Reading Round-Up: May 2019

Continuing the monthly summaries of what I’ve been reading and writing.

BOOKS

To keep my numbers consistent with what I have listed on Goodreads, I count completed magazine issues and stand-alone short stories in e-book format as “books.” I read or listened to 11 books in May: 4 in print, 2 in e-book format, and 5 in audio. They were:

1.       Lightspeed Magazine #108 (May 2019 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams. The usual fine assortment of sf and fantasy short stories and novellas. This month’s favorites for me were Rati Mehrotra’s “This Way to Paradise,” Nancy Kress’s “Cocoons,” Matthew Kressel’s “Trust is Like the Sun,” Kathleen Kayembe’s “The Ocean That Fades into Sky,” and Sofia Samatar’s “Fallow.”

2.       Lady Susan by Jane Austen. I’ll admit I’ve read precious little Austen, despite having been an English Lit major. This was a fun, and apparently lesser-known, work of hers. I really enjoy epistolary stories when done right – meaning that parts of the story are left for the reader to “fill in the blanks” between what the characters are and are not saying to each other.

3.       In Re: Sherlock Holmes: The Adventures of Solar Pons (Solar Pons Book 1), by August Derleth, narrated by Steve White. I’ve been meaning, since I finished reading the full official Sherlock Holmes canon, to move on to his Praed Street successor, created by August Derleth. This is a good start to what was a pretty long run of stories and novels. Steve White’s narration is solid as well, although there were a few points where the voices he was doing didn’t seem to quite match the descriptions of the characters. I posted a lengthier review HERE.

4.       Two Todd Tales, by Joseph Pittman, narrated by Benjamin Seay. This was a re-read/re-listen of two great short stories featuring Pittman’s con-man Todd Gleason, one of which features a character named after me, so I might be a bit partial. Benjamin Seay’s narration captures all of Todd’s, and the unnamed narrator’s snark.

5.       Upon A Burning Throne (The Burnt Empire, Book 1) by Ashok K. Banker. As I said in my longer review HERE, I’ve pretty much burned out on “doorstop/encyclopedia-length” epic fantasy. But Ashok K. Banker’s short stories in Lightspeed magazine in recent months really whet my appetite for this, and I’m glad I read it right away. Great character development and world-building.

6.       The Hidden Witch (The Witch Boy, Book 2) by Molly Knox Ostertag. I have a longer review of this coming on Strange Horizons in a few weeks, so all I’ll say here is this is a wonderful second installment in Ostertag’s graphic novel series about a boy who bucks family convention to be a witch instead of a shapeshifter.

7.       Fool For Love: New Gay Fiction edited by Timothy J. Lambert and R.D. Cochrane, narrated by Roman M. Wagar. Most of the sixteen stories in this romance collection worked for me. Some are sweet, some are brutally funny, some are painful. My favorites include ‘Nathan Burgoine’s “Heart,” Greg Herren’s “Everyone Says I’ll Forget in Time,” David Puterbaugh’s “Thai Angel,” and Rob Williams’ “Party Planning.” Roman M. Wagar’s narration is wonderfully varied, voices crafted to fit each individual story.

8.       Black Crow, White Snow by Michael Livingston, narrated by Janina Edwards.  I am completely unfamiliar with Michael Livingston’s writing, and picked this up honestly because it was an Audible Original free book. I’m glad I did. The mix of Caribbean and post-apocalyptic world-building is wonderful. And Janina Edwards’ narration is warm and smooth and full of character.      

9.       Under the Sunset by Bram Stoker. One of my “To Be Read” Challenge titles for 2019, so there’ll be a longer review upcoming. But I have to say right out: as much as I love Bram Stoker in general, I struggled with this fairy tale story collection. It felt like he was trying to write in someone else’s voice, and it just didn’t work most of the time.

10.   Acres of Perhaps: Stories and Episodes by Will Ludwigsen, narrated by John Fleming. “Acres of Perhaps,” about the sudden dissolution of a television writing team in the 60s, is easily one of my favorite novellas of the past few years, and the rest of the stories in this collection, which I intend to post a longer review of soon, are equally engaging and thought-provoking. John Fleming’s narration fits the dark, not-quite-noir-but-close, tone of the author.  

11.   Algorithmic Shapeshifting: Poems (Conversation Pieces Book 68) by Bogi Takács. As I say in the longer review posted HERE, I am not a poetry reader overall and asked for an ARC of this accidentally. And I loved it. Recommended, especially to fans of poetry with speculative fiction elements.

