J. L. Odom

Testing, Testing

Confession: I am not internet/tech savvy.

I avoided owning a cell-phone until I moved half-way across the country (I was eighteen, everyone else in my family already owned cell-phones).

I avoided smart-phones like the plague (I HATED that people were always looking at their phones rather than each other).

Now that I have a smart-phone (because of our family plan), I refuse to purchase/use any apps other than the weather or Pandora (and that only for the first time this last week!)

My computer skills lie in the realm of using Microsoft Word, Google search, and (with minimum pizzazz) blogging. I think the method I use to post images on blogs is probably not the best one, but it’s the only way I know how. I know how to upload photos on facebook, but I never do it. I do not have instagram or snapchat or any of those things, and I’m not good at taking photos anyway.

Part of this is just sheer lack of desire. If I want to figure something out, I will. When the starter in my old car went out, I REFUSED to take it to a mechanic, because I figure that, being my father’s daughter (a mechanic) I should do it myself. So I looked it up (YouTube was not as big then), bought a new starter, and spent two hours over lunch in the base Hobby Shop, replacing my starter.

It is possible for me to learn these things, but my interest level has historically been rather low. I figured out twitter (which used to BEFUDDLE me to no end. People kept trying to explain it to me and I could not understand at all) because I knew I needed to for the writing/publishing stuff.

Note: I am not 67 years old, and I do not have a porch from which I yell at uppity youths, but it probably sounds like it right now.

Anyhow, I have a keen desire to figure out how to use the occasional timely GIF. Let’s see if this works:

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Ha!

I don’t know if I did it the best way, but there’s Mal, and he’s moving like a Harry Potter news article photo, so I’m content.

Thanksgiving and Update

Got back last night from traveling home for Thanksgiving. My husband and I are lucky in that our parents live in the same city and are long-time friends, so we can easily spend time with both families. Random things to follow in list form.

The 9 hr trip there and back went well, with minimal baby-screaming.
We watched Inside Out for the third time, and are still impressed. Sadness is my favorite, which seems an odd thing to say…
We saw Mockingjay part 2 in theaters (because husband’s parents babysat!) and I was not as impressed with it as with Mockingjay part one. They really could have done away with all the love triangle drama. It felt so superfluous to the story. Plus I feel like there were some PTSD-related character beats missing. They did a really good job of making you sympathetic to the Capitol civilians at the right moment though.
After seeing all kinds of tweets and blog posts about NaNoWriMo, I was inspired to write new stuff, which I keep meaning to do, but keep not doing. My brain is so focused on worrying about the book on which I just did revisions, which is foolish, because I can’t doing anything about it now! So I’m going to try and do a daily word count again, which I haven’t done for a while.
In retrospect, I’m kind of amazed that I managed to finish my book at all. I wrote the whole story all in one shot (370,000 words at the time) then cut it up into three parts and did major revisions. About half or more of the initial draft was written while I was in the Marine Corps (including some bits written while on deployment) and then I finished it between end of service and through my first semester at university. It took me 4 years to do the whole (three book) first draft, and a year and a half to do major revisions, and another 6 months to do my agent’s revisions. So I am slow, I guess. I think I need to learn to be more efficient with my time…
Baby is currently growling at the window, and I have much to do, so that is all for now!

Bread and Circuses

Oookay. This is going to take a minute.

So, you know The Hunger Games, right. Big, popular book/movie franchise? Of course you do. We all do. All right. Good start. It’s going to seem like this rant is all about The Hunger Games, but it’s also kinda not. You’ll see.

So here’s the deal. When those books were coming out and everybody was reading them, I flatly declined to read them. Two reasons.

1. I’m extraordinarily picky about YA. Not trying to be snooty. YA can be awesome and insightful and it can be…terrible, shallow and boring. Sifting to find the good stuff gets difficult.

And reason number 2: I am not a big fan of 1st person present tense. This is far and away my least favorite narrative choice and YA is filled to the rafters with 1st person present tense and I have only ever liked one of them: The Scorpio Races.

Anyhow, a while later, after giving the Hunger Games books the side-eye and moving on (I did read a few discussions on the material presented in the books, and appreciated some of the themes explored, but it was not enough to induce me to read) a movie came out called Winter’s Bone. It is one of those movies that is actually horribly depressing, but somehow also redemptive even when it’s kind of hopeless? You know the kind.

