Jeff Salyards's Blog, page 2
March 21, 2015
Ghost of David Foster Wallace
“Your proofreading is an affront to writerly conscience, human decency, and much of what we hold dear as Americans. If you want to know how serious I am about this, know that I’d give this draft a B+, but because of what appears to be complete disregard for the impression that missing punctuation, hyphens, ‘your� spelled as ‘you’re�, etc. make, what I’m putting in my grade book for this is a C+/B-. If you get a C in this class, you can essentially wave a white Farewell-hankie at getting a C.W. Master’s here; and buddy, turn in another piece of prose this full of errors without even one measly pen mark to indicate even the casualest attempt to correct even one jr. high error and I will bend every effort to justify giving you a C in this class. Your talent and my nervous system deserve better than this.
Grimly,
The Angel of Death
David Foster Wallace�
Now, you might be thinking at this point, “Uh, dude, that’s not something you want to lead with on your homepage. Or any page. Because that’s sort of an author anti-blurb. Which is pretty anti-smart. Just what kind of jackass are you?�
OK. A little harsh. But a fair question. So if you’d like to know just what kind of jackass I am, in no uncertain terms, I invite you to keep reading. Seriously. It’s good stuff in here. I promise.
Maybe you’re curious about what makes me tick. Or maybe you just stumbled here on accident because I managed to trick the search engines into thinking there was midget porn here. Either way–welcome!
First, a couple of caveats. He actually signed the anti-blurb “Dave Wallace”—he wasn’t pretentious enough to go with the formal byline reserved for his books—I just figured I’d include it for clarity’s sake. In his class, he was just Dave. And lest I give off a false impression, while I had the pleasure of being in a couple of his classes, Dave was hardly a personal mentor. I can’t pretend to have received any greatness by extended association or special tutorials. I wasn’t under his wing. Or near his wing.
In fact, as evidenced by his commentary, I’m pretty sure I pissed him off more than anything. And he whacked me with his wing in a vicious fly-by.
The anti-blurb was a response to my third story submitted that semester, and it was the damningcoup de grâceto a two-page typed letter. What came before was the standard creative writing workshop fare: notes on too many florid verbs; a herd of adverbs that needed to be culled; nice dialogue here, but corny at the tail-end, etc.
And then, blam, the blistering indictment.
I read it, reread it, reread it again. And then I took a deep breath. And laughed. Loud enough to freak some people out in the coffee shop, given that I was sitting alone. Not because his response was inherently hilarious (although, to be fair, it kind of is), but I mostly laughed at myself. For being such a complete jackass and not even realizing the extent of it until then. (I’m man enough to own it; or dumb enough; whatever.)
This was right around the time Dave publishedInfinite Jest, won the MacArthur Fellowship (a.k.a., “Genius Grant�), and was the darling of both populist rags likePeopleand every intelligentsia outlet on earth. He was as close to a rock star as an English department ever gets. So I clearly knew whose class I was in. I can’t even try to blame registrar mishap here or blissful ignorance. I chose a class with a professor who was a known militant grammarian, as exacting in his critique of students� fiction as he was in producing his own precise prose. And I essentially taunted and disrespected him by my half-assed efforts, for reasons that still remain a little murky to me.
Now, in my (admittedly meager) defense, this was during my first semester in grad school. So I could claim I was overwhelmed trying to balance other intense classes and my workload as a teaching assistant. And there’s some validity to that. Or would be, except that this is me we’re talking about. I had a history of underachieving, doing just enough last-minute Herculean heroics during ridiculous Mountain Dew/NoDoz fueled all-nighters to skate by. I’d routinely win back the trust of professors before turning into a lazy slacker again. It was a horrendous cycle. This wasn’t a one-off, but the last episode in a history of egregious underperforming.
I’m not positive, but I think I thought Dave would be so blown away by my unadulterated talent he would overlook the fact that I was sloppy, negligent, and cavalier.
Clearly, I was a colossal idiot.