STORIES

I have a goal of reading 365 short stories (1 per day, essentially, although it doesn’t always work out that way) each year. Here’s what I did read and where you can find them if you’re interested in reading them too (with some short notes for stories that really stood out to me). If no source is noted, the story is from the same magazine or book as the story(ies) that precede(s) it:

1.       “The Iron Man” by Max Gladstone, from Lightspeed Magazine #108 (May 2019 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams.

2.       “This Way To Paradise” by Rati Mehrotra

3.       “Cocoons” by Nancy Kress

4.       “Trust is Like the Sun” by Matthew Kressel

5.       “The Ocean That Fades Into Sky” by Kathleen Kayembe

6.       “The Portal” by Debbie Urbanski

7.       “The Minor Superhero, At Home After His Series Ends” by Adam-Troy Castro

8.       “The Convexity of Our Youth” by Kurt Fawver

9.       “Fallow” by Sofia Samatar

10.   “Vegetables and Vaccines” by Seanan McGuire, on the author’s Patreon page.

11.   “The Church Fire and Redemption” by T.M. Morgan from Lamplight Vol 7 #2, edited by Jacob Haddon

12.   “Marrow” by E. Catherine Tobler, from Black Static #65

13.   “Silencer Head Like A Hole Remix” by E. Catherine Tobler, from Interzone #259

14.   “Notes Upon the Diadem Club” by Lyndsay Faye, from The Strand October 2015, edited by Lamia Gulli

15.   “It’s All Right – He Only Died” by Raymond Chandler, from The Strand October 2017

16.   “An Actual Treasure” by David Marcum, from The Strand October 2018

17.   “Tonight, My Love” by Max Allan Collins and Mickey Spillane, from The Strand October 2018

18.   “Lady Hilda Revealed” by Bonnie MacBird, from The Strand October 2018

19.   “A Word from Doctor Lyndon Parker” by August Derleth, from In Re: Sherlock Holmes (Solar Pons, Book 1), edited by David Marcum

20.   “The Adventure of the Frightened Baronet” by August Derleth

21.   “The Adventure of the Late Mr. Faversham” by August Derleth

22.   “The Adventure of the Black Narcissus” by August Derleth

23.   “The Adventure of the Norcross Riddle” by August Derleth

24.   “The Adventure of the Retired Novelist” by August Derleth

25.   “The Adventure of the Three Red Dwarfs” by August Derleth

26.   “The Adventure of the Sotheby Salesman” by August Derleth

27.   “The Adventure of the Purloined Periapt” by August Derleth

28.   “The Adventure of the Limping Man” by August Derleth

29.   “The Adventure of the Seven Passengers” by August Derleth

30.   “The Adventure of the Lost Holiday” by August Derleth

31.   “The Adventure of the Man with the Broken Face” by August Derleth

32.   “The Antics of Anton Ardno” by Joseph Pittman, from Two Todd Tales

33.   “The Perils of Penelope Pittston” by Joseph Pittman

34.   “Thai Angel” by David Puterbaugh, from Fool For Love: New Gay Fiction, edited by Timothy J. Lambert and R.D. Cochrane

35.   “Love Taps” by Mark G. Harris

36.   “Matchmaker” by Sean Aniston

37.   “A View” by Brandon M. Long

38.   “Gratitude” by Felice Picano

39.   “Happy Hour At Café Jones” by Rob Burns

40.   “Trunk” by Trebor Healey

41.   “De-Anima” by Joel Derfner

42.   “Like No-One’s Watching” by Josh Helmin

43.   “At The End of the Leash” by Jeffrey Ricker

44.   “Two Tales” by Paul Lisicky

45.   “Heart” by ‘Nathan Burgoine

46.   “Party Planning” by Rob Williams

47.   “Two Kinds of Rapture” by Andrew Holleran

48.   “Everyone Says I’ll Forget in Time” by Greg Herren

49.   “Angels What You Must Hear On High” by John H. Rausch

50.   “Under The Sunset” by Bram Stoker, from Under The Sunset

51.   “The Rose Prince” by Bram Stoker

52.   “The Invisible Giant” by Bram Stoker

53.   “The Shadow Builder” by Bram Stoker

54.   “How 7 Went Mad” by Bram Stoker

55.   “Lies and Lilies” by Bram Stoker

56.   “The Castle of the King” by Bram Stoker

57.   “The Wondrous Child” by Bram Stoker

58.   “Acres of Perhaps” by Will Ludwigsen, from Acres of Perhaps: Stories and Episodes, edited by Steve Berman

