#all of the books on my list by japanese authors were all under 300 pages

[permanentreverie]

U HAVE READ SOOOOO MANY BOOKS THIS YEAR ALREADY ???????!!!!!

hehehe thank you!!! the secret is not having a social life lol

[hedgehog-goulash7]

These Sherlock Holmes films have gone missing. UCLA and Robert Downey Jr. are on the case

LOS ANGELES TIMES, September 5, 2019

Text under the cut if you can’t link due to paywall...

                                                                                                                                    By Christi Carras,                                                                                     Sep. 5, 2019                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

More than a century after Arthur Conan Doyle published his first Sherlock Holmes mystery, a new investigation is afoot. But this story features more local detectives.

The UCLA Film & Television Archive and the Baker Street Irregulars, America’s foremost Sherlockian society, are on the case with “Searching for Sherlock: The Game’s Afoot,” a mission to recover and restore missing Holmes films from the silent era and beyond. The project, honorarily chaired by “Sherlock Holmes” franchise star Robert Downey Jr., reflects a continuing ongoing global fascination with Conan Doyle’s amateur detective that has spurred countless onscreen adaptations, lost and found.

“Sherlock Holmes is really an international phenomenon,” said Jan-Christopher Horak, director of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. “We decided that it would really be worthwhile to, first of all, do a research project and find out how many of these Sherlock Holmes films survived and in what condition, and what we at UCLA Film & TV archive could then do to preserve some of them.”

Horak estimates that more than 80% of American films from the silent era alone have been lost because of eroded prints, mislabeling, fires and other causes. Because the circumstances of their disappearances are so varied and unpredictable, it’s hard to say exactly how many Holmes adaptations wait to be discovered. But they are aware of some that may still be out there based on evidence of prints of long-lost films.

“It’s not like there’s a list anywhere,” Horak said. “I’m assuming that the great majority of the films from the silent era, when the most were actually made, are actually completely lost. But there are films that survived — that we know have survived.”

Finding the bygone works will, appropriately, require a bit of sleuthing, starting with contacting the Library of Congress and New York’s Museum of Modern Art, as well as historians, collectors and national film archives in Britain, Germany, France and other countries. Such efforts have seen previous success, particularly in the case of the missing 1916 Holmes production starring American actor William Gillette, which later turned up in 2014, mislabeled in Paris.

Like the best Holmes stories, the odds are daunting — but not impossible.

“Many of those hundreds [of films] are lost in the sense that there are no known copies,” said Baker Street Irregular and Malibu resident Leslie Klinger. “We know about the film, but nobody’s seen it for a generation or more. And we’re hoping that copies exist out there.”

While the hunt for Holmes officially kicked off last month,   obsession with Conan Doyle’s neurotic private eye is hardly novel. Conan Doyle’s page-turners were wildly popular when they debuted in late-1800s literary magazines. They’ve since inspired hundreds of books, TV series, movies, plays and even college curricula — as well as around 300 Holmes societies worldwide, from Canada to Japan.

“There aren’t many works of fiction — in English, at any rate — that are still read after over 100  years because people want to read them, not because they’re told to,” said Roger Johnson, a member of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London. “When I was at school — even when I was taking my degree in English — the idea of studying Sherlock Holmes would have been considered almost unthinkable. But people do now. ... It’s an extraordinary phenomenon, and it’s gotten bigger with the increase in Holmes onscreen.”

Klinger, known as “the world’s first consulting Sherlockian” for his advisory work on projects including the Downey Jr. movies, has some hunches as to why the Victorian-era detective continues to capture the imaginations of readers, viewers and artists to this day.

“I like to call him an attainable superhero,” Klinger said. “We don’t have to find a radioactive spider to bite us or be born on another planet. We just have to work really hard and study so that we can be like Sherlock Holmes.”

But like all heroes, even the great Holmes has his kryptonite, whether it comes in the form of substance abuse (cocaine was his drug of choice), red herrings or sharp-witted femme fatales such as Irene Adler.

“He’s not perfect,” Johnson said. “Even as a detective, he’s a great detective but he’s not perfect. He gets things wrong — occasionally — but it makes him more human, and that’s something we can relate to.”

In addition to Holmes’ appeal as an accessible yet fallible beacon of justice, some Sherlockians speculate that nostalgia also plays a role in luring audiences back to Baker Street. If anyone can deduce why Conan Doyle’s creations continue to inspire, it’s Nicholas Meyer, who authored and adapted the screenplay for “The Seven-Per-Cent Solution” — Oscar-nominated Holmes fan fiction — and is currently working on another Sherlockian caper titled “The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols.”

“Holmes exists — or at least initially existed when Doyle created him — in a world that was long enough ago to seem like a kind of fairy tale place or a fairy tale time,” Meyer said. “Perhaps, a time we like to tell ourselves was a saner time.”

That logic only stretches so far, however, when it comes to more recent small-screen adaptations such as “Sherlock,” the Emmy-winning BBC series starring Benedict Cumberbatch, or “Elementary,” a CBS hit featuring Jonny Lee Miller as Holmes and — notably — Lucy Liu as a rare female version of Dr. Watson. Both shows update the timeline of their source material to modern day, trading hansom cabs for subways and limousines.

“It turns out that you can put these two people into almost any landscape,” Meyer said. “You can make Watson a woman; you can call them Batman and Robin — it doesn’t make any difference. It’s the same idea of heroes who are fighting against anarchy and trying to be right.”

Liu isn’t the only woman to portray Watson. “Miss Sherlock,” a Johnson-approved Japanese series, flips the genders of both the titular detective and his loyal companion. In fact, according to Johnson, discussions have even swirled among Sherlockian societies as to whether Conan Doyle intended Watson to be female all along.

“There is no real reason why Watson shouldn’t be a woman,” Johnson said. “You have to ignore things like his mustache ... but when you translate the character into a woman for dramatic presentation, it works.”

With all the changes and updates the Holmes stories have successfully adopted over time, it’s not easy to pinpoint the fundamental elements of a good Sherlock Holmes adaptation — even for film and Holmes scholars.

“I can think of a time when I would have said fidelity to the original story,” Johnson said. “It’s fidelity to the spirit of the originals. I think that’s what it is.”

With “Searching for Sherlock,” Horak hopes that the archive can screen and upload some newly restored Holmes material to its website within the next few years. Despite all the witty modernizations and computer-generated bells and whistles that have since embellished the Holmes canon, Sherlockians and film historians agree that the earliest Holmes films — should they be recovered — still have great potential to teach and dazzle 21st century audiences.

“It doesn’t really matter whether it’s silent or talkie; it doesn’t really matter whether there were fancy special effects or not,” Klinger said. “We’re going to be gripped by the personalities and intrigued by the mysteries and also be satisfied that reason has prevailed. Evil has been conquered.”

###

[agallimaufryofoddments]

Came in the mail less than an hour ago! And now I can finally talk about it, ahhh. Does this count as a Baccanovember contribution? No? Well, no matter. I’m counting it anyway.

Maybe I’m a little too excited about this one, since technically speaking it’s not new for Baccano! fans. Ish. For Durarara!! fans? Maaaybe. 

This, friends, is 電撃ｈ＆ｐ(はじまり＆ピリオド) - Dengeki h&p (Beginning & Period - a limited Dengeki magazine issue published in November 2007. The magazine, if JP Wikipedia is anything to go by, contains the “first story and final chapter” of various Dengeki Bunko works, as written by the works’ authors.

(With most if not all of these stories being parody works/having parody elements, in an April Fools style mode.)

...And included in those works are Baccano! and Durarara!!. Specifically, this magazine is where the stories "Baccano! BC 300 ~ Notorious B · E · Ginning” and “Durarara!! x0 Goodbye Mikado-senpai” come from. 

Now, I imagine quite a few Baccano! fans know about the former; it’s Ronny’s origin story, which has been fan-translated twice already. Hence my “too excited?” ponderings. I am compelled to point out that both of those fan-translations were from Chinese translations, rather than the original Japanese, and differed from each other quite a bit. 

The Durarara!! story is something that @kaedesan721 has been hunting since forever, meanwhile, so I’m also excited on her behalf/the Durarara!! side of things. Vamp! character Laetitia G. Atzanduja appears in it, apparently, so that’s also a score for Vamp! fans, too! 

(In fact, I think it could potentially be her ‘debut’ as a character? Under the JP Narita wiki’s listing for this story, there’s an old bullet point that says something like, “The character that appeared here is likely to appear in either Durarara!! (23%) or Vamp! (70%)” so...hm.)

Despite the parody elements in Baccano!’s story, we know via 1935-D that it’s overall canon. I think that’s also the case with Durarara!!x0 (again, if the JP Narita wiki is anything to go by). Can’t speak for the various other stories in this, though.

Oh right, metadata things!: following things like a double-sided foldout (one side = the textless Kino cover art, the other Spice and Wolf) and the table of contents, the bulk of the book is split into h (beginning) and p (period) parts...with the latter first and the former second. 

The Baccano! story and the Durarara!! story are the penultimate and last stories respectively of the h (beginning/first story) section (but not the whole thing, since there’s a ? section after h). Baccano!’s story is on pages 188-194 (7 pages), Durarara!!’s is on 195-203 (9 pages). 

*I guess the alternate title of the Baccano! story is 鋼の冶金術師――獅子の時代の奇妙な冒険野郎ホムダイバー」』, , .

