I finished Grettir’s Saga last night. It never fails to amaze me how sagas don’t end with the death of the main character. There’s always at least a half-dozen more chapters going into some detail about the friends and relations left behind. Grettir’s Saga ends with the story of Thorstein Dromund, Grettir’s half-brother, travels all the way to Constantinople to seek revenge and, as the saga scribe relates, this is the farthest any Icelander had ever traveled to get revenge.

The last chapters are great, where Grettir holes up on the steep-walled island of Drangey, owned by a consortium of farmers. Grettir and his friends pull the ladders (that reach from the sea to the top of the island) up after they’ve gotten themselves comfortable and the farmers who own the island have no way of getting him down. It takes a combination of witchcraft and laziness on part of Glaum, the slave who forgets to pull the ladders up one day, to allow Grettir’s enemies onto the island. Grettir is nearly dead from infection when his attackers arrive; he cut his leg badly when chopping a cursed log sent by a witch.

When Grettir finally succumbs, his attackers can’t wrench the sword free from his dead hand: they need to hack it off before his fingers release the hilt. Then a piece of the sword breaks off when Thorbjorn, his killer, uses it to strike at Grettir’s head because it’s so hard. It takes three strong blows to decapitate him. Thorbjorn takes the sword with him everywhere so he can brag about he killed Grettir but it wins him little renowned in the north where people know Grettir was sick and done in by witchcraft, so Thorbjorn packs up and goes to Constantinople. Thorstein Dromund catches up with him there and it’s during one of Thorbjorn’s bragging sessions that Thorstein takes up the sword, in the guise of admiring it, and hews down Thorbjorn.

Good stuff.

There are lots of parallels with Beowulf, especially in terms of a pagan hero being described by a Christian poet. I also noticed that Väinamöinen, one of the gods in the Finnish poem the Kalevala, slashes his knee much like Grettir does–but that’s probably more a statement of how dangerous it was to wield an axe in the middle ages rather than any correlation between the texts because the similarities stop there.

What I find most interesting (unsurprisingly I guess) is how Grettir, like many folks in Iceland at that times, isn’t necessarily anti-Christian but he’s certainly not the embodiment of Christian morals either. As I said in the previous blog, Grettir’s a solution for many supernatural problems that Christians can’t tackle. It’s as if it takes old school pagan muscle to beat old school pagan monsters. It’s telling, however, that it’s witchcraft–a relic of pagan
Iceland–that ultimately does Grettir in rather than galavanting Christian soldiers. In fact, this passage just before
Grettir’s final fight is telling:

Grettir said to Angle: “Who showed you the way to the island?”
“Christ showed us the way,” he said.
“I guess,” said Grettir, “that it was the wicked old woman, your foster-mother, who showed you; hers were the counsels that you relied upon.”

So it’s not necessarily Christianity aggressively rooting out pagans but rather pagan-on-pagan violence that’s doing them in, just like the cycles of violence present in nearly every Icelandic saga that claim the best and brightest men. The old ways die off as the pagans are killed or expire naturally and Christianity fills the void they’ve left behind. Still, there is an unmistakeable note of wistfulness on part of the author who, while certainly Christian himself, fondly looks back to Iceland’s colorful and mythic pagan past and perhaps wishes men like Grettir still existed.

Quite an assortment, huh? This is what’s been keeping me occupied for the past few days. Oh, and the Badgers making it to the Elite Eight in the NCAA tourney deserves mention, although in fairness I must admit I can’t watch an entire college basketball game to save my life.

Anyway, I was sorely disappointed by the US display in Mexico. Most of my bile this time around is reserved for coach Bruce Arena. I groaned when I saw the lineup. I did not like the pairing of Berhalter and Onyewu in the middle and thought Johnson would be out of his depth as the lone striker in the Azteca. My fears turned out to be well-founded, and I was also a little miffed that Arena played some guys who aren’t in peak condition. Claudio Reyna was clearly dragging ass throughout much of the game. Still, it’s not a disaster. You don’t go into Mexico looking for three points and a 2-1 loss isn’t shameful, although it could have been worse. A loss or even a draw against Guatemala Wednesday night, now that would be cause for concern.

