Desert Dispatches

On writing a trilogy

2013-05-21T21:01:27Z

Sarah Johnson interviews me at Through the Tollbooth today about writing a trilogy, including discussion of writing exploratory drafts, crafting a character arc over multiple books, and researching the Bones of Faerie trilogy (including some of the pictures I took of Liza’s forest, pre-faerie-apocalypse).

And speaking of trilogies, look! It’s a complete set!

Faerie After comes out just one week from today!

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

Another Faerie After review

2013-05-20T21:58:56Z

Over at Snowdrop Dreams of Books, where I also talk about writing the final book of a trilogy and admit to who my favorite character is.

“Liza is still as strong of a character as ever, fighting for what is right, pushing the limits and always looking out for those around her … The entire world building in this last book is amazing … You are always wondering if things will be okay, if Liza and her crew will figure out how to make things right and if they do – will anything be like was once before?”

If you head over in the next few hours, you can enter to win your own copy of Faerie After, too!

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

Cynthia Leitich Smith on Writing for the Long Haul

2013-05-20T13:01:01Z

Cynthia Leitich Smith was one of the first writers I mentioned the idea of a Writing for the Long Haul series to, and when I did, she commented that those who keep writing are “writing survivors.”

I’m thrilled to kick the series off with a post from Cynthia on what writing survival means to her.

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I owe much of my publishing success to my lack of financial security.

When I hear others talk of the pain of rejection or the unfairness of market whims or the challenge of staying motivated, I think of my mortgage, the payment due on my health insurance, and the cost of my guilty pleasure—Whole Foods hummus.

Of course that’s not the whole equation. While many of my children’s-YA books have sold well (and a few not-so-well), I don’t initially conceive or craft them from a commercial perspective.

Instead, I’m a creature of two brains.

One: the literary artist with a commitment to diverse (defined broadly) protagonists and an experimental bent with regard to age markets, techniques and forms. I’ve published funny picture books, quiet multicultural books, quasi-memoir essays, and YA adventure-fantasies with a feminist and intercultural bent. I’ve won awards and made bestseller lists and seen books go out of print.

Two: the fierce, savvy business person who takes all that—coupled with speaking and teaching fees—and cobbles together a base salary. In the latter years I’ve earned more, in the early years less, but having a baseline goal keeps me pounding the keyboard, hitting the road, and stretching in new directions.

I have a respectful patience for the inner artist but always hold her accountable.

You’re in love with that niche project? Fine. How are you going to market it? Not the publisher—you. Whatever the house does, that’s icing. You encourage it. You work it. But it’s your name on the byline.

Your sales figures can and will be held against you. Glancing around the conference floor, you notice how many of your once-popular colleagues are no longer in the game. Doesn’t anyone else miss them?

How do you carry on? What are you going to do?

What you’ve always done. Choose yourself, your book, whatever you’re trying to say in the whole. Do it in such a way that lifts up everyone, that doesn’t apologize for mattering, that shows a sense of purpose. Recognize but don’t dwell on the uncontrollable. Where there is potential for forward momentum, give it grease with as much good humor and dignity as you can spare.

You’ve stumbled before. You’ve fallen before and started over from scratch. You’ve made a fool out of yourself. You’ve also helped build readers and community and changed lives for the better.

There’s wisdom to be gained from all that and stories that can help lift up someone else. All of your fellow survivors have successfully reinvented themselves at least once and so can you.

Do for yourself what you do for your stories.

When all else fails, begin again.

If only because hummus is expensive.

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Cynthia Leitich Smith is the New York Times and Publishers Weekly best-selling author of the Tantalize series and Feral series. Her award-winning books for younger children include Jingle Dancer, Indian Shoes, and Rain is Not My Indian Name. She first published Jingle Dancer in 2000.

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More about the Writing for the Long Haul series.

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

Writing for the long haul: a blog series

2013-05-20T03:28:26Z

I’ve been thinking for a while now about what it means to write for the long haul.

