Kristin Janz

A couple of weekends ago, I attended Arisia, one of Boston’s local science fiction conventions.  I usually think of Arisia as more of a party convention than a writers’ convention.  I’ve attended Arisia in past years without sitting in on a single panel.  (Though I may have done this at Readercon, too; panels aren’t my favorite thing about cons.)  And I tend to run into more non-writer than writer friends.

This year was different, though.  For better or worse, I was fighting off a cold the entire weekend, so I was a lot more careful about trying to get enough sleep, and ended up not going to nearly as many parties (I didn’t feel I could justify the cost of staying in the hotel for the weekend, since home was a T- or cab ride away).  And, oddly, there were actually panels and other items on the program for which I was willing to show up early in the morning!  Often there isn’t much on the program of particular interest to writers, except maybe for absolute beginners (e.g., “How to Get Your First Story Published”).  This year’s program was definitely an exception.  And I ran into plenty of writers and editors, too.

I didn’t take any pictures to liven up my post, so I’ll try to make the paragraphs short instead of one long, mind-numbing block of text.

Here’s a summary of all the stuff on the official program that I actually attended:

The Super Robots (Beast King Golion)
I was going to go to a panel that someone from my writers group was on. Then I realized that there was a screening of Voltron in the original Japanese (with English subtitles) going on at the same time! Sorry, Jen. I was obsessed with Voltron as a child. I even sent away for membership in the official Voltron fan club (sadly, I threw out all the posters and stickers once I thought I’d outgrown them–but they live on, in my heart). My sister and I wrote Voltron fan fic (again, sadly, I don’t think any of this has survived through the ages). Voltron was “re-edited and re-recorded for American audiences” from a Japanese show called Beast King Golion. Golion as in Goliath, the Biblical giant. Only with lions. (“I wonder why they changed the name” my sister quipped.) Beast King Golion hasn’t been damaged by the Suck Fairy as badly as the American version has, though there are numerous plot points that don’t pass adult scrutiny (like the whole escaping from the tower by using vultures as hang gliders sequence).  There’s a lot more swearing, though, which apparently was edited out for the American audience.  And I’m pretty sure the Voltron we watched as children wasn’t so violent and bloody (my parents were allowing my 5-year old sister to watch this, after all).  But the animation was the same.  They showed several episodes, but I had to leave before we got to the one where all the 5 lions join together to form Voltron.  I mean, Golion.

That was a long paragraph, wasn’t it?  That just shows you what a special place Voltron has in my heart, even after all these years.

A Roman Legion: Legio III Cyrenaica
Those who know me well and have read various drafts of my novel-in-progress know that I love Romans as much as I love elves. Maybe more! So, even though I had to be at the convention at 11:00 am for this (don’t laugh, it’s a long commute and it takes me a long time to get ready in the mornings), I couldn’t miss the opportunity to see these representatives from a Roman reenactment group, in their lorica segmentata and caligae. It was very exciting! They were only on the program for 30 minutes, but they should have had a longer time slot, because they went over time and people in the audience still had questions. It was a small audience, but an enthusiastic one. I learned that the legionaries started carrying the gladius (i.e., sword) on a baldric over their shoulder instead of on a waist belt around the same time they switched to the segmented plate armor from chain mail. The reenactors theorize, based on trying out different bits of equipment, that they started doing this because the waist belt slides more over the plate armor than over chain mail, and it no longer held the weight of the gladius without slipping down.

That was a long paragraph, too. I probably love Romans even more than I love Voltron!

Don’t Quit Your Day Job
Since I have quit my day job (actually, my day job quit me), I found this of interest. Also, Jennifer Pelland from my writers group was on the panel. The authors on the panel were all pretty much against the idea of quitting one’s day job, which I suppose fits with the title and description. I’m happy not to have a day job for right now, but I think I have a pretty realistic set of expectations about the fame and fortune I’m likely to achieve as a result. Also, I went into it pretty carefully. I’d been saving money for several years before I was laid off, and don’t intend to use my retirement savings or go without health insurance. I’ll try to find another job long before it comes to that, or at least move back in with my parents. (Just kidding, Mom!)

Winter is Coming
A panel discussing George R. R. Martin’s series A Song of Ice and Fire, of which I’m a huge fan (though I still like Romans better). It was a fun and interesting discussion, with plenty of audience participation. Though there a lot of Johnny-come-latelies jumping on the bandwagon with the immense popularity of the HBO series, I have to say. Two of the panelists (the purported experts) admitted that they’d only read the books for the first time within the last year! As someone who has been a member of the Brotherhood Without Banners fan club since 2006 (and even that’s not very long, relatively speaking), I’m a little shocked that such newbies are getting to be on panels as experts on the series! (Okay, I’m not the most active member in the world. I do have a cool secret identity name though! (it’s said that there’s a fine line between cool and dorky)).