Also, I’m excited because...well, this limited magazine is really hard to find. I think I once saw it up on Amazon for something like 200 USD (later out of stock?), so seeing a copy of it in new condition up for auction was really something. I’d honestly thought finding the original Japanese version of the Baccano! story was never going to happen.

(I don’t mean to knock the fan-translators’ hard work, gracious no; I’m so grateful that they translated the Chinese versions. Without them, I don’t think we’d have had any access to the story whatsoever.) 

I had my eye on this auction since...before October, but it wasn’t until late last month that I bid on it. It shipped yesterday and arrived today, miraculously, and here we are. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to serve dinner (and then potentially holler at Kaede and others for a bit).

[shazzeaslightnovels]

Reading Log - April 2019

Volume Count: 8

My first month without Saekano and I finished off Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu and read all my volumes of Ankoku Kishi wo Nugasanaide. I also read Cafe de Blood, a one-shot by the author of Psycome and started Slime Taoshite 300-nen, Shiranai Uchi ni Level Max ni Nattemashita and Saijaku Muahi no Bahamut.

This post does contain spoilers for Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu vol. 4, but other than that are no spoilers. I put the mini-review for Iriya at the very bottom of the post so you can easily avoid spoilers.

(Finally figured out how to shrink image sizes so I can put the volume covers to make this post look more interesting. Yay! Let me know if they aren’t visible to you.)

Ankoku Kishi wo Nugasanaide 2 & 3 by Shinichi Kimura

Putting these under the same entry because my feelings on them didn’t differ much between them. After my lukewarm feelings on the first volume, I didn’t have much hope that the following volumes would be better and I was right. I was rewatching Kore wa Zombie desu ka? and I didn’t like it nearly as much as I used to so it’s possible that I’ve just grown out of this type of humour but I do think that KoreZom is better than this series as Ayumu really stands out as a protagonist while Kurama lacks anything that makes him interesting. He’s a bit of an idiot sometimes but that’s it. The reader has no reason to care about him. The other major issue is that I found the scenes to be too long so I would start a scene being somewhat interested but would quickly get bored before it was over. Volume 2 was a little bit better than volume 1 but volume 3 introduced a perverted lesbian character who doesn’t understand the meaning of consent and my views of this series dropped to rock-bottom. I do think that it’s possible to enjoy this series if you’re into this kind of humour and found KoreZom to be hilarious but I won’t be buying any future volumes.

Slime Taoshite 300-nen, Shiranai Uchi ni Level Max ni Natteshimatta 1 by Kisetsu Morita

It took me 10 days to read this which is a lot longer than I usually take for a volume of this size. Amazon lists the volume as 281 pages while BookWalker says it’s around 320 pages. Either way, it felt like the page count was pushing it for a story where not a whole lot happens. It was relaxing at first but I quickly got bored of it. For most of the volume, each chapter introduces a character and you get to spend a little bit of time with them before moving on to the next character. And I don’t think it spent enough time getting me to care about the character it just introduced before moving on to the next one so I didn’t really care when the “climax” happened. Also, I don’t think the 300 years thing was really thought out - it’s just there to get Azusa at an OP level but we barely know what she did for those 300 years. We know that she read a lot, killed slimes, learned how to use herbs to make medicine and helped some villagers but I want to know what kind of books she read because you would think that after 300 years of reading books, she would be quite knowledgeable in just about every field but other characters still have to explain things to her for the sake of the reader. Another issue I had with this volume is that even though Azusa is a female protagonist, she’s not really written like one. The series still uses a male gaze. A really good example of this is when Halkara is introduced and the first thing Azusa notices about her is her large boobs and butt and not in a yuri way but more of in a breast envy way. You could change her into a male character and not much would change. I don’t think this will bother too many people but it sure did bother me. In general, I think this series will be a good relaxing series but it lacks any overall direction to be an entertaining series. I’d recommend if you want to take it easy and I’d especially recommend it if you’re learning Japanese and want to read a story set in a fantasy a world as it’s pretty easy to read though there are a couple of tricky parts. If you want a slice of life set in a fantasy world, this would probably do the trick.

I’m not sure if I will continue with this series. I can see that it has some nice elements to it and I do feel like the series will feature more yuri in future volumes if the covers are anything to go by but I’m not sure it’s the series for me so we’ll have to wait and see.

The manga version of this is pretty good. It has a cute art style (though I prefer Benio’s art in the original) and is a 1:1 adaptation but doesn’t improve the source material much so it’s probably not worth reading unless it’s the only version of the story you have access to or you really like the novels.

Yen-press is currently publishing this series in English under the title of I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level so please pick it up if the series interests you.

Cafe de Blood by Mizuki Mizushiro

This is a one-shot from the author of Psycome and it’s kind of what you’d expect from the title: it’s about a café that serves vampires blood and the human male who works there. It’s not terrible but it’s pretty plain and the heroine doesn’t stand out much. While I do think that people who like vampires would find this worth the read, it features one of the more plain versions of vampires that I’ve seen. There’s also some pretty annoying stuff in it like a paedophile/lolicon vampire who talks in a mangle of English and Japanese and is super annoying as well as a character who’s only function seems to be to have big boobs. It might have been a good first volume for a longer series but it’s not a memorable one-shot. If you liked PsyCome, I do think you would like this a lot but I just found it too plain to care much for it. I do love Namanie’s art style though so that was definitely the highlight of the book for me.

Saijaku Muhai no Bahamut 1 by Senri Akatsuki

Little known fact about me: I actually really like this kind of school battle fantasy. I know most of them follow the same template but I’ve always enjoyed reading them anyway and I enjoyed this volume a lot. I loved the characters and their interactions, I loved the battles and I loved the atmosphere that comes with these kinds of stories. Don’t get me wrong, Bahamut is far from being original but reading this volume was so much fun and I got really interested in the plot. I love that Lisha’s a geeky mechanic and I love that the story has the old empire being corrupt while most modern light novels would make this a story about Lux manipulating everyone into getting him back on the throne. I do think that the exposition was sometimes awkward and I don’t think this would be a fun read for people who place importance in originality but I certainly had fun with it. I was surprised by how much I liked this given that I remember reading this volume in English a few years back and not caring for it but I did and I can’t wait to read the second volume for my girl Krulcifer.

The anime adapts this volume into 2 episodes and cuts out a lot of good character moments but I think they probably made the right call as so many light novel adaptations have failed due to the staff’s unwillingness to do anything but a 1:1 adaptation (Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dane comes to mind; I don’t know anyone who really enjoyed this series prior to volume 4 but the anime only adapts the first 3 volumes). The anime has really clumsy exposition even more so than the light novel. I liked the novel more but I think the anime serves as a good advertisement for the series so, if the anime got you interested in the plot, I highly recommend checking out the light novels.

The manga is a closer adaptation and it’s fine but the novels are better. The manga does make some interesting character design choices though like making the teacher indistinguishable from the students. Probably wouldn’t recommend the manga unless you don’t have access to the light novels.

Juuou Mujin no Fafnir by Tsukasa

And here I thought Bahamut had clumsy exposition but at least it only provided the reader with information on a need-to-know basis and spread it out over the volume. Fafnir just gives it to you in the first couple of chapters and the battle mechanics are way to complicated to do that. In my opinion, the author should have made the battle mechanics more simple or spread it out more instead of dumping it at the start and hoping the reader paid attention when it becomes relevant later. Otherwise, I didn’t really like this volume but I didn’t hate it either. I think the story has potential and Iris is a charming main heroine and I enjoyed seeing her character and relationship with Yuu grow throughout the volume. But, aside from Iris and maybe Mitsuki, none of the characters really stand out. Yuu’s your typical protagonist with a bit of a snarky attitude and a dark past. I’ve seen worse protagonists but he doesn’t strike me as particularly interesting and characters like Lisa and Firill don’t really do much and are just kind of there. That has the potential to change in future volume but it’s an issue in this one. I will probably continue with this as I remember being fond of the later volumes when I read them in English but it might be take a while to get around to.

I won’t be covering the manga or anime on this blog as I don’t have easy access to them.

Dokuhaki Hime to Hoshi no Ishi by Izuki Kougyoku

Last month, I talked about Torikago Miko to Seiken no Kishi which is actually a spin-off to this novel which in turn is a sequel to Mimizuku to Yoru no Ou. I didn’t mention this then because I didn’t realize that characters from Torikago Miko would actually show up in this. I just thought they were in the same setting. And it’s been so many years since I read Mimizuku that, while I know that some of these characters are from Mimizuku, I wouldn’t be able to tell you exactly which ones. Regardless, this didn’t impede my enjoyment of this novel at all so I don’t think that reading Mimizuku is required to understand and enjoy this story.

Regarding the work itself, I really liked it. I think it was a perfect one-shot that was incredibly compelling. I loved Elsa. She’s very different from the usual female protagonist in that the best ways that I could describe her at the start of the story are “feral”, “angry” and “broken”. She’s experienced so much abuse in her life and I think this story is really about healing after so much trauma and finding a place that will accept you where you can be free to be whoever you want. I really enjoyed that theme of the story. I didn’t find Claudius to be that interesting of a character but he’s a nice guy and I’m glad that Elsa found someone to support her. I recommend this work if you want to read a fantasy story that’s really about healing, especially if you’re a fan of fairy-tale inspired stories.