I’ve been writing professionally for more than two decades now, rebooting and restarting and rethinking my career–as well as the reasons I’m writing in the first place–many times. I’ve watched other writers do the same, and I’ve wondered at all the varied shapes our careers have taken.

I’ve also watched writers stop writing, and I’ve wondered at that too, because there doesn’t seem to be any one formula for when writers continue writing and when they move on to other things. It’s not as simple as the most successful writers lasting the longest, or the rest of us stopping after we hit some set number of challenges or bumps in the road. Whatever it takes to keep writing, it’s something more complicated than that.

What does it take to keep writing for the long haul? Much of the discussion of writing online is about how break in, or else about how to manage a career for the first few books or the first few years. Those perspectives are valuable, but I’m also interested in seeing an ongoing discussion of how writers survive beyond that–not just from a business point of view, but also from an emotional and life balance point of view.

So I started asking novelists who’ve been in this field for at least a decade (often far longer) why they’re still here and how they keep writing.

Starting tomorrow, I’ll post their responses as part of a new weekly blog series. I’m already enjoying the range of takes that I’m reading, and I’m looking forward to sharing them.

I’m hopeful that, wherever we are in our individual careers, we all can learn from each other.

Mirrored from Desert Dispatches: Wordpress Edition.

Why writers need retreats

2013-05-20T00:00:52Z

Back from a lovely, energizing, soul-filling week at Kindling Words West, in the company of a writing community I’ve not seen for far too long, not setting goals for once but simply (yet not-so-simply) filling the well.

And I wrote today, not because I’m supposed to or because I’ve established useful routines and habits and know how to stick with them, but simply because it’s what I woke up wanting to do more than anything else in the world.

It’s good to be back.

Mirrored from Desert Dispatches: Wordpress Edition.

“It had never occurred to him until now that a hero would sleep on the ground”

2013-05-09T21:59:31Z

Finally finished the first Prydain book (Book of Three) today. There are some books that you don’t get around to reading long past when everyone else does, and you don’t really know why.

I was in just the right mood for this sort of immersive otherworld adventure, and I enjoyed it lots and lots, in spite of a few reservations: that Taran is a bit of a twit (but he’s supposed to be), that several characters are built largely around a single conversational tic or two (“munchings and crunchings” are fine and even lovely, “a Fflam always” was beginning to push it), and most of all the fear that as likable a female character as Eilonwy is likely to get tamed in later books rather than being allowed the spirited adventure-seeking life she deserved (Gwydion went down many notches in my regard when he began simultaneously flirting with and dismissing her).

But that’s not the real reason for this post. The real reason is a conversation lnhammer, who’d been rightfully telling me I needed to read these books for years.

Me: “I already knew Taran was an assistant pig-keeper. But I didn’t know the pig was important.”
lnhammer (looking up): “Some pig.”

Fanficcers, your mission is clear.

Mirrored from Desert Dispatches: Wordpress Edition.

On filling the writing well

2013-05-06T18:58:24Z

It’s been a busy several weeks … busy several months, really … in ways that have little to do with writing. Except, of course, that everything has to do with writing, and everything affects it.

I’m not always graceful about admitting when it’s time to refill the writing well. The times when I’m most busy and stressed are the times when I feel like I should be getting more efficient, making sure I fill every moment with productive writing work. Except, of course, when the writing well–that space inside me where stories come from, whatever metaphor we use for it–is running dry, my time actually becomes less productive, not more.

But finally I’ve begun forcing myself to focus on what I know to be my well-filling things. Walking and running and swimming. A few yoga classes where I really force myself to focus on myself and my practice and where I am, and not just on the poses.

This weekend, an impromptu overnight camping trip, up on Mount Lemmon. Getting out of the city is one of my big well-filling things. Somehow, in worn jeans and an old T-shirt, surrounded by wilderness (even near-city wilderness that can be reached in less than an hour), with nothing to do but be, I remember who I am, in a deep way that’s hard to explain, and settle more comfortably back into my own skin.

