Tag: reading

ReaderCon33 Experiences (Part 1): Memorable Moments, Moderating Panels, and Networking

A lot happened at ReaderCon33 this year. Okay, yes, a lot always happens at ReaderCon (read about some of my other experiences here), but specifically a lot happened for me at ReaderCon this year. So much so that I want to make sure I write about it here so I don’t forget it all (I have the memory of a fruit fly). This is the first of a two part ReaderCon wrap-up. There’s that much for me to talk about. [ReaderCon33 Experiences]

Attending as an Official Participant [SFF Community, Writing Conferences]

ReaderCon33 is the first one I attended as an actual program participant. Last year, I volunteered and had a blast doing so. If you’re looking for a great way to meet new people and make connections all while feeling good about giving back and helping the convention continue to thrive, I strongly recommend volunteering. I did end up on a panel last year, but that wasn’t planned. Someone who was supposed to be on a panel about writing during the pandemic got sick at the last minute (ironic, right?). A good writing friend of mine, Anatoly Belalovsky, who was also on that panel suggested I step in and fill the empty spot. The ReaderCon folks decided that would work, and it did. I mean, I assume it worked out because when I applied to participate in this year’s Con in a more official capacity, they approved my application and put me on four panels. And approved me for a solo reading slot (more on that later).

So, yeah, fame comes in all shapes and sizes. This is my little moment of “oh my gosh, I’ve made it! I was a program participant at ReaderCon! My name was on their list and everything. Squeeee!! P.S. The SFF community is pretty small, so it truly is silly for me to feel so stupidly excited about all this, but I’m a low key hedonist, so I find pleasure wherever I can, including in the small things. [ReaderCon33 Experiences]

From Volunteer to Program Participant [Moderating Panels, Networking at Conventions, Writing Events]. Readercon33 Experiences

Like I said, I was on four panels this year. For three of them, they put me on as the moderator. Which is fine by me. That’s basically what I do all day everyday as a teacher. I moderate rowdy hoards of teenagers in a classroom full of glassware and biohazardous materials. Pshaw, I got this.

Thanks to my role as moderator, the fun started weeks before the convention. Teacher that I am, I like to plan ahead. I reached out via email to all the other panelists for all three panels I was slated to moderate. I introduced myself, encouraged them to do the same via email, and then solicited ideas on what everyone wanted to talk about during the actual convention. This, I will admit, felt like basic due diligence on my part. However, multiple folks from all three panels made a point to thank me for being proactive and said I was the only moderator to do so. That’s not to say that no other panel moderators contacted their panelists ahead of time. I’m sure many did. Just not the moderators of the other panels my people were on.

The pre-con preparations paid off, too, because by the time we actually sat down together in person, we all had a working rapport established and were primed to talk shop on all the various cool topics. Who were those folks and what were those cool topics? Glad you asked. [R

eaderCon33 Experiences]

My ReaderCon33 Schedule [Moderating Panels, Networking at Conventions, Writing Events] Readercon33 Experiences

Starting at 12:00PM on Friday, I moderated the panel, “What Separates Adult and YA SFF” which meant I got to toss questions to authors LJ Cohen, Mark Painter, Melissa Caruso, and Sarena Straus for forty-five minutes and listen to them share their thoughts.

Both SFF sold as adult and as YA may contain protagonists who are teens or young adults, as well as sex, drugs, and violence. What, then, puts a story in one category or the other? Panelists will examine what tropes, themes, sensibilities, pacing, and narrative voices may genuinely distinguish the categories.

Then, at 5:00PM, I moderated my second panel, “Writing For, With, About, and Around Children.” This was a truly excellent panel. Not only was the topic itself interesting, but so too were the panelists (authors Caitlin Rozakis, Carlos Hernandez, Noah Beit-Aharon, and Rob Cameron)!

Many authors have to navigate their writing careers around the needs of their offspring, not least those who write books for children. How does parenting inform or transform one’s writing, and how does writing inform or transform one’s parenting? Do parents create more believable child characters? Do readers even want realistically depicted children? And what of the parents? How realistically do we dare depict ourselves?

Later that evening, at 9:00PM, I moderated the panel: “Mad Science Q & A,” which was… interesting. The description of the panel left me slightly confused, so I reached out to the ReaderCon33 folks to ask what the format and feel of the panel would be like. They told me to expect a bunch of SFF writers to pepper the panelists with science-related brainstorming questions. It sounded like I would be calling on audience members when they raised their hands to ask questions about something science-y. As a teacher, I felt pretty confident I could handle that.

The panel ran pretty much the way I expected, except that all of the panelists (including myself) had backgrounds in biological sciences. Arula Ratnakar is a writer pursuing a PhD in Computational Neuroscience. Amanda Downum is a writer with a degree in Mortuary Science. Author Allen Dyen-Shapiro has a PhD in Biochemistry, and I’m the schlep who teaches biology to high schoolers. So, of course, nearly all the questions were about time travel and quantum entanglement. Ugh. What do four folks who know all about biological systems know that can possibly let them answer the question, “Do you think time travel is possible” in any kind of satisfying way? Spoiler alert: No, time travel is not possible. Someone did ask about whether or not the idea of transferring memories from one brain to another was plausible. That, we were able to talk about at length. Especially Arula. Thank Thor for Arula!

Have a notion for a futuristic technology and want to run it by some experts? A chimerical monster whose biology requires further scientific study? Need to know how long it takes a body to decompose in an abandoned mineshaft, for… um… reasons? Ask our panel of ~~mad~~ scientists your burning questions and see what they think ~~through the little windows in their skulls~~. Answers may be unexpectedly thoughtful or incredibly unreliable—you will have to judge that for yourself. They called us mad, MAD to do this panel! [ReaderCon33 Experiences]

Meet the Pros(e) Social Hour [Moderating Panels, Networking at Conventions, Writing Events] Readercon33 Experiences

This photo is from a previous “Meet the Pros(e)” event that didn’t involve teeny tiny tables.

My final panel of Friday night wasn’t so much a panel as a professional gathering styled like a speed dating event. At 10:15PM authors and editors sat around teeny tiny (way too teeny tiny) tables with non-authors and editors and chatted about whatever. Every 15 minutes, we rotated to a new, randomly assigned table and repeated the process until 11:00PM. It was loud, crowded, and kind of awkward, but also fun. And I got to sit for fifteen minutes with author P. Djélí Clark, whose writing is amazing! If you haven’t read anything by him, you’re truly missing out. Turns out, he’s also a pretty amazing human as well as an amazing author.

I also got to chat for fifteen minutes with the award winning horror editor Ellen Datlow, who has edited some of the best horror anthologies out there, Screams from the Dark being the most recent that I’ve read. Okay, truth? Ellen is one of those people around whom I freeze up and get fanishly awkward. I have a huge (non-romantic) crush on her. She knows her shit, takes no shit, gives no fucks, and totally owns whatever space she’s in. She’s absolutely incredible. Sorry for the swearing, but Ellen Datlow deserves heaps and heaps of profane praise.

I’m going to end this Part 1 post here. In my part 2 post, I tell the story of my Sunday solo reading experience (my first in person live reading at a convention and holy wow was I nervous!), and I’ll tell you about all the awesome folks I met and chatted with. I also need to record the many packing errors I made but didn’t discover until I got to the hotel and checked in for posterity sake. [ReaderCon33 Experiences]

Do you have a favorite con that you like to attend regularly? Tell me about it. What makes it great for you? [ReaderCon33 Experiences]

Thanks for stopping by, and as always, happy writing! [ReaderCon33 Experiences]

July 16, 2024
Book Review: The Stone Serpent

I recently had the pleasure of reading Nicholas Kaufmann’s newest horror novel, “The Stone Serpent.” This sequel to Kaufmann’s 2021 novel “The Hungry Earth” takes place a year after the events of the first book and follows the main character, Dr. Laura Powell, as she tries to re-establish some semblance of normalcy in her life. The story’s premise (which you can read over on Goodreads) was a lot of fun, and the fast pace kept me engaged from start to finish.

