Authorial responsibility to characters and readers

Now I'm reading The Lark and the Wren by Mercedes Lackey. It's from 1992. I wonder if I'm allowed to use a photo of the cover. It's lurid. Sci-fi/fantasy lurid.

And . . . it's about what I'd expect from the cover. By no means genius. Amateurish? Sincere. And yet, so far, I am really enjoying it, warts and all. I look forward to reading it.

In the evenings I've been watching Being Human, the U.K. version, on Netflix. I was surprised by how much I liked the characters and how willing I was not to know all the rules of the world the series was building. I cut them some slack when I saw moments of wobbly narrative indecision.

But I watched the finale of season one last night, and I'm not sure I'll go back for season two. Not because of any one inconsistency, but because there were so many and not one of them was addressed.  The ghost is a poltergeist only when they need a plot point. The werewolf always manages to have enough time to get someplace "safe" to transform, even when the story makes a point of throwing obstacles in his path. The vampire isn't "feeding" for moral reasons, but  that choice only had physically observable consequences in the first couple of episodes. And so on.

Weak spots, y'know? Like someone just wrote anything because there was a deadline, or maybe there were too many cooks and things got sloppy.

So now I'm looking at Lark and Wren, and I'm really hoping that M. Lackey won't be as heavy-handed with her plotting as she can be with her prose. Because it's so disheartening to see characters I care about being abandoned by their creator.

How long do I have to wait?

I am reading a Terry Pratchett book. Trying to. Previously I was reading the first of Piers Anthony's Xanth novels. The Pratchett is about a mercenary cat named Maurice and some rats who have become conscious of themselves. "I think, therefore" kind of conscious.

What I am not understanding is why I enjoyed Xanth so much and can't get into Maurice.
I read at least 10 of the Xanth books years ago. I don't believe I've ever gotten more than 200 pages in to a Terry Pratchett. Why? What's the difference?

Both authors wink at the camera - tell the kind of jokes that make you aware of an authorial presence outside of the story. In Xanth you get shoes from shoe trees. Maurice has met up with a girl who bases her behavior on how things go in fairy tales. To find a secret passage, she starts leaning casually on various walls.

The shoe trees are much more of a groaner than is the self-referential analysis of how things should go in stories.

And yet I prefer Xanth. Is it that Pratchett's winking pulls too much focus from the story? There is something sincere about Anthony's story-telling, something about heart that I'm missing in The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, even though the rodents are dealing with some important moral issues.

What really makes me sad is that I want so much for Maurice and the stupid kid and Dangerous Beans - the rats named themselves - to become important to me, but I don't feel like I'm willing to devote much more time to them.

Y'know. So many books, so little time.

Now What?

John said the other day
It's always something
I said
Yes, it is.

FINE!!!

Been drinkin' red wine from Costco. Ok, a bottle. John had a glass - I had the rest. Watched a doc abt. a burlesque class in Seattle. I love them all. I want to do it. There's a class nearby on Sunday. Will I go?
I have trouble spouting myself in public, even for readers who are only hypothetical - what do you care what I think or what I'm doing? Twittering is right out.
John says I have an old blog called Drawing from the Figure. Forgot abt that.
We're both on the sofa on our laptops blogging.
Shit. Am I Twittering w/o the Twit?
John says I should add photots.
How's that? He taught me how. Not the furry goat man from the Ren Faire. John taught me. Fine.

reading is fundamental

I bought more books yesterday. I'm not supposed to buy books. Well, I'm not supposed to buy anything except food - I'm a good $20 thou in debt.

But I also have issues with impulse control when it comes to books. I have figured out why, though. I buy books - may-not-ever-be-able-to-read-them-all walls of them - because the next one might hold the key. The phrase, the idea, the catalyst, the connective tissue that will cause all the crap in my head to become a choir of angels. The good kind of angels.

Not a bad reason. However. Occasionally I allow myself to notice that I have more love for some of my unread darlings than I do for their cousins. Most books are diminished once I've read them. I pass them on. But I don't seem ever to have enough unread books. If some are good, more will be better. I sit and stare at their uncracked spines and think: Those angels are in there somewhere. And I sigh with the pleasure I know I'll find eventually.

Narcissus and Me

I've forgotten how to do this. But I just read thru the posts at Jennygoestocrawford, and I feel like a pretty cool cat. Or rather, like a cat who wants to be able to go back over more of my own genius at some future later date.
I remember deciding to be short and sweet. I remember not doing rough drafts longhand as I do with the rest of my writing. I remember telling myself that I was just going to write about my day so that my folks and my fella would know I was safe. As opposed to writing so as to shatter the earth.
Well, and Susan made me do it.
So thank you Susan. I had no idea I was so cool.