And reading. Lots of reading. Whenever I’m feeling off, if I look at my reading journal, I’ll find I’m not reading enough. I brought a pile of books with me on our camping trip, and I spent much of the weekend inhaling story.

Did I have time for any of these things, right now? Not really. But last night, a stray opening sentence bubbled up, and I grabbed a piece of paper to write it down. This morning, a stray story idea. I did the same.

It’s not as if I have a shortage of story ideas or evocative sentences. But this random bubbling of ideas–of story finding me, rather than me pushing through the brambles and failing to find story–is the first sign that the well is starting to fill, that there’s something inside me again to put onto the page without fighting every step of the way. If it takes time to get to and hang onto that, well, it also seems to be something I can’t write without, not for long.

Mirrored from Desert Dispatches: Wordpress Edition.

Spring! And Faerie After signings!

2013-05-06T18:24:46Z

Been mostly offline for various life reasons the past few weeks, while early spring transitioned to late spring here in the desert. You can tell it’s late spring because these are cactus flowers, not ground-scattered wildflowers. Specifically, cholla flowers. (Warning. Chollas will jump you if you get too close. But we love them anyway.)

Anyway, suddenly it’s May, and that means Faerie After is due out at the end of this month!

And I’ll be places, celebrating and signing the final book of the Bones of Faerie trilogy. Specifically:

Friday, May 24 – Sunday May 26
Phoenix Comicon
Phoenix Convention Center

Saturday, 6-8 p.m., Faerie After party!
Renaissance Salon, Renaissance Hotel

See the rest of my Phoenix Comicon panels here, or catch me at my table in the exhibit hall, too. Early copies of Faerie After will be available at con only.

Tuesday, May 28, 6 p.m.
Official Faerie After release day!
Signing at Changing Hands Bookstore
6428 S McClintock Drive
Tempe, Arizona

Saturday, June 1, 1 p.m.
Faerie After signing at Barnes and Noble Eastside
5130 E. Broadway Blvd
Tucson, Arizona

Friday, June 21, 7 p.m.
Alamosa Books Solstice Party
(Solstice party starts 5:30 p.m.; Faerie After reading and signing at 7 p.m.)
8810 Holly Ave. NE, Ste. D
Albuquerque, New Mexico

You can also always find copies of my books at Antigone Books, where you can tell them you’d like Faerie After personalized, and they’ll ship a copy to you wherever you are.

Mirrored from Desert Dispatches: Wordpress Edition.

"Wanna make you believe / that the height of this tightrope / is just second nature to me"

2013-04-11T17:23:28Z

Not been online much. Busy with life stuff, book stuff, other stuff, so …

… here. Have some music. :-)

(This one is on the raven book’s playlist. While Duvekot’s “Phoenix” belongs on a Bones of Faerie playlist.)

Mirrored from Desert Dispatches: Wordpress Edition.

Faerie After: a review!

2013-04-07T21:02:55Z

Hey, it’s less than two months until Faerie After‘s release! Here’s what Kirkus says about it:

“With the faerie and mortal lands crumbling away, a teenage girl must work with both worlds if anyone is to survive. The Bones of Faerie series concludes with this high-stakes adventure … In a satisfying trilogy conclusion, Liza confronts the conflicts between saving the world and saving her friends in an environment where nobody is willing to let go of the last generation’s hatreds.”

Faerie After releases into the wild May 28–spread the word!

And if you have any friends who’ve maybe read Bones of Faerie but didn’t realize there were sequel, I’m running a giveaway for Faerie Winter on Goodreads this month.

Mirrored from Desert Dispatches: Wordpress Edition.

"We built our base camp on avalanche terrain ... I think the wreckage was built into the frame"

2013-03-21T17:06:08Z

A good equinox to you all. It’s feeling like an equinox-y sort of season around here, with poppies and penstemon blooming, with the feeling that everything’s all balanced and poised for change, the citrus blossom-scented air filled with opportunities and challenges.