I’d be interested in doing a closer re-read of this in the future and doing a proper essay-type post on the themes because I think there’s a lot going on underneath the surface of the story here and I think there’s a lot to say about how Elsa is the only character to express her anger and sadness in a straight-forward manner while everyone else tends to be more passive-agressive about it.

THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR IRIYA NO SORA, UFO NO NATSU 4! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu 4 by Mizuhito Akiyama

Before I read this volume, I was panning on doing a full review of the series but, before the first 100 pages of the volume were over, someone tries to sexually assault Iriya. I do not know whether this attempt was successful or not because, as soon as I realized what was happening, I had to skip through the scene. This scene is incredibly poorly done. We never get to see Iriya’s POV of this event either during or after it happens. Instead, the story decides to continue to focus on Asaba and how stressed he is. Perhaps I’m thinking too hard about it but the fact that this scene is juxtaposed with a scene of Asaba acquiring a porn mag and masturbating and that adolescence is a primary theme of the series makes me think that this scene is meant to imply that “boys desire girls while girls get to be desired” as neccesary part of adolescence. Furthermore, at the end of the volume, Iriya dies and it feels like she got fridged for the sake of Asaba’s character. And, to be honest, Iriya has never really felt like a proper character to me. She’s always felt too perfect to be one. The only time she felt like one was during the eating battle with Akiho. We’ve never gotten the story from her POV and that prevents her from becoming a proper character like the others. She feels like an idealised Mysterious Girl who motivates the other characters but has no real motivation for herself. Part of this is undoubtably because of when it was written but I can’t overlook these flaws because of that, espcially since I was around the ages of 3 and 5 when this was written so I don’t feel that same nostalgia that this series is trying to make me feel. I never went to middle school either and Australia high schools are very different from Japanese ones so I feel none of the nostalgia that this series is praised for.

I think this series has it’s charming moments and it’s not as though this volume was boring but I just can’t overlook the things I’ve mentioned. I could only really recommend this series if you are interested in the history of light novels or you are interested in reading a coming-of-age story with a bit of sci-fi.

[lindoig]

Days 103 to 109 (7 to 13 August)

Next morning, we checked out Tom Price, stocked up on a few necessities and photographed some of the local flora and fauna then headed out to Paraburdoo where we did much the same before eventually camping at a rudimentary camping area next to the dry Beasley River.  (There was not a lot to see at either Tom Price or Paraburdoo – to all intents, not much more than dormitory accommodation for the miners and some basic shops and services that their families and the service providers’ families might need.)  There were a few other rigs there when we arrived and quite a few more turned up later, some quite late at night.  It was a bit crowded, but the noise abated early and all was fine.  Had we known, there was another area that would probably have been better about 3 clicks further on.  Sometimes it would be great to be able to see a little way into the future.

I went for a walk down to the dry river bed, a circuitous route there, but an easier and shorter route back – I was in a hurry to get back to enjoy dinner.  Next morning, Heather joined me in a walk down to the same place via the easier track and she enjoyed picking up some of the coloured stones in the river bed.  It is obviously used as a quarry and the pebbles go down at least 5 or 6 metres – we could see places where the diggers had removed many tonnes of stones 20 feet down with no end in sight.  I spent some time checking out a pair of black-shouldered kites that I hoped may have been letter-winged kites.  We have never seen the latter, but I know of no way to tell the difference until they fly so you can see the under-wing – and this pair were high up in two dead trees with no particular inclination to fly.  At least I got some pics before they decided to disappoint me by being black-shouldereds – still a remarkably beautiful bird.

One problem along the track was that the rough road caused our fridge some difficulties.  I think there were some installation issues and I had to fix some of them early in the trip when the freezer door almost fell off – but this time, when Heather opened the door, it simply broke out of the hinge and smashed down on the floor.  It is now sticky-taped on and hopefully, we can get it repaired in Perth – theoretically, it is still under warranty.

It was then on to Onslow with numerous stops along the way for pics – mainly flowers and plants because it is over a week since we saw any new bird to add to our various lists. Interestingly, we saw 4 more grey falcons (the birds that allegedly don’t exist) – hardly worth reporting any more – must have seen at least 10-12 this trip so far.

The last week or so has been delightfully slow going, with lots of stops for exploration and photographs – almost all of them flowers and trees.  This means that the distance travelled each day has been less (and we have set up camp a bit earlier most days too), but we have enjoyed it more – even if there is little to blog about.

Onslow has two caravan parks, but unfortunately there was ‘no room at the inn’ for us and we had to park in the ‘overflow area’ beside the footy oval with only a gents’ toilets available some 2-300 metres away – the ladies’ was locked.  We felt more grotty than ever that night, but showering was too much of an effort.  So was cooking so we ended up at the pub for dinner – each selecting a parma when one would have been enough for both of us – as well as the folks at the next table.  They feed people well up here!

Before dinner, however, we drove out to the site of Old Onslow – where the town used to be 100 years ago, on the side of the Ashburton River.  It was a disappointment.  40-odd km to get there and there is nothing there apart from a few scattered signs advising that a shop or a forge or whatever was there (or somewhere not too far away) when the town existed over a century ago. Interestingly, I counted well over 130 rigs set up along the side of the River over several kilometres – certainly more pleasant than our footy oval carpark, but it was already pretty crowded, so finding a quiet spot may have been challenging.

First order of the next day was ‘let’s get out of here’ and off we toddled to Exmouth.  All of these places were Shangri-Las to me as a kid – just so far away and so exotic. So I have enjoyed visiting them, even if they have shattered some of my misconceptions.  In the main, they have been dry and dusty, perhaps smaller, but more modern (or exhibiting attempts at modernity) than I imagined – but that is progress and I certainly had a very distorted view of what they were like as a kid anyway.

As we approached Exmouth, there was quite a formidable display on a hill overlooking the sea on the northern side of the peninsula – and another page of untaught history unfolded. Operation Potshot was a US initiative in WWII and they established a submarine base there to counteract a threatened Japanese invasion.  Who ever heard of Exmouth being bombed during the war? – but it was, fortunately with no loss of life – but why weren’t we told at school or otherwise?  Where else, other than Darwin, was attacked during the War?  The display commemorates Potshot as well as the Krait expedition (of which I had some very murky recollection).  Increasingly, I am aware that history is His Story and there may be any number of other interpretations of events that other stories might establish.  Like our formal education, we only ever get to know the things the ‘authorities’ want us to know.

Of course, we all know about the secret Communications base at Exmouth, once the tallest radio towers in the world.  Another of the wonders of the engineering world – how in the world did they get built and what keeps them from falling down.  Another mystery that will probably confound me for the rest of my days!

After our inability to get a park in Onslow, we had made some phone calls and secured a slot for a couple of nights at Yardie Homestead Tourist Park some 30-odd clicks the other side of Onslow.  There was limited power (no electric jugs, microwaves, hairdryers, toasters, etc.) and very poor water pressure, but enough for our purposes.  We recharged our devices in the car and just topped them up in the Park – and when the water pressure was too low, we supplemented it by using the pump on our own water tanks.

We booked ourselves a cruise on a glass-bottomed boat over Ningaloo Reef for the following day and that was interesting.  They picked us up from the Park and drove us to the jetty a few clicks down the road.  We only went out about a kilometre, but we drifted over some wonderful coral and saw quite a variety of fish, some turtles and other marine flora and fauna.  It was a bit cold and windy and the water was not as clear as it might have been, but it was very interesting for all that – with a good commentary from the skipper (even if I had trouble hearing it all with his accent).  Heather was one of about 5 who braved the conditions and went snorkelling over the reef with her underwater camera, but the current was a bit strong and I was concerned that she could have trouble swimming back to the boat – but fortunately, no problems.  I think the swimmers were pretty cold back on board, but we moved to another area and saw a couple more turtles before heading back to shore.  We have certainly had our share of little (and big) excursions like this and the tourism industry must love us grey nomads.

We needed to go to the Visitors’ Centre back in Exmouth and then went out to the Communication area where it seemed they were adding some big cables to two of the ginormous towers – another staggering feat, but we weren’t allowed to stop to watch.  We called in at a couple of beaches and then went up to the Lighthouse, where there was quite a bit more information about the wartime (and later) history of the area.  While up there, we saw a couple of humpback whales not far offshore – a mother and calf – and at least another seven further out to sea.  We saw them a lot closer on out Russian expedition last year, but this was the first time we had seen them from land.

Next stop was a turtle display near a beach where they lay their eggs.  Quite a good description about turtles, but really not much more than things to read – so we went further south into the National Park to visit a bird hide in the mangroves. It was a bit disappointing – I saw a few birds, but nothing new and all a fair way away – and the other people there kept up a constant chatter that got on my nerves.

Next morning, we packed up and went in to Exmouth for more fuel a bigger shop at the supermarket.  I told Heather to go ahead while I parked the car and van and I would meet her in IGA.  I was parked in an open area near the Police Station, but was told I had to move so found a spot at the back of a nearby carpark and went to find Heather. Nowhere to be seen and my phone was flat so I couldn’t call her.  I went back to the car and charged it enough to text and call her – no response!  I walked up and down every aisle in IGA several times and back to the car several times in case she was looking for me where I parked originally.  Eventually, we made contact by phone and had this weird conversation – we were both near the checkout in IGA, but couldn’t see each other.  Would you believe, there are TWO IGAs in Exmouth, directly across the arcade from each other?  Heather was in one and I was in the other.  It was almost spooky – who would have believed it in little Exmouth?

