Secondary World Fantasy
Jun. 18th, 2026 02:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerAt the end of April, I had just finished a draft of my secondary world fantasy novelette The Paper Bird. asakiyume agreed to give it a beta read, and liked it! At which point my head promptly swelled to the size of the Goodyear blimp and I cheerfully informed everyone that I was finally going to write the dozen or so secondary world fantasies that have been knocking around in my brain for the last fifteen years, fifteen years ago having been about the time that I concluded I needed more life experience and primary world knowledge before I could attempt a secondary world fantasy again.
Since then my head has returned to its normal size (hot air balloon). I have recalled that it is not in fact possible to write a dozen stories at a time and have therefore settled on one that has been knocking around since my senior year of high school: the tale of Jess and Innis, which begins when Jess’s cousin (commandant of a prisoner of war camp) foists one of the prisoners of war on Jess, who objects that actually he doesn’t WANT a pet prisoner of war.
Cousin Commandant: Too bad! We have a big overcrowding problem! He can help you sail your little sailboat through the archipelago helping you collect folktales or whatever if is you do.
I’m not absolutely wedded to the folktale collecting of it all, mostly because it would definitely require me to write some folktales, not just for Jess’s people (the Naditai) but also for Innis the prisoner of war turned folktale gathering assistant. Obviously less work for me if Jess is collecting butterflies. However, probably also less thematic resonance.
ANYWAY obviously Jess and Innis fall in love, obviously there is culture clash, different expectations about what love is, for instance, marriage doesn’t exist in Jess’s culture and honestly they consider the whole idea kind of titillatingly weird. Romance genre imposes an ending to shoot for (happily-for-now in this case) which is very helpful to me; the challenge with a LOT of my other ideas is that I have what I consider a wonderful set-up but no actual vision for how to structure a story on top of it.
Among its other fine qualities, this is one that I could self-publish as a trial balloon to see how my readers feel about secondary world m/m. Hopefully positive? It’s just like my historical m/m, except this time the culture clash is between cultures I made up!
asakiyume agreed to give it a beta read, and liked it! At which point my head promptly swelled to the size of the Goodyear blimp and I cheerfully informed everyone that I was finally going to write the dozen or so secondary world fantasies that have been knocking around in my brain for the last fifteen years, fifteen years ago having been about the time that I concluded I needed more life experience and primary world knowledge before I could attempt a secondary world fantasy again.Since then my head has returned to its normal size (hot air balloon). I have recalled that it is not in fact possible to write a dozen stories at a time and have therefore settled on one that has been knocking around since my senior year of high school: the tale of Jess and Innis, which begins when Jess’s cousin (commandant of a prisoner of war camp) foists one of the prisoners of war on Jess, who objects that actually he doesn’t WANT a pet prisoner of war.
Cousin Commandant: Too bad! We have a big overcrowding problem! He can help you sail your little sailboat through the archipelago helping you collect folktales or whatever if is you do.
I’m not absolutely wedded to the folktale collecting of it all, mostly because it would definitely require me to write some folktales, not just for Jess’s people (the Naditai) but also for Innis the prisoner of war turned folktale gathering assistant. Obviously less work for me if Jess is collecting butterflies. However, probably also less thematic resonance.
ANYWAY obviously Jess and Innis fall in love, obviously there is culture clash, different expectations about what love is, for instance, marriage doesn’t exist in Jess’s culture and honestly they consider the whole idea kind of titillatingly weird. Romance genre imposes an ending to shoot for (happily-for-now in this case) which is very helpful to me; the challenge with a LOT of my other ideas is that I have what I consider a wonderful set-up but no actual vision for how to structure a story on top of it.
Among its other fine qualities, this is one that I could self-publish as a trial balloon to see how my readers feel about secondary world m/m. Hopefully positive? It’s just like my historical m/m, except this time the culture clash is between cultures I made up!
