July 2019 Dispatch
Kyell Gold
June Recap
At the beginning of June, I shipped out The War and the Fox to Argyll, so I hope it’ll be for sale at Anthrocon this coming weekend. I’ll also have a story in ROAR 10 (two stories, actually, one under each name!), so keep an eye out for that anthology as well.
As soon as that was done, I headed out to teach alongside Ryan Campbell at this year’s RAWR workshop. We had another great class and spent a week reading through some really interesting stories, watching our students learn critique and improve both their reading and analytical skills. This was the last year our workshop will be held in South Lake Tahoe; next year we’re moving to the more accessible Dallas. We hope that’ll make it easier for more students to attend.
After RAWR I got home, turned around, and flew to Chicago for Pokémon GoFest. In three years of playing, this was the first chance we had to go, and it helped that we also have friends and relatives in Chicago. We were there for two days and got to see a bunch of friends, and also spent ten hours walking around Grant Park catching rare Pokémon that were spawning for the festival. In previous years, we heard, access to GoFest was physically restricted to attendees, but this year Niantic appears to have finally figured out that they can just control the environment that people see, because it’s an AR game. So everyone was welcome in the park, but only those registered for the event on that day could see the Pokémon.
Back home, I took a week to chill. May into the beginning of June were pretty busy non-stop, and so I did some “thinking about stories,” some plotting, and working on my Patreon. Unfinished Business is chugging along nicely and going in some directions I hadn’t anticipated when I first envisioned an adaptation of the short story, so I’m excited about that.
I don’t have any series finales to write about this month, sadly, but I will make a recommendation for anyone who likes sharp writing and character-driven mature (adult situations), sometimes uncomfortable, comedy: Amazon’s series “Fleabag,” written by and starring Phoebe Waller-Bridges, whom I only knew as the voice of the activist droid in Solo: A Star Wars Story. Turns out she’s great, which British television and movies already knew.
As far as work, I’m recharged and ready to get the fourth Calatians book done, and I’m working on edits on the new Dev and Lee book (and still looking for a title) with an eye to getting that out at MFF.
I hope you guys have a great July 4th weekend! If you’re going to Anthrocon, have a fabulous time, and check out my books at the FurPlanet and Sofawolf tables (the new ones will be at FurPlanet).
Release dates
The third Calatians book, The War and the Fox, will be out at Anthrocon, as will ROAR 10 with two of my stories included. I won’t be there but if you go and get either of them, bring them to Furrydelphia and I’ll happily sign them.
The Tower and the Fox audiobook is out; you can find it on Audible, Amazon, or iTunes. If you don’t have an Audible account yet, check out my new Soundcloud page (https://soundcloud.com/user-710305036-429996600), which has samples and links to all my audiobooks. Those links help me get extra money especially if you use them to sign up for a new account.
Here’s my best guess at a 2019 release schedule: The forthcoming New Tibet anthology and the new Dev and Lee book will probably be out late in 2019, maybe at MFF. Love Match 3 may be pushed to 2020 through a combination of beta reader availability, artist availability (Rukis is doing art for both this and the Dev and Lee book), and my own schedule and desire to get the Dev and Lee book out before it gets even more out of date.
Appearances in 2019
My full list of upcoming appearances is at http://www.kyellgold.com/contact.html, recently updated (or soon to be updated).
I do not currently have plans to go to AnthroCon, but if you’re on the east coast, come see me at Furrydelphia in August where I’ll be a GOH with Rukis! Alternately, I’ll be at Megaplex in Orlando on the Saturday and Sunday of con, just seeing friends, but if you’re around there, tweet at me! After that I plan to go to MFF in December. I’ll also be at Comic-Con in San Diego at the Sofawolf booth (1236), as usual.
Spotlight: Di-Fur-Sity
Thurston Howl Publications is trying to fund an anthology of stories by POC furry writers. I think this is a pretty cool idea, showcasing the diversity in our fandom and giving POC writers a venue just to tell their stories. When Lightspeed Magazine did a “Queers Destroy Science Fiction” collection, I was proud to be part of it, not only to tell a story that I wanted to tell, but also to be part of a small community group and to show that that group was important in the larger SF fandom. I think Di-Fur-Sity has the chance to have this same impact on the furry fandom.