Eventually on the road to Coral Bay and Carnarvon, just in time to stop for lunch! Coral Bay was NOT our thing!  It seemed almost entirely composed of caravan parks with vans crammed cheek by jowl, one against the other, absurdly neat, but with hardly space to walk between them.  Horrendous for people like us that prefer open spaces and as little to do with our neighbours as possible.  There was a massive parking area at the boat ramp so we ate our lunch there, but there was nothing else at all to attract us.

On the other hand, Carnarvon was great.  Good facilities and our Caravan Park had plenty of space and nobody next to us on two of our 3 nights there.  As a kid, Carnarvon was another of those very remote places, but that is where Western Australia’s bananas came from.  Dad hated bananas (always called them pigs’ food) but Mum loved them and even when newer varieties became available from imports, her taste-buds still craved the curvier, skinnier, blacker Carnarvon variety.  I wonder if they still grow them?

We drove all around Carnarvon whilst there, covering several of the roads multiple times.  We went to the port area, the marina, through the CBD (such as it is) several times, out through the agricultural and orchard areas (they provide 70% of Western Australia’s vegetables from this one small area) – we seemed to be back and forth so many times.  We had a fish and chips lunch at a restaurant on Sunday and visited the One Mile Jetty and associated museum – and I went looking (unsuccessfully) for birds along the boardwalk through the mangroves.

Saturday was extremely windy – gales blowing all day so we hid out in the van, catching up on business issues and planning our future travel options – then it rained ALL night (sounded wonderful on the van roof, but inhibited sleep a little) and we woke up to very soggy – water-logged – environment next day.  Rain was forecast all day, but despite threatening signs, it held off and never impacted us at all.  We copped quite a lot more rain a day or two later, but only while we were driving so we feel lucky that our travel adventures have remained virtually unaffected by weather all along the track so far.

I did a bit of birding while we were there, but saw nothing new.  I went chasing waders across the mud-flats when the tide was out on Sunday and got very wet shoes to take into the restaurant at lunchtime.  I also walked along the side of the Gascoyne River near Chinaman Pool (Carnarvon’s water supply) during the afternoon and saw over 20 different species within about 45 minutes.  Hundreds of them were white-plumed honeyeaters that set off their alarm calls all around me throughout my walk, scaring everything away before I could get close enough for photos.

Carnarvon was an important part of the 1969 moon mission and they have a wonderful museum there to let people get a glimpse of what it was like at the time.  They have a mock-up of a space module where they can lock you in and you have actual sound and video from the original launch as if you are really astronauts so Heather and I climbed in and experienced it – very realistic and a big buzz for me.  I was a little closer to the event than most people (when I was working in Canberra, I was one of about a dozen who saw it all a few seconds ahead of the rest of the world!) so it was a bit special to me. The museum also contains a display of OTC equipment and a lot of information about that.  The Overseas Telecommunication Commission had a major presence in Carnarvon and Australia’s first overseas TV broadcast was made from there.  It was a really big deal for Australia and the display is excellent.  We spent a couple of hours there, but to do justice to both displays, including the several videos playing continuously, you would really need most of a day!  A really excellent attraction, recommended to anyone – but especially significant for those of us old enough to recall the actual events they commemorate.  (VERY educational for anyone younger who was unlucky enough to miss these momentous events.)

I am bird-deprived – it is 11 days since we saw a new species for this trip and 13 days since we ticked anything new for us.  Current count is 262 for the trip and 59 new ones for us.

[scifrey]

Improbable Press put out a call asking fan fiction authors how they went from Free to Fee. Here’s my response. Happy reading!

The Story of How I Started Selling Stories

My parents, teachers, and acting/singing coaches will all tell you that I've always been a story teller. For the first twenty four years of my life, I was determined to do so through musical theatre, though I had always secretly harbored the desire to write a hit stage play. My early writing consisted of plays for my friends and I to put on, interspersed with prose that I supposed would one day become a novel, but which wasn't my passion.

I was a big reader, but where this habit came from, I'm not certain. While my mother always had a book on the go - whatever crumbling paperback law thriller or murder mystery she'd been handed by the woman down the street when she was done it, which was then passed on to the next neighbor - my father and brothers preferred sports (either on TV or outside in the yard) over reading. I stumbled into fantasy and science fiction because Wil Wheaton was hot, and his show was on every Friday night, and from there I consumed every Star Trek tie-in novel my tiny rural library carried, then started following the authors of the novels into their other worlds and series.

So you won't be surprised to learn that this was how I found fan fiction for the first time. My "I love this, gee, I wonder what else there is?" muscle was well developed by junior high, and before the internet had come to The Middle Of Nowhere Rural Ontario, I had already gotten quite adept at search keywords and codexes to track down more books to consume.  Imagine my shock and joy when, in the middle of my Phantom of the Opera phase (come on, fess up, you had one too), the internet in my school library told me about not only Fredrick Forsyth and Susan Kay's stunning re-tellings, but of something called fan fiction.

I wasted a lot of the librarian's ink and paper printing out these books and secreting them into binders and pretending to do school work at my desk or backstage between scenes. A lot. And yes, I still have most of them.

And as we all well know, the jump between reading and writing is a short when one is submerged so fully in communities of creators. Everyone else's "What If" rubs off on you, and it's just a matter of time before you find yourself playing with the idea of coaxing a few plot bunnies over to spend some time with you. Not everyone loves to write, but gosh darn it, if you want to give it a try, then you couldn't ask for a better, more supportive community. It doesn't matter how new you are to it, everyone reads, everyone comments, everyone makes suggestions. People beta read. People edit. People co-write. People cheer, and support, and recommend, and enthuse. Yeah, there are the occasional jerks, flammers, and wank-mongers, but on the whole? There's literally no better place to learn how to be a writer than in fandom, I firmly believe this.

So, of course, born storyteller that I am, I had to give it a try.

I started writing fan fiction in 1991 for a small, relatively obscure Canadian/Luxembourg co-pro children’s show called Dracula: the Series.  I used to get up and watch it on Saturday mornings, in my PJs, before heading off to whichever rehearsal or read through or practice I had that year.

1995 brought the English dub of Sailor Moon to my life, (and put me on the path to voice acting), and along with a high-school friend, I wrote, printed out, illustrated, and bound my first “book” – a self-insert story that was just over eleven pages long, which introduced new Scouts based on us.  From there, I didn’t really stop.

1996 led me to Forever Knight and Dragon Ball Z, and from there to my friend’s basement where they’d just installed the internet. We chatted with strangers on ICQ, joined Yahoo!Groups and Bravenet Chat Boards. (Incidentally, a friend from my DBZ chat group turned out to be a huge DtS fan, too. We wrote a big crossover together which is probably only accessible on the Wayback Machine now. We stayed friends, helped each other through this writing thing, and now she’s Ruthanne Reid, author of the popular Among the Mythos series.)  In 2000 I got a fanfiction.net account and never looked back.

In 2001, while in my first year of university for Dramatic Arts, I made my first Real Live fandom friends. We wrote epic-length self-insert fics in Harry Potter and Fushigi Yuugi, cosplayed at conventions (sometimes using the on-campus wardrobe department’s terrifyingly ancient serger), and made fan art and comics in our sketchbooks around studying for our finals and writing essays on critical theory or classical Latin.  I was explaining the plot of the next big fic I was going to write to one of them, an older girl who had been my T.A. but loved Interview with the Vampire just as dearly as I, when she said, “You know, this sounds really interesting. Why don’t you strip all the fandom stuff out of the story and just write it as a novel?”

You can do that? was my first thought.

No! I don’t want to! Writing is my fun hobby. What will happen if I try to be a writer and get rejected by everyone and I end up hating it? was my second.

But the seed was planted.  Slowly at first, and then at increasingly obsessive pace, I began writing my first novel around an undergrad thesis,  fourth-year  essays,  several other big fanfics that popped me into the cusp of BNF status but never quite over the tine, and then a move to Japan to teach English. From 2002-2007 I wrote about 300 000 words on the novel that I would eventually shut away in my desk drawer and ignore until I published on Wattpad under my pseudonym on a lark. It was messy. It was long. It was self-indulgent and blatantly inspired by Master of Mosquiton, Interview with the Vampire, Forever Knight, and anything written by Tanya Huff, Laurell K. Hamilton, and Charlaine Harris. This was fine for fanfic, but in terms of being comfortable with presenting it to agents and publishing houses, I felt that it wasn’t original enough.

By this time I was teaching overseas, and in my spare time (and boy, was there a lot of spare time while sitting in a Japanese teacher’s office for 40 hours per week when one only actually teaches for 11 of them) I started applying to MA programs (where I eventually wrote my thesis on Mary Sue Fan Fiction). I also spent it researching “How to Get Published”, mostly by Googling it and/or buy/reading the few books on the topic in English I could find at the local book store or order from the just-then-gaining-international traction online bookstore Amazon.

What that research mostly told me was “Write and sell a bunch of short fiction first, so you have proof that a) you can do the work and b) you can finish what you promise you’ll finish and c) you have proof that other people think you’re worth spending money on.”