59.   “Season 1, Episode 2: Ourselves and Immortality” by Will Ludwigsen

60.   “The Zodiac Walks On The Moon” by Will Ludwigsen

61.   “Season 1, Episode 5: Singing Each to Each” by Will Ludwigsen

62.   “The Leaning Lincoln” by Will Ludwigsen

63.   “Season 1, Episode 10: Guess What’s Coming To Dinner” by Will Ludwigsen

64.   “Night Fever” by Will Ludwigsen

65.   “Season 2, Episode 2: Dark Horse Candidate” by Will Ludwigsen

66.   “Poe At Gettysburg” by Will Ludwigsen

67.   “Season 2, Episode 8: Unable Are The Loved To Die” by Will Ludwigsen

68.   “On Stony Ground” by Cynthia Ward, from Analog May-June 2019, edited by Trevor Quachri

69.   “Repairs at the Beijing West Space Elevator” by Alex Shvartsman

70.   “Painting the Massive Planet” by Marissa Lingen

So that’s 70 short stories in May, putting me now way ahead for the year so far. (May 31st was the 151st day of 2019.)

Summary of Reading Challenges:

“To Be Read” Challenge: This month: 1 read; YTD: 3 of 14 read.

365 Short Stories Challenge: This month:  70 read; YTD: 200 of 365 read.

Graphic Novels Challenge:  This month: 1 read; YTD: 15 of 52 read.

Goodreads Challenge: This month: 11 read; YTD: 61 of 125 read.

Non-Fiction Challenge: This month: 0; YTD: 4 of 24 read.

Read the Book / Watch the Movie Challenge: This month: 0; YTD: 0 of 10 read/watched.

Complete the Series Challenge: This month: 0 books read; YTD: 0 of 16 read.

                                                                Series fully completed: 0 of 3 planned

Monthly Special Challenge: I may not do something like this every month, but I set an May goal to try to read primarily short story collections and anthologies, since May was Short Story Month, and also to read some non-fiction about Asia and/or the Pacific Islands and/or about the Jewish Diaspora, since May was also Asian/Pacific Islander Heritage Month and Jewish-American Heritage Month.

I blew it on the Asia, Pacific Islands, and Jewish Diaspora mini-challenges – only Bogi Takacs’ poetry collection really counts toward the last of those three, although at the end of May I started Barbara Krasnoff’s The History of Soul 2065, which would also count towards the Jewish Diaspora challenge had I finished it in May (it was the first book finished in June, though!)

I was more successful on the Short Stories challenge, reading 70 stories, the bulk of that coming from 5 of the books and 1 magazine read in May.

June is Pride Month, so my mini-challenge is to read mostly books and stories by or about people who identify somewhere on the Queer (QUILTBAG+) rainbow.

Series Saturday: The Jimmy McSwain Files

This is a series about … well, series. I do so love stories that continue across volumes, in whatever form: linked short stories, novels, novellas, television, movies. I’ve already got a list of series I’ve recently read, re-read, watched, or re-watched that I plan to blog about. I might even, down the line, open myself up to letting other people suggest titles I should read/watch and then comment on.

As Adam Carpenter has just launched a second round of novels featuring openly gay private detective Jimmy McSwain (beginning with “Fresh Kill”), now seems the right time to chat a bit about the first five-book run in the series.

Jimmy McSwain is a private investigator operating out of Hell’s Kitchen in New York City. In a perfect world, Jimmy would be a cop just like his father before him. But our world isn’t perfect, and at age fourteen, Jimmy watched his father be murdered by an unidentified man holding up a local deli. When the NYPD stopped investigating his father’s death, Jimmy decided he’d take it upon himself as a private eye. Most of the time, Jimmy works cases for actual clients. In the first book, “Hidden Identity,” he’s hired to find missing heir Harris Rothschild, who had a falling out with his father over his “alternate” lifestyle. In book two, “Crime Wave,” he works pro bono to prove his sister’s boyfriend is innocent of murdering a man he was just seen kissing. In “Stage Fright,” a playwright receives threatening messages and the theater (at which Jimmy’s mother is head usher) hires Jimmy to find the culprit. “Guardian Angel” sees the holidays coming to NYC and Jimmy hired to protect and escort a tabloid darling. And in the finale of the first series, “Forever Haunt,” Jimmy takes on the case of an endangered mother and child and their missing husband/father. 