Wednesday Reading Meme
Jun. 17th, 2026 12:50 pmosprey_archerI trundled on in Three Moments of an Explosion until the story with three dead women (one of them died 500 years ago, but still) returned the ratio of stories to dead women to one to one. Then I decided enough was enough and I stopped.
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s The Bronze Pen. A budding young writer acquires a bronze pen that seems to make what she writes come true. Propulsive while I was reading, but not very memorable aside from the fact that the main character is named Audrey Abbott - like Martha Abbott in The Changeling! - but evidently no relation.
Also Alexander Woollcott’s Two Gentlemen and a Lady, a trio of dog stories that I purchased in Bloomington in the interstices of the wedding I was attending. The stories were cute, but what I liked best were the illustrations by political cartoonist Edwina. Political cartoonists often make a very successful transition to illustration, I find. (See also Tenniel’s illustrations of Alice in Wonderland.
What I’m Reading Now
In The Romanovs, Nicholas I has just blundered into the Crimean War, which is going poorly because he has failed to modernize the Russian army since the Napoleonic Wars. Fortunately for him, the British and the French are catastrophically mismanaging their modernized armies, so Russia is not getting nearly as trounced as you might expect.
What I Plan to Read Next
I purchased two other books in Bloomington: Nigel Andrew’s The Butterfly: Flights of Enchantment, and Christopher Morley’s Parnassus on Wheels.
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s The Bronze Pen. A budding young writer acquires a bronze pen that seems to make what she writes come true. Propulsive while I was reading, but not very memorable aside from the fact that the main character is named Audrey Abbott - like Martha Abbott in The Changeling! - but evidently no relation.
Also Alexander Woollcott’s Two Gentlemen and a Lady, a trio of dog stories that I purchased in Bloomington in the interstices of the wedding I was attending. The stories were cute, but what I liked best were the illustrations by political cartoonist Edwina. Political cartoonists often make a very successful transition to illustration, I find. (See also Tenniel’s illustrations of Alice in Wonderland.
What I’m Reading Now
In The Romanovs, Nicholas I has just blundered into the Crimean War, which is going poorly because he has failed to modernize the Russian army since the Napoleonic Wars. Fortunately for him, the British and the French are catastrophically mismanaging their modernized armies, so Russia is not getting nearly as trounced as you might expect.
What I Plan to Read Next
I purchased two other books in Bloomington: Nigel Andrew’s The Butterfly: Flights of Enchantment, and Christopher Morley’s Parnassus on Wheels.
Book Review: Letter from Japan
Jun. 16th, 2026 12:25 pmosprey_archerI love books that delve into the customs of other countries, so of course I had to read Marie Kondo’s Letter from Japan, written with Kondo’s interpreter Marie Iida.* The book is a collection of essays exploring various Japanese customs, practices, ways of seeing the world, often with an exploration how these concepts influenced Kondo’s tidying method, but the focus remains on exploring the customs themselves.
*Slightly unclear to me if Kondo wrote the book in Japanese and Iida translated into English, or if Kondo wrote in English and Iida helped with the English as she wrote. I waffled and decided to tag it as a Japanese translation.
Some essays I particularly liked:
The one about Japan’s traditional calendar, which breaks each season into six segments, which are further divided into five-day ko, or microseasons. If there’s a book in English just about the microseasons, I’d love to read it.
The concept of mottonai, the regret over wasting something that could still serve a purpose - Japanese mothers will cry “Mottonai!” if their children try to discard something still useful.
The Japanese tea ceremony. I knew about the tea ceremony but enjoyed getting more details about the theory behind the tea ceremony (although clearly this could also fill a book!), and also I was tickled when Kondo explained why she chose the tea ceremony as her extracurricular in high school: she had heard that students in the tea ceremony club got to eat a sweet treat every day!