He beat me with a rubber hose, rolled me in a wet carpet, rolled me downhill, and then glared at me as I untangled myself, got to my wobbly feet, and then fell in the mud, dizzy, bruised, dripping, bloodied. And I utterly deserved it.
So, this begs the question again, why am I not only including his commentary here, but showcasing it front and center in what could arguably be anti-smart fashion? Two reasons.
First, this literary smackdown was, if not catalyst of an outright epiphany for me, at least as big a learning moment as I’ve ever had. I realized (not for the first time, maybe, but certainly with the most clarity), that the opportunity for playing the “potential� card was over. If I wanted to really be a writer, I not only had to strap my ass in the chair and write, but I had to force myself back there after a first draft was complete (instead of congratulating myself on a job well done, as I was wont to do) and viciously revise, kill the darlings, prune, cull, strip away (uh oh, florid verb alert), until I really reworked the writing.
Wanting to be a writer is easy and fun. Actually committing yourself to writing, forcing yourself to do the work, treating the craft seriously, that takes discipline. And some masochism or madness, too. But definitely discipline.
I still fail at this from time to time, beset by bouts of procrastination and high moments of jackassery, and I don’t imagine I’ll ever master myself enough to eliminate them entirely. But now, I often have a decent chance of catching it before it gets too far along, kicking myself in the ass, and doing better. And almost without fail, every time I force myself back to the prose to give it another once over, to give it the attention it deserves instead of succumbing to the limitless distractions or my own limitations, it’s because I hear Dave’s voice calling me out on my shit, or catch a glimpse of that anti-blurb seared onto the backs of my eyelids.
But, just on the off-chance I’m able to convince myself that episode never happened, I’m slapping it on here as a reminder.
The second reason I included his diatribe so prominently is that I owe Dave an enormous debt of gratitude. Which I can’t ever hope to repay. Which is probably good, because it’s enormous. But the least I can do is give him the proper shout out on my website for redirecting me.
He wasn’t the first person to impact me that way, but hopefully he’ll be the last, at least as far as delivering the message about treating craft seriously. I’m sure there will be countless other knucklehead things I do throughout my life, and if I fail to recognize them and adjust accordingly on my own, hopefully my lovely wife, some dear friend, or a conscientious colleague will slap me in the side of the head and say, “Hey, dingleberry, how about you remove your head from your ass, huh? Stuff going on out here you might want to check out.�
Oh, and if you came here for midget porn, my apologies for my deception. But I’m very glad you stayed, just the same. And you never can tell what might show up on these pages. So stick around.
The post appeared first on .
March 13, 2015
List Away, Listy Listerson
OK, per usual, I’m late to the party. In fact, it’s pretty much over. There are some people passed out on a loveseat, and someone is puking into a potted plant, and a lava lamp is still churning, but the music is off, the alcohol is gone, and it’s mostly just a bunch of empty cups now. Why is there a lava lamp, you ask? Isn’t this 2015? It is, and I don’t know. These things just happen.
Anyway, the last of the “Best Of 2014� lists rolled out in February and here it is, nearly the Ides of March, and I’m finally compilingany of the ones I saw that I appeared on. My house sigil is the Sloth, after all.
Making someone’s “Best of 2014� list (or some such related list) is incredibly rewarding and humbling. There are so many fantastic fantasy writers out there, it’s an honor to seeVeil of the Deserters on any and all of these blogger’s lists. What’s more, for anyone looking for some good suggestions on what to pick up next,you could do much worse than perusing these. There is some overlap on several lists, but also some eclectic choices too.
Incidentally, Mark Lawrence just ran a blog about this very thing and the question of how does making lists like these actually impact a book’s sales or popularity.