Each case stands very much alone. Carpenter plays fair with the reader, planting all the clues necessary to solve each case along with various mcguffins, red herrings, and sub-plots for distraction from those clues. I love that each case is markedly different in tone and stakes from the others, even though they pretty all eventually hinge on a murder of some kind. Hey, it’s a crime/mystery series—most people come for the death and stick around for the reveal, I get that – but it’s nice to have each book not always start with the hero tripping across a murder scene. It’s also nice that even though Jimmy is an openly gay detective, he doesn’t take exclusively gay-oriented cases. Yes, it’s true of the first two books (the missing heir in book one is gay, as is the sister’s boyfriend in book two), but after that the cases don’t necessarily hinge on the victim being gay. That said, there are plenty of gay tertiary characters running around for Jimmy to interact with and to draw on for help in his cases – especially the hysterically flirtation drag queen Terry Cloth and her club full of lost souls finding themselves. (I think a book set exclusively in The Dress Up Club, crime-oriented or not, would be a fun side-project for Carpenter to pursue.)

If this were an old-style mystery series, with little in the way of character development or continuing sub-plots, you’d be able to just read these five books in any order you’d like. But this is the modern age of serialization, both on television and in books, and the Jimmy McSwain Files has an over-all arc that is best read in order. Because Jimmy has that drive to solve his father’s murder after all these years (fourteen, that is. He was fourteen when his father died, and he’s twenty-eight at the start of the first book), and each book progresses that sub-plot. Hints and clues, sometimes revealed as part of Jimmy’s main case and sometimes coming from unexpected places and not always at a good time, abound. There’s forward movement towards Jimmy finding his answers and there are set-backs and road-blocks. And yes, this first series ends with an answer for Jimmy. This is not one of those series where the author never quite gets around to given the haunted main character closure. (Needless to say, I’m intrigued to see how Jimmy handles life now that his driving issue has been resolved, in the next set of novels.)

Jimmy himself is flawed. He’s a damned good detective, but he has his blind spots. His singlemindedness regarding finding his father’s killer puts him, and his loved ones, in danger. In the middle book, the clues about what happened to his father distract him from the main case and vice-versa, to the point where Jimmy barely manages to solve the main case. He’s pretty near rock-bottom, and I still think it was a brave move for the author to make, allowing the reader to see the main character essentially falling apart. Of course, that gave the author room in the final two books in the series to bring Jimmy back to the capable detective he was earlier, and that arc is also satisfactorily handled.

There’s also a romance at the heart of these books: Jimmy’s on-again, off-again relationship with Captain Francis X. Frisano of the New York City Police Department. While the biggest problem initially seems to be that Frank is not “out” to his force because it might impede his upward movement in the department, it also turns out that Frank’s father worked with Jimmy’s – and perhaps knows things he’s not telling. This adds even more tension to whether this relationship will work out. There’s also, at various points, the return of the man who broke Jimmy’s heart before the series commences and a possible new love interest. But the sexual and romantic attraction between Jimmy and Captain Frisano is palpable and multi-faceted, and the reader can’t help but root for both men to get their heads out of their asses and just get together already.  Note to the wary: Carpenter made his name writing erotica; there are sex scenes in these books, and they are fairly explicit. I personally think the books would have been perfectly fine without the sex scenes, but Carpenter knows his audience and gives them what they want.

I mentioned the sort of tertiary-level recurring characters, but I really need to talk about Jimmy’s main supporting cast: his widowed mother (still working at the same theater she’s been at since before her husband died and at which she often convinces her children to help out as ushers); his sisters (one a lawyer, one at loose ends and pregnant in the later books); his Uncle Paddy (who owns the bar above which is Jimmy’s office); and Jimmy’s mentor (his late father’s now-retired partner). Even in the first book this is a well-drawn and complicated supporting cast, and they each have something of a sub-plot arc running throughout the series. But they really get moments of their own towards the end of the run that feel real and satisfying and give Jimmy a world outside of work to complicate his life. One of my favorite aspects of each book is the time Jimmy spends with his mother and siblings around the dining room table, followed by the times Jimmy gets encouragement from his otherwise sort of old-school uncle. And of course, there’s always the shadow of Jimmy’s father: if he’d lived, would he be proud of who Jimmy is? Would he have been accepting of Jimmy’s homosexuality? It’s a question Jimmy can’t ever get an answer to. He can only hope. And I think it’s great that this series makes the point that even when we get the answers we’re looking for (as each of Jimmy’s clients does by the end of each book, and as Jimmy ultimately does at the end of the series), we never get all the answers we need.

Read the Jimmy McSwain Files if you’re looking for: a series lead whose homosexuality is not his only character trait; fair-play mysteries; solid character arcs for the main and secondary characters; a variety of types of cases that don’t fall into formula; and oh yeah, some sex.