Plot and Structure
The panel description reads “It is often remarked that there are only six original plots. How then do you make the plot of your story stand out?” Which sounded interesting enough, but the actual panel was even more interesting than I’d expected, a lot of talk about writing craft, outlining stories vs. making them up as you go along. A counterpoint to the “Don’t Quit Your Day Job” panel, in some ways, with one of the panelists coming right out and saying (more or less) that you needed to write stories people wanted to read if you were going to pay the mortgage. Whereas on that other panel, one of the main reasons given for not quitting your day job was the freedom to write whatever you wanted.

2,326 Worlds And Counting
A science talk on planets outside our solar system. Science is getting better at detecting smaller planets around other stars. The latest research suggests there are probably a few billion Earth-sized rocky planets in our galaxy that are capable of supporting intelligent life (i.e., at a distance from their sun such that liquid water could exist on the surface). Scientists used to think planet formation was rare, but now that we have techniques that can detect planets, it turns out that most stars have them.

Why You Should/Should Not Self-Publish
This probably ought to have been called “Why You Should Not Self-Publish”. Or “Why Would You Even Think of Self-Publishing, You Idiot”? Everyone on the panel (including one panelist who had self-published) basically said you shouldn’t do it except as a last resort. I have mixed feelings about that message. I do think that a lot of writers who are just starting out need to hear the things that were said. That trying to go with a traditional publisher can keep you from embarrassing yourself by putting out a crappy book that you’ll be horribly ashamed of in 10 years. That most customers aren’t going to give you a second chance: if they read a book of yours and it sucks, they’ll probably never buy anything else you ever write (unless they’re your mom). That most self-published books are awful, and most people will assume your book is awful if you self-publish it. That if you want to self-publish and you want your book to have a chance, it’s not just formatting your book on CreateSpace and clicking on a button; it’s expensive and time-consuming, because you have to pay for cover art and design, copyediting, and formatting. And you have to do all your own marketing. No random stranger is going to choose your book out of all the millions of others out there. That self-publishing will probably ruin any chance you had of getting a different book published by a major publisher later on, because (my analogy) publishing is like a medieval marriage in that the publisher expects the author to be pure and unsullied, and views self-publishing more or less as a medieval husband-to-be would view premarital prostitution. These things are all true, and yet…. Not everyone wants a book deal from a major New York house (not if they have to sell their soul and change their name to get it). Some writers can do all the tasks of publishing on their own. Some people aren’t willing to have their manuscript sit on an editor’s desk for 5 years with no answer. And just because you play the traditional publishing game doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed success. Authors are dropped by publishers all the time because their first or second book didn’t sell well enough, and if that happens, you probably will have to self-publish subsequent books (see medieval marriage analogy). As far as I’m concerned, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with self-publishing your work as long as you have realistic expectations for how much work it will be, how little money you’re likely to make, and how unfamous you will be. Hey, just like writing!

That was a long paragraph, too. I don’t love self-publishing, but I have strong opinions.

Stitch ‘n’ Bitch
I recently started crocheting after reading some of my sister’s crocheting and knitting books. I was also envious of the beautiful sock she was knitting, and wanted to be able to make stuff like that. I decided to start with crocheting though, because I’ve heard it’s easier. The book I used to teach myself is from the Stitch ‘n’ Bitch series. My sister has a copy, and I ended up getting my own. Anyway, there are Stitch ‘n’ Bitch gatherings where you meet up with a bunch of other knitters and/or crocheters and work on your stuff, and chat. (Stitch, and bitch. Get it?) And they had one at Arisia. So I went, and worked on my scarf. I’m making a striped scarf as my first project ever. It’s all single crochet.

I should mention that I was taking my crocheting to Arisia pretty much every day and working on the scarf while I was sitting in panels. Oddly, I find it easier to pay attention overall if I have something to occupy my hands during the boring bits. Hmm, I wonder if it would look bad if I took my crocheting to church….