Well I loved it and was very impressed by what’s-her-name in the main role (yes I know her name now, everybody does). I don’t normally get into fangirling over actors and actresses, but I thought this chick was pretty impressive in this low-key, dark, sad role. When I heard that this actress was going to play Katniss in the Hunger Games movies, I thought “well, now I’m going to have to read those books because of my book-before-movie rule, and that actress is going to KILL that role. I’ll read them for that.”

So I read Hunger Games. Forgive me, O-devoted-fans-that-might-accidentally-happen-upon-this-post, but though I read it very speedily, it elicited a mere shrug from me. Once again, 1st-person-present-tense irks me to the high heavens, and I didn’t really find Katniss herself all that compelling to walk with. That’s not to say I didn’t like some of the important things the book was saying about the moral and material decadence of society, the faux half-life compassion in our culture*, and the astounding ways in which we can trick ourselves into forgetting about the reality of suffering by entertaining ourselves with it, or with something else. That’s some important stuff.

I had followed my rule, and I watched the movie. I enjoyed it, but it’s not going down in my all-time favorites or anything. Then Movie!Catching Fire came out, and I tried to force myself to read the book first, but once again, the narrative style had me betroubled and I said forget it (something I rarely do.) I watched the movie and I liked it.

I did not even attempt to read Mockingjay, because I now knew that the narrative style and I just didn’t get along. Suzanne Collins has CLEARLY written a compelling story that connects with a lot of people, so I’m not knocking her, but I knew I that it was just going to irritate me. But I committed book heresy and watched the movie anyway. (I have yet to watch the second due to baby-related restrictions on…my whole life).

The first Mockingjay movie punched me in the gut. I was near tears. I wrote a blog post about it (elsewhere). My husband and I discussed the depictions of desperate sacrifice by people who had no hope of surviving, but who gave in hopes that others would survive.

Okay, I really liked that movie. So what, right?

Well, this morning I read this article. It’s worth the read, though you can skip the first three paragraphs of box office earnings gobbledygook if you like, to get to the crux of it. Summary? Mockingjay 1 and 2, while still being quite successful, earned considerably less than the first two movies. Why is that, the author of the article asks?

Because the last two movies (the last book) don’t have the bread and circuses everyone came to expect. No fancy flaming gowns, no reality tv commentary, no tricked-out arena arsenals, no carefully contained/entertaining blood sports, and considerably less romantic drama. I’m not saying it is a perfect story, or a perfect movie, or that they get everything about war and revolution right. But I’m saying that it’s no longer covered in sparkles and glamour shots, and there’s some chewing material that can last you, if you’ll engage it.

So not as many people attended the arena this time.

The irony is gobsmacking. Of course this is not the first time someone pointed this out. The Hunger Games Capitol-style makeup line was a low-point in the self-awareness of the marketing campaign, at the very least, though I think (hope) most people realized that was pretty messed up. The Onion did a faux review where the reviewer did nothing but discuss the hotness levels of Peeta and Gale. It would seem that most people are aware that the depiction of the Capitol was an indictment on our own entertainment-obsessed behaviors and that the love triangle was beside the point.

But for all that, the box office numbers seem to tell the truer story. This is just my two cents, so there’s no need for anyone to put it in their pocket if they disagree (I LOVE disagreement. A good, logical debate will always win my heart), but I thought the third movie had the most meat and salt in it, and I guess that makes it the least easy to chew and swallow.

This should come as no surprise in a day and age where real world events are reduced to memes and hashtags, or else played 24 hours to feed either curiosity or anger, but eventually to the point of desensitization. But surprise me it did.

*Excellent article about the online half-life of grief.

Useless Facts

I am still waiting (with nail-biting nervousness) on my next round of edits…or whatever it is my agent has for me to do. I am very tired and have nothing particularly insightful to say, so I have decided to post a string of useless facts for the sake of…uh…being productive? Sure.

Unlike most people who try to get books published, it never occurred to me that I might want to be a writer when I grew up. I wrote stories all the time and could sit still for hours in daydream, but never drew from this any conclusion towards a hopeful career.
Actually I wanted to be Peter Pan when I grew up, which is to say, I didn’t want to grow up. The reason for this was because I never saw adults climbing trees and this seemed to me a miserable state of affairs.
I speak a few languages. In order of fluency: English, Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish. Spanish used to be second-highest to English and I used to use it all the time, but it has fallen into disrepair.
I have galloped around Giza, hiked through a wadi in Israel, and crossed the Tigris in a 7-ton ferry. These experiences have strongly influence my writing.
I do not know how to use GIFs, but I wish I did, and I mean to figure it out someday.
Coffee. No sugar, no cream, no weird flavors like “chocolate.” Just coffee.
I love running, except when I hate it, which is often. Especially when it’s cold.
I believe that if a recipe calls for garlic, you should automatically double the quantity. Same for garam masala and most other spices and aromatics.
The other day I felt a strong impulse to shout “BUMBershoot, BUMBershoot!” at the top of my lungs. However there was a sleeping baby in the back of the car, so I refrained.
A bumbershoot is an umbrella, for those of you who did not know. The only reason I know is because my nieces and nephews watched an episode of animaniacs.