An Incomplete List of Queer Creators

Every year, just before Pride, I say I’m going to write a post promoting other queer writers/artists/musicians. And every year the month goes by and I end up thinking “Man, I wish I’d written that post about other queer creators…”

So this year, here it is, and only one week into the month itself!

This is by no means a complete list. It’s mostly about people I’ve worked with, I’m friends with, and/or whose work I love, but it also includes some people I’ve yet to read but have heard good things about.

Caveat: I’m only including here people I have confirmed, either via open online presence or by talking to the person, are openly Queer: that is, they are “out” on their social media. I have no interest in forcing anyone out of the closet just because I love their work. So if I have any doubt as to whether someone is in fact open about their queerness, I’m going to put them in my “Allies / People Who Write About Queer Characters Even If They’re Not Queer Themselves” follow-up post in a few days.

Also: There’s no particular order to this list, either. I’m not even going to try to do this alphabetically. But I am going to try for categories (although some folk fall into more than one).

Also Also: If you should be on this list and you’re not, you were not left off on purpose! Send me a message and I’ll edit to add. I’m kind of winging this in an effort to actually get something posted, and I’m sure I’m forgetting people!

Writers

Steve Berman – gay short story and novel writer, editor, and publisher. His own work is mostly in the fantasy/horror realms, but Lethe Press publishes authors in pretty much all genres. Twitter: @thesteveberman

‘Nathan Burgoine – gay short story and novel writer, in the science fiction, fantasy / urban fantasy, horror, erotica and romance realms. Twitter: @NathanBurgoine

Richard Bowes – gay short story and novel writer, in the sf/f/h realms. One of the Beloved Elders, in my opinion. Twitter: @rickbowes

Christopher Barzak – gay short story and novel writer, in the sf/f/h realms. Twitter: @CBarzak

Adam Carpenter – gay erotica and crime author.

Ellen Kushner – lesbian short story and novel writer, mostly in the fantasy realm, perhaps best known for her novels and stories of the Tremontaine family and the City they inhabit. Also perhaps well-known for being married to Delia Sherman. Twitter: @EllenKushner

Delia Sherman – lesbian short story and novel writer and editor, mostly in the fantasy realm. Twitter: @deliasherman

Seanan McGuire / Mira Grant – bisexual short story, novel, and comic book writer. As Seanan she writes fantasy, science fiction, and urban fantasy novels and novellas and the on-going Spider-Gwen title at Marvel. As her own evil twin Mira, she writes sf-horror. Twitter: @seananmcguire

Bogi Takacs – agender short story writer, poet, and blogger. Twitter: @bogiperson

Everett Maroon – transgender short story and novel writer and memoirist. Twitter: @EverettMaroon

Alex Bertie – transgender memoirist and YouTube personality. Twitter: @Alex_Bertie

Dane Bauer Hassid / Dane Kuttler – queer poet and local activist.

Jeff Baker – gay short story writer.

Michael Nava – gay crime author. Twitter: @micnavawriter

Lydia Schoch – queer science fiction author. Twitter: @TorontoLydia

Vylar Kaftan – “queer as fuck” science fiction and fantasy author. Twitter: @Vylar_Kaftan

Jean Johnson – bisexual, gender-fluid sf/f author. Twitter: @JeanJAuthor

Peter Dube – gay author and poet.

Adam Burgess – gay non-fiction author and blogger. Twitter: @HeWritesWords

Jerry Wheeler – gay author, editor, and blogger. Twitter: @jw_den

Jeanne Kramer-Smyth — bisexaul author and photographer.

Sarah Pinsker – queer musician and sf/f author. Twitter: @SarahPinsker

K.M. Szpara – queer sf/f short story and novel author. Twitter: @KMSzpara

Lee Thomas --  gay horror author.

Hal Duncan – gay sf/f/h author. Twitter: @Hal_Duncan

Bart Leib and Kay Holt — queer publishers of Crossed Genres. Twitters: @metafrantic @sandykidd

Amara Lynn — Enby queer urban fantasy author. Twitter: @AmaraJLynn

Clarissa C.S. Ryan — queer sf/f author. Twitter: @wintersweet

Jordan L. Hawk — queer non-binary author of fantasy M/M romance. Twitter: @jordanlhawk

Kace Alexander — genderqueer sf/f author. Twitter: @kacealexander

Musicians/Singers

Greyson Chance – gay singer/songwriter (alternative) Twitter: @greysonchance

Ryan Beatty – gay singer/songwriter (pop/hip-hop)

Darren Hayes – gay singer/songwriter (pop)

David Roundsley of Munich Syndrome – gay singer/songwriter (electronica) and memoirist

Levi Kreis – gay singer/songwriter (blues) and Tony Award winner.