Short fiction. Huh. Of course we’d studied short stories in school, and I’d even taken a short story writing class in university, though nothing I’d written for the class was indicative of the kinds of stories I preferred to tell. But I felt pretty confident about this whole writing short stories thing… after all, I’d been doing weekly challenges for years. Drabbles. Flashfic. Stories and chapters that were limited to the word count cap that LiveJournal put on its posts. I’d written novellas without knowing that’s what they were called; I’d written whole novels about other people’s characters. All I needed was an idea. Short fiction I could do.

Unfortunately, everything that came to me was fanfic inspired. It frustrated me, because I didn’t want to write a serial-numbers-filed-off story. I wanted to write something original and epic and inspiring. Something just mine. I started and stopped a lot of stories in 2006-2007. I’d been doing NaNoWriMo for years by then, having been introduced to it in undergrad, and I was determined that this would be the year that I wrote something I could shop. Something just mine. Something unique.

While I adored fanfiction, I was convinced that I couldn't make a career on it.  What had once been a fun hobby soon because a source of torment. Why could I think of a hundred ways to write a meet-cute between my favorite ships, but come up utterly blank when it came to something new and original and just mine?

It took me a while to realize that my playwriting and short story teachers had been correct when they said that there are no original stories in the world, no way you can tell a tale that someone else hasn’t already tried. The "Man vs." list exists for a reason.

The unique part isn’t your story, it’s your voice. Your lived life, your experiences, your way of forming images and structuring sentences. Your choices about who the narrator character is, and what the POV will be, and how the characters handle the conflict. In that way, every piece of writing ever done is individual and unique, even the fanfic. Because nobody is going to portray that character’s quirk or speech pattern quite like you do, nobody is going to structure your plot or your imagery like you. Because there is only one of you. Only one of me. Even if we're all writing fanfiction, no one's story sounds like anyone else's,  or is told like anyone else's.

That is the reality of being a storyteller.

And strangely enough, the woman who opened my eyes to this was a psychic from a psychic fair I attended, who told me that Mark Twain was standing over her shoulder admonishing me to stop fretting and just get something on the page – but to never forget character. My strength, she said that he said, was in creating memorable, well written, well rounded characters. And that my book should focus on that above concerns of plot or pacing.

Well, okay. If Mark Twain says that’s what my strength is, then that’s what my strength is, right? Who am I to argue with the ghost of Mark Freaking Twain?

An accident with a bike and a car on a rice patty left me immobile for six weeks in 2006, and I decided that if I was finally going to write this original short story to sell – especially since I would need income, as the accident made it obvious that I would never be able to dance professionally, and probably would never be able to tread the boards in musicals – now was the perfect time. I was going to stop fighting my fannish training and write.

I cherry picked and combined my favorite aspects of Doctor Who, Stargate: Atlantis, Torchwood, The Farm Show/The Drawer Boy, and my own melancholy experiences with culture shock and liminal-living in a foreign culture, and wrote a novella titled (Back). It was a character study of a woman named Evvie who, through an accident of time travel, meets the future version of her infant daughter Gwen. And realizes she doesn’t like the woman her daughter will become. It was a story about accepting people for who they are, instead of who you wish they would be, and had a strong undercurrent of the turbulence I was going through in trying to figure out my own sexuality and that I wouldn't have the future in performance that I had been working toward since I was four.

Deciding that I would worry about where I would try to publish the story after it had been written, I sat down and wrote what ended up being (at least for me) a pretty standard-length fanfic: 18,762 words. It was only after I had finished the story that I looked up what category that put it in – Novella. Using paying  reputable markets, like Duotrope, the Writer’s Digest, MSFV, Absolute Write, SFWA, my local Writer’s Union, Writer Beware, I realized that I had shot myself in the foot.

It seems like nearly nobody publishes novellas anymore. SF/F and Literary Fiction seem to be the last two bastions of the novella, and the competition to get one published is fierce.  The markets that accepted SF/F novellas was vanishingly thin I had to do a lot of Googling and digging to figure out who I could submit to with an unagented/unsolicited SF/F novella. If I recall correctly, it was only about ten publications. I built an excel database and filled it with all the info I found.

I put together a query letter and sent it off using my database to guide me. Most of the rejections were kind, and said that the story was good, just too long/too short/ too sci-fi-y/not sci-fi-y enough. Only one market offered on it – for $10 USD. Beggers couldn’t be choosers, even if I had hoped to make a little more than ten bucks, and I accepted.

It was a paid professional publication, and that’s what mattered to me. I had the first entry on my bibliography, and something to point to in my query letters to prove that I was a worthy investment for a publisher/agent.

And energized by this, and now aware that length really does matter, even in online-only publications, I started writing other shorts to pad out my bibliography more.

I tried to tailor these ones to what my research told me the "mainstream industry" and "mainstream audiences" wanted, and those stories? Those were shot down one after the other. I was still writing fanfiction at the time, too, and those stories were doing well, getting lots of positive feedback, so why weren’t my stories?

In 2007 I returned to Canada and Academia, frustrated by my lack of sales, desperate to kick off my publishing career, and feeling a creative void left by having to depart theatre because of my new difficulties walking. I wrote my MA, and decided that if (Back) was the only original story that people liked, then I’d try to expand it into a novel.

Over the course of two years I did my coursework, and  read everything there was to read about how to get a book deal, started hanging out in writer’s/author’s groups in Toronto and met some great people who were willing to guide me, and expanded (Back) into the novel Triptych. I kept reminding myself what Mark Twain said – character was my strength, the ability to make the kind of people that other writers wanted to write stories about, a skill I’d honed while writing fanfic. Because that's what we do, isn't it? Sure, we write fix-its and AUs and fusions and finish cancelled shows, and fill in missing scenes, but what we're all really doing is playing with characters, isn't it? Characters draw us to fanfic, and characters keep us there. Characters is what we specialize in.

Fanfic had taught me to work with a beta reader, so I started asking my fic betas if they'd like a go at my original novel. Fellow fanfic writers, can I just say how valuable editors and beta readers in the community are? These are people who do something that I've paid a professional editor thousands of dollars to do for free out of sheer love. Treasure your beta readers, folks. Really.

“It reminds me a lot of fan fiction,” one reader said. “The intense attention to character and their inner life, and the way that the worldbuilding isn’t dumped but sprinkled in an instance at a time, like, you know, a really good AU. I love it.”

Dear Lord. I couldn’t have written a better recommendation or a more flattering description if I’d tried. Mark Twain was right, it seems. And fanfic was the training ground, for me – my apprenticeship in storytelling.

Of course... what Mr. Twain hadn't explained is that character-study novels just don't sell in SF/F. They say Harry Potter was rejected twelve times? HA. I shopped Triptych to both agents and small presses who didn't require you to have an agent to publish with them, and I got 64 rejections. Take that, J.K.

At first the rejection letters were forms and photocopied "no thanks" slips. But every time I got feedback from a publisher or agent, I took it to heart, adjusted the manuscript, edited, tweaked, tweaked, tweaked. Eventually, the rejections started to get more personal. "I loved this character, but I don't know how to sell this book." And "I really enjoyed the read, but it doesn't really fit the rest of our catalogue." And "What if you rewrote the novel to be about the action event that happens before the book even starts, instead of focusing solely on the emotional aftermath?"

In other words - "Stop writing fanfiction." There seemed to be a huge disconnect between what the readership wanted and what the publishing world thought they wanted.

Disheartened, frustrated, and wondering if I was going to have to give up on my dreams of being a professional creative, I attended Ad Astra, a convention in Toronto, in 2009. At a room party, complaining to my author friends that "nobody wanted my gay alien threesome book!" a woman I didn't know asked me about the novel. We chatted, and it turned out she was the acquisitions editor for Dragon Moon Press, and incidentally, also a fan of fan fiction.

I sent her Triptych. She rejected it. I asked why. She gave me a laundry list of reasons. I said, "If I can address these issues and rewrite it, would you be willing to look at it again?" She said yes. She was certain, however, that I wouldn't be able to fix it. I spent the summer rewriting - while making sure to stay true to my original tone of the novel, and writing a character-study fanfiction. I sent it in the fall. I do believe it was Christmas eve when I received the offer of publication.

From there, my little fic-inspired novel was nominated for two Lambda Literary Awards and a CBC Bookie, was named one of the best books of 2011 by the Advocate, and garnered a starred review and a place on the Best Books Of The Year at Publishers Weekly.

The award nominations led me to an agent, and further contracts, and even conversations with studio execs. It also made me the target of Requires Only That You Hate, and other cranky, horrible reviewers. But you know what? I've had worse on a forum, and on ff.n, and LJ. It sucked, and it hurt, but if there's one thing fandom has taught me, it's that not everyone is going to love what you do, and not everyone interprets things the same way you do. The only thing we can do is learn from the critique if it's valid and thoughtful, and ignore the screaming hate and bullying. Then you pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and go write something else.

 Because a screaming hater? Is not going to ruin my love of storytelling.

But for all that... the day someone made me fan art based on Triptych is one etched in my memory. It means far more to me than any of the emails I ever received inquiring about representation or film rights, or wanting meetings to discuss series.