2014 Lists
Best Fantasy Books: Best Grimdark of 2014, Runner up, Best Sequel; Best Action; Best Audiobook; Most Violent Fantasy:
Elitist Book Reviews: Best of 2014:
A Fantasy Reader: Best Novel of 2014; runner-up, Best Map:
Grimdark Reader: Best Fantasy of 2014 (Top Spot!):
Beauty in Ruins: Top 10 of 2014:
Bibliotropic: Top 5 Fantasy Novels of 2014:
Only the Best Sci Fi and Fantasy, Top 7 of the year (#3):
Bibliosanctum: Best of 2014:
Best Fantasy Books: Top 25:
The Passionate Foodie: Best Fiction of 2014 (Top 10 Novels):
Stefan Raets, guest blog on The Book Smugglers, honorable mention for best fantasy of 2014:
Timothy C. Ward: Top 5 Books of the Year Runner’s Up:
Total Inability to Connect: Top 10 Books of 2014:
Grimdark Review: Best Fantasy of 2014:(Scourge)
Beauty in Ruins: Most Anticipated of 2015:(Chains of the Heretic)
Most Anticipated 2015:
Dark Wolf’s Fantasy Reviews:
(Chains of the Heretic)
SF Signal Mind Meld: Most Anticipated 2015:
(Chains of the Heretic)
The post appeared first on .
List Away, Listy Listerson
OK, per usual, I’m late to the party. In fact, it’s pretty much over. There are some people passed out on a loveseat, and someone is puking into a potted plant, and a lava lamp is still churning, but the music is off, the alcohol is gone, and it’s mostly just a bunch of empty cups now. Why is there a lava lamp, you ask? Isn’t this 2015? It is, and I don’t know. These things just happen.
Anyway, the last of the “Best Of 2014� lists rolled out in February and here it is, nearly the Ides of March, and I’m finally compilingany of the ones I saw that I appeared on. My house sigil is the Sloth, after all.
Making someone’s “Best of 2014� list (or some such related list) is incredibly rewarding and humbling. There are so many fantastic fantasy writers out there, it’s an honor to see Veil of the Deserters on any and all of these blogger’s lists. What’s more, for anyone looking for some good suggestions on what to pick up next,you could do much worse than perusing these. There is some overlap on several lists, but also some eclectic choices too.
Incidentally, Mark Lawrence just ran a blog about this very thing and the question of how does making lists like these actually impact a book’s sales or popularity.
2014 Lists
Best Fantasy Books: Best Grimdark of 2014, Runner up, Best Sequel; Best Action; Best Audiobook; Most Violent Fantasy:
Elitist Book Reviews: Best of 2014:
A Fantasy Reader: Best Novel of 2014; runner-up, Best Map:
Grimdark Reader: Best Fantasy of 2014 (Top Spot!):
Beauty in Ruins: Top 10 of 2014:
Bibliotropic: Top 5 Fantasy Novels of 2014:
Only the Best Sci Fi and Fantasy, Top 7 of the year (#3):
Bibliosanctum: Best of 2014:
Best Fantasy Books: Top 25:
The Passionate Foodie: Best Fiction of 2014 (Top 10 Novels):
Stefan Raets, guest blog on The Book Smugglers, honorable mention for best fantasy of 2014:
Timothy C. Ward: Top 5 Books of the Year Runner’s Up:
Total Inability to Connect: Top 10 Books of 2014:
Grimdark Review: Best Fantasy of 2014: (Scourge)
Beauty in Ruins: Most Anticipated of 2015: (Chains of the Heretic)
Most Anticipated 2015:
Dark Wolf’s Fantasy Reviews:
(Chains of the Heretic)
SF Signal Mind Meld: Most Anticipated 2015:
(Chains of the Heretic)
February 22, 2015
A Link in the Chain
The publisher asked for an excerpt of Chains of the Heretic for sales material, and I just tweaked a chapter and sent it over. It feels very strange to let some of it out of my hands–this is the first time anyone else has seen more than a snippet. It’s sort of like watching a baby bird step out of the nest, hoping it can fly. And also not get eaten by a hawk or crash into a sliding glass door. Because those are really tricky, even for adult birds.
So, here is a chapter from the WIP. Bear in mind, it’s still rough around the edges, but for those who want an early taste of the next book. . .
The post appeared first on .