Kaufmann does love his research. In all his novels, he adds a sense of authenticity by including numerous (and often terrifying) scientific details. The science was one of the things I enjoyed so much in his vampires-on-a-submarine horror novel, “100 Fathoms Below.” As with his other books, “The Stone Serpent” is packed with interesting and accurate scientific facts and descriptions. That said, the science sometimes felt wedged into scenes without good reason. Often, descriptions felt included just for the sake of serving up a creepy or interesting fact. More than once, I wondered why a small-town medical examiner would know about so many facts unrelated to medicine. Nevertheless, all those not-necessarily-needed scientific facts were so interesting (and morbid) that I enjoyed their inclusion regardless.

The main character, Dr. Laura Powell, is a woman I could easily root for–smart, self-confident, capable, and caring. Booker, her boyfriend, is equally likable if a bit passive. His role in the story was mostly to offer emotional support for Laura and to tell her to be careful. There were a few moments when I wanted him to step up and step in, saying, “No, sorry. I can’t let you do this crazy thing because I care about you. It would be irresponsible to let you do such this incredibly dangerous and poorly thought-out thing.” But, this is a somewhat campy horror novel we’re talking about, and characters acting illogically is part of the genre.

As Laura navigates her way through a new crisis, she grapples with a prickly new police Chief, Elana Morales. The chief’s cold affectation and constant micromanaging makes her highly unlikable. Once Kaufmann shared her backstory, though, I started rooting for her as hard as I was rooting for Laura.

A general issue I had with this book was with Kaufmann’s heavy use of exposition as a writing technique. While some explanations helped establish setting or provided context, the abundant exposition did occasionally detract from the immediacy of the action. I wanted to be told less and shown more. A related issue was with the use of dialogue to explain things. There was a lot of “as you know, Bob” conversations throughout this story.

There were two subplots to this story competing for the readers’ attention. One involved the cutting-edge pharmaceutical company, Thurmond Biotech. The other was a plot involving a fringe religious community (the details of which reminded me strongly of Warren Jeff’s extreme sect of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints). Of the two competing plots, this was the one that got the most time on the page, yet I found it to be distracting from the main premise of the novel. The characters dominating the religious plot line were, in my opinion, clichéd and two-dimensional. I would have liked more development of the dodgy biotech company and its involvement in the creation of the main threat of the novel: killer snakes!

Ah, the snakes. I won’t say too much about them lest I spoil the horror of them. Let me simply say that if you are naturally squeamish about snakes, this book will have you crawling out of your skin (haha, pun intended).

The final confrontation between the main characters and the snakes was intense and well-written, and the resolution felt earned. As a reader, I felt fully sated. Overall, I would definitely recommend “The Stone Serpent” to fans of just-for-fun, campy horror novels with some cool science packed into the terror.

December 31, 2022
A Summer of Short Stories!

I went on hiatus from posting to the blog back in March. Now, summer’s at an end here in the Witch City, so it’s time to get back to blogging with a summer recap. For the past few months, my focus has been on short stories, both reading and writing them!

When Opportunity Knocks

This past February, I sat in on a Boskone panel discussion titled “Tough Love for New Writers.” Among other participants, award-winning editor Neil Clarke of Clarkesworld Magazine sat on the panel. Following the lively and informative discussion of the short story market, I ended up chatting with Mr. Clarke. What was involved in becoming a slush reader for your magazine, I asked? Shoot me an email, and I’ll give you the application link, he replied. I did, and he did, and I applied. To my great surprise, he offered me a spot as a reader!

And so, since early April, I’ve been reading slush submissions at Clarkesworld Magazine. The experience changed pretty much everything I’ve been doing between then and now.

A Crash Course in SFFH Short Fiction

Not that I don’t have any experience reading genre fiction. In fact, SFFH is pretty much all I read. It’s just that it had been almost 20 years since I’d read many SFFH short stories. Some A. S. Byatt, collection by Jeffrey Ford, the 2017 Year’s Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. But that was about it. As such, I waded into reading slush last April feeling horrifically ignorant of the current market.

Eager to correct my deficit, I grabbed a subscription to Clarkesworld and started reading every short story that made the final cut. What better way to fine-tune my reading eye than to see what stories were being chosen each month for publication? It helped, but I wanted more.

And then the SFWA announced it was raising their pro-rates from $0.06/word to $0.08. Twitter exploded with debates, discussions, and pleas for financial support either through subscriptions or Patreon contributions. Editors from several of the top genre fiction magazines shared their thoughts, insights, frustrations, and hopes about the state of the industry, the pros and cons of the newly set pro rate, and the desperate need for more authentic financial support from readers. It became clear that my goals to self-educate aligned with industry goals to fund the new pay raise.

Required Reading for the New Slush Monkey

Here’s the list of short story magazines to which I now have a monthly subscription (in no particular order). I can confidently testify that each is a source of excellent fiction, and I urge every writer of short stories, both new writers and established writers, to invest in yourself as well as in the industry by grabbing subscriptions of your own. (Many of these magazines make the stories they publish available to read for free on their websites, but I wanted to be more than a freeloading parasite.)

Clarkesworld Magazine

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Asimov’s Science Fiction

Nightmare Magazine

Lightspeed Magazine

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

Uncanny Magazine

If that seems like a lot, it is. As for cost, those seven subscriptions tally up to about $30.00/month, a more than affordable expense now that I’ve stopped drinking diet coke every day. Skipping my daily stop at the vending machine seems a reasonable sacrifice to get access to tons of great fiction every month! And my money is supporting a better industry than, you know, the Berkshire Hathaway corporate beast.

Bonus! Nearly all of those magazines have weekly podcasts, too. My commute has never been so enjoyable!

Renewed Interest in Writing Short Stories

Of course, reading so many excellent SFFH short stories each month (as well as reading submissions for Clarkesworld) has rekindled my interest in writing short stories of my own. How could it have not done? When the school year ended, and summer began, I started writing and submitting my own work.

The thing about short fiction is this: in my opinion, it’s hard to do well. Not that writing a book isn’t also difficult. It’s just difficult in a different way. Long-form fiction has the luxury of room on the page for tangents and extra adjectives and perhaps even a few adverbs. Novelists can get away with stuff that writers of short fiction can’t. The writing in short stories has to be tight, crisp, clear, sharp.

Have you ever tried to sharpen a knife with a ceramic rod, gotten the blade to the point of being kind of sharp, and thought with a shrug, “Eh, that’s good enough?” Well, if you apply that analogy to writing short stories, kind of sharp isn’t going to make the cut. Authors of short fiction need to wield that ceramic rod with enough skill to get that blade obsidian sharp. And that’s no easy feat.

I spent the summer practicing my knife sharpening skills. Anyone who knows me won’t be surprised by that. Overwriting is my authorial Achilles heel. My fictional blade isn’t sharp, but it’s getting better. Reading outstanding short stories day in and day out helps. Writing and revising short stories day in and day out helps, too.

Next Steps?

I plan to keep reading slush and, for now, keep writing and submitting short stories. I’ve set aside my latest novel revisions. If all goes well, I will be able to take a wickedly sharp blade to the manuscript when I return to it later this winter.

Tell me, writers, what strategies do you use to keep your skills knife sharp?