The concept of do, the way - not any specific way, but the concept itself, the joy of striving for mastery. Currently (on the English-language internet, at least), there’s often an emphasis on the dangers of perfectionism and the joy of accepting good-enough, so it was invigorating to read Kondo’s assertion, “When you make a decision to perfect something, your life opens to a kind of meditative stillness and satisfaction… Continue on with faith in your own joy and soon enough, a path will emerge.” The concept of mastery/perfection as an expression of joy - of loving something so much that you want to take the time to do it right.
Kondo also notes the contrast between American English and Japanese, particularly the fact that American English tends to reward and value speaking loudly and confidently - to frame being able to speak loudly and confidently as inherently freeing. But Kondo comments, “When I speak in Japanese, I feel I can get away with speaking softly”; and it struck me that being able to shout your views is one kind of freedom, but being able to speak softly and still get a hearing is another.
*Slightly unclear to me if Kondo wrote the book in Japanese and Iida translated into English, or if Kondo wrote in English and Iida helped with the English as she wrote. I waffled and decided to tag it as a Japanese translation.
Some essays I particularly liked:
The one about Japan’s traditional calendar, which breaks each season into six segments, which are further divided into five-day ko, or microseasons. If there’s a book in English just about the microseasons, I’d love to read it.
The concept of mottonai, the regret over wasting something that could still serve a purpose - Japanese mothers will cry “Mottonai!” if their children try to discard something still useful.
The Japanese tea ceremony. I knew about the tea ceremony but enjoyed getting more details about the theory behind the tea ceremony (although clearly this could also fill a book!), and also I was tickled when Kondo explained why she chose the tea ceremony as her extracurricular in high school: she had heard that students in the tea ceremony club got to eat a sweet treat every day!
The concept of do, the way - not any specific way, but the concept itself, the joy of striving for mastery. Currently (on the English-language internet, at least), there’s often an emphasis on the dangers of perfectionism and the joy of accepting good-enough, so it was invigorating to read Kondo’s assertion, “When you make a decision to perfect something, your life opens to a kind of meditative stillness and satisfaction… Continue on with faith in your own joy and soon enough, a path will emerge.” The concept of mastery/perfection as an expression of joy - of loving something so much that you want to take the time to do it right.
Kondo also notes the contrast between American English and Japanese, particularly the fact that American English tends to reward and value speaking loudly and confidently - to frame being able to speak loudly and confidently as inherently freeing. But Kondo comments, “When I speak in Japanese, I feel I can get away with speaking softly”; and it struck me that being able to shout your views is one kind of freedom, but being able to speak softly and still get a hearing is another.
(no subject)
Jun. 15th, 2026 09:36 pmysobelBeing sick is the stupidest thing ever, I swear. Can't sleep well because I'm coughing a bunch (with the help of robitussin it's about every 45 minutes instead of every 10), and coughing and swallowing both hurt way more than is sensible when I don't actually have razor blades in there... oh and my left ear is starting to feel sus...
Also the fun of chronic headaches is: this is day four of symptoms (day five if I count generally feeling off on Thursday, which is not itself a guaranteed symptom (I'm an introvert who needs aides, and several are new, an occasional off-feeling day comes with the territory) but in retrospect may have been related) and I feel a headache threatening, is that a new symptom of whatever I have, or a tangential symptom from having a lower appetite than usual, or just unrelated coincidence?
I've been monitoring for fever and so far it's been ok, just throat congestion and laryngitis (thank fuck for text to speech) and pain on swallowing (especially empty swallows, where it's just saliva; eating and drinking is less bad), and a weird increase in inhaling saliva when im trying to swallow it when I'm lying on my back (which is the only way I can sleep) but... that's more than enough kthx.
Also the fun of chronic headaches is: this is day four of symptoms (day five if I count generally feeling off on Thursday, which is not itself a guaranteed symptom (I'm an introvert who needs aides, and several are new, an occasional off-feeling day comes with the territory) but in retrospect may have been related) and I feel a headache threatening, is that a new symptom of whatever I have, or a tangential symptom from having a lower appetite than usual, or just unrelated coincidence?
