leahbobet | Two Good, One Meh, One Bleh

GOOD!

"Kryptonian International Remembrance Day", which is the poem I wrote after the Virginia Tech shootings, is live in the second issue of Oddlands Magazine. I normally wouldn't give the context for a poem like that, but it's pretty obvious.

Also, "Furnace Room Lullaby" is scheduled for the May 2nd issue of Pseudopod. 'Ware!

MEH!

(Published in accordance with the Tenets of Book Reporting and the support of Viewers Like You.)

So far this year...
#1 -- M. John Harrison, Nova Swing
#2 -- Barth Anderson, The Patron Saint of Plagues
#3 -- Stephen King, The Waste Lands
#4 -- Stephen King, Wizard and Glass
#5 -- Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad
#6 -- Patricia McKillip, The Book of Atrix Wolfe
#7 -- Stephen King, Wolves of the Calla
#8 -- Stephen King, Song of Susannah
#9 -- Julia Alvarez, !Yo!
#10 -- Stephen King, The Dark Tower
#11 -- Melissa Marr, Ink Exchange
#12 -- Paul Melko, Singularity's Ring
#13 -- Sarah Prineas, The Magic Thief
#14 -- Sarah Monette, The Bone Key
#15 -- Marie Brennan, Midnight Never Come
#16 -- Michelle West, The Broken Crown
#17 -- Nick Sagan, Edenborn
#18 -- Karl Schroeder, Permanence

Not-#19 -- Joel Shepherd, Crossover

I got maybe a chapter into this last night and put it aside as a qualified Not For Me. Not because there was something therein that offended me, or made me sad, or was abominably terrible or mean, but...it's just slushy.

In 35 or so pages it manages to hit most of the major bases of stuck-in-slushpile writing, including a mirror scene, coyness with information, rampant word rep (the tic word is "attractive", up to four times in two sentences at one point), loose and scaffoldy writing, 25 pages worth of exposition and wandering around a setting not quite sure what to do (aka: stalling for time) before the plot even thinks about happening, two sex scenes, and that thing peculiar to male writers of female characters who are supposed to be highly sexual where...the character views herself as sexual but in a way a third-party male person would do it. I think this falls under a not-fully-developed ability to maintain and empathize with character PoV. However, it sort of comes across as the author wanting to do his character, but the words being fed through the character's brain and mouth.

That is creepy as shit, let me tell you.

Writers are hereby invited by me to stop it.

So...yes. Not-#19. It's just made of too much slush.

BLEH!

The paper doesn't have to be good, it just has to be handed in on time.
The paper doesn't have to be good, it just has to be handed in on time.
The paper doesn't have to be good, it just has to be handed in on time.
The paper doesn't have to be good, it just has to be handed in on time.
The paper doesn't have to be good, it just has to be handed in on time.
The paper doesn't have to be good, it just has to be--