The Future of Religion
Honestly, I don’t know why I go to these panels, because I just get annoyed. (Though sometimes I feel the same way about church.) According to a show of hands, I was the only audience member who considered themself a monotheist (one of the panelists was also a monotheist). That wasn’t the annoying part; it felt awkward to have identified myself as a minority, but it’s good for all of us to be in the minority sometimes. The things that did annoy me were: (1) the extreme anti-religious attitude of one of the panelists, who was often pretty condescending about how religious people are weak-willed, etc., etc. (an audience member did respectfully call him out on it); and (2) predictions of religion’s future were very western-focused (societies will become less religious as they become more technologically advanced, etc.) with no reference to how religion actually has been changing in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Except for an anti-Muslim comment from one of the non-monotheist panelists.

I thought the monotheist on the panel (a Unitarian / United Church of Christ minister) did have some very insightful comments, about the nature of the Trinity and other things, and was constantly responding to negative caricatures of religion from the anti-religious guy by saying things like “That’s not what religion is for me”. And it was interesting to hear about the pagan panelist’s journey of faith. Even my irritation is probably a useful thing. It occurred to me when I was so irritated by the anti-religious guy’s comments about how only weak people need religion, and religion is harmful to society (etc.) that it’s probably also very irritating for people who aren’t Christians, the way Christians will often go around telling them they can’t possibly be happy or understand what it’s like to love someone without knowing Jesus. Not that avoiding offending people should be priority number one. But people are usually less likely to want to listen to anything you have to say if they feel you’re being condescending towards them.

Consistent Magic Systems in Fantasy
This was sort of the same panel as the one I was on at World Fantasy, at least from the panel description, only this one didn’t get derailed into a debate between a pagan and an atheist as to whether magic really exists. Margaret Ronald from my writers group was on this panel. Interestingly, these panelists were much less insistent on magic in novels having to fit into consistent “systems”. One of the panelists said, “When someone says to me, ‘I’m going to write a fantasy novel, I just have to work out the magic system first’, I start to hear the dice rolling.” Which is exactly (exactly!) my issue with what I see as excessive emphasis on magic systems. (I think it was Joshua Palmatier who said this. One of the disadvantages of writing a con report 2 weeks after the con is that I have trouble remembering who said what on which panel.) One of the panelists (David Sklar, I think) even came out pretty strongly against having magic systems, and felt that that makes the magic feel less authentic (others were more for magic systems, though not as strongly as the other authors I was on a panel with at World Fantasy). (I should say that none of the authors were advocating having the magic conveniently do whatever the plot seems to need at any given time, because that feels pretty fake, too.)

Among the Ruins
About how in fantasy novels there are all these ruins from civilizations with better technology, and why does no one in these novels ever seem to wonder overmuch about who these vanished civilizations actually were, except when they’re picking up a jeweled dagger lying in the middle of the street or something. More fantasy stories about archaeologists! Like the religion panel, I thought this one also suffered a bit from assuming that all possible human societies are just like ours in every significant way. I mean, most people in most cultures (real and imagined) are probably too busy working to spend a lot of time trying to understand Those Who Came Before. Look at Rome. The old forums with their temples were buried under centuries of rubble and garbage, and mostly the only attention that got paid to the ruins by the people who lived over them was to scavenge good marble from old buildings. Though I suppose most people in most cultures are also too busy and/or impoverished to become rogue adventurers or set out on a mission to save the world. (Damn you, realism!)

So, lots of good panels; or at least, panels that sounded interesting enough in the program book to lure me there even at the expense of partying/staying-up-late time.

There was some drama about the Barfleet party getting shut down on Saturday night (Barfleet is an organization that exists solely for the purpose of throwing parties at science fiction conventions).  I heard various things from different sources, but as far as I can tell, even though Arisia’s contract with the hotel specifies that the hotel will not put non-convention guests on floors designated as party floors, they had a last-minute cancellation and stuck a non-convention attendee in the room right next to Barfleet, and this person complained to hotel security about all the noise Barfleet partygoers were making at 8:30 p.m., so hotel security went and shut the party down.  Rumor has it that they weren’t very gracious or polite about it, either, and confiscated all the alcohol, citing violation of Massachusetts state law, even though I think Barfleet is pretty careful about that sort of thing:  it was a closed-door party and wasn’t advertised at the con, so I think it qualifies as a private party, which means serving alcohol should have been fine, at least as far as I understand things.  Also, in my experience, Barfleet won’t let anyone into their parties without proof of ID.  Anyway, everything I’m saying about what happened at Arisia w.r.t. the Barfleet party is hearsay and speculation.  But a lot of people were really upset about the incident.  (I’m sure the poor hotel guest stuck in the room next to them was also justifiably upset, but the hotel knew that there were going to be parties on that floor and really shouldn’t have booked them there.  This hotel is generally kind of lame about that sort of thing.  I know of people who’ve been put in rooms on the party floor at Boskone after requesting a quiet room.  Also, some of the staff are really rude and snippy.  Most of them are actually very gracious and helpful, but it’s always easier to remember the mean ones.)