I've been monitoring for fever and so far it's been ok, just throat congestion and laryngitis (thank fuck for text to speech) and pain on swallowing (especially empty swallows, where it's just saliva; eating and drinking is less bad), and a weird increase in inhaling saliva when im trying to swallow it when I'm lying on my back (which is the only way I can sleep) but... that's more than enough kthx.
...I seem to be sick
Jun. 13th, 2026 06:50 pmysobelSo far the main symptoms are throat based -- voice issues, and congestion around the vocal cords -- but it's only the second day. (Third if the "I don't want to be around people" semi-fatigue feeling Thursday is a symptom.)
Meh.
I'm not quite sure where it came from. Could be the Pride festival a week ago, if things can incubate that long: could be the family lunch on Monday, especially because last week my youngest niblings had a respiratory bug; could be any of my aides.
I'm staying hydrated (lots of tea with honey) and resting. And I don't want to go outside anyway because yesterday had a high of 102 and the next week is high 90a and eww, so it's okay, just bleh.
Meh.
I'm not quite sure where it came from. Could be the Pride festival a week ago, if things can incubate that long: could be the family lunch on Monday, especially because last week my youngest niblings had a respiratory bug; could be any of my aides.
I'm staying hydrated (lots of tea with honey) and resting. And I don't want to go outside anyway because yesterday had a high of 102 and the next week is high 90a and eww, so it's okay, just bleh.
Wednesday Reading Meme
Jun. 10th, 2026 05:49 pmsinealaWhat I Just Finished Reading
Nothing!
What I'm Reading Now
Comics Wednesday!
( Avengers Armageddon #1, Captain Marvel Dark Past #3, Civil War Unmasked #2 )
What I'm Reading Next
Not sure. Still slowly working through this baseball autobiography of Billy Bean thatlysimache got me I think for Christmas. (Not Billy Beane with an e, that is a different former baseball player. This one is the gay one.)
Nothing!
What I'm Reading Now
Comics Wednesday!
( Avengers Armageddon #1, Captain Marvel Dark Past #3, Civil War Unmasked #2 )
What I'm Reading Next
Not sure. Still slowly working through this baseball autobiography of Billy Bean that
lysimache got me I think for Christmas. (Not Billy Beane with an e, that is a different former baseball player. This one is the gay one.)
Wednesday Reading Meme
Jun. 10th, 2026 10:44 amosprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Tamar Adler’s Feast on Your Life: Kitchen Meditations for Every Day, which is a collection of 365 brief kitchen meditations. Most of them are bitty and ultimately I felt that the book seemed fairly bitty too, but we’ll see how I feel about it in the long run - I’ve had Adler books sneak up on me before.
I also read Caroline Dale Snedeker’s The White Isle, in which a young Roman girl travels to her family’s new home in Britain. First third of the book is road trip (Snedeker does a great landscape description), second third is settling down in Britain (more beautiful landscape), we’re getting near the end and no suitable suitors have appeared… but then Lavinia and her mother travel to Cornwall to visit a friend and they are kidnapped by Durotrigs, only to be rescued by a band of Christians!
Lavinia instantly gives herself up for dead, because as we all know the Christians sacrifice human beings in order to drink their blood. Except apparently? This is not actually true?? Which is convenient, because Govan (the leader of the band that rescued Lavinia and her mother) is just SO handsome.
“I cannot believe you are conversion narrativing at me,” I griped at Snedeker. Then we got to the part where Govan is comforting Lavinia after a death, and I unexpectedly burst into tears. So grudgingly but with feeling, I must say well-played.
What I’m Reading Now
“Then the Prussian general Blucher, a gnarled cavalryman who shared Alexander’s bellicosity, defeated Napoleon and was ready to advance - till he suffered a nervous breakdown and went blind, convinced he was pregnant with an elephant (fathered by a Frenchman). The advance faltered. Had a septuagenarian cavalryman pregnant with an elephant saved Napoleon?”