Or maybe that second is always true, and season change encourages us to step back and take notice.

I was asked about the source of the lyrics for this post (and to source my lyrics in general–I’ll try!) It’s from another Antje Duvekot song, Juliet.

I just might be obsessing over her music a little right now, having only recently discovered it. It’s music that takes to obsessing over well.

Mirrored from Desert Dispatches: Wordpress Edition.

Plague in the Mirror / Absent giveaway winners!

2013-03-21T16:51:59Z

Thanks to everyone who entered to win Absent and Plague in the Mirror. The winners of my ARCs, chosen with great care by random.org, are …

(drumroll as I pull up the website and draw virtual names)

Absent: J.R. Goldberg!

Plague in the Mirror: John Higginbotham!

Email me your addresses at janni(at)simner(dot)com and I’ll get your ARCs in the mail!

And hopefully the rest of you will seek out these terrific books once they’re out, too. :-) You can find out more about both Plague in the Mirror and Absent at my original post, here.

Mirrored from Desert Dispatches: Wordpress Edition.

"I was quiet / you were reckless / and the boys liked you better / and in truth I did mind"

2013-03-18T17:50:33Z

I forget who pointed me towards this New York Times article on how different students handle the pressure of competition differently, on the different ways we all handle stress in general, and on how stress can both benefit and hinder us, but it has implications for those of us building creative careers:

Studies that compare professionals with amateur competitors — whether concert pianists, male rugby or female volleyball players — show that professionals feel just as much anxiety as amateurs. The difference is in how they interpret their anxiety. The amateurs view it as detrimental, while the professionals tend to view stress as energizing. It gets them to focus.

I remember that one of the single things that helped put me most at ease about public speaking was learning when listening to a con panel of professional singers that people who perform don’t have some magical gift for not worrying … they just accept the worry as something that will always be there, and somehow flow with it.

It may be that many people who do things–any sort of things–don’t have a gift for confidence so much as practice-earned experience pushing through their lack of confidence. A useful thing to be reminded of.

Also–no surprise–standardized tests really aren’t a good measure of how we handle stress and competition, among other things because they lack the benefits of many other forms of competition:

Taking a standardized test is a competition in which the only thing anyone cares about is the final score. No one says, “I didn’t do that well, but it was still worth doing, because I learned so much math from all the months of studying.” Nobody has ever come out of an SAT test saying, “Well, I won’t get into the college I wanted, but that’s O.K. because I made a lot of new friends at the Kaplan center.” Standardized tests lack the side benefits of competing that normally buffer children’s anxiety. When you sign your child up for the swim team, he may really want to finish first, but there are many other reasons to be in the pool, even if he finishes last.

Mirrored from Desert Dispatches: Wordpress Edition.

Your daily dose of jaguar cub bottle-feeding

2013-03-12T21:57:17Z

You’re welcome.

(For the full BBC Natural World Jaguars Born Free documentary this comes from, you can go here.)

Mirrored from Desert Dispatches: Wordpress Edition.

"... dangers that befell the ones who wandered / But the fern moss just looked pretty in the snow"

2013-03-11T21:55:55Z

So today I was trying to find out how commonly birds (and ravens specifically) eat spiders.

Instead I discovered a spider that eats birds.

Well, okay, one bird. A hummingbird, specifically. As reported by Victorian explorers, who are not exactly known for reliability themselves. But still.

Theraphosa blondi remains known as Goliath Birdeater because of that hummingbird. Never let it be said there isn’t sensationalism in the wildlife biology world, or that one crazy bird-eating moment can’t get a rep that follows you and all your many arachnid descendants forever.

Theraphosa blondi is known to more often eat rodents, frogs, and snakes in the wild. That’s still pretty spider-kickass in my book.

