Sacred Cheese of Life

The show Agents of SHIELD is all about identity, to the point where once you notice it, it’s absolutely pervasive through every bit of the series. Other topics include Thanksgiving dinner, yachts, upholstering all the things, and all the ways that identity gives and takes. Sacred cheese of life!

This week I read Myla Goldberg’s novel The False Friend , about a woman who questions and investigates her memory of the day her best friend disappeared forever when they were eleven.  I adore this book. I mean, it’s painful to read, but it’s amazing and a psychological puzzle. The ending of it knocked me sideways and I’ve read it multiple times before. The two girls are abusive toward anothe...

Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity uses the epistolary form to tell a devastating story about two friends in WWII. I look at the way storytelling within the frame of the story uses lies, mistakes, and deceit to create an incredibly layered narrative. Read the book before you listen because you only get once unspoiled and it is worth it to go in unaware. MANY SPOILERS. ALL THE SPOILERS.

I talk a lot about C.J. Cherryh’s novel Hammerfall and the mind-blowing thing she does whereby her character discovers the world is so much bigger and more complex than he ever could have imagined, over and over and over. Other texts that do a similar wonderful thing include: Laini Taylor’s Strange the Dreamer and A Mote in God’s Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. To a certain extent, Lord o...

Rainbow Rowell’s novel Fangirl is one of my all time favorites. It shares some traits on paper with the book I’m wrestling with now, Summerlands , except Fangirl does so many things right that mine doesn’t…yet.

I look into outsider status in cult television and fiction in general, especially when it goes along with found family.

I discuss season one of the TV series Poker Face in terms of story engine, beautiful losers, and being on the road. Other texts discussed include: The Dukes of Hazzard, Leverage (of course), Columbo (so much) and more. Rag tag fugitive fleet!

I look at the glorious TV show Wonderfalls with story engine in mind. I'm also thinking about story engine in novel series, in procedurals, and in this thing I want to write but have no idea how to approach. Might have figured it out here, though. Also trying to finish Summerlands but can't quit cutting down trees and damaging myself. Woe.

A student asked how to read the classics, so I wrote up a guide. I walk you through how to tackle any classic text that might seem daunting and then look at Book I of The Iliad briefly just to get a taste. Other texts discussed: Pride and Prejudice, Dracula, the Agamemnon , The Furies, Battlestar Galactica so what shut up, The Odyssey , Kafka's "The Metamorphosis," who knows what all else. I got e...

In this episode I discuss the Firefly television show episode "Objects in Space." This continues the previous episode's conversation about treating people as objects, but the resolution comes from an object basically being a person. Other texts mentioned are the found family sci-fi show Farscape , Marge Piercy’s SFF novel He, She, and It , and Sister Helen Prejean’s amazing book Dead Man Walking a...

I dissect the cruelty behind Raymond Carver's story "So much water so close to home" and Agatha Christie's The Hollow . Both create profoundly unsympathetic characters who treat people like things. Stop it.

How *comma plus and* can drive you right around the bend.

In this episode I dig into what makes character work, whether we’re building one or living with one in our head long after the novel is over. What? I discuss a character I developed in an unusual manner for The Icarus Triptych by building him on a character in a television show, which also meant using a real actor’s voice and manner and so on. Is it a good idea? Does it help or hurt your developme...

Roald Dahl’s autobiographical stories in Boy sent me down a rabbit hole about what we’re doing with autobiography and biography in general. Who cares what you did last Tuesday? What insights do we get about our own lives by writing things down? What about when we read them later? Does anyone ever have any insight into their own lives?

Glory O'Brien's History of the Future, by A.S. King. It's a book that changes lives. The main character is utterly stuck in a life where nobody will talk about the death of her mother or what's wrong with everyone around her. The novel does a speedrun escape from depression via the magic of talking about those things you're not allowed to talk about and going into that locked room.

Roald Dahl's Matilda, structural analysis and how this novel makes several sharp turns, high/low art and why that's stupid, genre bigotry, and listener questions. Oh my goodness. Very full episode.

The tv show Leverage is one of the best sources for happiness around, partly due to the competence of the five main characters, partly due to the justice they find for the downtrodden, partly due to rich scumbags getting what they deserve. The commentaries are also an incredible mental health resource somehow, which I can't really explain, oh well.

Let's look at a common trope in young adult fiction, the good girl and the sad boy who needs to be saved. The good girl persona is such an insidious psychological trap for anyone caught in it. We'll get into why. And the sad boy persona is catnip to a good girl. It's all nightmare fuel covered in red flags and lit on fire.

How do dual storylines, past and present, make sense of things for characters? Does the past actually matter? How is writing a novel like reupholstering a chair?

I discuss the first season of Andor and how amazing it is, especially the way one event causes the next and so on, with no random nonsense--so rare. And I try to figure out how to do that myself, already halfway through a novel draft.

I look at a YA novel, a literary novel, and a movie in order to discuss the idiot plot, a story that only works when people are absolute idiots.

In this episode, I look at open and closed mysteries and discuss James Tiptree Jr.'s "The Last Flight of Dr. Ain" while wrestling with how to set up this dual storyline novel covering the past and the present.

In this episode, I discuss Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find" in terms of unlikable characters in fiction and begin working on a page one rewrite of my novel Summerlands.

I discuss the modern Gothic in the context of my favorite novel, then try to apply these tropes to this draft in progress that is giving me conniptions. Also I get really cold halfway through.

In this episode, I discuss aspects of Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat" and dig into what's wrong with a stalled novel draft, as well as how to tackle a messy first draft.