As of this writing (July 1), it’s three days from ending and 4/5 of the way to being funded. If just a few of you can support them, we can push them over the top. Help out if you can!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thurstonhowlpub/di-fur-sity-stories-from-furries-of-color
Excerpt: “Unfinished Business”
Here’s a scene from Unfinished Business in which Jae calls his mother and an old army buddy, with his Russian ghost bear partner as a peanut gallery.
Of course Mom had called while I was out. She had an uncanny sense of when I was on a job that allowed her to call and leave a message and then complain that I was screening my calls.
So when I got back to the house, I called her back first thing. “I just got back from a job,” I told her. “Pretty exciting, too. I chased a guy across a rooftop.”
Her voice had that slightly echoey headset quality and I could hear music in the background, so she was in her office, or shopping at a very quiet mall. “How many rooftops? Did you jump across like in the movies?”
“Technically, I guess, I chased him from the ground. My partner and a colleague of ours were up on the roof.”
She made a small noise of satisfaction, either because she’d gotten past my exaggeration or because I’d remained safe. “I’m glad you know how to delegate,” she said.
“Anyway, that’s why I didn’t pick up. What’s up?”
“I have some exciting news.”
“Mm.” This meant that she’d found someone else for me to go on a date with. I braced myself.
“I was talking to Mrs. Park, who just moved here from Milwaukee, and she told me that she has a son who lives in Chicago and just broke up with his boyfriend. He’s a paralegal and he works in, ah,” a pause as she consulted her notes, which I could picture easily in whatever version of her tattered paper notebook she was on now. “Aurora. No, he works downtown. He lives in Aurora.”
“Okay,” I said. “And what does Mrs. Park do?”
She tried to make the pause less noticeable this time. “She works for a non-profit that is trying to save old-growth forests by working with timber companies to plant new trees. She’s their director of public relations.”
“Interesting. And how did you meet her? Is one of your restaurants thinking of starting an old growth forest special?”
“She joined our Facebook community.”
“Where you periodically post that your gay son is looking for a partner? Or do you just ask every new person who joins?”
“If you’d join it, you’d know. Do you want to hear about Aleum Park or not?”
“His name’s Alem?”
“Aleum, you know, ‘beautiful’? I believe he goes by Al in his offices though.”
Two Als in one day, Sergei said. He had materialized in his bear form, so I rolled my eyes at him rather than answer.
“Is he?” I asked.
“Is he what?”
“Beautiful.”
“How should I know?”
I turned away from Sergei, who was grinning, and he materialized in front of me again. Damn ghosts. “Because I’m sure you asked Mrs. Park for a picture.”
“I’m not going to prejudice you. You can judge for yourself when you meet him.”
“And when am I meeting him?”
Sergei couldn’t affect most things materially, but he could generate electric currents and move air particles, and so a year ago I’d purchased a ghost interface for my tablet that allowed him to interact with it. He couldn’t lift it off the table, but he called up my calendar. Tuesday night is free, he said, unless you are wanting to go to dinner with Alan then.
“You can work that out with him. What am I, your secretary? It isn’t enough I find these wonderful eligible young men for you? Let me tell you—”
“If I were straight, it would be so much easier to find someone, I know, Mom, don’t think I haven’t had those same thoughts myself.” To Sergei, I said, I don’t want to go out with Alan. I might call him, just to talk about the old days, but…
“I love you just as you are, Jae. You know that.”
“I know.” Although that wasn’t entirely true, was it? But it was close enough. I knew that many Korean mothers weren’t as accepting of their children’s alternative lifestyles; I’d briefly joined a community of gay Korean-American men and the dominant topic was parents, comma, intolerance of.
I tell you, Sergei said, he likes you.
“So you’ll email him? I’m sending you his contact info.”
“Sure, Mom, I’ll email him.”
“Good. How’s work going? Staying busy chasing people across rooftops?”