There. 10 useless facts for you today.

War and the Military in Fantasy

A very merry (un)birthday to me! Yesterday, that is.

I was in the Marine Corps for five years and Marines take their collective birthday (10 November) very seriously. If you’re in active service, there’s a slight spike in pride amidst the drudgery of everyday military life. If you’re no longer active, you feel warm fuzzy nostalgia.

I have this ridiculous memory of one time (in boot camp, naturally, where all the ridiculous things happen) we were told that if ANYONE asks us where we’re from or how old we are, we are to say that we are from Parris Island (boot camp location) and we were born on 10 November 1775. I played along, and had this weapons instructor laugh and get irritated because I kept saying I was from Parris Island over and over and over again, whereas he was genuinely curious as to where I was actually from.

Anyhow, because of the birthday, and now Veteran’s day, I thought it might be fun to talk about the military and warfare in fantasy in general, as well as in my books in particular.

Most authors focus on different aspects of military/warfare, and leave the rest to the imagination. I think this rather wise much of the time, because it can get tedious if you try to depict every last bit. Also, it depends very much on what kind of story you want to tell. Some people just don’t care about the nuances of battle or military life. To others, it’s vital.

One of the most popular things to depict is:

Training

It’s cool, it’s tough, it’s intense. You show your characters’ mettle. Most people skip the boring parts. There’s a reason the ‘training montage’ exists.

Honestly half the reason I was interested in the military when I was a mere 14 years old was because I watched Sgt. Bilko and thought I would be doing nothing but obstacle courses all day long amid hilarious camaraderie.

Plus your character comes out the other end all awesome and what-not.

But the real meat of most training is not particularly cool to depict, and despite my obvious susceptibility to images of people climbing ropes and jumping over logs, I’m not really into the training montage style (except Mulan’s. Hers is the best.)

Another popular style is:

2. The Grim and Grit

The thing here is to talk a lot about blood and mud and guts and viscera. This may or may not be accompanied by battle details or strategy…meaning it can be a mere whirl of carnage, or carnage in context. This can be a good way to depict war (and the horrors of war) provided it’s done in moderation and contrasted with other, more mundane, realities of war (like sitting around in the desert in winter and being cold…so, so cold).

Done to excess the reader begins to yawn at each successive severed limb, plus you can lose sight of the broad scale of things.

Another method, that is less popular these days, is:

3. The Grand Battle

This is the one where the author avoids too much detail, but shows the broad sweep of the battle. Usually there’s less tactical/strategic information and they may occasionally focus on an individual, and then go back to how the battle is going as a whole (“The heroes are hard pressed! The enemy is gaining ground!”)

This is a more classical fantasy style, where it’s more a matter of the atmosphere of the battle than the exact way the pieces are moving on the chessboard, so to speak.

Sometimes these ones are too vague for me, but they avoid being bogged down the way the following one can be…

4. The Strategist

This is the guy with the map out, plotting every piece of terrain, every physical movement (whether you’re doing one-on-one combat, or grand scale battles, or whatever), every broad strategy, and every minute tactical decision.

This can be truly awesome, or truly tedious. More on that in a second.

5. Day-to-day, AKA “Bored Marines”

Are they pretending to clear that barracks room with brooms? Why, yes. Yes they are.

One time, in Kuwait, a bunch of us stood around in a circle and kicked a big rock at each other. For about 15 or 30 minutes. It was idiotic. But we had nothing better to do, and there are far more ridiculous (and usually pretty crude) things that people come up with to do when they are living the military ‘hurry-up-and-wait’ life.

I actually really like a measured depiction of this in a book or film. It shows camaraderie, it shows the truth, and it creates a nice juxtaposition for the more intense, bloody, dangerous moments and it gives you a chance to see how people act under normal, mundane circumstances.

Now this is going to sound obvious, but my ideal depiction is a careful combination of each, although day-to-day+strategy is my favorite! Like I said at the beginning, this isn’t always going to work, and it can get tedious if it isn’t done thoughtfully and purposefully. But if you can, show the day-to-day, know the master strategy AND the lower-level tactics (just be moderate and savvy in how much you actually communicate on paper), give room for realistic training and learning, show the blood and grit in a meaningful way, and–sometimes–step back and show the whole thing at a wide angle so the reader can get a real sense of what’s going on.

