As you may be aware, because I'm certainly not hiding the fact, I am a Mormon (a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). It's kind of interesting to note how many Mormon professionals there are in fantasy and children's/YA lit. I get past counting on both hands (especially when including editors), and while that might not seem as much compared to the various other religious and/or nonreligious groups a professional in this industry may claim, it's always an interesting subject for Mormons to talk about. :D

I've been asked to write an essay for a Mormon publication, Dialogue, on Mormon writers of mainstream YA and children's literature. While I'm working on that, I thought I'd throw the topic out there, both to my readers who I know for a fact are LDS, and to anyone else who might be interested in the subject. What YA and children's fantasy writers out there are LDS? Does knowing they're LDS affect how you perceive the book? Did you learn they were LDS before or after reading, and did that change your perception of the book?

Let's contrast this to a notorious example, and a timely one at that. You've all probably heard of the emails going round some parts about boycotting the movies based on Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials.* Would you go to see the movie? Do you believe that it should be avoided? If so, why? If not, what do you like about Pullman's work? What influence, if any, does his background have on your reading?


( A smattering of a list, if you're curious )


*Full disclosure: I think Pullman's writing is beautiful. While I didn't necessarily agree with the conclusion of the series (as a member of a slightly unorthodox religious group that in a way rebelled/withdrew/rejected the teachings of the organized church of its day, I'm in a strange position of agreeing with him and disagreeing at the same time), I did think that HDM was beautifully written and a well-crafted fantasy story. And so what if I don't agree with him? I think that there's room for all of us to read each others' perspectives and learn from them, and that freedom to do so brings to our world beauty and understanding of both our differences and similarities.

In all the correspondence I've seen from Pullman himself on children's lit listservs, he's always been respectful, articulate, and a knowledgeable advocate for children in education. And he's got one of the best first lines of all time, too. I've got the Sally Lockhart mysteries lying on my bedside table begging for me to finally getting around to reading them.

So I certainly don't advocate boycotting the movies. On the contrary, I think they look gorgeous from what I've seen so far and I'm interested in seeing how the books are adapted to film.

I've been meaning to post about this forever, but completely forgot to even put it on my sidebar until the discussion of great audiobooks came up on one of the listservs I subscribe to. Several people recommend Natalie Moore's reading of Dairy Queen  by Catherine Gilbert Murdock as the best audiobook out there, and I'd almost have to agree--and I say almost because I believe it's the same actress who does Meg Cabot's All American Girl, which is also a great audio production. I'd have to look it up to be sure.

At any rate, I believe I've said here before that a lot of my outside-of-work reading actually gets done via audiobook on my commute, because I don't have the luxury of public transportation to give me a spare half hour to hour every day. 

Dairy Queen stood out to me because main character D.J. Schwenk could be living in my own hometown in Illinois (as it is, she's not far off, up in Wisconsin). Her school, her family, and pretty much everything about her story could have been something I experienced or knew someone experienced in my small farm town. I grew up on a farm and though I didn't play football, that feeling of responsibility for the family farm that a farm kid gets really resonated with me.

So go read the book, and notice the voice--she's got such a distinctive voice. Granted, it was filtered to me by the excellent narrator, but I think that the narrator had a lot of good writing to work with.

Notice the setting: it's my experience that contemporary realism doesn't shy away from rural settings (though I think Dairy Queen is unique in setting it in the upper Midwest--I can't think of a single book that's set in Iowa or Illinois farm country, though suggestions are welcome), but what about contemporary fantasy? Mostly, I see urban and suburban settings. There's a reason for this, of course--that's what writers tend to know, because that's where most of the general population lives. But I'd love to find that contemporary rural fantasy that breaks those boundaries, that can mesh small town contemporary life with a fantastic setting without relying too heavily on tropes popular in more medieval rural fantasy. 

Can it be done? Has it been done? Recommendations, if so.

My enviable dilemma for the evening is to either watch another episode of my new favorite show, The Dresden Files on SciFi (via Itunes), or read more of Austenland, by Shannon Hale (I managed to grab an ARC at ALA Midwinter). I must say, this show is awesome. Harry Dresden is a wizard. A wizard who lives in modern-day Chicago.

