Writer’s group

I’ve joined a new writer’s group, and we will be submitting writing every other week. We’ve just had our second critique session, and I like how the group is going.

I have to admit, though, I was bad. I started this blog in part to help me stay focused on the Tuatha de Rising writing project, but I decided to send a different non-YA writing project to the group that is closer to completion. I am still debating things like how much I should say on the blog about other writing projects. I would hate for someone to read one of my YA books and say “That’s great, I’m going to read this author’s other books” and then have them find this project, which has more of a gritty, dystopic setting and some themes that I consider not-age-appropriate for YA audiences.

After a computer algorhythm discovered J.K. Rowling’s new publication under a pseudonym, however, I’ve found myself debating about how much it is possible to keep my “adult” vs “children’s” writings separated by little more than a pseudonym and separate blogs. I figure people aren’t likely to subject writings to that level of scrutiny unless I strike an extraordinary amount of commercial success with Tuatha de Rising.

For reasons of my “day job”, there are reasons I would want to distance myself from certain of my writings via pseudonym for fear of them being scrutinized by potential employers. Tuatha de Rising is something I would feel comfortable connecting with my real name.

I am curious about your thoughts on writers maintaining multiple pseudonyms, and the logistics of keeping such alternate identities separate. How many of you publish (or plan to) under pseudonyms vs. your real name? How do you maintain your pseudonyms, especially if you have multiple pseudonyms for writing?

Magic for Beginners

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Kelly Link, Magic for beginners, short stories

I finished Kelly Link’s book Magic for Beginners today. The short stories in the book are rich with detail and oddity. Sometimes I had to set the book down to get a break between the stories and clear my palate for the next one. Each of the stories dealt with unique “What if’s” and led to some wonderfully imaginative stories. I was initially surprised at some of the language and adult situations in the book because the friend that asked me to read it presented it as being a YA book. There wasn’t a lot of that though.

There are some of the stories I found particularly compelling, like “The Faery handbag” and “Magic for Beginners.” I was amazed by the variety of voices each short story was written in. There were some stories, however, like “Stone Animals” that seemed to drag with the pacing. It sometimes felt like the author was throwing in a lot of weird stuff just because it was weird, but didn’t have a satisfying direction for it. There were a few stories where I found the endings unsatisfying, with too much unresolved by the end. Overall, though, I did enjoy the book.

The friend who recommended it to me did so after hearing me do oral storytelling on a short story I wrote about ‘how Fiscassia got her name’, so I view it as a pretty big compliment that my story made her think of Kelly Link’s work. *Happy Dance*

Visit from The Winter Fairy

I was on a trip this past week and had the opportunity to speak with Lola Karns, the author of Winter Fairy. Her book doesn’t exactly meet the “myth meets modern” kind of theme I’ve been trying to go with on this website, but I found it enjoyable nonetheless. I loved the ways that the young child in the book tried to establish interaction with the fairies, even though there was no direct appearance of fairies in the book. I also felt the way Lola handled the additional challenges involved in a widower entering the dating scene was consistent with the experiences that one of my widower friends has had: both with the adjustments he had to make, and the additional fears and insecurities involved for potential partners who knew that he still loved his wife and would still have been with her if she hadn’t passed on. The plot was pretty standard for a romance novel, but the execution was rich with detail and made for an interesting read.

Anyways, Lola and I also discussed blogs and book reviewing, and one thing she mentioned was that Goodreads regularly has contests for receiving prerelease books. Winning such contests is more likely if it is from a favorite genre of books that someone reads and reviews. I would love to post some more prerelease reviews for you, so I entered more books on Goodreads. I must say I’ve been amused to see that Goodreads felt my selection of books was more eclectic than I realized. I tend to think of myself as a lover of science fiction, fantasy, mythology, children’s books, and crossovers thereof. So far, Goodreads says that I like Biographies, Classics, Contemporary, Crime, Fantasy, Fiction, History, Historical Fiction, Horror, Memoir, Mystery, Nonfiction, Paranormal, Philosophy, Psychology, Religion, Romance, Science, Science Fiction, Spirituality, Suspense, Thriller, and Young Adult. Come to think of it, it would be shorter to list the genres it thinks that I don’t like.