Pet owners are advised to stick to insects such as crickets and locusts, though. (The sites pointing out that making pets of these guys isn’t exactly advised seem to be outnumbered by sites on how to take care of your Goliath bird-eating tarantula. Make of this what you will.)

Mirrored from Desert Dispatches: Wordpress Edition.

"First you sung her praises, drunk on her glow / Then you cursed her name when you lost control"

2013-03-11T21:07:37Z

Had a great weekend at the Tucson Festival of Books this weekend. Sometimes (especially when, say, one is just off a two-week cold during which she’s spent way too much time at home trying to write but maybe not being very productive), it’s really good to just get out and talk books and writing with friends old and new–to get outside my own head and into the world with all of you. Many thanks, to all of you who came.

And hey, the TusCon folks posted a couple of clips from our Bordertown panel Saturday morning. I haven’t been able to embed them outside of facebook, but I don’t think you need to be logged in there to listen to Charles de Lint here and me here.

Mirrored from Desert Dispatches: Wordpress Edition.

Media sharks

2013-03-08T19:12:07Z

It occurs to me that a peaceful shark migration, dominated by species not generally associated with attacks on humans, could be a feel-good sort of wildlife biology story. Humans detect migrating sharks, sensibly put out the word so other humans can get out of their way, and the sharks successfully migrate, as they do every year, in spite of this year’s migration being a little later that expected.

Instead of the deadly-dangerous-sharks-swarm-Florida-beaches story I saw on TV at the gym this morning and continue to see through other online news sources.

How about more coverage of the migration itself instead? As a Southwesterner I didn’t know until now that the Florida coast had such a massive and regular migration of blacktip and spinner sharks. Sounds pretty awesome, actually.

Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission on sharing the water with sharks.

Mirrored from Desert Dispatches: Wordpress Edition.

Two hauntings: Absent / Plague in the Mirror (ARC giveaway)

2013-03-07T23:32:38Z

So if you’re here, you probably at least know about the Bones of Faerie trilogy. But maybe you have friends who don’t. So point them towards this goodreads giveaway of the first book in the trilogy.

Meanwhile, for the rest of you, I’m giving away ARCs of a couple books I loved that you maybe haven’t heard of, because they’re not out yet. They’re both about hauntings, of very different sorts, and have stayed with me in different ways.

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In Deborah Noyes’ Plague in the Mirror, May is haunted by Cristofana, a ghostly double from plague-era Florence who’s determined to convince May to change places with her. While on the surface this would seem a clear thanks-but-no-thanks offer, the past is seductive, Cristofana is determined, and the present has problems of its own.

This is a dark, lush, moody book that I loved enough to blurb: “Dreamy and gorgeous and dark. I couldn’t pull away from this tale of seduction–not by a lover, but by a dark past and a darker reflection of the storyteller’s own self.”

In Katie Williams’ Absent, protagonist Paige is the ghost, victim of a fall from the roof during physics class, haunting her high school along with two other students: Brooke, who died of an overdose a few months before Paige; and Evan who died decades before, but who like the others can’t seem to leave the spot of his death.

Many of Paige’s friends/enemies are convinced she jumped off that roof on purpose, but Paige … remembers things differently. Then Paige realizes she can possess living people when they think of her, and thinks maybe she has a chance to set the record straight.

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To be entered into a giveaway for Plague in the Mirror or Absent, just comment (on the wordpress version of this post) and let me know whether you’re interested in just one of the books or either of them. Closes March 20 at 5 p.m. mountain standard time.

Mirrored from Desert Dispatches: Wordpress Edition.

“The future’s bright / There are new things we will love”

2013-03-06T19:18:46Z

Raven versus octopus. Who wins?

Go!

Mirrored from Desert Dispatches: Wordpress Edition.

Unsent

2013-03-05T20:33:33Z

Dear Character Whose Judgment and Maturity I Respect,

That decision you’re making? It’s going to save the people you’re trying to save.