Thanks for stopping by, and as always, happy writing to you.

September 14, 2019
Book Review: The Martian by Andy Weir
Andy Weir’s The Martian was the hottest science fiction book to hit the shelves in 2014. There was a resurgence of interest in the novel when the film came out. I finally got around to reading it this summer. I’d heard many a great thing about it.

The Description from Goodreads

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars.

Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there.

After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.

Chances are, though, he won’t have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old “human error” are much more likely to kill him first.

But Mark isn’t ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills — and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit — he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

My Opinion of The Martian? Meh.

Disclosure: I did not finish this book.

I got halfway through The Martian, almost to the page, and it wasn’t grabbing me. The main character, the crew, the folks back on earth–I didn’t feel invested in any of them. So, I evaluated reasons why and moved on.

Reading half the book gave me enough of a picture for this review, I think.

Andy Weir’s writing is solid from a nuts and bolts perspective. Nothing wrong with his craft, per say. Had I read to the end, it’s possible my opinion might have changed. Maybe The Martian morphed into something spectacular five pages away from where I stopped. Lots of folks love this book. Love with a big fat capitol “L”.

As an individual reader (n=1 for the scientists), I reached a point where I thought to myself, “Eh, I kind of don’t care anymore.”

And that’s telling.

Where the Book Failed Me:

1) Lack of Tension

There are two things everyone seems to gush about with this book: the “voice” and the science, and there was plenty of both, but neither were enough to keep me going.

By the halfway point of The Martian, I was looking around going, “So, I have a clear picture of the problem, but has anyone scene the story? It should have showed up by now. Should we call somebody?”

I mean, yes, there was an inciting incident and (I guess) some rising action, but here’s the thing. Rising action is not always synonymous with rising tension. Their relationship is closely correlative but not causal.

Tension is what attacks our brains. Tension hooks us into a story and makes us want to know what happens next. In The Martian, the MC–Mark Watney–faces one problem after another after another as he fights to survive on Mars. And yet I wasn’t chewing my fingernails worrying about the consequences.

I think I first heard of the storytelling concept of “Yes-but, No-and” from Mary Robinette Kowal during a discussion on the podcast Writing Excuses. The idea goes like this.
1. A character faces an obstacle to achieving their goals. I’ll apply it to this book. Mark Watney’s goal is surviving long enough to get rescued. The challenge is… there were a bazillion to choose from in this book.
2. Does the character overcome the challenge? If Andy Weir’s goal was to build tension, then…
3. If the answer is yes, it should take the form of Yes-but now Mark’s created another, bigger problem. Note bigger in that description, not different.
4. If the answer is no, it should take the form of No-and now Mark’s chances of surviving are less than before.
Andy Weir throws challenge after challenge at his main character, but he does so in a consistent “Yes-and” pattern. See the difference? Yes-and manifests like this: Mark Watney faces a problem that will kill him. He solves it. A different problem pops up that also might kill him. He solves it. Repeat. They aren’t building off one another, amplifying in magnitude. For all the science in The Martian, the story was (for me) kind of boring.

Quick aside: even for me–a science-loving, science-teaching, science geek–there was just too much science. IMO: It would have been a stronger story had Andy Weir cut out about half the step-by-step scientific explanations and replaced them with moments of emotional vulnerability on the part of the characters.

2) Emotional Disconnect with the MC

I love me some action, but you’ve gotta connect me to the character on an emotional level, and do so as quickly as possible, if you want to hook me into the story. Weir didn’t do that.

Weir chose to deliver the main character, Mark Watney, through a filter. In the form of log entries. When you read the book (and remember, I only read half of it, so this might not be true of the entire novel), you’re not seeing Mark, not even hearing him speak, certainly not hearing his thoughts. You’re reading what the character wrote in NASA log entries. Sort of like a semi-personal, but semi-official journal. For me, that threw up a hazmat-suit kind of barrier between me and the guy on the other side of the fictitious keyboard.

Now, this might be where people want to jump in and say, “Yes, but you’re wrong because the character is so snarky, and he swears a lot, and he makes jokes and stuff.”

Okay… but, did you ever find yourself tapping into Mark Watney’s panic? The absolutely agonizing, muscle-seizing, grays-your-vision-around-the-edges pain of his initial injury? The heart-exploding relief at getting back to the HAB after the first time he drove out of sight of it. Of the hollowing crush of loneliness he was caught by? Rage? Frustration? True, Hulk-smash frustration?

Yeah, he swore a lot and wrote flippant comments and cracked an Aquaman joke. Maybe a strong “voice” isn’t enough. It’s got to be welded to emotional interiority of the character. What few emotions we saw were… flat. I didn’t believe them.

Andy Weir was using a literary device. I get that. The emotional distance I felt might have been intentional. Maybe we don’t see much interiority because Mark Watney thought everything he wrote down was eventually going to be read and analyzed. He was holding back his deepest inner self. Wouldn’t blame him. Makes perfect sense.

I guess I’m not the type of reader who enjoys staying somewhat removed of characters’ emotions. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people who adored this book. Cheers to them, I say. For me, it missed the mark.

Biggest Takeaway?

Do not, fellow writers, trouble your minds with the worry, “What if this story I’m writing is no good?” Easier said than done, I know. This is, perhaps, the biggest darkest deepest shadow looming over all writers. But, I just read a book loved dearly by a LOT of people and I didn’t love it. You’re never going to please everyone, no matter how great a book you write.

Maybe there could have been a different strategy for writing The Martian that would have pulled me in more effectively. Not really for me to say, I suppose.

Let me reiterate, however, this was a DNF book for me, so… take my thoughts with a big grain of salt.

Curious about my other book reviews?

Click here to read my review of Mackenzie Lee’s YA historical romance, The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue.

In the meantime, thanks for stopping by. As always, happy writing (and reading) to you.
August 7, 2018
My Interview for Arthur McCabe’s Website!

My Very First “Writer” Interview!!

Over on the website Interviews from the Void, I had the honor of chatting with Arthur McCabe about a whole bunch of interesting writing stuff. It’s a sign of how inept I am at professional marketing and blogging that I only just thought today of mentioning this on my own site.

In any case, Arthur and I talked about the neuroscience of engaging fiction, how evolving communication technologies are or aren’t changing readers brains, and how I use neuroscience both when I write for and teach science to teens. The questions were thoughtful and I revealed a lot about myself, I think, in the interview.

If you’re interested, check it out.

Interviews from the Void: Episode 24 – Katherine Karch

August 5, 2018
My ReaderCon 2018 Experience (Part 2)

This year’s ReaderCon event was so huge and so fabulous that I couldn’t fit it all into one post, so here’s the rest of my incredible experience. Click here to read about the first two days of fun.

Recap of Saturday’s Fun:

I kicked off Saturday with a delightful Kaffeeklatsch hosted by Victoria Janssen, a skilled writer of erotic fiction. If that strikes you as an odd choice on my part, given that my focus is on writing YA and MG stories, check my part 1 post for the explanation. It was a great conversation that ran the gamut of topics from industry trends to work-life balance. During this Klatsch, I met Sam Schreiber, whom I re-met later the same day. More on that in a bit.

I rushed from Victoria’s kaffeeklatsch to Susan Jane Bigelow’s workshop.

World Building Governments

Maybe they didn’t expect many people to attend it? They put her in one of the smaller Salons in the hotel room. Big mistake. By the time I arrived at 9:04, every seat was filled, and folks were beginning to sit on the floor, myself included. No way was I going to miss Susan’s workshop.