February 21, 2015
A Link in the Chain
The publisher asked for an excerpt of Chains of the Heretic for sales material, and I just tweaked a chapter and sent it over. It feels very strange to let some of it out of my hands–this is the first time anyone else has seen more than a snippet. It’s sort of like watching a baby bird step out of the nest, hoping it can fly. And also not get eaten by a hawk or crash into a sliding glass door. Because those are really tricky, even for adult birds.
So, here is a chapter from the WIP. Bear in mind, it’s still rough around the edges, but for those who want an early taste of the next book. . .
February 12, 2015
It Is Darkest Before the Grimdark
There’s been a lot of talk about “grimdark� of late in the old blogosphere. Assertions, contentions, defamation, an inability to agree on a definition, all over the map really. Some folks describe grimdark as any fantasy that exhibits rampant nihilism, a miserable setting overflowing with depravity, gratuitous violence, gleeful misogyny, filled with characters that are twelve shades of villain or possibly anti-hero, but no shades of decent human being or “good guy.� Others subscribe to the idea that it’s just a natural counterpoint to over-sanitized high or heroic fantasy—grittier, dirtier, more “real� (whatever the hell that means), and unafraid to explore the ugly side of humanity, but not necessarily gutted and hopeless. I’m sure there are probably other theories besides.
But regardless of how you define grimdark or whether you think it is cathartic, irredeemable, honest, or monstrous—that kind of storytelling isn’t anything radically new. Tales of horror, xenophobia, misery, woe and wrath, vengeance and terror, cynicismand calamity have enjoyed stretches of popularity since the dawn of storytelling.
There are plenty of stories in the Bible that are more gruesome than anything I’ve read in the last twenty years. It’s chock full of genocide, fratricide, rape, mass extinction, fun stuff like that. Leave it to Lego to capture some of the heavy , but that obviously doesn’t do real justice to just how awful and terrifying a lot of biblical stories are. Adam and Eve mucked everything up, begetting Cain and Abel and some other guy, and Cain brained his brother just to show, yep, we’re all damaged goods. There is a whole lot more begetting in there, and some sunshine now and again, but the lesson learned over and over is that humanity excels at sucking and dooming itself, no matter how many chances it gets.
And the grumpy Old Testament Godmight have beenthe original grimdark author, but inspired plenty more. Greek tragedies don’t get as much play nowadays as they used to, but there is a very good reason “tragedy� is part of that descriptor, as they cover chilling and lurid events that inspired countless authors and storytellers ever since (well, the depraved ones, of course): there is no shortage of mutilations, mistaken identities leading to awful and brutal murders, dismembered corpses, cannibalism, the Fates grinding down men to bloody stumps, and yes, reference to (gasp!) vulgar language. And it’s not just the wicked getting punished and beat down—there is collateral damage out the wazoo. Sure, plenty happened off stage in original productions, but that doesn’t lessen the lesson of doom.
Fast forwarding a couple of millennia, and wouldn’t you know it, tragedies are still in vogue. There were plenty of playwrights cranking them out, and some bloke named Billy Shakespeare penned a fair number of them, but few as grotesquely violent asTitus Andronicus, with horrific happenings that make Abercrombie and Lawrence look like Jane Austen—a raped woman has her tongue and hands cut off and has to write a message about her rapists in the dirt with a stick in her bloody mouth; a man feeds the bodies of his enemy’s sons to him in pies and then revels in that revelation; more limbs get lopped off; innocents are slain; someone is buried to the neck and left to die of starvation; and there is so much perverse bloodletting the stage crew must have been stained red head to toe.
While nihilism is a fairly modern term, before that they just called it tragedy. Worlds where loyalty, lust, love, hope, treachery, hatred, and ambition are mixed in a blender by the Chorus or Fates or Just Shitty Luck and served to the audience like bloody marys, who slurp it down in delight/transfixed horror, watching the protagonists, antagonists, and unlucky passerbys get offed in obscenely graphic fashion. You think the Red Wedding is bad? That looks like a preschool graduation ceremony compared to Titus.