Rented Kill Bill Vol. 2 the other night and it was pretty good although I thought KBVI was the stronger of the two, and I feel that this could have been a three+ hour epic rather than five or so hours split over two movies. Too much self-indulgent Quentin Tarantino and not enough movie over that length. Although I do have to say there were striking scenes in both movies. The Uma Thurman/Lucy Liu duel at the end of KBVI was great and one of my favorite scenes (even though it’s a small one) was in Vol 2, the conversation between Keith Carradine and Michael Madsen where Madsen concludes “She’s coming to kill us and we deserve to die.” That scene, less than a minute long, really struck a chord with me.

Deadwood’s first season reminded me of the early Sopranos. Deadwood’s season two still reminds me of the early Sopranos. What I mean by that is it has vivid characters, interesting plots, great dialogue, and each week I can’t wait for the next installment. The second episode this season had me a bit worried as it was mostly filler story to set up the various relationships for future drama to unfold, and it’s unfolding nicely thank you very much. I thought a lot of the show was riding on the back of Al Swearengen (played by the excellent Ian McShane) but I was wrong; gall stones practically wrote ol’ Al out of the last two episodes and they’ve been awesome even with his relative absence. The DVDs will be added to my collection someday in the near future.

Finally, I’m about 80% done with Grettir’s Saga. It’ s been a long one but it’s quite good. What’s so interesting is how Grettir (like Egil Skallagrimsson) is, for the most part, a very unlikeable character but his personality is so strong and he’s so unpredictable, you can’t help but root for him. He seems like the archetypal Icelandic hero since the coming of Christianity. Grettir, as an outlaw, quite literally has no place to live yet he manages to persevere, just like the Icelandic traditions and rituals slowly being lost to the Christians. Yet he overcomes supernatural foes and human foes with courage and brute strength summoned straight from Iceland’s pagan past. Time and time again Christian priests are timidly praying for help while Grettir is out cracking skulls and saving people from threats of all sorts by muscle alone. All the while, both the reader and Grettir know that he can’t win. He’s not going to survive twenty-odd years of outlawry, he’s never going to be accepted for his good qualities, and he’s never going to accept the Christian faith. I’ve got about fifteen chapters left (which isn’t much for a saga) and Grettir’s luck seems to be running out.

I’ve got a bunch of books coming in the next few weeks. I got my Clarion mate Marjorie Liu’s “Tiger Eye” (people are raving, check Amazon) and a bunch of others: The Gormenhast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake; The Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams; Bears Discover Fire by Terry Bisson; and The Pure Product by John Kessel. Where to start reading next?

Been home from Clarion for about eight months now and I think I’m beginning to settle down again. Writing is coming much easier now and I think it’s in large part due to how much short fiction I’ve been reading.

I was writing with editing in the front of my mind. Make all verbs active verbs, delete every instance of “was” you can find. Strike wordy prepositional phrases or reword them. This saves a lot of words and makes a story tighter. Unfortunately, I’m coming to realize it also makes a story too tight. It loses its flow completely.

Here’s a few lines from the opening of Andy Duncan’s excellent “The Chief Designer”:

They had been ordered to dig for gold, but he knew this tunnel held no gold; this tunnel was the antithesis of gold; the gold had been pried from its workers’ teeth and chased from their dreams; and his pick was as soft and blunt as a thumb. He raised it again, and tried to lose count of how many times he had done so.

There’s a distinct rhythm here that “overtightening” of the prose would destroy. The dreaded “was” shows up twice and I counted eight prepositional phrases in these two sentences. But sometimes it’s worth twisting a sentence into a “bad” construction in order for it to work. Here’s another example from Jeff Ford’s “Floating in Lindrethool”:

The globe above was filled with clear liquid and suspended at its center was a human brain.

Technically, a “better” sentence would be “A human brain hung suspended in the globe, suspended by a clear liquid.” But it’s clearly an inferior sentence even though I managed to strike two instances of “was” and added an active verb, “hung.” But the kicker of the sentence, and the paragraph, and to a certain extent the story is that there’s a friggin’ brain in the jar. By sacrificing the rules in this instance, the sentence packs a lot more punch by putting the shocker (”brain”) as the last word in the sentence. Nancy Kress called this “weighting” and good writers weight their stories, paragraphs, and sentences to squeeze the most out of each.