I’m fascinated by government systems as portrayed in fiction. And, since my current project is all about the upheaval of an existing government system, I thought it would be good to sharpen my world building tools.
Also, I saw Susan for the first time at Boskone in February. She participated in a panel called “Governmental Structures in SFF” that was outstanding. I wrote a summary of the discussion here.

I don’t know if Susan was inspired to create this workshop from the Boskone panel discussion or not, but she gave an epic workshop. She made all of her slideshow available on her website, too. Check it out.

Topics discussed:

What governments do.
What forms governments can take.
How governments go bad.
Current government structures with examples from the US, Iran, and Italy.
Historical government structures with examples from medieval Europe and China.
Questions an author should ask/answer when creating a fantasy or science fiction government.

Great, right? Yeah, it was.

After we gave her a standing ovation, I rushed off for my noon kaffeeklatsch with Navah Wolfe, which I wrote about previously. She gushed over Catherynne Valente’s new novel Space Opera.

Serendipitously, I was working my way through The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2017 Collection, edited by John Joseph Adams and Charles Yu. I had picked it up during my final residency for my MFA in creative writing program at Lesley University at the end of June. Catherynne has a story in the collection called The Future is Blue. I hadn’t yet read it when this Klatsch happened, but I’ve read it since then, and Odin it was so good! Space Opera is now on my TBR list.

The rest of my Saturday at ReaderCon was a whirlwind of panel discussions, followed by an awkward encounter at the hotel bar with a man who unintentionally offended me multiple times as he tried to chat me up while I ate dinner. Thank Thor, Sam Schreiber turned up and gave me a reason to extricate myself from a bad conversation for a much, MUCH better one. Sam is a member of the Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Group, and he helps produce the podcast Kaleidocast.

I just listened to the first episode of season two, by the way. The story, “Playing Nice with God’s Bowling Ball” by N. K. Jemisin, was quite enjoyable, and the woman who narrated the story, Tatiana Grey, did an excellent job.

Shameless plug, Sam (if you happen to read this), I would love to narrate a story for you fine folks.

I discovered the existence of the Boston Speculative Fiction Writers Group pretty much accidentally while at ReaderCon. Had Sam not mentioned it in passing during our conversation at the hotel bar, I might never have stumbled upon its existence. This was after I used him to extricate myself from a very uncomfortable conversation with some Rando who was making me very nervous.

Quick tangent…

The hotel restaurant was packed on Saturday night, so I asked to be seated at the bar for dinner since there were actual seats available there. They put me next to an older gentleman who was also eating dinner at the bar. I ordered my food, got my food, ate my food, and then decided that it might be fun to try my hand at “Barconning,” so I ordered a beer and sat, hoping to see someone I had already spoken to earlier so I could say hello and try to have a conversation with him or her.

Long story short, that was when the man sitting beside me, who was not part of the convention, proceeded to tell me that he’d like to beat the $h!7 out a fellow standing at a nearby table for laughing too loud.

Reg flags up, warning bells ringing, iceberg dead ahead. Course correction needed five minutes ago.

Then, he asked what the convention was about and I told him.

The man with the violent tendencies and hair trigger then said, “I always wanted to write a book because I’m a pretty good writer, and I bought this house once to renovate it but when I went inside of it, it had this feeling like it was possessed, like not just haunted, you know, but possessed by evil, like that Amityville house, you know what I mean, with the walls just and voices screaming at me to just, just get out, get out, get out like it was pure evil. That would make a pretty good book, right?”

The side of this boat has been torn off, folks. Evacuate if you can.

That’s when I saw the guy from Victoria Janssen’s kaffeeklatsch. What was his name? Loki, why am I so terrible with names? Sam! His name is Sam! Okay, be cool. Keep the fear and desperation out of your voice.

“Oh, hi there! You’re Sam, right? You were in Victoria’s Kaffeeklatsch with me.”

Sam’s smile was as glorious a sight as a life raft to a drowning victim.

I jumped ship and did so without a shred of guilt.

End of Tangent

On Sam’s suggestion, I skipped the Comedy Show happening at 9 PM in the ballroom and instead scoped out the Boston Speculative Fiction Writers Group, where I had a great conversation with author Elaine Isaak. [I later learned that the party was hosted not by the writing group but by the related Speculative Boston Readers Series Group. Not entirely the same thing.]

Elaine Isaak, at Arisia in 2013

She’s a member of BSFG, and I’d seen her on a few panels at Boskone. It was great to see her again and talk to her in a smaller, more informal setting. She told me about another organization, Broad Universe, and invited me to check it out. I did, and I’ll be joining the latter group while wishing the former group was open to new members.

At around 10:30 PM, I finally made it up to the eighth floor, where the ReaderCon Suite resided. All weekend long, folks had been mentioning the ConSuite up on the eighth floor. I had envisioned it as a secret VIP room for the chosen few where high powered con-goers sat around schmoozing with one another high above the lowly commoners (like me). A ridiculous notion, I know, but I’m still new to the world of book and writing conventions. Cut me some slack.

Sam Schreiber was the one who got me to swallow my misguided fears and get into the elevator. Turns out, it really was just a place to hang out, eat free food, drink free beverages, and chat with entirely ordinary people! I had a long conversation with a book dealer who woke me up to the existence of CanLit (Canadian Literature). We also discussed Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, and Plato. Peter, from Ontario, it was a pleasure debating the philosophy of myth and religion with you, sir.

I called it a night at 12:30 AM, an obnoxiously late hour for me.

Sunday:

Second Name Drop

See?! It’s me and Chip!

Ready for this?! I ate breakfast with Samuel Delany. Can you freaking believe it?

Despite getting to bed at a ridiculously late hour (for me), I got down to the restaurant at 7:30 AM for breakfast. Just in time for the rush, apparently. The guy standing in line ahead of me shifted, and I noticed he was wearing a ReaderCon badge (on a lanyard, so I had to stare at his belly to read his name and hope he didn’t notice and take offense).

Samuel Delany? Oh Sugar Honey Iced Tea, I must talk to this man. I must open my mouth and stammer out a hello to this giant in the sci-fi literature world. Be cool. Be cool. Just say hello. That’s all you have to do.

“Hi, are you Sam Delany?”

What a nice guy. Just as open and friendly as Ken Schneyer had been on Friday. After a few minutes of talking about the convention and the panels, the waitress said she was ready to seat him. He turned and asked if I would like to share a table with him because he was all by himself–his spouse, Dennis, had elected to sleep late. Gee, um, let me think. Okay!

So I got to spend Sunday morning chatting with Samuel Delany about his career, his process, his love of genre fiction, his love of ReaderCon, and other random stuff over eggs and bacon and oatmeal. He even let me snap a selfie of the two of us together, because who would believe me that I’d had breakfast with him unless I obtained photographic evidence?

After breakfast, Sam and I walked together to his and my first panel of the day:

Curses, World Building Through Explitives

It was, of course, a highly entertaining and thought-provoking hour. In hindsight, I wish Catherynne Valente and Scott Lynch had been on the panel, as they both make lovely use of expletives as world building tools in their writing. Still, Francesca Forrest, Sarah Smith, Vinnie Tesla, Yves Meynard, and Sam had the audience laughing and scribbling notes like crazy.

They talked about the fine art of inventing curse words. Vinnie brought up the standard technique of blending “high” and “low” into a contrasting and therefore ironic and insulting combination (“holy shit,” for example). Sam mad the excellent point that the preferred pejoratives a culture uses tell a lot about systems of power and dominance in a fictional world. A culture that tosses around “bitch,” “slut,” and “cunt” is probably patriarchal. Curses that invoke a world’s religion(s) or god(s) will always be blasphemous, and Yves Meynard brought up the use of swears that denigrate certain professions or geographies as excellent and quick ways to tell readers who the underclass are in a world.