The lesson I learned from publishing Triptych  - now sadly out of print, but we're looking for a new home for it - is that if I chase what the "mainstream" and the "industry" want, I'll never write anything that sells because my heart won't be in it. I have to keep writing like a fanficcer, even if I'm not writing fanfic, if I want to create something that resonates with people. And if it takes time for the publishers and acquiring editors to figure out what I'm doing, and how to sell it, then fine - I have an agent on my side now, and a small growing number of supporters, readers, and editors who love what I do.

Do I still write fanfic? Very, very rarely. I’ve had some pretty demanding contracts and deadlines in the last two years, so I’ve had to pare down my writing to only what’s needed to fulfill my obligations. Doesn’t mean I don’t have ideas for fics constantly.

Sometimes the urge is powerful enough that I do give into it – I wrote To A Stranger, based on Mad Lori’s Performance in a Leading Role Sherlock AU recently, when I should have been writing the second and third novels of The Accidental Turn Series. And even more recently, I cleaned up To A Stranger  into something resembling a real screenplay and started shopping it around to film festivals and producers because I love this story, I love what I did with it, and I’m proud of the work. If To A Stranger is only ever a fanfic, that’s fine with me. I poured my heart into it and am so proud of it. But I figure that if there’s one more project I could possibly get into the real world, then why not go for it?

The worst thing the festival heads and producers can say about the work is: “No, thank you.” And being an online writer has taught me not to take the “no, thank you”s personally. Applying the values of Don’t Like Don’t Read or Not My Kink to your publication/agent search makes it much easier to handle the rejections – not every story is for every person.

Maybe once every producer in North America has rejected it, I might think about working with someone to adapt the screenplay into an illustrated comic fanbook? Who knows?

That’s the joy of starting out as a writer in fandom – felixibility, adaptability, creative problem-solving and cross-platform storytelling comes as naturally as breathing to us fan writers. It’s what we do.

You may not think that this is a strength, but trust me, it is. I was never so shocked at an author’s meetup as when I suggested to someone that their “writer’s block” sounded to me like they were telling the story in the wrong format. “I think this is a comic, not a novel,” I’d said. “It sounds so visual. That's why the story is resisting you.” And they stared at me like I suddenly had an extra head and said, “But I’m a novelist.” I said, “No, you’re a writer. Try it.” They never did, as far as I know, and they never finished that book, either.

As fans, our strength isn't just in what we write, or how we come to our stories. It’s also about the physical practice of writing, too. We’re a group of people who have learned to carry notebooks, squeeze in a few hundred words between classes, or when the baby is napping, or during our lunch breaks, or on commute home. This is our hobby, we fit it in around our lives and jobs, and that has taught us the importance of just making time.

We are, on average, more dedicated and constant writers than some of the “novelists” that I’ve met: the folks who wait for inspiration to strike, who quit their day jobs in pursuit of some lofty ideal of having an office and drinking whiskey and walking the quay and waiting for madam muse to grace them, who throw themselves at MFAs and writing retreats, as if it's the attendance that makes them writers and not the work of it.

We fans are career writers. We don’t wait for inspiration to come to us, we chase it down with a butterfly net. We write when and where we can. More than that, we finish things. (Or we have the good sense to know when to abandon something that isn’t working.) We write to deadlines. Self-imposed ones, even.

We write 5k on a weekend for fun, and think NaNoWriMo’s 50k goal and 1667 words per day are a walk in the park. (When I know it terrifies some of the best-selling published authors I hang out with.) Or if we fans don’t write fast, then we know that slow and steady works too, and we’re willing to stick it out until our story is finished, even if it takes years of weekly updates to do so. We have patience, and perseverance, and passion.

This is what being a fanfiction writer has given me. Not only a career as a writer, but tools and a skill-set to write work that other people think is work awarding, adapting, and promoting. And the courage to stick to my guns when it comes to telling the kinds of stories that I want to tell.

This is what being a fanfiction writer gives us.

Aren’t we lucky, fellow fans? Hasn’t our training been spectacular?

*

J.M. (@scifrey) is a SF/F author, and professional smartypants on AMI Audio’s Live From Studio 5. She’s appeared in podcasts, documentaries, and on television to discuss all things geeky through the lens of academia. Her debut novel TRIPTYCH was nominated for two Lambda Literary Awards,  nominated for a 2011 CBC Bookie, was named one of The Advocate’s Best Overlooked Books of 2011, and garnered both a starred review and a place among the Best Books of 2011 from Publishers Weekly. Her sophomore novel, an epic-length feminist meta-fantasy THE UNTOLD TALE (Accidental Turn Series #1), debuted to acclaim in 2015 and was followed by THE FORGOTTEN TALE (Accidental Turn Series #2) this past December. FF.N | LJ |AO3| Books | Tumblr

[yesweweresoldiers]

Historical Reads: The Battle of Midway

I am interested in a variety of topics and eras in history, although I am drawn mostly to memoirs and analytical military history. Perhaps that seems like a contradiction, given that one tends toward the personal while the other the technical, but that’s me as a reader. I especially enjoy reading different genres of writing on a single event or idea, as I recently did to learn about the Battle of Midway.

Anticipating the release of Roland Emmerich’s movie Midway last November, I decided that I needed to bone up on the battle, about which I knew in mostly general terms. I have had the good fortune of running TAH programs on board the USS Midway in San Diego since Spring 2019, and they have a great used bookstore on board - a delightfully cramped room off of the hangar deck, packed with quality used books, maps, and other materials, most of which are related to the battle after which the ship was named. If you ever visit the ship, make sure to find it and take a look around - it’s on the port side of the ship, near the bow, inside the hangar deck. If those nautical terms don’t mean anything to you, consider this your opportunity to learn something new.

In any case, I picked up Miracle at Midway, by Gordon W. Prange. This story and analysis of the battle was published in 1982, after the author’s death, with the book having been completed by two other historians who believed that his take on the battle deserved to be read. After reading it, I agree with them.

Miracle at Midway is what I’d call ‘traditional’ military history, in that the authors present the facts in chronological order, from  the lead-in, to the beginning of the battle, to its progression into a major conflict with key turning points, to its resolution. This expository approach is punctuated by deeper explanation and analysis of key people, moments, and decisions, providing the reader with a sense of what happened, when and where, and with the authors periodically saying, in effect, “make sure to pay attention to this key point.” At just under 400 pages, the book is well-balanced between the American and Japanese perspectives. In page count, it might actually seem weighted - - toward telling the story from the Japanese vantage point. I found that this helped me understand the battle more comprehensively, given that I was only familiar with the American perspective on it. It was one thing to know that the Japanese were in the middle of switching munitions when American dive bombers arrived. To understand what led to that moment--Japanese decisions decisions made in the fog of war--was something else.

MIracle at Midway is approachable enough, I believe, for most readers with an interest in learning more about the battle. The only shortcoming I found was a shortage of maps. Yes, there were a few maps on the various stages of the battle, but I was left wanting more incremental detail, especially considering how pivotal space and time were in a battle that took place over thousands upon thousands of square miles of open ocean. Still, Prange’s book is a good, quick read that will almost certainly expand your knowledge of the battle as a whole event.

I finished the book and a few days later the movie debuted. Upon seeing it I understood how the story was told and what limitations the studio had in this massive undertaking. I’m glad that I went to the theater armed with this knowledge, because it helped me make sense of the tight story the movie sought to tell. I could then explain the film’s strengths and (few) shortcomings to others.

About a week after that, I turned to a volume I’d had on my Amazon wish list for years: Never Call Me a Hero: A Legendary American Dive-Bomber Pilot Remembers The Battle of Midway, by N. Jack “Dusty” Kleiss. I wanted a more personal, individual view of the battle, and Kleiss delivered in this 300-page book, which devotes about 70 pages to his experience of the battle itself. The rest of the book covers his early life, service before the war began, and experience in other battles. These pages are essential to understanding how Kleiss acted at Midway.

Kleiss, one of only two pilots confirmed to have scored bomb hits on two separate Japanese carriers - the other was Dick Best, the main character in the recent movie - tells a sometimes harrowing story of his war service. Combat flight duty during the Second World War was one risk after another: training accidents, equipment and navigation failures over open water, and then combat. Men died regularly in and outside of battle, and Kleiss does a fine job of establishing the high-risk world in which he and fellow volunteer pilots lived, without patting himself on the back. In fact, he reserves honor and credit for his friends, one in particular, who didn’t make it back.

His tale of the battle itself stood out to me for two reasons: first, the account was clearly from the mind of a man who had a good memory and had done his own fact-checking of unit histories, his own flight logs, and other reputable accounts of the battle. There are moments of what might be called ‘sidebar’ commentary from him in which he mentions this work, given that he only committed to writing the book in his twilight years, decades after the battle. The other standout aspect to his account is that he did not avoid commenting on American mistakes. While in no way engaging in finger-pointing or blame, he gives an honest account of fellow flyers and leaders and their decisions. Sometimes books of this sort give only glowing accounts of the decisions and character of all who served, as if disagreement or friction over actions in battle did not occur. We all know that this simply isn’t possible - we’re dealing with real human beings here, right? Kleiss struck a refreshing balance between the extremes of an unfair, accusatory post-mortem and an unrealistic picture of perfectly happy brothers-in-arms.

Kleiss’ story is personal, poignant in some places, and well-told, providing a vantage point on the battle that’s relatable and comprehensible; that is, through a single set of eyes. If the notion that a person can rise to great moments and still be a regular person interests you, I think you’ll enjoy this book, and you’ll certainly learn some good history from it.