When I got to this part in The Romanovs, I laughed so hard I cried. Obviously Blucher got it together to help put Napoleon on Elba (and then help defeat Napoleon again after he got off Elba), but WOW.
I have also continued China Mieville’s Three Moments of an Explosion - making better progress once I concluded these stories are too stressful to read at bedtime. I just read the one about the people who live in a settlement where they can see ships passing, and sometimes the ships sink, but the ships never land and sailors never wash ashore after the sinking… also a character dies who MIGHT not be a woman, but Gam never gets a pronoun so it could go either way.
I’m also reading Marie Kondo’s Letter from Japan. More about this later, but for now, it has definitely inspired me in some tidying! (Not a full KonMari, but smaller scale tidying of things that have accreted on flat surfaces.)
What I Plan to Read Next
I’m off to Bloomington this weekend to be a bridesmaid(bachelorette party tomorrow in fact!) so I don’t expect to have much time to read. But I’ve got Rosemary Sutcliff’s Flowers of Adonis along, and I DO intend to snatch some time to visit my four favorite used bookstores in town.
Tamar Adler’s Feast on Your Life: Kitchen Meditations for Every Day, which is a collection of 365 brief kitchen meditations. Most of them are bitty and ultimately I felt that the book seemed fairly bitty too, but we’ll see how I feel about it in the long run - I’ve had Adler books sneak up on me before.
I also read Caroline Dale Snedeker’s The White Isle, in which a young Roman girl travels to her family’s new home in Britain. First third of the book is road trip (Snedeker does a great landscape description), second third is settling down in Britain (more beautiful landscape), we’re getting near the end and no suitable suitors have appeared… but then Lavinia and her mother travel to Cornwall to visit a friend and they are kidnapped by Durotrigs, only to be rescued by a band of Christians!
Lavinia instantly gives herself up for dead, because as we all know the Christians sacrifice human beings in order to drink their blood. Except apparently? This is not actually true?? Which is convenient, because Govan (the leader of the band that rescued Lavinia and her mother) is just SO handsome.
“I cannot believe you are conversion narrativing at me,” I griped at Snedeker. Then we got to the part where Govan is comforting Lavinia after a death, and I unexpectedly burst into tears. So grudgingly but with feeling, I must say well-played.
What I’m Reading Now
“Then the Prussian general Blucher, a gnarled cavalryman who shared Alexander’s bellicosity, defeated Napoleon and was ready to advance - till he suffered a nervous breakdown and went blind, convinced he was pregnant with an elephant (fathered by a Frenchman). The advance faltered. Had a septuagenarian cavalryman pregnant with an elephant saved Napoleon?”
When I got to this part in The Romanovs, I laughed so hard I cried. Obviously Blucher got it together to help put Napoleon on Elba (and then help defeat Napoleon again after he got off Elba), but WOW.
I have also continued China Mieville’s Three Moments of an Explosion - making better progress once I concluded these stories are too stressful to read at bedtime. I just read the one about the people who live in a settlement where they can see ships passing, and sometimes the ships sink, but the ships never land and sailors never wash ashore after the sinking… also a character dies who MIGHT not be a woman, but Gam never gets a pronoun so it could go either way.
I’m also reading Marie Kondo’s Letter from Japan. More about this later, but for now, it has definitely inspired me in some tidying! (Not a full KonMari, but smaller scale tidying of things that have accreted on flat surfaces.)
What I Plan to Read Next
I’m off to Bloomington this weekend to be a bridesmaid(bachelorette party tomorrow in fact!) so I don’t expect to have much time to read. But I’ve got Rosemary Sutcliff’s Flowers of Adonis along, and I DO intend to snatch some time to visit my four favorite used bookstores in town.