Might get you killed, but hey, you’re totally doing the right thing.

Carry on.

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Dear Protagonist Whose Tastes Are Less Like Mine Than I Thought,

There’s still time to rethink your romantic decisions.

In this scene right here especially.

Just saying.

Mirrored from Desert Dispatches: Wordpress Edition.

Things the current project has taught me

2013-03-05T18:00:56Z

I’m more of an owl than a raven.

But that means ravens have things to teach me, so I need to pay attention.

Mirrored from Desert Dispatches: Wordpress Edition.

“Though I had no armor / you just let me go / into the night to battle with your ghosts”

2013-03-04T16:34:51Z

Thanks to Matociquala, I’ve been obsessively listening to Antje Duvekot’s music this week.

This one in particular feels like a Bones of Faerie sort of song–I can listen to it and focus on Liza, or listen to it and focus on all the parent/daughter relationships that echo through the trilogy.

Plus, it’s just a gorgeous and haunting song.

Mirrored from Desert Dispatches: Wordpress Edition.

Tucson Festival of Books this weekend!

2013-03-04T16:20:45Z

Southwesterners! I’ll be at the increasingly awesome (100,000+ people these days) Tucson Festival of Books this coming weekend.

Specifically:

Saturday, 11:30-12:30 a.m.
Panel: Border Town
with Charles de Lint and Janni Lee Simner; moderator John Munoz
Student Union – Catalina Room

Saturday, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
Panel: Writing Fantasy for a Young Adult Audience
with Nancy Holder, Charle de Lint, Jeff Mariotte, and Janni Lee Simner
Integrated Learning Center – Room 140

Sunday, 11-11:45 a.m.
Signing: Poisoned Pen Books
with Kevin Hearne, Janni Lee Simner, and Dana Stabenow
Booth #230-231

But even if I weren’t speaking, TFOB is where I’d be spending this weekend. Come hang out!

Mirrored from Desert Dispatches: Wordpress Edition.

Travel well, Thomas Harlan VI

2013-03-04T02:11:39Z

In western lands beneath the Sun
the flowers may rise in Spring,
the trees may bud, the waters run,
the merry finches sing.
Or there maybe ’tis cloudless night
and swaying beeches bear
the Elven-stars as jewels white
amid their branching hair.

Though here at journey’s end I lie
in darkness buried deep,
beyond all towers strong and high,
beyond all mountains steep,
above all shadows rides the Sun
and Stars forever dwell:
I will not say the Day is done,
nor bid the Stars farewell.

Mirrored from Desert Dispatches: Wordpress Edition.

Darkover reread: The Winds of Darkover

2013-02-28T23:27:23Z

Where Star of Danger was less interesting than I remembered, The Winds of Darkover was more interesting–and not only because I’d completely forgotten everything about it until I began rereading, at which point just enough came back to make clear that I’d read it before.

This is the first book where we get a female POV character, Melitta of Storn Castle. Melitta’s mountain home has been invaded by the bandit Brynat. Her older brother, Storn of Storn, has escaped into a telepathic trance; her younger brother is imprisoned; and her sister has been forcibly taken as Brynat’s wife. That means it falls to Melitta to escape the castle and seek help, guided by telepathic messages from her older brother.

Melitta is pretty much a standard issue Spunky Female Character, but given that we haven’t seen many spunky female characters in the earlier books (Dio Ridenow comes closest), she and her strong will to action were welcome.

(Again, some PG-13 content about sex and its politics on Darkover ahead)

This is very early 70s feminism, though, and there are some things that stand out now that maybe didn’t then. The biggest is that Melitta actively blames women who don’t share her spunkiness, to the point of asking her older sister how she could have “let” herself be raped. (“Had you no dagger?” Melitta asks, and then goes on to think about how she would have killed herself before letting Brynat have his way.) Women are not Good and Bad in this book, but they are Strong and Weak, and there’s only one real way of being strong. (Admittedly, this is a trap contemporary stories can still fall into, not understanding or else forgetting that in the real world, women have always been strong in such a wide range of ways.)