Bloody great stuff, am I right?

Then, it was off to the next discussion:

Crime and Punishment Panel

The panelists were Josh Jasper, Scott Lynch, Tamara Vardomskaya, and Chris Gerwel.

The discussion kicked off by identifying familiar “criminal” archetypes in fantasy and science fiction. Rogues, thieves, burglars, tricksters are the big four.

The nature or purpose of incarceration both in life and in fiction generated lots of questions and comments from the audience. Is the primary purpose of imprisonment to punish the individual or to send a message to the broader populace? Or is it a tool to rehabilitate, and if so, who decides what constitutes “rehabilitated?”

The discussion was fascinating and unsettling all at the same time.

Final Panel of My ReaderCon Experience: How Horror Stories End

This was the panel I’d been most looking forward to all weekend.

Horror is my favorite genre. It lives and breathes deep in my psyche. In the second grade, I filled a notebook with short stories, all of them involving bloody deaths and vicious murders and witches eating babies for breakfast. All accompanied by my own gory illustrations in bright Crayola colors. It’s a wonder I didn’t end up meeting regularly with the school psychiatrist.

Anyway, I love horror stories, so this was my panel for ReaderCon. It was hosted by Nicholas Kaufmann, Jess Nevins, Elsa Sjunneson-Henry, Ellen Datlow, and Jack Langen.

Nick opened things up by asking the question: Can a horror story have a happy ending?

Short answer, no. Not really.

Characters can survive. They can even defeat the enemy and save the day, but it still isn’t a happy ending because said characters have been forever changed (probably damaged) by their ordeal.

The discussion then shifted to the concept of definitive versus ambiguous endings in horror novels. Ellen Datlow professed that ambiguous endings get tiresome. She likes a story that ties up all the loose ends. [Correction: Ellen did not actually say that. That was my (mis)interpretation. Rather, she said that reading too many stories with ambiguous endings gets tiresome, and there seem to be many of them, so the stories with definitive endings are a welcome break from that. That’s not a direct quote either, but I think I’m correctly capturing the spirit of her words.] Other panelists tried to come up with concrete examples of horror stories that do that. The Haunting of Hill House was mentioned as a horror story with a concrete ending. I suppose it is for the characters, but (and I applaud Yves for pointing this out) it still contains a level of ambiguity because Hill House survives. It continues to exist, so the potential for future horrors remains. I thought of Stephen King’s first novel, Carrie. The ending is definitive for the characters, but King tacked on a “letter” at the end of the book that left the door of ambiguity open.

Panelists and audience members alike tossed out example after example, each with an ending that seemed to contain both definitive and ambiguous notes. Given that the human psyche wants neat endings, wants things wrapped up and resolved, wants problems solved. Ambiguity is inherently horrifying to us.

In my opinion, the only successful use of a genuinely definitive ending in a horror story would involve the heroes losing and the villains winning. I’m thinking of a recent superhero film that shall not be directly named, to half-heartedly dodge spoiling it for folks who haven’t yet seen it. Pretty unambiguous but definitely horrifying.

It was a great panel!

And Then I Went Home

By the end of “How Horror Stories End,” I was well and truly done. Fatigue slammed into me like a wrecking ball loosed from its chain. I might have actually staggered. I checked out of my room, quickly and without difficulty, caught the shuttle to the Redline, the Redline to North Station. So as not to miss my stop should I fall asleep, I set an alarm on my watch. Thank Thor for a bit of foresight, because I did indeed tumble into the land of Nod shortly after the train started moving. An hour later, I was home. It took me a week to recover from four days of high-octane interactions and very little sleep, but it was worth it!

So, that was my adventure at ReaderCon 2018. It took two ridiculously long posts to cover all the fun, I know, but I gotta say, I had an incredible time. If you’re a fan of science fiction and fantasy stories, you have to get to ReaderCon. You won’t be disappointed.

Except, maybe, by the lack of towel hooks.

Thanks for dropping by and as always, happy writing to you.

July 24, 2018
My ReaderCon 2018 Experience (Part 1)

I went for three days without seeing the sun.

Not best practice in terms of health, but it tells you something about how busy I was at ReaderCon this past weekend.

Quick disclaimer: This is going to be a long post, as will be the part 2 follow-up. I’m trying to paint a clear picture of my experience to help others unfamiliar with ReaderCon decide whether or not to give it a try next year. That will take more than a few quick words.

What, you ask, is ReaderCon? Until last summer, I’d never heard of it. Then, one of my instructors in my MFA program suggested I attend. “It’s about the best Con in New England, and it’s local for you.”

So, I looked into it.

To quote from ReaderCon’s homepage:

“Readercon is the only small convention regularly attended by such giants of imaginative literature as Gene Wolfe, Samuel R. Delany, John Crowley, Barry N. Malzberg, Kit Reed, and Jonathan Lethem.

The program consists of two tracks each of panel discussions, author readings, and solo talks or discussion groups, plus kaffeeklatsches (intimate gatherings with an author) and autograph signings.

There is a large bookshop full of new, used, and rare and collectible books and magazines (and yet more great conversation; if a Readercon attendee is not at a program item, they’re probably here).”

This convention is all about the people!

I met many authors (both established and aspiring) as well as avid readers, all of whom were open and friendly and willing to chat with me. You might remember from my post about Boskone that I sometimes have trouble engaging with folks in new and unfamiliar settings. That was not a problem this time around. That said, I did rig the game of talking to people slightly in my favor with judicious use of name tag add-ons.

Without further ado, here’s what my four-day, three-night romp at ReaderCon looked like.

Thursday:

I checked into my hotel room at the Boston Marriott in Quincy at around 6:30 PM. First impressions of the hotel itself? Meh. I doubt folks are attending because of the fantastic rooms. The carpets were difficult to look at, the closets seemed designed to dissuade anyone from actually using them, and (oddly) the bathrooms lack any towel hooks. For whatever reason, that last detail really bothered me. Why, Marriott, do you have zero places for me to hang up a towel in the bathroom? Why?! That is, however, the limit of my complaints. The rest is all glowing praise.

Thursday night’s program kicked off at 8 PM with panel discussions that were free and open to the public. Despite that, attendance was sparse. Probably because it was a Thursday. The two panels I attended were:

1) Writers Who Edit, Editors Who Write

Author and funny man, Scott Edelman

The panel consisted of Sabrina Vourvoulias, John Lawson, Scott Edelman, Mimi Mondal, and Mike Allen.

For an hour, these folks talked about the tricky task of balancing being an editor of others’ work and writing your own stuff.

“There’s a long history of writers who became editors and then stopped writing their own work.” – Scott Edelman

“My rule to keep me working on my owns stuff is this. Add three sentences to your own story every day no matter what.” – Mike Allen

“When we edit, we’re reshaping the bones of a story. When we write, we’re creating the bones from scratch.” – Sabrina Vourvoulis

“I’ve had people tell me to stop writing and just be an editor because I was so good at editing.” – Mimi Mondal

“As a writer, I feel inspired by the submissions that come across my desk. I learn a lot from both the good and bad pieces that I edit.” – John Lawson.

The advice that stuck with me most came from Scott Edelman, however. He said, “Learn how to say no!” His comment was in reference to taking on editing projects, but I think it’s useful to writers who don’t edit, too, because there is always going to be someone asking you to do something for them.

2) Fabric Goods in Fantasy Settings

The panel consisted of Victoria Janssen, Natalie Luhrs, Sarah Smith, Tom Greene, and Elaine Isaak.