Post-Clarion, I’ve been trying to write the magnum opus, the perfect story and it’s not happening. Everything ends up being a bit too constipated and reads like a paper, not a story. The writing flows better and I think it reads better, too. I’m slowly adjusting back to trusting my “inner reader” and not worrying so much if every rule is being followed in every sentence. If you have too many prepositions or too many passive verbs, the inner reader generally picks those things up anyway.

And I think that’s what the instructors meant when they said it’ll take at least six months before the lessons from Clarion really sink in. Finding the right balance is, of course, the trick.

Wow.

The hits just keep on coming from my Clarion class. Rebecca Rowe, another Clarionite from this past summer, just found out her novel is being published by Edge Sci-Fi/Fantasy and will be coming out next spring or fall. Go Rebecca!

Here’s the tally from Clarion 2004:
Amelia Beamer: Honorable Mention, Issac Asimov Award for Undergraduate Fiction
Peter Burtis: started pro-paying webzine, “Shadows of Saturn”
Grace Dugan: Young Adult book deal with Penguin Australia
Dr. Phil: Honorable mention, CrossTIME Science Fiction Anthology
Marjorie Liu: Multiple book deal with Dorchester, her first novel “Tiger Eye” is already in second printing
Rebecca Rowe: Book deal with Edge
John Schoffstall: Writers of the Future second-quarter winner, sale to Fortean Bureau, sale to Lady Churchill’s
Me: sale to Cicada

There have been other encouraging signs, such as quarterfinalist places in Writers of the Future. This was a good group of writers, something we all recognized and mentioned by our instructors. It’s good to see publishers are starting to find out about us, too! Many of the above were pre-Clarion or while-at-Clarion sales, so it’s only a matter of time before there starts being more and more post-Clarion stuff coming out from this crew. Exciting stuff.

I got some big news this week. A story I wrote at Clarion entitled “A Change of Seasons” was accepted at Cicada, a literary magazine for teens. This is a big magazine with national distribution and, best of all, they pay $0.25/word, about five times as much as most genre magazines.

This is also a SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) qualifying market. In order to become a SFWA member you need to have a novel published by a qualified venue or have three short stories published by a qualified venue. For short fiction, the list of qualified venues is rather short–the link above only lists a total of 13 sci-fi/fantasy markets by name, and then lists another 9 or so that aren’t genre specific but they do qualify. Cicada is one of them and is listed along with the likes of The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, and Boy’s Life. Pretty good company to keep.

I was told repeatedly by my Clarion instructors to shoot high, to start with the top markets and work my way down. My “dream” markets are The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Ficiton, Asimov’s, Realms of Fantasy, and Scifi.com, the website for the SciFi channel. These publications carry a lot of clout and for good reason; they regularly publish great fiction.

There is no causal bridge linking my first pro sale to these four. The publication of my story is not an “in” to anything else. But it does show that breaking in for a new writer can be done and, more importantly, it can be done by me. Even though it’s happened to a few of my Clarion buds, I think it’s hard to imagine it’s possible until it happens to you.

As a writer constantly (and necessarily) dealing with rejection it’s hard to find a gauge of how well you’re doing. Prior to Clarion, I was getting rejections and many of them had hand-written notes with things like “good writing” or “good story, but not quite right for us at this time.” At Clarion, most of the instructors said getting something beyond the standard form rejection was a good thing and a sign of progress which was small consolation. Post-Clarion, I’ve been constantly wondering if my stories had really improved–I can see the flaws much clearer now, but am I really any better at fixing them? The jury is still out on that one, but clearly getting a story placed in a big magazine is another sign that there’s some sort of progress. I’m also buoyed by the fact I don’t think “A Change of Seasons” is my best work.