I think it’s hard to get right, but I try. In the second and third books of my story, I have some pretty large scale battles. For most of them, the terrain is VERY important, almost a character unto itself. So I mapped out the details, thought about where each character was and what they were supposed to be doing, thought about the numbers on both sides, played devil’s advocate, and then my husband (former infantry) and I (former linguist) sat down together an war-gamed the whole thing. Not everything we planned is actually described in those scenes, but the scenes rest on the foundation of all that preparation and planning.

I know this doesn’t nearly cover everything (still haven’t talked about aftermath, PTSD, just cause or lack thereof, leadership, or a zillion other things), but that’s my two cents on some of the basics.

(P.S. I wrote a PART TWO to this)

The Goings-on Hereabouts

A quick, sprinty update!

So I did another race on Saturday. This time it was a half-marathon, and this time I was a whole different kind of sore. Last time it was more that I was bruised and a bit roughed over. This time the act of standing was a serious challenge for a few hours.
My parents came into town to help out with the little Mousekewitz and while it was lovely, it was also a bit of a whirlwind; they were here for three days which consisted of the race, getting together with an old friend, recovering from the race, and having church small-group at our house.
No news on the revisions yet, but my imagination has conjured up many horrible and silly scenarios. I check my e-mail with considerable trepidation every day (far too many times a day). Patience is a virtue, but not one often accompanied by calmness or confidence…
We didn’t do anything for halloween except hand out candy, which is always fun. The wolf enjoyed it particularly. He stood watch at the window and anytime a kid appeared on the sidewalk, he would run to the front door and anxiously await his adoring masses. And they were adoring. One little girl seemed to forget entirely about candy and trick-or-treat and all that nonsense. She just dove in to hug the 95 Lb wolf, which seemed perfectly reasonable to her. I don’t really know what her parents thought about it. We kept the wolf at bay, obviously, but kids instinctively go for him.
The Mousekewitz is dangerously mobile. Able to climb-ish, and pull himself up against all sorts of things, but not always able to gauge the sturdiness of said things, or to get down, or keep his balance. He’s having some adventures, and I am usually busy.

And that’s about it!

Obstacle Race

Did an obstacle race yesterday. I don’t have any photos, but it was fun.

I am so, so sore. It’s a good sore, yes, but also it hurts when I stand up.

The first two hours were spent walking around with the little Mousekewitz strapped to my front, so my husband could run. Then we switched, and I ran. There were 23 obstacles, including the ‘carrying a bucket full of rocks over a hill’ one, the monkey bars, lots of walls to climb, mud hills to climb, cargo nets to climb, hay bales to climb, boulders to carry, sandbags to carry, sandbags to hoist, sandbags to drag across the dirt.

I failed four of the obstacles. The rope climb (I did the foot loop, but got no traction!), the spear throw, the monkey-ring-pole-across-rope-hold-thing, and the traverse wall (like rock-climbing). Failure to do an obstacle results in a penalty of 30 burpees (an exercise where you start standing, drop to the ground–often with a push-up–and then come back to your feet with a jump). By the last of those burpees I basically just looked like someone collapsing awkwardly to the ground and then scrambling weakly back to their feet…over and over and over. The integrity of the exercise had completely disintegrated, but I still did thirty of…whatever they were by then.

Oh, we also rolled/crawled under barbed wire for an age, an jumped over fire at the end…just for fun.

I ache, but I do not regret…it was worth it.

Other than that, I have no writing news as of now, unless “writing news” means I did something fun/hard the experience of which can influence my writing someday…(?). Yeah, anyhow. I will put up a post when I know anything about my recently submitted revision!

Updates of all Flavors

A smattering of uncategorized updates:

I am recovered enough from my surgery to run and even go to the obstacle race this weekend, so thank God for that! This is the type of race I’ll be doing:

It’s between 3-5 miles long and has 20 some obstacles like the one above. Mud is inevitable. Blood is possible. I’m not as fit for it as I would have liked to be considering I had to take about 2-3 weeks off running and such, but hopefully it will go well!

2. I finally finished my first round of revisions for my agent!!! With some nervousness, I sent it off last week. My mind conjured all the extremes: the most unlikely response would be “Ah, it’s perfect, we’ll begin submitting it immediately” (I wish). The worst case scenario would be “Yeah, none of the problems are really fixed at all. The improvements you made don’t work. Try again.”