The discussion centered around the economics of producing the clothes that characters wear in fantasy and science fiction stories. Consensus? Few authors drop any references into their worlds of the supply chains involved or the various professions involved (other than, perhaps, tailors and blacksmiths). What’s missing? Where are all the animals providing the leather? Where are the fields of cotton or flax? Where are the silkworm farms? And, where are the people who tend the animals, tan the leather, gather the cotton, process the flax into linen, harvest the silken threads, or dye the woven cloth? (I’m looking at you George R. R. Martin, famous describer of every single character’s outfit to the last button).

By the time 10 PM rolled around, I was happy but tired, so instead of hitting up the BarCon — a term I became familiar with this weekend –, I went to bed. It was the earliest I would manage for the rest of the convention.

Friday:

I popped out of bed bright and early at 6:30, showered, dressed, then loaded up on breakfast in the hotel restaurant. As a chronically light eater, I opted not to go for the buffet. Given the price, I would have had to be a bottomless pit to make it financially feasible, so I ordered from the regular menu. It must be noted that the hotel restaurant is quite expensive, but there was a hotel shuttle ferrying folks to and from the redline T-stop every half hour. If I’d wanted to, I could have headed into Boston and found better food for less money. But it was my first time at ReaderCon, and I didn’t know how it worked. I didn’t want to risk missing out on anything significant, so I stayed inside the hotel (hence the three days without actual sunlight touching my skin).

First Name Drop:

On my way out from breakfast, I stopped at the Starbucks at the hotel bar to grab some caffeine. A man was waiting to be seated who looked familiar to me.

He’s an author, I thought. I’ve seen him before. I should talk to him!

Ken Schneyer, a master storyteller!

Boskone is the only other place I could have seen this gent, so I asked him if he’d been on any of the panels. Why, yes, he had. I offered a hand to shake and introduced myself. Imagine my surprise and delight to find myself shaking hands with Mr. Kenneth Schneyer, prestigious and prolific author of many excellent speculative and science fiction short stories (and a few novels). Turns outs, he’s not just a great writer but also a great human being. It came out in the quick exchange that I was pretty new to writing conferences. Ken went out of his way for the rest of ReaderCon to smile and say hello and talk to me whenever he saw me. He wasn’t the only one, either. I’m telling you, ReaderCon was terrific!!

Getting Registered:

I wandered back to the registration table and queued up to officially register and get my name badge. There were two options for how one could wear the plastic badge–either clipped to your clothing or dangling from a thin black lanyard around your neck.

Interlude: A Rant about Placement of Name Badges

Take this piece of advice to heart. Do NOT go for the lanyard option, and here’s why. Someone sees you from across the way. You look like an interesting person. They would like to meet you, say hello, learn your name, chat you up, hear your thoughts on books and writing and life. They swallow their nerves and approach you. The natural instinct is to check your name badge, but oops–to do that, they have to break polite eye contact and allow their gaze to drift down your torso to your midriff where your name badge is dangling. Awkward. Worse, there’s a 50/50 chance that the plastic card is flipped around backward and they have raked their eyes up and down your body for no reason at all. Twice as awkward!!

Please, use the clip option, and affix your name high up near your shoulder. Easy peasy fresh and breezy and no awkward body-gazing needed. End of interlude.

ReaderCon had an ingenious name badge add-on option available. You could write anything (within reason) you wanted on fabric tags that could then be securely adhered to the bottom of your badge. I saw lots of folks using them as a chance to clarify preferred gender pronouns (thank you so much to folks who did that, by the way).

I chose to use my add-ons as a way to invite people to talk to me, and to give them a conversation starter as an “in.” It worked quite well.

Kaffeeklatsches!

At the sage advice of a volunteer manning the registration table Thursday night, I wandered over to where the Kaffeeklatsch sign-up book lay at around 9:45 AM, fifteen minutes before sign-up officially opened. Good thing I did, too. There was already a line of folks forming, and people were already filling up the slots with their names.

If you don’t know what a kaffeeklatsch is, fear not. I didn’t know either until Boskone when I missed all of them because I didn’t realize you had to sign up for them in advance. Hence my 9:45 AM appearance at the sign-up table. A kaffeeklatsch is a small, intimate affair in which an author (or editor, or agent) sits down with ten to fifteen folks and spends an hour shooting the breeze, talking about whatever people want to talk about.

I thought I would sit quietly at the tables and let others ask their questions and share their thoughts. After all, this was my first time attending these things. Best to sit back, watch, and learn. That didn’t happen. The authors were too friendly, too engaging. So were all the other folks at the table. The conversations were lively, and I quickly found myself sucked in, laughing and chatting away with everyone else. So great!

Here’s the list of folks who I got to meet and talk with via the Kaffeeklatsches at ReaderCon:

1) Nicholas Kauffman

Horror writer extraordinaire and a super nice guy. I pre-ordered his upcoming new book “100 Fathoms Below” within 20 minutes of his klatsch ending. The pitch that sold it for me? Disabled American submarine in Soviet waters with a vampire on board. Yup. That’s for me. Thank you!

2) James Morrow

Okay, I signed up but didn’t attend. One of the problems I had at ReaderCon was having no free time to feed myself. By the time this klatsch was starting up, my hands were starting to shake, and I was feeling panicky from hunger. I had to eat. Sorry, Mr. Morrow. I’ll try to catch you next time. Your book, The Asylum of Dr. Caligari, is fantastic, by the way.

3) Ken Liu and Anatoly Belilovsky

The conference room in which the kaffeeklatsches happened accommodated two groups at a time, divided by a mobile wall. Ken and Anatoly’s klatsches were scheduled for the same time slot. Because they knew each other and did similar stuff regarding translating Chinese (in Ken’s case) and Russian (in Anatoly’s case) fiction to English, they opted to break down the dividing wall and combine their klatsches. I found the ensuing conversations about balancing their own writing with the job of translating others’ works to be fascinating. I also enjoyed listening to Ken and Anatoly discuss the many nuanced elements that go into translating literature from one language to another.

My mind kept returning to the two versions of Ovid’s Metamorphosis that I and my beloved own. It’s the same story, but the two translations (we sat and read the story of Apollo and Daphne back and forth to each other one morning) created different tones and different points of thematic emphasis.

4) Max Gladstone

I love, love, LOVE Max’s Craft Sequence books, and so I was very excited to sit in a room with this man and bask in his presence. That’s all I wanted to do. However, Max’s klatsch happened immediately after the “Bureaucracy in Fantasy” panel. More than half of us in Max’s klatsch (including Max) had attended the panel, and Max had asked the last question fielded before the man with the bright red “STOP!” sign ended things. So, Max’s kaffeeklatsch turned into an extended discussion of bureaucratic systems both in the real work (in China, specifically) and in fantasy settings. It was great!

5) Victoria Janssen

Why, you might be asking yourself, would I sign up for this kaffeeklatsch? After all, I’m a self-proclaimed YA and MG writer. Victoria writes adult erotica! Well, the YA novel I’m working on at the moment takes place in a secondary world in which women are the unapologetically dominant gender. That means my characters have never experienced male-induced body-shaming or sexual-stigmatization. They are fully realized and fully confident sexual beings. Sex is not shied away from in this world I’ve created. It is openly discussed, and even more openly practiced. Yet, as I pointed out, it’s a YA novel. I’m walking a narrow and tricky line here. How do I write sex scenes that are 1) well-done and 2) strike the right balance of on-page/off-page references so that this manuscript doesn’t get kicked back to me with a “thanks but a little too edgy” comment in the rejection email I get from every YA agent I sub it to? This was my chance to sit down with a woman who knows how to write sex scenes in their many iterations and ask my questions. The conversation was, as you might guess, both stimulating and enlightening. I’m so glad to have met Victoria and to have had a chance to benefit from her experience and insights.