It's like Law and Order, only with wizards. 

Seriously. Only better.

And that's coming from a L&O fan.

He gets into situations where he has to deal with cops--crimes involving supernatural things, like werewolves and hellions and crows that are really weird magical beings. But he can't tell anyone who doesn't already know about the supernatural anything about what's going on, so it puts him in some interesting situations, having to solve problems on his own or get into situations where he might get arrested for what he's doing.

Very good. It's apparently based on books by the same name, but I've never read them myself. Anyone else read them?

By the way, this show is a great answer to a recent comment by Scott Westerfeld in an interview in Locus. Oh, it must have been six months or more now. He said that whenever he travels to a new country the first thing he does is turn on the TV, but then he's utterly bored or disappointed, I can't remember his words, if the show is just a cop show or a drama without anything supernatural. I remember him saying that he looks at a L&O kind of show and hopes that the lawyer is going to sprout wings or throw a fireball or something. Well, here's the show for him. :)

And Cindy, if you're reading this, yes, Shannon Hale + Jane Austen. You're on the list of people to borrow it after my coworker, who I stole it back from tonight to read.

ETA: BTW, Dresden Files is set in Chicago! I love Chicago.

Thanks to everyone who gave me ideas in the last thread. You're all thinking about what I was thinking, and you gave me some great examples. 

I'm done, done, done with my last apartment. Got my vacuum back (though not my broom and dustpan) and got the kitchen clean. Done. Never going to live in an apartment complex ever again. Too much gambling on whether your neighbor will be a smoker and whether the management and maintenance will be competent, and usually way overpriced anyway.

Currently putting together those thoughts on fantasy--both the idea of it being all around us and the evolution of folk/fairy tales and mythology through fantastic stories all the way back to Beowulf and A Midsummer Night's Dream through the Victorians and up to today. It's really amazing how fantasy really is a part of most cultures and their storytelling. And then there was what's his name in the Victorian era who consigned fantasy to the nursery... James? Yes, Henry James. We talked about it a bit in my Victorian class in grad school. It was a complete cultural shift, in my opinion, in people's overt opinions of "fantasy" the large concept, but it's so interesting how it's still pretty much infused in our culture.

Just a quick drive-by to say that there will be no post of substance today because ARRRgh and GRRRRR, my old apartment complex totally sucks. Went back tonight to finish the last of my cleaning and take out my vacuum and cleaning supplies. And when I arrived, they were gone.


ARrrrrrrrgh.

At this rate I'm going to go be a pirate. (Speaking of which, if you've never heard the song The Last Saskatchewan Pirate, you must. Even two or three years after hearing it the first time I laugh out loud when I hear it. It's here, link in the middle of the page, if you're interested in hearing it.)

Now I'm off to put together some thoughts on the evolution of fantasy and fantasy in pop culture. Open thread portion: tell me about where you see fantasy and the fantastic in pop culture. For someone who doesn't read fantasy, where in their normal everyday life would you tell them they're already seeing it? Popular movies? Folklore and fairy tales? Disney movies? What else?

Does anyone out there--teachers, librarians, writers, readers--remember the Endless Quest books? Anyone out there read them as a kid? If so, can you shoot me an email at stacy l whitman AT gmail DOT com, or just comment here? (take out the spaces, of course)

I think it appropriate that the book I will review today will be Jane  Yolen's Take Joy, due to all the joy I've been taking in my new camera over the weekend. I've been finding the joy again in my photography that I've been delaying for so long because film has become such an encumbrance that I end up saving rolls of film for months--my latest batch included shots from San Diego Comic-Con last July, a trip I took last August, several rolls from my Christmas travels, as well as a variety of smaller events in the last six months--and by the time I get to see them again, the pictures have little meaning. I didn't play with pictures as much as I used to when in photography classes because I don't have the time to play in the darkroom making the exposure perfect (though how tempting it has been over the years to find a place I can build a darkroom, especially this last year because my uncle offered me his enlarger....).