But that dark spirit pervades storytelling right on up the line. . . Grimm’s fairy tales (before Disney scrubbed them clean and threw glitter on them), gory operas likeElektra that harken back to the Greek roots or invent brand new stories of wretchedness, 20th century fantasists like Howard and Moorcock that excelled at depicting antiheroes, film noir, tons of dystopian science fiction, and finally, most recently, those naughty, naughty “grimdark� authors. 
It’s shortsighted or neglectful of narrative history to think of any recent offerings as somehow more hopeless or unconscionable or extreme than everything that has preceded them. There was darker and grimmer stuff long before “grimdark� became so bloody popular.
The post appeared first on .
It Is Darkest Before the Grimdark
There’s been a lot of talk about “grimdark� of late in the old blogosphere. Assertions, contentions, defamation, an inability to agree on a definition, all over the map really. Some folks describe grimdark as any fantasy that exhibits rampant nihilism, a miserable setting overflowing with depravity, gratuitous violence, gleeful misogyny, filled with characters that are twelve shades of villain or possibly anti-hero, but no shades of decent human being or “good guy.� Others subscribe to the idea that it’s just a natural counterpoint to over-sanitized high or heroic fantasy—grittier, dirtier, more “real� (whatever the hell that means), and unafraid to explore the ugly side of humanity, but not necessarily gutted and hopeless. I’m sure there are probably other theories besides.
But regardless of how you define grimdark or whether you think it is cathartic, irredeemable, honest, or monstrous—that kind of storytelling isn’t anything radically new. Tales of horror, xenophobia, misery, woe and wrath, vengeance and terror, cynicismand calamity have enjoyed stretches of popularity since the dawn of storytelling.
There are plenty of stories in the Bible that are more gruesome than anything I’ve read in the last twenty years. It’s chock full of genocide, fratricide, rape, mass extinction, fun stuff like that. Leave it to Lego to capture some of the heavy , but that obviously doesn’t do real justice to just how awful and terrifying a lot of biblical stories are. Adam and Eve mucked everything up, begetting Cain and Abel and some other guy, and Cain brained his brother just to show, yep, we’re all damaged goods. There is a whole lot more begetting in there, and some sunshine now and again, but the lesson learned over and over is that humanity excels at sucking and dooming itself, no matter how many chances it gets.
And the grumpy Old Testament Godmight have beenthe original grimdark author, but inspired plenty more. Greek tragedies don’t get as much play nowadays as they used to, but there is a very good reason “tragedy� is part of that descriptor, as they cover chilling and lurid events that inspired countless authors and storytellers ever since (well, the depraved ones, of course): there is no shortage of mutilations, mistaken identities leading to awful and brutal murders, dismembered corpses, cannibalism, the Fates grinding down men to bloody stumps, and yes, reference to (gasp!) vulgar language. And it’s not just the wicked getting punished and beat down—there is collateral damage out the wazoo. Sure, plenty happened off stage in original productions, but that doesn’t lessen the lesson of doom.
Fast forwarding a couple of millennia, and wouldn’t you know it, tragedies are still in vogue. There were plenty of playwrights cranking them out, and some bloke named Billy Shakespeare penned a fair number of them, but few as grotesquely violent as Titus Andronicus, with horrific happenings that make Abercrombie and Lawrence look like Jane Austen—a raped woman has her tongue and hands cut off and has to write a message about her rapists in the dirt with a stick in her bloody mouth; a man feeds the bodies of his enemy’s sons to him in pies and then revels in that revelation; more limbs get lopped off; innocents are slain; someone is buried to the neck and left to die of starvation; and there is so much perverse bloodletting the stage crew must have been stained red head to toe.
While nihilism is a fairly modern term, before that they just called it tragedy. Worlds where loyalty, lust, love, hope, treachery, hatred, and ambition are mixed in a blender by the Chorus or Fates or Just Shitty Luck and served to the audience like bloody marys, who slurp it down in delight/transfixed horror, watching the protagonists, antagonists, and unlucky passerbys get offed in obscenely graphic fashion. You think the Red Wedding is bad? That looks like a preschool graduation ceremony compared to Titus.