6) Navah Wolfe

A chance to sit down with the senior editor at Saga Press?! Yes, please. Let me sit and be showered with insider tips and suggestions for the SFF publishing industry. Which, by the way, is exactly what happened. Plus, I received an impromptu education into the joys of Eurovision. Didn’t even know that was a thing!

Navah talked faster than an auctioneer after her third espresso, and her energy and enthusiasm was infectious. I don’t know how old Navah is, but she looked too young to be a senior editor. After spending an hour with her, however, I realized that she’s got the advantage of youth on her side because her job (and her clear love of and commitment to it) sounds exhausting.

That’s it for the kaffeeklatsches. I spent the rest of my time at ReaderCon attending panel discussions, chatting with friendly folks at the bar and at the after-parties up on the eighth floor of the hotel.

Friday Panels:

Every time slot was quadruple-booked with interesting panel discussions. If only I had Hermione’s time turner, I could have gone to every panel that sounded interesting (all of them). Alas, I had to pick and choose. Here are the one’s I sat in on.

On Dislike – Between Meh and Rage

The panel consisted of KJ Kabza, Lauren Roy, Graham Sleight, J.R. Dawson, and Auston Habershaw.

Take-away from this discussion? Life is short. If a book isn’t hooking you for good or ill, dump it and move on.

The Bureaucracy of Fantasy

The panel consisted of Victoria Sandbrook, Ken Schneyer, Phenderson Djèlí Clark, John Wiswell, and Alex Jablokow.

Of course, the Ministry of Magic was brought up and discussed at length. I get it. Harry Potter is practically universal; most of us who are fans of fantasy and science fiction have read it. But… there are so many other interesting examples that could have been mentioned. I still can’t believe no one brought up the movie Brazil!!

Feminist Socialism in Fantastika

The panel consisted of Veronica Schanoes, Tamara Vardomskaya, and Marissa Lingen.

Wow. In the best possible way, wow. These three women knew so much about the topics of socialism in literature, feminism in literature, and the combination of the two in literature. I was blown away. Humbled, really. I added about ten books and authors to my TBR list.

Friday Night Fun

The final events of Friday were purely social in nature. At 9:00 PM ReaderCon hosted a “Meet the Prose Party” in which participating panelists printed witty one-offs from one of their published works on sticky mailing labels and walked around a big ballroom with them in hand. The idea? Folks like me could walk up to someone carrying printed labels and ask for one. It gave us shy people a way to engage with authors when we might otherwise not.

Also, there was a bar at the back of the ballroom. I do not often partake of the alcoholic beverages, but a beer gave my hands something to hold onto, and the ethanol settled my nerves. Win-win.

The mailing label thing worked like a charm, too. By the end of it, I had both sleeves of my shirt lined with snippets from over twenty published authors, and each time I requested one, I read it and asked the giver to tell me more about the work from which it came. Hooray for socializing!!

At 10:30 PM, music started playing, and the 80’s/90’s themed dance began. I had my 80’s outfit ready to go up in my hotel room but never went up to put it on. Too much fun being had to pause for a costume change. By 11:30 PM, most folks had either called it a night or headed off for other, smaller parties elsewhere. A natural night owl I am not, so I climbed into bed at 11:45 PM, read for about two minutes and crashed.

I still had all of Saturday and the half-day schedule on Sunday ahead of me, but by the end of Friday I’d gotten my money’s worth from ReaderCon. You can check out the rest of my adventure in My ReaderCon 2018 Experience–Part 2 (coming soon). You’ll want to read all about my second name-dropping moment, which also happened in the hotel restaurant over breakfast (involving Samuel Delaney). In the meantime, you can check out my Instagram for pic’s from this year’s ReaderCon29.

Are you a writing convention enthusiast? Which Cons have you attended? Any you’d like to recommend to the rest of us newbies? Do share in the comments!

Thanks for dropping by and as always, happy writing to you.

July 18, 2018
Neuroscience Hack #2-Writing That Hooks Readers

In my previous post, Writing that Hooks Readers-Neuroscience Hack #1, I discussed how elements of change affect our brains as we read. As promised, I”m back with the next installment of this multi-part exploration of the neuroscience behind writing that grabs our attention and pulls us in.

If you’ve ever watched an Olympic sporting event like the floor routine in gymnastics, you might have seen shots of athletes preparing to compete. They stand to the side, eyes closed, twisting their bodies around in odd ways. You know what they’re doing. They’re envisioning their routine, imagining the jumps, the turns, the tucks. The term for it is pre-visualization, and there’s plenty of data in the field of neuroscience to show that it improves performance in the live competition. The same things happening to those athlete’s brains occur inside readers’ minds when they read. Provided, that is, an author uses a few key tricks when they write.

Brain Hack #2: “Monkey See, Monkey Do” is a Truer Statement Than You Think

In 1996, a team of Italian scientists inserted electric probes into the premotor cortices of monkeys. They tracked neuron (nerve cell) activation in the animal’s brains when they reached for a toy or grasped a piece of food or brought a cup of water to their mouth to drink. Each time a monkey did something, the scientists noted which neurons fired during each activity.

Interestingly, they discovered that when a scientist reached for a toy or grasped a piece of food, the neurons in a watching monkey’s brain would fire in the same way as if the animal were the one performing the actions. The lead scientist said, “…we realized that the pattern of neuron activity associated with the observed action was a true representation in the brain of the act itself, regardless of who was performing it.” (G, Rizzolatti, et al. “Mirrors in the Mind.” Scientific American, 2006. pp. 54–61. Print.)

What does that mean? From a neuroscience, it means our brains simulate what we observe others do and experience. In the book The Storytelling Animal, author Johnathan Gottschall suggested that this phenomenon offers us a “safe” way to learn new skills. It also lets us assess possible consequences of specific actions without endangering ourselves.

To better understand this idea, you have to know about a couple of specific types of neurons.

Motor Neurons

These are the nerve cells that stimulate our muscles when we kick, jump, or swing a bat. They originate in a region in our brain called the motor cortex and end in our muscles.

Mirror Neurons

These are the neurons our Italian scientist friends saw firing in their monkeys. The science is far from conclusive on why these cells exist. However, many folks believe mirror neurons help us understand the intent of other people’s actions. They also help us learn new skills by imitation.

Whereas motor neurons fire when we kick, jump or swing a bat, mirror neurons fire when we watch (or read) someone else kick, jump, or swing a bat. If a person is hooked up to a fMRI brain scanner while watching a film of an X-games freestyle skier launching off a half-pipe doing some crazy, twisty, flip thingy, the mirror neurons in their motor cortex light up brightly. Inside their brains, it looks like they’re the ones coming off the half-pipe. Even if they’ve never been skiing!

Writers Can Use Mirror Neurons to Deepen Reader Engagement

Include strong action verbs that reference specific body parts in your writing to stimulate your readers’ mirror neurons. The key to this brain hack working, however, is the specificity of your descriptions.

“He did a flip off the diving board.”

– this sentence uses an auxiliary verb (did) versus an action verb (flipped). Flip, in this sentence is a noun, a thing, not an action than can be mirrored in our minds.

“He flipped himself backward off the diving board.”

– in this sentence, flipped is an action verb, which is a stronger choice. Reading about an action, at least in theory, can stimulate mirror neurons. Also, we know something about the direction of the action (backward) and a rudimentary setting (the diving board). However, the verb flip refers to the whole body rather than specific body parts, so it doesn’t stimulate mirror neurons all that much.