If that happens, I may be tempted to cry. But then I’ll dust myself off and I’ll figure something out.

The middle scenario is the more realistic, perhaps: “Some of this is much better, you’re much closer but you still need to do x, y, and maybe z.” And then that round won’t take me a tenth as long, Lord willing, as the last one did. I don’t know how many rounds of agent revisions is “normal” before starting submissions, but I’m hoping it’s not too many.

For sheer curiosity I’m so excited to start submissions. What will happen? I’m even excited to get a rejection, because…what will it say? I’M SO CURIOUS! I have an editor at a SF/F imprint in mind, but I know my agent will have a list and a plan in place when it comes time, so I’m not going to worry about that too much right now.

3. So what to do in the meantime? First, work over books 2 and 3. I can do this at my leisure, because there will likely be more revisions yet, and those revisions will need to be implemented. So revising books 2 and 3 is kind of like weeding or doing the dishes…it’s good to do, to keep it from getting out of hand, but you’re going to have to do it again tomorrow.

For that reason, I also want to work on a new thing. I have this other story that’s been sitting in my mind a long time, and while I have some setting issues to work out, I’m really curious to see if the story has enough merit to go down on paper and survive.

4. The little Mousekewitz kid is a-crawling and a-cruising which is all kinds of adorable and exhausting. He is fast. I turn my back for but a moment, and he is in the other room. I have to let him fall a little (sharp objects removed from falling radius) so he can learn his strength and balance, but it means it’s rather difficult to do a task unless I literally strap him to my back while I do it.

Last week, before my surgery, the Mousekewitz took the liberty of knocking a cup of water onto my computer. It went gray and crackly right as we were skyping with family. But my husband grabbed it, unplugged it and took it apart quickly, wiping it off. We let it dry for a few days and put it back together. So far, no issues. It works as I sit here typing on it.

Babies are harder than boot camp, friends. I can say this with a degree authority. They last longer, you see. But all is well, and I’m learning.

4. Currently reading: Ender’s Game (recommended by my brother), Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (a great read, but very long, and for reasons mentioned above, I read in very short spurts), Blaise Pascal’s Pensees, and The Book that Made Your World (Vishal Mangalwadi). I’ll do reviews when I finish them.

Anyhow, I still wanted to post something writing related, so I thought I’d talk about smells. My favorite.

This meant that I needed to diversify my descriptions so as to speak to all those who DON’T go around smelling their spice cabinet or stop to sniff the air smack-dab in the middle of a conversation.

Of course, smell is still my favorite, and I probably still overuse it. But this was an eye-opening experience for me, for which I am extremely grateful!

I have to read by snatching a few scant pages at a time, and I’m reading several books right now. I finally finished “Ender’s Game,” a book which I read upon the recommendation of my brother.

Overall? I was quite impressed.

I have several thoughts and spoilers will abound. ALL SPOILERS.

Meanwhile, on earth, his two genius siblings—the brutal Peter, and the kind Valentine—are directing global politics via…essays, apparently?

It is not a particularly happy book, as a side-note.

There are some speculations in the background about what the politics of earth might have become some years from now, but that is not the focus of the book, so I’m not really going to comment on it.

The Good:

-It’s an engaging story, and a well-rendered concept

Secondly, the powers-that-be put Ender in this position of ignorantly conducting REAL battles, because they wanted him to have the compassion and empathy to UNDERSTAND the enemy, but also the genius and strength to defeat them (which he did). It is an altogether chilling thought.

-The physical, mental, and moral consequences of war are addressed. Not in their totality, but in a valuable way.

The “bad” by which I mean the things that niggled:

-Why were the parents so oblivious if they gave birth to the greatest three geniuses on the whole earth?

Conclusion? A good book, and recommended…although recommending a book after I’ve spoiled everything seems a little pointless now that I think about it.

This book is also on the Marine Corps Commandant’s reading list. So congratulations to me for finally reading it, six years after finishing my service in the Corps. So, one point to Gryffindor.*

*I say this, but there is a slight chance I would have ended up in Slytherin.

Got back last night from traveling home for Thanksgiving. My husband and I are lucky in that our parents live in the same city and are long-time friends, so we can easily spend time with both families. Random things to follow in list form.

The 9 hr trip there and back went well, with minimal baby-screaming.

We watched Inside Out for the third time, and are still impressed. Sadness is my favorite, which seems an odd thing to say…

Baby is currently growling at the window, and I have much to do, so that is all for now!