While Melitta makes her escape from Storn Castle, the Terran Dan Barron is having visions of, well, Storn Castle. Zoning out during one of those visions got him fired from his job as a flight controller, and so now he’s been sent off into the mountains to teach the Altons–including Lerrys Montray, who is now Valdir Alton’s foster son–how to grind lenses for telescopes in their fire stations. His visions grow stronger as he travels, and they too come from Storn of Storn, who eventually possesses Dan’s body in order to use him to meet his sister and help free the castle.

We’re told Storn can’t escape the castle and do all this for himself because he’s blind, which, whether or not it’s true (and given that these are telepaths, it wouldn’t necessarily need to be), reminds one that if this book is taking some early stumbling steps towards feminism, disability activism isn’t even on its radar. We’re told regularly that because he’s blind Storn is helpless, even an invalid, though being blind and being an invalid are two very different things. I was very aware, as I read, that 20 years and a lot of “problem” novels lay between this book and the Americans With Disabilities Act. (For a more recent take on blindness and telepathic magic in a low-tech world, Kristin Cashore’s Graceling and Bitterblue are pretty interesting–including and especially the afterword to Bitterblue where she apologizes for what she got wrong in the first book.)

Melitta and Dan eventually meet, of course, and once Storn’s control over Dan slips, they fall in love. Along the way they go back to Storn Castle to oust Brynat and his the bandits, with help from Castle Aldaran’s keeper (who, though this book takes place before The Bloody Sun, isn’t a cloistered virgin, because it turns out Aldaran isn’t wrong about everything).

They succeed by … waking the Sharra Matrix. You know, the thing that destroyed Lew Alton’s life, killed those he loved, and endangered the entire planet? Yeah. They wake Sharra, and it works, and … well, it just works. When at the end of the book Lerrys Montray and Valdir Alton show up with the obligatory belated cavalry, they do say words to the effect of, “You really, really shouldn’t have done that,” but that’s pretty much the extent of the consequences of waking one of Darkover’s most deadly weapons. (Unless, of course, this waking leads directly to events in Heritage of Hastur, and I’ve just forgotten.)

There aren’t any real consequences for Storn possessing someone else’s mind, either, even though we’re told repeatedly this is a major crime. Valdir just sort of shrugs and says that having to be blind again now that he’s in his own body is the worst punishment possible anyway. Which, well, see disability activism, above.

There are more random background women in this book, women who don’t exist to satisfy the desires of the men in the story, and we even briefly see Cleindori, Jeff Kerwin’s mother, who we learn is also Kennard’s foster sister. (Kennard is off-planet, being a Terran exchange student, falling in love, and changing the course of Darkovan history. But we only really know that first part in this book.)

Yet while women no longer seem to exist only to satisfy male desires, they do still seem to be obligated to satisfy them when they arise. Melitta thinks at one point about how if she even inadvertently aroused desire in a man she were traveling with, she’d of course be obligated to satisfy it, because anything else would be cruel. That may have been the book’s squickiest moment for me. Though it does come right after a scene where Storn thinks about how sleeping with his sister would be no big deal, because In The Mountains We Do That, but then remembers he’s in a Terran body, and that unlike brother/sister incest, asking Melitta to sleep with an alien would be way beyond the pale–which makes it a reader call whether or not both scenes should be taken with a grain of salt.

But The Winds of Darkover did have clean prose and decent plotting, and for all its issues in many ways I enjoyed it as the straight-up adventure yarn I was expecting to get when I read Star of Danger.

Next up is The World Wreckers, which I remember as being kind of cracktastic incoherent fun, and then Darkover Landfall, which I’m not sure I’m allowed to read until I have Joanna Russ’ We Who Are About To … also at hand.

Mirrored from Desert Dispatches: Wordpress Edition.