The next convention on my schedule is Boskone, the 3rd weekend in February (Presidents’ Day weekend).  Also here in Boston.  So, if you’re there, I hope to run into you!

I just finished reading the 2nd Edition of Coach’s Midnight Diner, an anthology of “hardboiled horror, crime, and paranormal fiction with a Christian slant”.

I was mostly reading it because my boyfriend has a story in the anthology. But I’d heard of this anthology before. I remembered being impressed by their submission guidelines. Most Christian magazines and anthologies are way less forgiving of profanity, sex and violence in the stories they publish than, say, the authors of the Bible (to pick a completely random example). So I was heartened to read that it wasn’t really an issue for them; I think the guidelines said something along the lines of “God’s not a pussy, and neither are we.”

They’ve, um, changed it since to something less crude. (“This is not Guidposts or your Sunday School quarterly.”) But I still approve. The first anthology they put out was subtitled “The Jesus vs. Cthulhu Edition”, further evidence that the editors have a sense of humor.

The one I read was “The Back From the Dead Edition.” Some of my favorite stories: “Flowers for Shelly”, by Greg Mitchell, was possibly the most memorable story in the anthology, with the best description I’ve ever read of a first person narrator who turns into a mindless zombie during the zombie apocalypse. Jerry Gordon’s “9th Ward” was also memorably creepy, very short, but with a twist ending that I didn’t see coming. I’d be amiss not to mention Donald’s story (for which he used the byline D.S. Crankshaw), “The Office of Second Chances.” I don’t claim to be offering an objective opinion here, but it was one of my favorite stories in the anthology; it’s probably the most humorous story, with its send-ups of action/thriller cliches and Lovecraftian horrors from beyond time. I also liked Maggie Stiefvater’s “The Denial” (about a demon who falls in love with a human woman, and finds some kind of redemption), Daniel G. Keohane’s “Box” (about a victim of child trafficking) and “Small Accidents of God”, by Virginia Hernandez (a teenage girl is unnerved by the menacing shadows she can see hovering around other people, and hopes that “getting the Spirit” will make them go away).

One thing that the anthology got me thinking about is whether there can even be such a thing as Christian horror. I’m not talking about the window dressing of horror, the zombies and demons and serial killers and such. What I mean is that many critics seem to be arguing that one of the essential features of horror fiction is, at its core, a sense that everything is meaningless. That there’s no underlying purpose to our lives, or to life in general; or if there is, then the mind behind that purpose (if there is such a mind) does not wish us well. Most Christians would agree, I think, that this worldview is antithetical to the essential doctrines of Christianity.

I realize that Coach’s Midnight Diner doesn’t limit itself to horror fiction. But having read the anthology didn’t do much to convince me that there is such a thing as Christian horror. Most of the best stories were neither horror, nor particularly Christian (I don’t mean that they were anti-Christian, just that Christianity wasn’t relevant to the story). Some were one, but not the other. Even stories with horrific or frightening elements often ended on too much of a redemptive note to seem true to the grim and hopeless horror aesthetic.

I think one of the reasons I especially liked “Flowers for Shelly”, though, is that it did a better job than any of the other stories at walking the line between Christian faith (the first person narrator who turns into a zombie is a devout Christian, and of course there’s the question of how God could allow a zombie apocalypse to happen to good people), and grim hopelessness (perhaps there’s a purpose, but the zombified protagonist isn’t going to find out what it is). It’s also a bleakly funny story.

Of course, on the other hand, the Bible itself can be pretty horrific, and not just in window trappings (“I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit,” as the author of Ecclesiastes tells us). I’d argue that if you read the entire book, the horrific bits are just local minima (to use a scientific analogy); overall, there’s a purpose. Not necessarily for individual lives, though. People die without ever seeing the redemption that they’d hoped for.

So I guess I don’t have an answer to my own question. One thing I do know, though; every so often while I’m typing up a blog post, it auto-saves and tells me how many words I’ve written so far; and for an awfully long time while I was writing this post, the word count was 666.

At least for the past week, I’ve been able to keep up with my pledge to myself to make more time for reading, and I finally finished a book I’d been at for a long time. Of Fiction and Faith: Twelve American Writers Talk about Their Vision and Work, by W. Dale Brown. It was published in 1997, so it’s a little out of date in some ways, especially since some of the interviews took place in the early 90s. All this talk about the first Gulf War, and newspapers still being viable, and hardly anything about the internet.