“Pumping his arms like pistons, he heaved his weight downward against the edge of the diving board, then rode its recoil high into the air, tucking his knees tight to his chest as he spun, and craned his neck back as he sought to find the water.”

– I went a bit over-the-top with this one, but I wanted to make a clear point. This sentence contains multiple action verbs (pumping, heaved, rode, tucked, spun, craned, sought, and find). Many of the verbs reference specific parts of the body (arms, knees, and neck). The last element embedded into this sentence that is absent in the prior two examples is a clear goal. The individual is seeking the water. It’s the most engaging of the three because it does the best job of stimulating your motor cortex via mirror neuron activation.

So there you have it! Neuroscience hack #2: Mirror Neurons. Next time you sit down to write a scene, or edit a scene for that matter, pay attention to your use of verbs. Your readers will be pulled in and feel as if they’re living the story.

More posts about a neuroscience hacks writers can use to make their writing more engaging will be coming soon, so stay tuned.

Thanks for stopping by, and as always, happy writing to you!

July 11, 2018
Writing That Hooks Readers – Neuroscience Hack #1
The final requirement for my Masters in Creative Writing program at Lesley University is to teach a graduate student seminar, and I’ve chosen a topic that merges my two great passions in life: biology and writing. More specifically, neuroscience and literature. I’m going to drop a little science on my fellow writers next week by teaching them three inescapable brain hacks they can employ to suck readers into their stories.

It occurred to me that these neuroscience hacks would make some cool blog posts. Today’s neuroscience hack is subtle but incredibly useful.

Brain Hack #1: The human brain evolved to monitor the immediate environment for signs of change.

It’s true! From an evolutionary standpoint, the brain is an organ with a singular purpose. To keep us alive. An essential part of “not dying” is noticing any kind of change to the current situation.

Change grabs our attention as we assess whether it is positive or negative. The brain then forms a “survival goal” based on the conclusion and takes steps to achieve that goal. It could be as simple as putting on a sweater when the temperature drops. Or eating food when blood glucose levels fall. Or running for cover when a strange shadow shifts position in the tall grasses of the African savannah.

Changes such as a hulking figure with a knife stepping from a shadowy alley come with potentially extreme consequences. Experiencing that situation firsthand could mean death. Thankfully, our brains developed workarounds that let us gain knowledge and experience safely.

We have the somewhat unique ability to learn by watching others deal with problems.

Forget it, babe. You’re hooked!

Whether the observed individual lives or dies, we gain knowledge that might keep us alive should we encounter a similar problem.

When we read fictional stories, we get to practice identifying changes and assessing their potential positives or negatives.

In 2007, researchers found that when people read stories, there is a significant increase in brain activity during narrative moments containing changes in characters, scene locations, or changes in characters’ goals.

Changes that Really Light Brains Up:
- Words that suggest the passage of time, such as later, soon, shortly, or immediately.
- Descriptions of spacial changes, such as characters moving from one room to another, or even moving from one side of a room to another.
- Descriptions of characters changing their interaction with objects (picking up or putting down objects, or opening or closing things like doors or windows).
- Showing characters starting a new, goal-oriented action with a clear intent. For example, initiating a conversation, preparing to jump over a puddle, or thrusting a sword during a fight.
Consider the following excerpt from Cressida Cowell’s middle grade novel How to Train Your Dragon:

The Dragon had crawled down into the depths of the ocean and gone into a Sleep Coma. Dragons can stay in this suspended state for eternity, half-dead, half-alive, buried under fathom after fathom of icy-cold seawater. Not a muscle of this particular Dragon had moved for six or seven centuries.

But the previous week, a Killer Whale who had chased some seals unexpectedly deep was surprised to notice a slight movement in the upper eyelid of the dragon’s right eye. An ancestral memory stirred in the whale’s brain and he swam away from there as fast as his fins could carry him. And, a week later, the sea around the Dragon Mountain—which had previously been teeming with crabs and lobsters and shoals and shoals of fish—was a great, underwater desert. Not a mollusk stirred, not a scallop shimmied.

Admit it, that’s some engaging writing. One of the reasons why it pulls you in so fast is because it contains so much change. Your brain locks onto the text as it tries to figure out whether those changes are good or bad. Cowell employs another interesting neuroscience hack in this excerpt, too, but that’s a topic for another post.

Regardless of the quality of the actual story being told (Twilight? The Da Vince Code? Fifty Shades of Gray?), certain tricks can grab readers by the brain and engage them. Change is one of them. Take a look at your writing and see if adding a few elements of change livens things up a bit.

Have you ever gotten so into a book you were reading that you lost track of time and literally forgot about the real world? What was the book, and what was it that sucked you in so effectively?

Thanks for stopping by, and as always, happy writing to you!
June 21, 2018
ReaderCon29, Here I Come!

As John Arnold said in Jurassic Park right before everything went south, “Hold onto your butts.”

I just booked my hotel room for ReaderCon29. Who’s excited? Meeeee!

ReaderCon29 will be the second writing conference I’ve ever attended, and my very first conference–Boskone–was fun but underutilized. I spent most of my time star-struck, tongue glued to the roof of my mouth, unable to approach authors and talk to them. So many missed opportunities. You can read all about my (mis)adventures at Boskone here.

For example, while I managed to get a copy of Ghost Talkers signed by Mary Robinette Kowal, I could not bring myself to join the circle of fans surrounding her at the art show and tell her how much I enjoyed her writing (not to mention her commentary and sass on the writing podcast “Writing Excuses.”)

Then there was Marshall Ryan Maresca and E. J. Stevens, both of whom (if they noticed me) probably got utterly skeeved out by the weird blonde woman stalking them from a distance all weekend long. Sorry about that, by the way, if either of them by some slim chance ever read this post. Didn’t mean to be a creeper. I just got so fetching shy! It wasn’t just you two. I couldn’t talk to anyone!

Not this time, I am telling myself without much confidence. This time, I will have done it once before. I won’t be a complete newb. I will be able to approach and interact with other people at the conference because I will remember that it is a writing conference. Everyone in attendance will have a love of books and writing in common with me. I will smile, just like last time, but then I will make my feet move, and I will approach people, and I will say “hello” and other normal things. I will not go mute and resort to hiding behind giant plants in lobbies and watching authors from great distances.

Jeffrey Ford is going to be there, though, so I might. The man is an incredible writer. Have you read his short story collection, A Natural History of Hell? Sooooo good!

Anyway, ReaderCon has been on my radar since last summer, when my Fantasy & Science Fiction professor, Mark Edwards, suggested I attend. He described it as the most prominent annual writing convention in Massachusetts. A “not to be missed” event.

I missed it.

But, I vowed to get there this summer. Registered way back in February, even. I mean, I have no excuses to miss it a second time. The cost to attend is incredibly affordable, and it takes place in Quincy, Massachusetts. That’s an hour and a half from where I live, for Thor’s sake. This morning, I went all in on the experience and ponied up the funds to secure a hotel room. Now getting to and from each day won’t be an issue.

I am ready to rock this conference. Okay, not really. I definitely need some pointers, guidance, encouragement, etc.

Here’s my plea:

If you’re also going to ReaderCon, help me overcome the paralytic shyness that grabbed me by the throat at Boskone55 and say hello. Connect with me over on Twitter and Instagram, so that by the time July rolls around, I will (at least in a theoretical, social media sort of way) already know a few folks. How awesome would that be?!

If you’re a seasoned writing conference attendee, what tips do you have for me that will help me make the most of ReaderCon29?

As always, thanks for stopping by, and happy writing to you.

June 11, 2018