Getting the digital camera, even in the first few days of use, has given me back that joy. I'm starting to remember the way I used to play with angles and lighting and the strange subjects I used to seek out. I have done a little of that playing with my camera phone, but that's more of a toy than a passion--when you're dealing with a 2 MP camera, there's only so much art you can create.

(I have a point, really I do.)

This is an important process to me, because I occasionally do a freelance article here and there, a wedding here and there, that kind of thing. I'm taking some pictures for our kickboxing teacher in a couple weeks to help him promote his new dojo. But I'd been feeling lately that I was losinig my chops. All my pictures ended up coming out the same--lots of flash burn, standard compositions, nothing out of the ordinary that gives you that wow factor. Competent, but not excellent. Even the pictures I posted in the last few days reflect those ways of seeing, though I love the salt shaker post because it's something different, something new I tried after learning a few things about indoor lighting (the bane of my photographic existence).

So, what does this have to do with writing and with Jane Yolen's book in particular? 

The whole book is about that discovery process, giving writers permission to find that joy that I have been rediscovering in my photography. In the first chapter Yolen quotes Gene Fowler, "'Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead'" and immediately refutes him: "I suggest you learn to write not with blood and fear, but with joy." She says to forget about publishing, because it's out of your hands, and to focus on the joy of your craft--of writing a story well, of really digging in and living in the story.

A very good premise. I mean, after all, why write if you don't find joy in it? I write. I think I've said it before here. I have a story, a retelling of a Scottish fairy tale, that I've been working on since my last year at BYU, in 2001. It's gone through many renditions, and the most I've ever finished was a novellette for a folklore class in grad school. Then I threw out the entire setting and decided to change it all around, and have gotten all of 10,000 words written since then in the new setting. 

Why haven't I finished it? Because while it brings me joy to live in that story, it doesn't bring me enough joy to make it worth my time to write every night after doing a very similar activity at work every day. I fully admit I may never be a published fiction writer (I am a published non-fiction freelance writer over and over, but that's a different market), and that's enough for me to find the little joys in the little bits of writing I do from time to time because publication isn't important to me--what's important to me is the story in my imagination. 

And mostly because I find that same kind of joy in being an editor to far better books than I could probably write right now.

For those who don't have that push-pull of using up that creative energy before you can set pen to paper (metaphorically speaking), Yolen's book will have much fodder for the imagination. 

Though I must say that the whole numinous "the mystery of fiction," "the mystery of the writing process," bleh. Don't make it all mysterious, as if someone with a little talent and a lot of effort can't figure it out. There's nothing mysterious about the combination of putting in the time to do something you love so that you can develop the inborn talent you have into something better. It's work, but if you find joy in it, it's time well spent, in my opinion. 

But that may just be my practical Midwestern upbringing coming into play. Doesn't mean that there isn't mystery in the art, and if that motivates you to seek joy in creating art, whatever your art is, more power to you.

Back to Take Joy--as you have probably already guessed, this isn't so much a review as a disjointed essay borne from a few ideas I've plucked from its pages--Yolen says that "These stories grace our actual lives with their fictional realities. Like angels they lift us above the hurrying world." I really like that idea. I don't know if I can recapture what it is that caught me about that particular passage, but I'll try.

As I was driving home the other night a program on NPR caught my attention. It was a Romanian professor by the name of Kodrescu (spelling? who knows?) who was speaking about the power of memories, how we create memories that didn't actually happen and turn them to pedagogical uses, how we change memory to fantasy because sometimes fantasy feels more real than the reality it is trying to reflect. 

How to express this? That talk really said something to me the other night, but now it's slipping from my mind, and I can barely even remember who the speaker was at this point. 

At any rate, I think what I'm trying to say is that sometimes in fiction we find more truth than we do in the reality we're seeking to interpret. I've said this before about fantasy, about its wonderful metaphorical magic. We can talk about struggles, the epic battle between good and evil, the shades of gray, the variety of human existence, in so many ways in fantasy that we can't do as well in realism sometimes because of the power the metaphor gives us--the power that the fictional, the fantasy (meaning the numinous, the fantastic, as well as simply the fantasy of making up a story), give us to assign multiple meanings and to interpret and reinterpret.