Still, I’ve been chanting like a mantra something Gavin Grant, editor of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and main squeeze of Kelly Link, said at Clarion: “Keep your expectations low.” Surfing around the ‘net I stumbled across this message board where Dave Felts the moderator says:

I won third place [in the L. Ron Hubbard "Writers of the Future Contest"] in 1997; my story ‘Troder’ is in volume XIII…I was sort of spoiled after that. Troder was the 5th story I had written. At the time I had 18 rejection slips. Then I won in WotF and thought ‘I’m on my way!’.
Here I am 8 years later with one more pro sale (First place in the the Chizine Story contest in 1999) and a handful of semi-pro, small press and WHOLE BUNCH of rejections. Been three years since I’ve written anything new and even longer since I subitted…..

So like the stock market, past performance does not guarantee future success. All you can do is keep trying and hoping that your sale-to-rejection ratio stays as low as possible.

So those are the two phrases twisting like a helix in my head–”Keep Expectations Low” and “It Can Happen To You.”

Good news. Even though I don’t have oodles of experience in this realm, I would survive a zombie invasion. Most impressively, I think I really stood out in my demographic.

I plowed through another couple books in the last month or so. I finished “Pavane” by Keith Roberts. It really picked up steam in the last third and, in retrospect, it was quite good. The first three sections didn’t seem to have a whole lot connecting them but, in the end, it all becomes clear. The last chapter “Corfe Gate” pulls everything together nicely and, better yet, espouses a kind of fatalistic description of the universe that I wholly endorse. It was fun to read this immediately following Phillip K. Dick’s “The Man in the High Castle” because they’re both alternate histories and both doing completely different things with that subgenre. Dick is a bit more “in your face” (an odd way to put it, I guess) with the alt history and Roberts is much more subtle with it, but that’s also because MITHC is only twenty years of alt history where P is nearly six hundred.

I had to proctor an exam last week and managed to polish off the last 2/3rds of Bob Dylan’s “Chronicles” in that time. It’s great stuff and highly recommended for anyone interested in the artistic process: Bob’s, their own, or anyone else’s. What I like best is how he doesn’t write about “Freewheelin’” or “Blood on the Tracks” or his Christian phase at all, but rather his beginnings in New York, “New Morning” and “Oh Mercy.” It’s also very gratifying to find out the songs I like the best off those albums happen to be the ones he likes as well; the ones I thought sucked, he generally thought sucked too. I’m very much looking forward to Volume 2, whenever that may be. I wonder how much of “Chronicles” is God’s honest truth and how much is revisionist history…

Started reading “Grettir’s Saga” a few days ago. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to read more sci-fi or pick up one of the last “major” sagas I haven’t read. I decided to go the saga route and the beginning was slow, as is with most sagas, but things are rolling right along now. Good ol’ Grettir (who happens to be a dick most of the time) just robbed a burial mound and killed a dozen berserkers. Lots of poetry and funny lines to keep me interested. “Grettir’s Saga” is quite long but I think I’m going to enjoy it.

There’s been a long gap in my blog primarily because I didn’t quite know what to write. My grandmother on my father’s side passed away a few weeks back in February. She was 93.

My brothers and I met my parents in Lincoln, NE, where my dad grew up and where my grandmother lived for the vast majority of her years. We got to see my dad’s older brother and his kids, some of which I have no memory of ever having met as the last time we’d seen them I was still in diapers. We also got the grand tour of Lincoln on special request and saw all the places that formed the background for my father’s stories from his youth. I’d done this tour once before when I was fourteen, when my dad and I went back to Lincoln when he was inducted into his high school Hall of Fame. This time is was different, though. It wasn’t just my dad’s stories I heard this time; it was the story of a group of immigrants struggling to survive in America in the mid-1900’s.

My grandmother’s people were Germans who were invited to live in Russia by Catherine the Great. They settled on the lower Volga River. As time went on, the benefits Catherine had promised the settlers eroded and these Germans, transplanted once, chose to move again. A great many settled in the “Bottoms” neighborhood of Lincoln, NE including the Bäckers, my grandmothers family.

We happened across the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia located in my dad’s old neighborhood and purchased a commerative brick in Grandma Em’s name. It’s a small gesture but an important and symbolic one. She was part of the neighborhood for most of the twentieth century; her memory will remain for centuries to come.

I plan on doing more reading on the family’s history as I find it absolutely fascinating. We loved our Grandma Em very much and she had a long, good life. I am proud to have been her grandson.