you have to trust that she will return, when she is ready.

Don’t spend hard-earned gold on the chains to keep her from leaving.

Little Miracles

A while ago I wrote a couple of pages of New Novel, and even before I printed them out to get a second opinion from my first editor (who is married to me, but who doesn’t let that fact interfere with the sometimes brutal honesty) I knew that they were not good enough. They were dense — four scenes of story stuffed into six paragraphs, a synopsis of what I needed to write.

My instinct was spot-on. My first editor told me the exact thing I had been thinking, without my having said a word about it.

But the opposite of knowing that something is inadequate is knowing that it is good. And every now and then something is good enough to be nothing less than a gift from the Gods.

Often it’s my characters who will come up with these things, stuff I SWEAR I have never thought, or said, or intended to put into a book, until I see myself typing it and it appears on the computer screen. Then I can only sit back and stare at it and wonder where it had come from… because not a syllable of it came from me.

I was given one such gift only the other day while writing my new novel.

I have a character who has taken a step away from being dead letters on a page into flesh-and-blood three-dimensionally with a personality larger than life, a sense of humor, an ability to articulate her own thoughts and responses above and beyond what I am capable of imparting to her.

She meets another character, in a scene of 3,000 words which I wrote at a sitting and which needs practically no editing at all.

When I sat back and looked at that particular dialogue exchange, it was the Gods speaking because I had certainly not planned to write anything of the sort. These were two real people, having a real conversation.

I SWEAR the conversation in that scene did not come from me. But it is perfect. I have a character to thank for that piece of dialogue – gift from the Gods, from their spirit into my hand and my keyboard, I was a channel, nothing else. And all I could do was sit back and stare at the screen and shake my head in astonishment.

I love it when things come together like this. When occasionally there’s a blaze of… something… when the muse walks into the room and smiles.

In the back of my mind there is a tiny grotto of a temple where I retire every night to say my literary prayers. On nights like these, when the little miracles are spilled like diamond dust across the rest of the prose, the bits I know I have crafted from my own knowledge and experience and ability and my own conscious thinking, I light an extra little candle of gratitude in that temple – because I know I do not do this writing thing alone, and when the Gods come to visit, I am always humbled and thankful that I am still sometimes their favored child.

This an abridgement of an essay written for StorytellersUnplugged. You can read the full essay here.

When writers review

If you are a writer who does a less-than-complimentary review of another writer’s book, you run the risk of one of two things.

1) If the writer whom you are reviewing is more famous than you, your bad review might come off as sour grapes.

2) If the writer is a rung or two lower on the publishing ladder, you run the risk of of being seen as snotty and snobby

I started writing book reviews when I was in my early twenties, back in Cape Town, South Africa. I wrote them for the local newspaper (ah, the days when newspapers still had reviews…) and I wrote reviews for a wide variety of books, from tomes on science to coffee-table picture books, from travelogues to novels. The one thing that I always took with me in this endeavor was complete and utter honesty. If I liked a book, I said so, and I said why. If I disliked it, *I said so*, and I said why.

I’ve since grown up, become a writer myself… and I’ve continued to review. My on-line reviews have appeared at www.sfsite.com for several years now, and that site has been witness to at least three reviews which might be called… less than complimentary.

In some ways writers make the perfect reviewers, because we are capable of reading between the lines and figuring out just WHY a book fails. In other ways writers are the worst reviewers because we cannot help reading a book with a writer’s eye and things that drive a writer nuts would probably be given a free pass by an average reader. So a writer-reviewer walks a fine line – that between being overly technical and overly simplistic — pitching the review at an educated reader rather than at fellow writers.

So – readers – what do you want/need out of a review? Are you really interested in reading only “Oh, I LOVED this!” reviews? What do you think the value of a not-so-good review (if any) actually is? Is there space out there for a breadth of opinion? Is there a need for it? Should writers bow out of writing reviews the moment they sign their own first publishing contract, or do you think there is something of value in a writer’s reading of another writer’s work?

You tell me.

Shout it out!

It used to be, if you got picked up by a halfway-decent publishing house, your book got a publicist whose job it would be to make sure that the world knew about it. No more. Or, not so much if you aren’t already a mega-star.

A recent Washington Post article explores the world of the new and midlist author in the literary jungle these days. “Authors are expected to behave like mini-entrepreneurs,” the Post quotes Kamy Wicoff, founder and CEO of She Writes, a Web site devoted to helping women writers promote their books. “Writers with small advances and limited resources are expected to treat their book as a new company, with marketing and promotion and PR.”

That costs money.

And eminent blogger Colleen Mondor says, “If you really want to promote your books most effectively then you have to become part of the blogosphere. Basically you have to invest some serious time – like several days at least…”

That costs time.

Careers are made or broken daily – not because the author is a good writer or a bad one, but because the author is good, or not so good, at self-promotion.

But there is still one thing that is beyond price, that cannot be bought and paid for, that cannot be wheedled or bullied or blackmailed out of people. Word of mouth. If you like a book, particularly if it isn’t by a superstar like Dan Brown, tell other people about it. Go shout it from a mountain.

That shout, that’s something – that’s ONE thing – that your favorite author doesn’t then have to do themselves.

The closing of a circle

I was born into a cradle-language, Serb, which I spoke exclusively from the day I was born to when I was 10 years old. Then we moved to Africa, and my world changed – and so did my language, and English became the language I thought in, dreamed in, and eventually wrote in.

The seventh novel I wrote in English has just been translated into that same cradle language which I spoke as a child.

The life of a writer is full of strange circles…

21 Questions — Another Worldweavers?

Sabrina Banes, a writer and former journalist in Brooklyn, has a website, YA New York ( www.yanewyork.com ), dedicated to young adult literature. Here is the last of her interview with me.

Question Nineteen

Sabrina: How many languages do you speak and what are they?

Alma: Two and a half: I speak my mother tongue, obviously which is Serb, and I speak English. I had, but am rapidly losing, French.

Sabrina: What compels you to write in English?

Alma: I just do. That’s the language I started writing and dreaming and thinking in. I very rarely write in my own language any more unless it’s about things that are very highly emotionally charged memories. It’s very interesting, because now one of my books is finally being translated back into my own language. That would be Embers of Heaven.

Question Twenty-one

Sabrina: What else may we see of the Worldweavers universe after this last book?

Alma: There’s a story that turned up in my brain after I finished writing the last one, and I’m still probably going to write it and see if I can get it published. It involves the reason magic exists within the world and how it can create and how it can destroy. Alphiri chase magic but don’t have it: they don’t have the underpinnings of a world that has a basis of magic in this. This next book is about how they attempt to set up their own source.