“Pretty busy, yeah. How are all the restaurants?”
We chatted a little longer. Her restaurants (she and my aunt Hwa-Young owned one and was co-managing another) were doing well; they were gathering contributions to make improvements to the temple; a new bakery had opened down the street and they had the most divine croissants.
I didn’t have as much to tell, but I managed, as I always did, to scrape together enough to get her to end the conversation while still chiding me for being withdrawn about my life. I didn’t have the energy to tell her again that the habits ingrained during and just after the war persisted for a long time, and she had already dismissed that as an excuse anyway (“you’re not at war now, what do you think will happen if you tell your mother about how you spend your Saturday night?”).
I was going to have to email Al, because she would have Mrs. Park check and make sure that I did. “Do it now,” Sergei urged, aloud now that I was off the phone.
“I will. But I want to call Richard first.”
“Ah,” he said. “So you have reason to call cute wolf Alan back.”
“Sure. Not because I’m worried about a friend of mine.”
“Friend you have not talked to in years?”
“That doesn’t make us not friends. Anyway, he sends me a Christmas card every year.”
“Ah.” He nodded his great bear’s head. “In Russia, this makes you blood brothers.”
“Ha ha.” I sat down at my desk and dug through my contacts until I found Richard. There was an email, but if he hadn’t been answering those from the guys, he might not answer from me either. Probably would be better just to call him.
I leaned back in my office chair, headset in one ear. The phone rang and rang, long enough that I was about to hang up when he picked up. There was a beat, and then he said, in a familiar rough voice, “Jae?”
“Richard, hi.”
“This is a surprise.”
“Yeah, I know. How you been?”
“Been better. Been worse, I guess.”
He didn’t ask about me. I got to the point. “I ran into one of the guys from Kosovo today. He said they had a reunion and you didn’t show. Didn’t even answer their email.”
“They caught me at a bad time.”
Sergei raised an eyebrow at that, a reflection of my own feelings. “Okay, well, maybe you could return their email? At least let them know you’re okay?”
“It’s been weeks. I’m not going to email them now. You tell them.”
“Fine.” I ignored Sergei’s enthusiastic thumbs-up. “How’s Desiree?”
“Still living up to her name.” That was a joke he’d made at their wedding: “Desiree” means “desired.” She’d countered by saying that he was living up to his name, too, but she loved him anyway. “Her mom’s in the hospital and she’s heading down to Florida next week to visit her.”
“Ah, sorry to hear that.”
“How about you? You replaced Czoltan yet?”
“Jesus.” Sergei also sat straight up, eyes wide.
“What? You don’t even wanna hear his name anymore? It’s been what, three or four years?”
“I mean, give me a little warning before you lob a grenade at me.”
“Sorry, I thought we were making small talk.”
“I wouldn’t count that as ‘small talk.’”
“Big talk, then. You seeing anyone?”
“As a matter of fact, I have a date Tuesday night.”
“Heh. Is this one of your mom’s picks?”
Sergei shook his head, indicating, I suppose, that I should see Alan rather than Al. “Yes. No. I mean, I have a couple possibilities. Nothing’s definite yet.”
“Hope one of them works out. How’s the gumshoe business? Catching those cheating wives?”
“It was as many husbands as wives, and I don’t do that anymore.”
“Oh? What’s the new line of work?”
“No, I mean—” I spun the chair back and forth. “I don’t track down cheating spouses. I just deliver summonses. It’s a lot less, uh—”
“Dangerous? Some husband come after you with a gun? Wouldn’t have thought you’d need to worry about that.”
“No, I was going to say, ‘morally ambiguous.’ Like half the time, the person cheating would tell me about how their partner was abusive or neglectful or something, but I’d still have to go back and tell the asshole that I’d found proof of cheating. Or there wasn’t any cheating, but they were sure there was and I’d waste days following their partner to the office, to their book club, to friends’ houses, and then I’d get yelled at and told I’d missed something. And even in the other half of cases, when the asshole is the one cheating, it still doesn’t feel good, because usually those times the one hiring you wants to believe they’re innocent. No, it’s a shitty game all the way around, so I got out of it.”