These books, taken together, gave me a broader view of the Battle of Midway. Both are easy reads for anyone who’s a fan of popular historical writing, and both books are in print and available used for cheap. Additionally, Kleiss is one of several pilots interviewed in the first season of the History Channel’s “Battle 360,” a multi-part series about the war service of the USS Enterprise, the ship on which both Kleiss and Best served.

Join us for one of our seminars onboard the USS Midway or for any of our other document-based seminars on World War II coming up in 2020.

TAH is an Amazon Associate and any purchases made through qualifying affiliate links on our site help to support our programs. Thank you for helping us bring the documents and debates of the nation’s past into the present.

The post Historical Reads: The Battle of Midway appeared first on Teaching American History.

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[cars4starters]

A few weeks ago I decided, after much procrastination, to tidy up the bookshelves in my office.

They are crammed with mostly motoring/car books of every shape and size that I have collected or been given over five decades.

The two smallest volumes are titled “The Observer’s Book of Automobiles”.

They were first published in 1955 by Frederick Warne and Co. Ltd., of London.

A fascinating sidelight of the Frederick Warne story is that a struggling young author named Beatrix Potter submitted her first manuscript to the  company but like five other publishers – it was turned down.

The book was called The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Subsequently, Warnes changed their mind after they saw a privately published copy in 1901.

The following year they decided to publish the book providing the illustrations were in colour and by Christmas more than 20,000 copies had been sold.

Beatrix and Norman, the younger of the three Warne brothers, became engaged – but tragically he died just a few weeks later.

For 40 years, Frederick Warne published Potter’s books and in 1983, the company was acquired by Penguin books.

The first of my little automobile-observer’s books was edited by Richard T. Parsons and the second edited and revised by one L.A. Manwaring.

Both carried a forward by a young British racing driver who was showing a bit of promise at the time. Stirling (now Sir Stirling) Moss.

Both were originally published in 1955 but one of my two was an updated 1959 edition.

Each volume has nearly 300 pages and both are filled with black-and-white pics to illustrate cars as well as basic engine and dimensional details. Often there is also a bit of history of the marque in question.

The story of my two little observer’s books goes back about 10 years when a late dear mate of mine found the books in a box when he was moving house.

He had been given them as a kid and they each cost the princely sum of 8 shillings and sixpence.

As I was a busy motoring journalist at the time, he thought they would be of more interest to me than him. As well as being one of my great mates, he was also a hero of mine.

He was a Vietnam Vet whose number came out of the conscription barrel.

He was out in a paddy field one day crawling along on his hands and knees beside his sergeant gingerly stabbing the ground with their bayonets trying to find land mines.

They found one and the resulting explosion made my mate a triple amputee.

After returning to Australia for about a year’s treatment he resumed his life, got married to a wonderful wife, had a couple of great kids and went back to work as an international meat trader.

Some 50 years on, leukaemia claimed him … something the Viet Kong never could.

Naturally, when I saw my little car books tucked away on the bookshelves, I through of my mate and felt the need to burst into print.

In the first, Sir Stirling writes in his forward: ”Since the automobile first appeared before an amazed world, its shape and mechanical configuration has changed many times to arrive at the car we know today with its flowing lines, powerful engine, automatic transmission and reliable brakes.”

Thankfully, Sir Stirling is still with us. I wonder how he would word a forward were he to put pen to paper for a book’s forward in 2017.

But back to the little car books.

Flicking through them again for the first time in probably five years is was again struck by what has happened to the once-great British car industry.

With the demise of so many companies and brands, it’s fascinating to note that Morgan is now Britain’s largest locally owned car company.

While things like Vauxhall and Ford certainly have significant operations and models from which punters can choose, they are long-since owned by GM and Ford US.

Just look at the list of brands that have gone to the great wrecking yard in the sky.

AC, Allard, Alvis, Armstrong Siddeley, Austin, Austin-Healey, Bristol, Daimler, Dellow, Faithorpe, Frazer-Nash, Hillman, Humber, HRG, Jensen, Lanchester, Morris, Paramount, Riley, Kieft and Lagonda.

Then there’s Rodley, Rover, Singer, Standard, Vanguard, Wolseley, Sunbeam, Doretti, Triumph, Astra, Berkeley, Friski, Gill and Peerless.

While I acknowledge that many of our younger readers will not have heard of a heap of these, I can assure you that they were all at one time fair-dinkum car manufacturers.

The other badges that have survived include MG, which is now Chinese owned and Jaguar/Land  Rover that is now being extremely ably run by India’s Tata group.

There’s still Aston Martin and its home remains in the UK and it operates under largely private-equity ownership and still seems to lurch from financial hurdle to financial hurdle.

The two glamour British brands, Rolls Royce and Bentley, are still alive and well but are now owned by BMW and Volkswagen respectively.

Winston Churchill would be turning in his grave!

One saving grace for things motoring in Britain is now the country dominates the Formula 1 racing industry. With the obvious exception of Ferrari and Renault, just about all the other teams are British-based and full of British engineering and design talent.

For years, the British truck and transport industries were dominated by legendary names such as Commer, Bedford, Foden, Scammell, Guy, Dennis, ERF, Austin, Morris Commercial, Atkinson, Ford Thames, AEC and Seddon.

None remains. Like the cars, it’s a Pommy tragedy, and don’t get me started on the tragedy of the British motorcycle industry -just think of the great brands that are no more . . . snuffed out largely by the rise and rise of the Japanese brands.

How’s this for a list?

BSA, Matchless, Ariel, Brough Superior, Sunbeam, Velocette, Vincent, HRD, Excelsior, Norton and there is a heap more.

Looking back on more than 100 years of car, truck and motorcycle production, the Poms have a lot about which to be proud.

It’s just so sad they lost their way so tragically.

British cars keep disappearing into the mist A few weeks ago I decided, after much procrastination, to tidy up the bookshelves in my office.

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Franklin Furnace at 40: Still Radical After All These Years

Installation view of “Burning in Hell,” an exhibition in Franklin Furnace’s “Food for Thought” series curated by artist Nancy Spero in 1991 (photo courtesy of Franklin Furnace Archive)

The avant-garde is dead — isn’t it?

Rooted in a French military term referring to an army’s front-line “advance guard,” in the context of art history, “avant-garde” came to mean “trailblazing,” “rule-breaking,” and “forward-looking.” With regard to modern art, whose origins are generally traced back to the latter half of the 19th century, numerous avant-gardes, routinely emerging with tradition-busting fervor, contributed to the momentum of the modernist impulse.

Now though, from an early-21st-century vantage point, is it accurate to say that such movements have become art-historical artifacts — completed past chapters of a story that ended with paint-flinging Abstract Expressionism? Or with cool-detached Pop? Or perhaps still later, with the final elimination of the physical art object itself by a certain strain of Conceptual Art?

For Martha Wilson — artist, free-speech activist, and veteran arts administrator — and her collaborators at the Franklin Furnace Archive in New York, the avant-garde spirit is alive and well, and as relevant as ever; together, they’re committed to making sure it has the support it needs to continue shaking things up for years to come.

Martha Wilson, Mona Marcel Marge, 2011-2014, lenticular photograph, 20 x 12 inches (photo courtesy of the artist and P.P.O.W., New York)

Since last spring, the organization has been celebrating the 40th anniversary of its founding in 1976. Its program of commemorative events will soon culminate in a benefit art auction, in which bidding has already begun on the Paddle8 website; it will end in a live auction at Metro Pictures in Chelsea next Saturday, April 22. Various artists and galleries have donated works to the sale, which will include pieces by John Ahearn, Judith Bernstein, Ana Mendieta, Carolee Schneemann, David Wojnarowicz, and Wilson herself.

Franklin Furnace’s mission might sound like something of a contradiction — providing institutional support to artistic-activist forces whose purpose, implicit or explicit, is to tear down social-cultural institutions while proposing new ways of looking at, thinking about and engaging with the world.

Still, the organization’s history offers a persuasive and often colorful argument in favor of self-styled avant-gardistes charging ahead as well as shoring up their own rear guard by documenting and, in effect, taking the lead in historicizing their accomplishments. Now, as Franklin Furnace celebrates its big anniversary against a backdrop of a money-obsessed art establishment and a vehemently anti-culture federal government, the meaning and value of its mission have been thrown into sharp relief.

Judith Bernstein, Schlong-Face, 2016, three-color print, 21 x 15 inches (photo courtesy of the artist)

Wilson studied at a small college in Ohio and then earned a master’s degree in English literature at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She stayed in Canada following her graduation and, in the early 1970s, taught English at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. With so-called second-wave feminism (which linked the social-cultural and political inequality of women) and the sexual revolution well under way, Wilson became inspired by the language-based conceptual art for which NSCAD had become a laboratory, with artists and critics associated with the new “idea art” passing through Halifax to present their work at the school.

By 1976, Wilson had moved to New York. Intrigued by the diversity of experimental art forms that were flourishing on the fringes of the art-world mainstream, she continued developing her own performance-oriented work, in which, through costume, speech, and behavior, augmented by self-portrait photography, she examined women’s social roles and the idea of self-identity as it was shaped by class-, race- and gender-based values and assumptions.