But that dark spirit pervades storytelling right on up the line. . . Grimm’s fairy tales (before Disney scrubbed them clean and threw glitter on them), gory operas like Elektra that harken back to the Greek roots or invent brand new stories of wretchedness, 20th century fantasists like Howard and Moorcock that excelled at depicting antiheroes, film noir, tons of dystopian science fiction, and finally, most recently, those naughty, naughty “grimdark� authors.
It’s shortsighted or neglectful of narrative history to think of any recent offerings as somehow more hopeless or unconscionable or extreme than everything that has preceded them. There was darker and grimmer stuff long before “grimdark� became so bloody popular.
February 3, 2015
Bloodsounder’s Arc Complete
First off, I’m not dead. Let’s just get that out of the way. I mean, you’re forgiven for thinking so. It’s been a looooong time since I’ve posted on here. In Internet years, it’s been about 10,450, give or take. Even the tumbleweeds have given up and blown away. I never put enough content up here for it to even charitably be called a blog, but you can’t even claim you have a live website if it has no juice at all. Now, I could roll out a bunch of heartfelt excuses about juggling a day job that has gotten crazier by the day over the last year, and being a husband and a dad while trying to wrap up the final book of a trilogy. Except there are plenty of other writers who have similar circumstances who manage to post at least semi-often, so that flies about as well as a paper airplane drenched in cheap beer.
The good news: I actually used the time fairly wisely� is complete and the ebook just launched yesterday, and the hardcover drops 2/16. Which is sort of like having twins a couple of weeks apart. Weird, and disconcerting, and kind of confusing, but still special. In a freakish sort of way. But the important thing is, Chains is out now, which feels just about as fantastic as I thought it would.
I’ve never written the final book in a series before, so I had some pretty weighty anxiety about how the whole thing would turn out. I really, really didn’t want to blow chunks in the big finale. That goes without saying, obviously, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t cross my mind. I wanted to leave readers satisfied with the conclusion, but still wanting more.
Reviews have just started rolling in, so it’s still early days yet, but I feel like Chains of the Heretic is the best of the three. I’m proud of this book. Nothing is perfect, and there is always room for improvement, but I’m pretty sure It’s the best imperfect thing I’ve written so far. I told the story I intended to tell the way I wanted to tell it.
I really hope readers enjoy the hell out of it, because I absolutely enjoyed writing it.
The post appeared first on .
October 6, 2014
Back from the Wilds
OK, my poor blog has been seriously neglected here. The dust bunnies are armed and dangerous, and they are riding dust rhinos into battle. The summer was madness—both in the manic day job, as that was the busiest time of year, and in trying to crank away at Chains of the Heretic in order to get it out on schedule November 2015. That’s not really an excuse. It’s barely an explanation. But there it is.
Oh yeah, that was the title I decided on for Book 3 and the publisher green lit: Chains of the Heretic.
This is basically just to say I have returned from my hermitage, unshaven, stinky, and in rags. I’d like to affirm that I am wiser and more grounded, but that is crazy talk. Anyway, I’ll try to post something of more substance soon. But in the meantime, for anyone who happens to land here wondering how Veil of the Deserters is doing now that it’s been out for a few months, here are some pretty damn wonderful reviews.
The post appeared first on .
Back from the Wilds
OK, my poor blog has been seriously neglected here. The dust bunnies are armed and dangerous, and they are riding dust rhinos into battle. The summer was madness—both in the manic day job, as that was the busiest time of year, and in trying to crank away at Chains of the Heretic in order to get it out on schedule November 2015. That’s not really an excuse. It’s barely an explanation. But there it is.
Oh yeah, that was the title I decided on for Book 3 and the publisher green lit: Chains of the Heretic.
This is basically just to say I have returned from my hermitage, unshaven, stinky, and in rags. I’d like to affirm that I am wiser and more grounded, but that is crazy talk. Anyway, I’ll try to post something or more substance soon. But in the meantime, for anyone who happens to land here wondering how Veil of the Deserters is doing now that it’s been out for a few months, here are some pretty damn wonderful reviews.