That the stories can "grace our actual lives with their fictional realities" can mean so many things, and I'm losing the ability to express what I'm trying to say.

At any rate, the book is a good read, and I think nonwriters as well as writers can benefit from the idea of taking joy in the art you pursue--remembering why you do what you do.

Of course, writers will get even more out of it, because she's got some solid advice for writers in there about taking rejection well, the elements of a good story (beyond a simple anecdote to a fully drawn drama), finding your voice, even a whole section dedicated to specific practical advice. I love the little interludes, the little bits of wisdom between chapters. One such, before chapter 5, is especially apropos for anyone who writes historical fiction, fantasy, or other genres that require lots of research:

For a writer, nothing is lost. Research once done can be used again and again, a kind of marvel of recycling. As writers we need to be shameless about thieving from ourselves. 

For example, I did two books on the Shakers--a nonfiction book called Simple Gifts and a novel, The Gift of Sarah Barker. And it is no coincidence that the round barn I discovered in my historical research, I then used as a piece of setting in the Sarah Barker book. It later found its way into my young adult science fiction novel, Dragon's Blood.

Good research swims upstream where it can spawn. (p. 41)

So there you have it, as one of hopefully a lot of writing book recommendations here at Stacy Whitman's Grimoire, couched in an essay on finding my photography chops again. Check out the book--you might find some gems that help you find joy in your own writing.

I came home from work sick today and ended up sleeping a good six hours and will probably go back to bed early. I tell you this because I wish I could participate in the discussion of the way that we treat normalcy and people on the fringes of society in fantasy over at fangs_fur_fey that blackholly  is continuing at her own LJ ,but I'm just too out of it to be making any sense of the discussion. On a normal day, this would be a fascinating discussion. I mean, it still is, but I'm not really able to read coherently right now. But though I'm not up for it, I thought perhaps you all might find it interesting. Hopefully I'll be able to get back into it later.

The discussion on the community starts with a post Holly made back here, then someone bumped it. (Holly brings it over from a couple other authors' individual LJs, which links I want to follow eventually myself.) Interesting stuff.

I received an email today commenting on my last post on reluctant readers. Author Darcy Pattison said:

I just read your livejournal post about the panel on reluctant readers and fantasy. I love what Mirrorstone does with the reluctant readers and fantasy. Sounds like the BN Educator's Day you went to was more lively than the one I attended here!

I wonder if there's another readership you might explore, too.

I once heard Lawrence Yep talk about reading fantasy. As a first generation Chinese-American, he grew up in an all black neighborhood, but attended a school that was mostly white (If I remember it right!). He said that for him, reading fantasy was like his life: a character is thrust into an alien environment, must learn the rules of society, and must survive.

Using fantasy to reach out to immigrants might be another avenue of reaching the right readers for fantasy stories.

I completely agree with her. Often fantasy is written from a Western point of view or using mostly British/Celtic lore, and I've seen many a discussion about why that is and how we might gain more multicultural readers if we used more multicultural lore. Laurence Yep's work is a great example of using themes and folklore from other cultures to tell a great story that might appeal to readers of a more broad background. I volunteer for the library here and work with Somali and Cambodian immigrants, and it’s probably an issue they’d relate to.

But related to that, one thing I love about fantasy is that it can address issues like race and culture in a metaphorical way, so that people of many backgrounds can put themselves into an alien world and get out of it what applies to their life. That’s another thing we talked about on the panel, actually, that I didn’t cover in my post--the multicultural themes a lot of fantasy covers. Dragonlance, for example, at least in the New Adventures, often addresses racism between kender, elf, and human. Sindri Suncatcher is a kender who can do magic--something that's simply "not possible" in the world, which causes a lot of discrimination, speculation, and comments from other characters. Elidor is a great example of an elf from a mixed race who has to deal with the racism of his Silvanesti relatives and villagers at his "otherness."

Star Sisterz is another of our series that has alternating protagonists from many cultural backgrounds (Indian-American, Caucasian, Latina, and Asian-American—there’s one more that I’m forgetting), and we really love that it can speak to girls of all types—both in universal themes and in characters of different backgrounds. The authors were talking in the panel about how there’s not a lot of contemporary fantasy like that out there, but that high fantasy often addresses those themes. (Which does make me say, "we need more contemporary fantasy that addresses those themes!")