Comics Creators

Joe Phillips – writer/artist (House of Morecock, Joe Boys) Twitter: @joephillipsart

Tim Fish --  writer/artist (Cavalcade of Boys) Twitter: @timfishworks

Alex Woolfson --  writer, Artifice, Young Protectors Twitter: @alexwoolfson

Pride Month Reintroduction

Here we are at another Pride Month.

This website is, and always will be, a safe space for anyone who identifies anywhere in the collective realm of “queer.” Whether that identification is based on sexual attraction, romantic attraction, gender identity, or the confluence (or lack thereof) of all three: you are welcome here.

Not that this information isn’t available elsewhere on this website and across my social media, but occasionally it’s good to write a new post reminding people of who I am and what I’m about. So:

Your host and author, Anthony R. Cardno, is:

·         gay

·         cis-gender male (pronouns He, Him, His)

·         of Scottish, Italian and Polish extraction  (second-generation in the US on the Scots (Dad’s) side, and either second- or third-generation for the Pole and Italian (Mom’s) side)

·         non-denominational Christian with an open and accepting spiritual side (but raised Roman Catholic)

I came out in my late twenties. Slowly at first to my close college friends and immediate family, then to high school and childhood friends and extended family and eventually professionally. The response was a lot of “well, I always suspected but didn’t want to rush you,” which somewhat made each subsequent coming-out conversation easier. I was lucky enough to have a ton of love and support, which so many of my peers did not have, and so many folks now coming out still don’t. My process was perhaps easier than may others, but it wasn’t necessarily smooth. Mom told me she was fine with it as long as I didn’t “embarrass her in front of the neighbors” (polite speak for “I don’t care what you do at college, but don’t mention this around our community”); Dad was honest that if I’d come out as a teen his reaction would have been very different and perhaps even emotionally, if not physically, violent. And of course there were the handful of old friends who said they didn’t care “as long as I didn’t hit on them” (Interestingly, that almost always came from the guys I never even vaguely had a crush on in elementary, middle, or high school.).

Coming Out is NOT a one-time deal. It’s an on-going process as new people come into your life or as (thanks to social media) childhood friends come back in touch. And I’d be lying (or at least committing a sin of omission) if I didn’t admit that I do still find it stressful in professional (day-job-related) settings, for whatever reason.

So coming out happened in my late twenties, almost 25 years ago. But like many people, internally I knew (even if I didn’t acknowledge/accept) much earlier. A recent thread on my Facebook page about “the most obscure shows you watched when you were around 10 years old” reminded me that even at that age I had what I now can admit were crushes on actors like David Doremus (from “Nanny and the Professor”), Ike Eisenmann (from the “Witch Mountain” movies), Brandon Cruz (from “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father”), Jack Wild (from “HR Pufinstuf” and “Oliver!”), Tommy Kirk (from a dozen Disney movies), Donny Osmond, and pretty much all of the Brady boys. There were crushes on older guys too, of course … but these are the guys I remember wishing I could be best friends with, have sleepovers with, could just cuddle up with – long before any kind of sexual attraction was evident (and never mind that many of these actors were people I was seeing in re-runs and were thus actually older than me – 10 year old Anthony’s brain didn’t really take that into consideration).

As puberty hit and the sexual attraction component also kicked in, so did embarrassment, anxiety and a fear (thank you, Roman Catholic Church!) that I was inherently evil – or at least not “good.” Those insecurities manifested in several ways. In middle school it came as a tendency to do anything I could to not have to go to school (which my parents viewed as a return of a “habit” I had during my one year in Catholic school in Astoria, NY – but my theories about what was going on there are something for another post, if ever). In high school and for several years thereafter, it manifested as a limited form of self-harm involving scratching my wrists (which I recently posted about on my Instagram).

I stopped physically self-harming a long time ago but I still struggle with depression, insecurity and social anxiety issues, part of which stem from those years of not accepting my sexuality and part of which stem from completely different things.

So naturally as a reader and viewer I tend to seek out the kinds of characters I didn’t see growing up (except as jokes or villains; the subject of a post later this month). As a writer, I don’t intentionally limit all of my characters to those I would have liked to have seen but almost every story I write has a queer character of some kind in it somewhere, and usually more than one. Because we’re not just tokens; we’re a large part of the human community as a whole. As a blogger, I want to support and promote creators who identify as queer or who produce work with queer characters, because we won’t be fully represented at all if we can’t represent ourselves. (I also actively seek out work by creators who aren’t white, in case you’re wondering. Because I want to see work that represents humanity in all its diversity and wonder. But that’s a post for another time as well.)

