Shades of Milk and Honey review

After a couple months full of theater and schoolwork, I decided to treat myself to some reading: Shades of Milk and Honey, the first book of the Galmourist Histories, by Mary Robinette Kowal. I had the pleasure of meeting Mary at GenCon 2012, but only last week did I manage to pick up one of her books. I'm glad I did. I wasn't sold on the idea of Regency fantasy when I started, but as I read, I came to enjoy how well Mary's magic system works itself into the Regency world.

I've been increasingly interested in the Regency period in the last few years. I've read Pride and Prejudice upwards of a dozen times. (I may or may not have dressed as Elizabeth Bennet for Halloween last year.) It's an era that really lends itself to the aesthetic, and Mary works it.

The magic system is called glamour. Glamourists use breath (ether) in different arrangements to create illusions, even sounds and scents. The process isn't described in much technical detail, but that's not the point. The subtlety of glamour blends very well into the social setting of the Regency and thus the relationships that populate the story.

Our main character is Jane, a woman who is so nice and polite I at first couldn't believe her, but she soon develops into a remarkably subtle character. She's learned to repress her emotions and put stock in herself based on her propriety. By the end, she learns how to open herself up to her passions (and eventually takes less crap from her spoiled sister, whom I just wanted to slap. Even the sister, though, is developed enough to be believable). Love and family, in traditional novel of manners fashion, take the forefront.

Mary's elevator pitch for the series is "Jane Austen with magic." There are a few sprinklings of humor of a type you wouldn't get in an Austen book, but the idea is true to the setting. I've read that the other books depart from the typical Austen-esque plotline, but I think these characters (and glamour itself) have the potential to make other story types not only memorable, but also fun.

You may need a love of Regency or romance to get you in the door, but the characters and the magic will keep you there. I enjoyed this story and the world of glamour very much.

Find Mary's blog here.

Letter Writing Again

The best gift I received this Christmas was a journal full of letters written just for me. Almost nothing shows you care more than taking the time to write to somebody. It's a reminder that in another time and place, someone was thinking about you. This is why I write letters. This is also why when I don't write them for long periods of time, I feel like I'm missing something.

On a related topic, the Month of Letters is about to start again. I probably sent more letters last February than I did the rest of the year combined, but mailing something each day made me happy in a way that I've found hard to replicate. 

It's an illustration of the principle that it is better to give than to receive. Receiving letters is great (in my dorm, I'm known to turn from an empty mailbox with an exclamation of "Nobody loves me!"), but it results in another kind of satisfaction that isn't exactly the same as that of sending one. In writing letters, you give a part of yourself. In that letter, you, as the writer, are frozen in that time and place forever. When someone receives it, it can read it in many times and places. To quote Mary Robinette Kowal, it is "both lasting and ephemeral." 

If you're interested in writing or people at all, I'd recommend sending letters. They don't have to be long. They don't have to be especially eloquent. They just have to be. Need some tips for getting started?

• Be quirky! On the back of letters to my cousin Kara, I write poems about mail. (T. S. Eliot used to address his letters with poems.) Sometimes, I write quotes. Sometimes I like to draw on envelopes. What's life without a little whimsy?
• Who needs to buy envelopes, anyway? The poor college student must save money any way possible.
• Get to know the people in your post office. I once stopped in for directions to a pumpkin farm, and the lady behind the counter offered to take me there herself if I couldn't find a ride. I've met some really neat people employed by the postal service.
• Get sappy. Valentine's Day is in February, you know. See the second sentence of this blog post.

This is not a plea for the people who know me to send me stuff so I can feel loved. Rather, it's an encouragement for everyone to spread a little love around. I'm almost certain that you (yes, you) have family and friends who aren't near you at the moment. Go ahead and send them part of yourself. The impact will last much longer than it takes to write the letter.

Letter Writing

I have one longstanding pen pal and a few other people to whom I write letters on a semi-regular basis. Recently, though, I haven't written many. It's easy to let the time-consuming act of handwriting a note, stamping it, and mailing it be overtaken by such shiny things as Twitter and Facebook, not to mention soulless email.

A while ago, Hugo award-winning author Mary Robinette Kowal decided to rebel against the sad state of our communication and issued the Month of Letters challenge.  The idea is to send something through the mail every day the post operates. This February, that's 24 days. I'm only three mailed items in, but I'm already enjoying getting back into letter writing. Maybe my recipients don't, though.

 Handwriting issues aside, there's something very comforting about sending and receiving mail. It means that someone took special care to get something to you. It means that you've received something tangible, something you can keep with you. For me, it's a way to put a little more writing in my life -- and in the lives of others as well.

Outlining... sort of

After resolving to outline my story, I decided it was time to do some research and reviewing.

I turned to one of my favorite writing resources -- Writing Excuses. It's a fifteen-minute (or eighteen-minute... or twenty-minute) podcast by writers Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler, the guy behind my favorite webcomic, Schlock Mercenary. Each 'cast focuses on some aspect of story writing. I picked out some helpful episodes and got to listening. I also perused Dan Well's blog, because I remembered there had once been something on there about plot structure.

That led me to a really cool series of videos from a presentation he did on the structuring system he uses. So far, this has been my most helpful tool. Now I have beginnings and endings and midpoints and plot turns for the major character's arcs and the biggest plotline of the story. So, basically, an outline.

The reason I dislike outlines is from some unsubstantiated-but-still-strong belief that as a creative person, I don't need an outline. Obviously my thoughts and ideas are much too free and can't be constrained by such a rigid system.

This is stupid because I've never really used an outline before.

And I still don't think I can do a precise outline like other writers do -- chapter-by-chapter, scene-by-scene organization. Once I get to the point where I can picture it like that, I don't think I'll need an outline anymore. But right now I have a framework on which I hope I can start building my story.

But that's not the same thing as starting.