Book Review: Beat to Quarters
Jun. 9th, 2026 04:19 pmosprey_archerEven people who do not approach the Hornblower and Aubrey-Maturin books by reading the two series concurrently more or less inevitably end up drawing comparisons between the two. The general consensus seems to be that the Aubrey-Maturin books are better, and in terms of literary quality and depths of research I do not disagree; but at the same time there is no one in the Aubrey-Maturin books I want to stick a pin through and study like a bug like I want to study Horatio Hornblower.
Four books into the Hornblower series chronologically, we have arrived at the first book in publication order: Beat to Quarters, otherwise known as The Happy Return. (littlerhymes’ review here.) Hornblower’s neuroses, which spent the first four books slowly growing, here appear on the page fully formed.
Hornblower has an ideal of a perfect captain: firm, decisive, unsurprised by any contingency, in complete command of himself at all times, and completely without human weakness. He yearns to be RoboCaptain, and as he is instead a mere human being of flesh and blood, he is constantly disappointed with himself for such crimes as betraying to his steward the wicked and detestable fact that he’s hungry after not eating for hours upon hours of battle.
He’s constantly analyzing himself for any infraction of these self-imposed rules, but this constant self-analysis is combined with a crushing inability to understand himself at all. For instance, partway through the book, the aristocratic Lady Barbara Wellesley seeks passage on the ship, and Hornblower spends the next three chapters or so throwing a series of controlled but deeply felt temper tantrums about the situation.
She is so independent and intelligent, just like a man, and Hornblower prefers a woman to be a helpless clinging vine. (I think this is Hornblower’s desperate attempt to convince himself that his wife Maria, the original clinging vine, is the perfect woman for him.) She might be thinking that his clothes are shabby. (As far as I can tell she gives not a single hoot about Hornblower’s clothes, but she MIGHT.) She interrupted his sacred morning walk on the quarterdeck to ask him to breakfast. HOW VERY DARE.
( spoilers )
I’m glad we decided to read the series chronologically rather than in publication order, because I’m not sure I would have warmed to Hornblower if this was the first time that I met him. But maybe like Bush I would have seen the lonely wounded animal beneath the desperately constructed Perfect Captain front, and yearned to commit the audacity of putting a hand on his shoulder.
Four books into the Hornblower series chronologically, we have arrived at the first book in publication order: Beat to Quarters, otherwise known as The Happy Return. (
littlerhymes’ review here.) Hornblower’s neuroses, which spent the first four books slowly growing, here appear on the page fully formed. Hornblower has an ideal of a perfect captain: firm, decisive, unsurprised by any contingency, in complete command of himself at all times, and completely without human weakness. He yearns to be RoboCaptain, and as he is instead a mere human being of flesh and blood, he is constantly disappointed with himself for such crimes as betraying to his steward the wicked and detestable fact that he’s hungry after not eating for hours upon hours of battle.
He’s constantly analyzing himself for any infraction of these self-imposed rules, but this constant self-analysis is combined with a crushing inability to understand himself at all. For instance, partway through the book, the aristocratic Lady Barbara Wellesley seeks passage on the ship, and Hornblower spends the next three chapters or so throwing a series of controlled but deeply felt temper tantrums about the situation.
She is so independent and intelligent, just like a man, and Hornblower prefers a woman to be a helpless clinging vine. (I think this is Hornblower’s desperate attempt to convince himself that his wife Maria, the original clinging vine, is the perfect woman for him.) She might be thinking that his clothes are shabby. (As far as I can tell she gives not a single hoot about Hornblower’s clothes, but she MIGHT.) She interrupted his sacred morning walk on the quarterdeck to ask him to breakfast. HOW VERY DARE.
( spoilers )
I’m glad we decided to read the series chronologically rather than in publication order, because I’m not sure I would have warmed to Hornblower if this was the first time that I met him. But maybe like Bush I would have seen the lonely wounded animal beneath the desperately constructed Perfect Captain front, and yearned to commit the audacity of putting a hand on his shoulder.