I love to read, write, and consume pop culture largely in the “speculative fiction” / “genre” realms. I love live theater. I love live sports, too, but it’s very hard to convince me to watch them on televisioin (get me to a game, especially the faster-paced ones like hockey, soccer, basketball, and I’m all in; put it on the television and I’m bored). My sense of humor swings from snarky to puns and back, and if I don’t say something every day that qualifies as a “Dad” joke my nieces and nephews are gravely disappointed. I love my family – the genetic one and the found one.

Today, and every day, I send all my love to my fellow Queers around the world. Wherever/however you identify: gay, lesbian, bi, pan, aro, ace, trans*, non-binary, gender-fluid, questioning or anything I've inadvertently forgotten; whatever your "out" status: publicly, privately, or not at all. You are unique, you are you, and no-one should take that away from you. (Nor should anyone try to force you out if you're not ready or are in an unsafe situation.)

And of course, to my nieces and nephews who identify anywhere in the wide realm of Queer: I love you, every day and always, whether you’ve ever told me you’re queer or not.

Series Saturday: Planet of the Apes TV Show

This is a series about … well, series. I do so love stories that continue across volumes, in whatever form: linked short stories, novels, novellas, television, movies. I’ve already got a list of series I’ve recently read, re-read, watched, or re-watched that I plan to blog about. I might even, down the line, open myself up to letting other people suggest titles I should read/watch and then comment on.

The Planet of the Apes television series aired from September to December, 1974, cancelled mid-season with 14 episodes filmed but only 13 aired (although there seems to be some debate on which episode failed to make it to air). As much of a Planet of the Apes fan as my father was, I’m almost positive we watched these episodes when they originally aired, but being all of 10 years old at the time, my memories are vague; I have much clearer memories of seeing these episodes in the 80s, after they’d been re-cut into five (increasingly horribly named) movies for syndication. I even remember the framing device with Roddy McDowell as an older Galen, which apparently only were used when the movies aired on ABC affiliates on weekday afternoons. (These framing bits are sadly not on the DVD release. Perhaps for the best, as it leaves Virdon and Burke’s ultimate fate as described in the framing bits non-canonical. Not that anyone is likely to revisit this in live-action form…)

I of course followed up my recent re-watch of the original movie franchise with a re-watch of the TV series (and I’m intending to re-watch the Filmation animated series soon-ish). In some ways it was exactly as I remembered it: mostly fun, a bit over-acted, a bit formulaic, and with very little obvious connection to the movies.

The set-up, much like the first two movies in the franchise, is that astronauts Virdon (Ron Harper) and Burke (James Naughton) crash-land on what they think is an Earth-like planet (losing their only other shipmate in the process) where Apes are the ruling class and Humans are basically well-treated slaves with an occasional veneer of autonomy. They figure out pretty quickly that they have actually landed on Earth in the future (something the viewing audience already knew, so why keep the characters in the dark?) Hunted by council president Zaius (Booth Colman) and General Urko (Mark Lenard), they go on the run with sympathetic and inquisitive chimp Galen (Roddy McDowell).  Along the way they teach humans to want freedom, convince some apes (usually chimpanzees like Galen) that the current system is unjust, and have really awkward fight scenes with lots of gorillas.

Characterization is mostly one-dimensional, although the four leads (I include Mark Lenard as he appeared in almost all the episodes filmed) do their best with what they’re given. I’d like to think that if they’d run a full season or longer, the characterizations would have gotten a little deeper – but this was still the early 70s, when each character in an ensemble cast filled a particular function. Virdon is the home-spun leader; Burke is the ladies’ man (although he only gets one one-off unrequited romance, with a blind ape, compared to Virdon’s two with humans); Galen is the inquisitive, naïve one. Booth Colman’s Zaius, similar to Maurice Evans in the first two movies, knows more about the past than he’s willing to admit to anyone (the show of course never addresses whether Colman’s Zaius is an ancestor of Evans’), while Lenard’s Urko falls somewhere between the implied military clearheadedness of James Gregory’s Ursus (in Beneath) and the simpleminded buffoonery of Claude Akins’ Aldo (in Battle) – it really depended on the scriptwriter that week. While there are many actors who return in bit-parts over the run, only John Hoyt (the Star Trek OS doctor before Bones) recurs as the same ape, Prefect Barlow, in two episodes. It is interesting to note that Bobby Porter, who played Caesar’s son in Battle, plays two different ape pre-teens on the TV show. (It’s a shame they didn’t let him play a human in at least one episode.)