One thing that fantasy addresses well is the idea of "otherness," metaphorically. It's one of the reasons I love fantasy, really--as an outsider socially, a nerd/geek/bookworm (not to mention a farm girl in an urban world and a member of a minority religion), I've experienced at least some of what it feels like to be an Other, and I think that when we're in that position, even for a moment, it helps us to understand others who might feel like outsiders. Reading a book in which the protagonist is an "other" puts the reader, of whatever background, into their shoes and creates an experience that can help increase empathy, for those who have never felt that way, or just let the reader be able to say, "yeah, I've felt that way, too."

Not that I'm advocating bibliotherapy. But I do believe we look for ourselves in the books we read, as well as looking for adventures that we'd never be able to experience in real life. Both of those elements can be found in fantasy and science fiction, especially in what's out there for kids and teens today.

What a wonderful, restful vacation. I had a great time. I'm actually not quite ready to go back to real life, especially after the day before yesterday. If I were to move back to the country, that afternoon would be one of the deciding factors. After spending a pleasant hour at the library (during which I intended to write but ended up spending most of the time talking with the librarian I grew up with about children's and YA books and how I edit them now and how she should buy my books--that last quite subtly, of course :D), my sister took me, our 16-year-old cousin, my two nephews, and a random nine-year-old girl (daughter of a friend of the family, if you were interested) out to my sister's mother-in-law's lake out in the country. It's a new man-made lake (a lot of these dot the Illinois countryside, stocked with Conservation Service-provided fish). Other than a lot of slimy algae in the deeper parts, it was very clean. The fish are still very new and there aren't enough of them to keep the algae under control quite enough yet, though they were spawning while I was there (yes, pictures to come) and there were lots of tiny little baby fish to add to the cleaning efforts.

I'm more tan today than I've been in years since I moved to the Big City.

It was just very nice and relaxing to swim for a while, play on the lake with my nephews, dive and slide off the launch pad in the middle of the lake (trampoline, log roll, and slide), row in a kayak-like float (more submerged float than kayak with kayak paddles--weird, but worked out the arms), and I even did a few laps, though I couldn't do the whole length of the lake because the algae was pretty slimy all the way to the top of the lake toward the west. Ick.

The rest of the vacation was also really fun. Drum corps reunion brought back so many memories and makes me want to find a senior corps to get my chops back. Saw old friends I haven't seen since 1993 and I now have their email addresses, so we can be in touch again. Apparently, the guy I used to date while in corps has been in touch with them all along, which makes me sad I didn't know that because he and I have been good friends for years. I guess I just never thought to ask. But we know where everyone is now, so it's all good.

Also, after going to the Chicago fireworks with my old roommate up in Chicago on the 3rd, and then spending the 4th with my family in my hometown, I'm going to have to say that I prefer Galva's small town parade, 4th activities, and fireworks at the park district to the crush of the overwhelming crowds of the Taste of Chicago and standing a mile away in a street corner to watch the so-so fireworks over the lake. I think that being able to sit right under the fireworks really made a difference, but the lineup of the fireworks in Galva was also just prettier. Pictures to come later. They won't be developed for a couple weeks, I think.

And despite how I love my family, I find it both amusing and annoying that with them, I seem to be considered a flaming liberal (and a deceived one at that). I should have known to not mention that I work for the company that makes Dungeons and Dragons, but I thought they'd have gotten past the '80s "D&D is Satanic" fervor. It's really ridiculous that my aunt actually thinks that the liberals I work with are liberal because they "went too far" with D&D.

And then I tried to describe the new teen series coming out next year (i.e., vampiric fairies), and that ended the conversation with another aunt and a cousin.

At the time, it annoyed me because it happened over and over again, in every conversation about my work. With a few days' distance now, though, it's more funny than anything--yup, this is my family. I am the girl who doesn't understand what fantasy is doing to my brain. Or my spirit, rather. As a firmly religious person, that's both offensive and amusing.