“Huh. You always had some weird ideas.”
“Yeah, thanks. Sorry to get back into morality with you.”
“We had some good arguments back in the day, huh?”
“Sure. Okay, look, I’ll tell them you’re fine. You want to catch up more, you know, you can call sometime.”
“Yeah.” His tone made it pretty clear that I shouldn’t expect that.
When I’d hung up, Sergei asked, “He knows about Czoltan?”
“Yeah. Richard was one of the few people I told. Commanding officer and all that. Plus he knew I was gay, never cared as long as I did my job. The thing with Czoltan wasn’t exactly according to regulations, but…” I gestured to the phone. “Sometimes Richard’s questionable morality was useful.”
Sergei nodded. “You sometimes have too much morality.”
“So you’ve often said, old-timey Russian mass murderer.” I grinned at him. “It’s gotten me this far.”
“As good an argument against it as any.”
“Can’t you be positive just one time?” I asked.
He spread his great big insubstantial arms. “I am a son of mother Russia. To know my mother is to know that the world is fierce and glorious and ends always in darkness.”
“Great,” I said, “I’m calling Alan, all right?”
Questions From YOU
If you’ve got a question about my books or my writing—or anything else you want me to talk about—shoot me an email and I’ll answer it here.
Howl asks: “How do you write fairly technical things in fiction like sports or politics without coming across as either heavy-handed or lecturing?”
Anytime the reader needs a lot of context to understand something, you’re faced with this dilemma. It can also apply if you’re writing in a secondary fantasy world (i.e. a created world, not “Earth with wizards”) where you have to introduce the reader to that world.
The first thing you have to do is decide how much information to give the reader. In general you want to find the minimum amount necessary for them to understand the situation. You don’t need to explain all the rules of baseball for the reader to understand that a batter wants to hit the ball and not have a fielder catch it. They don’t need to understand the entire history of the wizarding world to know that there’s a wizard school that Hagrid wants to take Harry to. In fact, the more information you can leave out, the more mysteries you leave for the reader to discover and the more engaged they’ll be in continuing to read.
Once you’ve settled on what you have to convey, you have to figure out how to write it. The best way is to show the character interacting with the world, or have the narration explain the effect of the rules of the world on the character. For example, if you wanted to tell the reader how an American football team’s defense depends on each other, you could write, “The cornerback’s job is to keep the opposing team’s receivers from catching the ball, but the more time the receiver has to run around the field, the harder it is for the cornerback to anticipate and keep up, so the corner depends on the defensive line to put pressure on the quarterback and force him to get rid of the ball quickly.” Or you could write this: “Our cornerback Vonni comes back fuming at the defensive line. ‘Get more pressure!’ he yells, waving his arms. ‘You’re giving them like ten seconds there! We can’t keep up that long.’”
In many of these situations, you will be choosing between an explicit explanation that tells the reader exactly what’s going on and an implicit explanation that tells them what’s going on by showing them how the world works. In cases where you think it’s important that they know precisely the context the characters are in, go for the explicit explanation. Most of the time, I find that it’s enough to let the characters explain their world through their actions and reactions. “I wish we could just put a bill up for vote, but the committee chairman has to be convinced that it’s a good idea, and Trey never saw a good idea he agreed with.” tells the reader that the character is facing an obstacle and also explains why Trey is an obstacle.
You can also use the “stranger in town” device: have someone in the know explaining the situation to another character who’s new to sports/politics/whatever. Be careful how you use this, though; some people think that putting dialogue quotes around a narrative explanation automatically makes it interesting. If you’re going to explain something to the reader by explaining it to another character, make the conversation engaging. Have the “stranger in town” character ask questions, probe at the rules. Better yet, have the conversation have a point in the plot—the new character has to come up to speed quickly, for example.
In general, anytime you want to convey worldbuilding to your reader, decide the minimum they need to understand it. Don’t overexplain your world. Then put that information into an engaging form: character interaction, character reaction. Only when you absolutely can’t do any of that should you put your worldbuilding into the narrative.