The fiction and faith thing is a subject I’ve been interested in for a long time, so the book gave me a lot to think about. The writers interviewed are mostly lit fiction folks, so I had to grit my teeth at a lot of comments about how fantasy fiction can’t be considered art. Most of the writers in the book don’t really write “Christian” fiction (i.e., the stuff you find in Christian bookstores), even if they’re writing about God and faith.

One of the things I noticed was that, with few exceptions, the writers featured in the book were all quite liberal, politically. I guess since that’s where I find myself, it doesn’t surprise me that writers who wrestle with issues of faith and redemption in their work would have a similar outlook. But I do know Christian writers who aren’t writing standard Christian bookstore fare, who are not any more interested in providing easy but unsatisfying answers than I am, who are more conservative, politically. So I wondered if there was some sort of selection bias, as to the writers who were chosen. Few were genre writers–are genre writers more likely than literary fiction writers to have conservative politics? I don’t know.

Another thing that I came away with–something I’d already been thinking that was reinforced, really–is how easily and unfortunately we dichotomize. Many of the writers spoke of being too religious for secular readers, but too secular for religious readers. Fiction is religious, or secular. We’re Republicans or Democrats (at least in the country I’m living in). We’re intellectual, or uneducated. And Mississippi-born author Will Campbell, in his interview, talks about how contrary this is to the teaching of the New Testament, and yet how endemic it is in so many churches to do it anyway

“If you start saying, ‘Brothers and sisters … worldly standards no longer count in our estimate of anything. What this means is there’s no such thing as race … What this means is there’s no such thing as communism and capitalism and North Vietnam and South Vietnam. These are human categories, human standards, and Paul says these are no longer of any account. You don’t consider these things anymore.’ That’s when you start getting into trouble.”

Campbell’s mostly talking about his involvement in the civil rights movement, but I was really struck by how it applies to so many things, and how far I fall short of the standard God calls us to. I mean, this judging of people (or ideas, or works of art) by the categories you’ve put them into isn’t a problem that the church has exclusively. Literary fiction writers and critics disdain genre fiction. The college-educated look down on those with only a highschool degree (or less). People who eat exclusively natural and organic food look down on those who live off frozen entrees from the chain grocery store. But Christians fall into it, too, me as much as anyone else, and I was kind of moved by the reminder of how wrong-headed it is.

I’m not advocating the kind of tolerance where no one should express strong opinions about anything, or disagree with anyone else. I just mean that, all too often, we dismiss someone or something because of the category we’ve put them into. And even though I might not like it being done to me, I do it to others. I don’t want people deciding not to read my stories because they’ve found out I’m an evangelical Christian. But I tend to dismiss pretty much all Christian popular fiction (the stuff that Christian publishing houses produce, and that’s sold in Christian bookstores) as insipid and not worth my time. I get irritated if lit majors think my fiction can’t possibly be worth reading because it’s mostly science fiction and fantasy. But I make the same judgment about romance. I don’t want people at church to think I’m a bad person because I would vote for the Democrats if I were a US citizen, and think abortion and gay marriage should be legal. But I’m pretty quick to judge all the Republicans at church because of the policies of their party on the environment, international policy and domestic social issues.

I’ve heard secular humanists say that this kind of judging based on having categorized someone as “other” is the fault of religion (or maybe even the fault of Christianity, specifically). But I don’t think it is. I think it’s a very human instinct (or perhaps an animal instinct), and I think it’s one of the things that the Christian faith explicitly commands us to put behind us.

We just don’t do a very good job.

One of the things about my church that I think is really cool is that they have ASL translation at one of the evening services, so that people who are deaf can more easily engage with and participate in the parts of the service that aren’t written down. Tonight they went one step farther. There’s usually some sort of music performed while the offering plates are being passed around, and tonight it was sung by a mixed group of deaf and hearing people (I think they’re all in a Bible study group together). One woman sang into the microphone, and everyone else sang by signing.

I just thought that was incredibly cool, and a great way of encouraging and supporting the diversity we have in our congregation. I got all teary-eyed, and all that.

Of course, later on in the service there was something completely unrelated that I was annoyed and offended by. But I guess there’s something positive even in that. We all come together each week to worship God, and we have different ideas about how to do that, so much so that it’s pretty much impossible to do anything without offending someone. And yet, we still keep coming. We keep trying.

And every so often, something happens to remind me why I keep showing up, week after week.