In that same year, along with a group of artist collaborators, she established Franklin Furnace as an exhibition-and-performance space in the street-front loft of an Italianate, cast-iron building at 112 Franklin Street in TriBeCa. New genres, such as artists’ books or performance art, which were time-based, ephemeral or not easily classified became the focus of the organization’s programming.

Ana Mendieta, Untitled: Silueta Series, Mexico, 1976 (estate print 1991), color photograph, 20 x 16 inches (photo courtesy of the Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection LLC and Galerie Lelong, New York)

Just a few years earlier, in 1973, the American art historian Lucy R. Lippard’s landmark book, Six years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972, had been published. It chronicled the rise of the new, often immaterial, idea-based art that had effectively led to the critical demise of familiar, physical, handcrafted art objects.

Wilson had also been following this new art’s evolution, along with that of performance art, which many feminist artists had embraced. (“After all,” as she once noted in a past interview, “as women, performance came naturally to us; we were all keenly aware that we were performing society’s defined roles for us all the time.”)

She was also very interested in the fresh, quickly mutating genre known as the artist’s book. “I was interested in the page as a kind of performance space,” she said. “At the time, lots of artists were publishing their work in various forms themselves, but it seemed that no established institutions were paying close attention to this phenomenon. Apparently, this material was not perceived of as art, or at least not as valuable art. I could see that there was a vacuum that needed to be filled.”

Artists’ books were often related to performance art, whose practitioners understood that if they did not photograph, videotape, film, or otherwise document their performances, they would have no lasting record of such events. And so they would often turn to making imaginative, one-of-a-kind or limited-edition books to serve these documentary purposes.

Performance artist Laurie Anderson in an early-career appearance on stage at Franklin Furnace, circa 1970s (photo courtesy of Franklin Furnace Archive)

From the start, Franklin Furnace began amassing a collection of such books, along with related videotapes, photographs, films, and booklets, and all sorts of artist-produced, performance-associated or stand-alone ephemera, which entered its permanent collection. Franklin Furnace became one of the world’s first “alternative-space” museums, whose thematic exhibitions were often largely culled from materials in its unusual collection. Other pioneering, independent arts organizations were sprouting up in New York around the same time, each with a distinct mission in the service of emerging art forms, including Printed Matter, Artists Space, the Kitchen, and Exit Art. Wilson recalled, “In those early years, as Laurie Anderson used to say, ‘The same 300 people went to everything.’ But then things grew and took off.”

The writer-actor Eric Bogosian, who presented his earliest monologues at Franklin Furnace, recently noted by e-mail, “Performance in the late 1970s was totally focused on the artists’ community. It was a way of talking to one another, of trading ideas. The emphasis was on originality. Franklin Furnace was the venue where an important facet of my work began. Martha and curator Jacki Apple encouraged experimentation.”

Performance artist Paul Zaloom on stage at Franklin Furnace in his “Opus No. 39: New and Used Works,” February 1983 (photo courtesy of Franklin Furnace Archive)

The Los Angeles-based performance artist Paul Zaloom, who also got his start at Franklin Furnace during its early years, told me in a recent interview, “I remember the lively, full houses and raucous reactions of the audiences.” Zaloom became known for his political satire and goofy-provocative performances involving puppets made from found objects. He added, “In the late 1970s, there was a paucity of humor in performance art; political content was also rare. Obscurity was rampant. As the culture wars, the AIDS crisis, and the Reagan nightmare erupted, a lot more queer, radical, and compelling work began to surface — even some funny stuff. Franklin Furnace was key to this new, much-needed trend, giving voice to lots of artists, like myself, whose work was explicitly political.”

In December 1978, Franklin Furnace hung a poster in its street-front window. It bore a list of the artist Jenny Holzer’s “Truisms,” matter-of-fact but edgy-sounding pronouncements printed in plain block letters. Their collective cri de coeur signaled that this new, downtown arts outpost would not shy away from the political. “You must disagree with authority figures,” one “Truism” advised. Another declared, “You are responsible for constituting the meaning of things.”

As the AIDS crisis tore through the Reagan ’80s, followed by the heated “culture wars” of the early 1990s, Franklin Furnace became both a showcase and a clubhouse for artists with political messages aplenty, even as it pursued more conventional curatorial projects. “We did shows the uptown museums wouldn’t touch, about subjects in which they weren’t interested,” Wilson recalled.

With the assistance of specialist guest curators, her organization mounted revealing exhibitions on such subjects as artists’ books from Japan (in a show assembled by the influential Japanese critic Yoshiako Tono). Its Cubist Prints/Cubist Books show broke new ground in its field and traveled to other museums in the United States. Along with exhibition-making, Franklin Furnace launched its Fund for Performance Art, whose grants enabled emerging artists to produce and present new works in New York. (Its grants-for-artists program still exists today.) Franklin Furnace also developed an education program, sending book artists, performers, photographers, filmmakers, animators, and videographers to work with children in New York’s public schools.

Installation view of the exhibition “Artists’ Books: Japan,” at Franklin Furnace’s previous, physical space at 112 Franklin Street, TriBeCa, 1985 (photo courtesy of Franklin Furnace Archive)

Challenging censorship, Franklin Furnace courted controversial topics. In 1984, it was reprimanded by the National Endowment for the Arts for presenting Carnival Knowledge, an exhibition and performance art series that examined, with punchy humor, the notion of “feminist pornography.” In time, Franklin Furnace also became a key player in what the conservative commentator-turned-Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan called in 1992 “a religious war […] for the soul of America.”

Political pressure may have played a part in an episode in May 1990, when New York’s fire department dubiously forced the organization to close its basement performance space in response to a call claiming the arts outlet was an “illegal social club.” The shutdown prompted Wilson’s team to present performances and events “in exile.” Their first, off-site venue: Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, whose arts-related ministry had made it a censorship-free center for experimental dance, art, theater, and music since the 1950s.

As the 1990s unfolded, Franklin Furnace became embroiled in the so-called NEA Four case, in which performance artists whose works it had sponsored — Karen Finley, John Fleck, Holly Hughes, and Tim Miller — saw their proposed grants from the NEA vetoed by the agency’s director, John Frohnmayer, an appointee of President George H. W. Bush. Ultimately, the NEA settled with the four artists out of court and gave them the grants they had been denied. Still, they decided to litigate against the NEA’s congressionally approved “decency clause,” which had required the arts agency to judge grant-seekers’ proposals not only on their artistic merits but also according to “general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs of the American public.”

“Although the NEA Four finally won their grants,” Wilson recalled, “in the end, sadly, the arts agency stopped funding individual visual artists.” She added, “In a way, avant-garde artists both won and lost the culture wars. Certainly they often took the lead, through their art, in examining topics they felt were urgent but were not embraced right away by the general society. Eventually, though, those subjects became the ones everybody was talking and concerned about.”

John Ahearn, Chin Chih Yang, 2015/2017, painted plaster cast with aluminum cans, 20 x 21 x 10 inches (photo courtesy of the artist and Alexander and Bonin, New York)

Wilson noted that, ironically, far-right activists learned to employ techniques avant-garde artists themselves had developed. “There was the time that a group of conservative activists calling for the death of the NEA tried to haul two coffins up the Capitol steps in Washington, DC,” Wilson said. “That one was straight out of the performance art playbook!”

In 1997, after winding down its on-site programming and selling its TriBeCa loft, Franklin Furnace launched a website and became an Internet-based presenter of performance art and, in time, an online archive of material documenting its past events. It sold its collection of artists’ books and related research files to the Museum of Modern Art. More recently, the organization became an independently functioning entity under the administrative umbrella of and in collaboration with Pratt Institute. Its offices are located on Pratt’s Brooklyn campus, where the organization, drawing on its archive and considerable research resources, has been developing study programs in performance art and other areas, as well as helping to organize exhibitions.

Wilson said, “Now, after forty years, we find ourselves playing a Janus role: We still serve as an aid to avant-garde artists, which means we’re always looking ahead, and as custodians of decades of the recent avant-garde’s history, both with our physical and our online archives, we find ourselves looking back in time, too. These are big responsibilities, and we take them seriously.”

Installation view of the exhibition “Fluxus: A Conceptual Country,” curated by Estera Milman, which opened at Franklin Furnace in downtown Manhattan in October 1993 (photo by Marty Heitner, courtesy of Franklin Furnace Archive)

Art historian Lippard, reminiscing by e-mail from her home in New Mexico, recalled her own past collaborations with Franklin Furnace, back in the days when, with limited resources — homemade vitrines, clip-on lamps — it mounted many a ground-breaking exhibition. “It has always been a haven for book artists, performance artists and political artists way outside the mainstream. Mike Glier and I curated Vigilance, an artists’ book show there in the early 1980s, with a banner quoting Antonio Gramsci overlooking card tables; the books were tied by string to their legs, and, remarkably, none disappeared.”

As long as artists continue calling for radical change in the art world, a position that, in the broadest sense, is inherently political, maybe there will always be an active avant-garde. Looking back over the past four decades, Lippard observed, “We thought it was bad in the 1980s, but the Furnace’s history has a special resonance today, when things are worse than we could ever have imagined.”

Franklin Furnace @ 40 Benefit Art Sale and Auction will take place at Metro Pictures (519 West 24th Street, Chelsea) on Saturday, April 22, from 5 to 7pm. Pre-event online bidding is now under way at Paddle8.

The post Franklin Furnace at 40: Still Radical After All These Years appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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