Other major differences from the movies: The setting is clearly the northern California coast (with visits to “San Francisco” and “Oakland” ruins, and several very clear, if crude, wall-maps) as opposed to what turned out to be New York / New Jersey in the movies, a shift undoubtedly made because the show was filmed on backlots and in the hills outside Los Angeles. The time is a few centuries before the events of the first two movies but well after the events of Battle for the Planet of the Apes: humans are not completely mute uncivilized pack-animals as seen in the first two movies, but they don’t have near the autonomy implied by the end of Battle. And the majority of the episodes are formulaic in a way the movies never quite were.

That formula was basically: The Trio get comfortable hiding with a human family/community (occasionally a sympathetic ape family as in “The Good Seeds”), something happens to alert a gorilla patrol or local garrison to their presence, there’s a fight or two, and the Trio moves on (usually just ahead of Urko) rather than endanger their new friends. Two episodes (“The Trap” and “The Legacy”) take place in the ruins of human cities that clearly show we’re in the future of Earth, and each involve Urko somehow learning-but-not-learning that Humans used to rule over Apes. “The Legacy” also implies that there are other still-functioning but hidden computers out there that could enable Virdon and Burke to return home. (It’s never clearly stated, but I think one must presume that their mission launched after Taylor’s and Brent’s missions, but before Cornelius, Zira, and Milo arrive in the past; otherwise why would Virdon and Burke be so surprised at the Ape-Human reversal?) But other than those two episodes, the settings for each episode are rural areas usually “a day or more hard ride” from Central City, where Zaius and Urko are headquartered.

More than half of the episodes stick to the formula and eschew both deeper world-building and heavy-handed political commentary. But there are a few episodes that must have felt topical/controversial at the time and still do (although rather heavy-handed in execution). In the final filmed episode, “Up Above The World So High,” a human figures out how to make a working glider and a female chimp decides to use it for terrorist attacks against Zaius’ council regime. In “The Cure,” the Council considers the genocide of a human compound to prevent the spread of a unknown fatal disease while “The Liberator” features a human enclave ready to use gas-bombs to wipe out the apes. “The Interrogation” focuses on the Apes re-learning old human torture techniques, and “The Deception” has the Trio facing off against KKK-like masked ape “dragoons” bent on keeping the “animal” humans down.

There are a lot of recognizable faces (or at least, recognizable names attached to ape make-up) among the guest stars: a pre-Bad New Bears Jackie Earle Haley, a pre-Beastmaster Marc Singer, a very-pre-Hill Street Blues Michael Conrad. The aforementioned John Hoyt is among then-veteran character actors like Royal Dano, Roscoe Lee Browne, Martin E. Brooks and John Ireland and femme fatales Beverly Garland and Sondra Locke.

An additional six scripts were written but never filmed. Interestingly, the original pilot and second episode were written by Rod Serling but rejected and never filmed. Some of these scripts are available online (including the Serlings) but I’ve yet to read them.

The show’s failure is largely blamed on its time-slot competition (popular comedies Sanford & Son and Chico & The Man), but I have to wonder if the show would have been more successful had it been green-lit and aired during the height of the original movie franchise’s popularity as opposed to after that popularity had begun to wane. Then again, had they been filmed concurrently, I doubt Roddy McDowell would have done the show. And I can’t imagine caring as much without his endearing, if sometimes infuriating, Galen at the center of things.

SERIES SATURDAY: The original Planet of the Apes franchise

This is a series about … well, series. I do so love stories that continue across volumes, in whatever form: linked short stories, novels, novellas, television, movies. I’ve already got a list of series I’ve recently read, re-read, watched, or re-watched that I plan to blog about. I might even, down the line, open myself up to letting other people suggest titles I should read/watch and then comment on.

I have no idea which of the original Planet of the Apes movies I saw first.

Given that they were released in theaters between 1968 and 1973, when I was at the tender ages of two through seven, I definitely encountered them on television. In the mid-70s through mid-80s, New York City-area television stations WNYW (Channel 5), WWOR (Channel 9) and WPIX (Channel 11), all then local and not network-affiliated, aired a wonderful weekend mix of genre and genre-adjacent movies: everything from the Apes to Japanese kaiju to wire-fu martial arts to classic Universal monsters to Abbott and Costello and the Bowery Boys. Somewhere in that mix, I encountered the original Planet of the Apes franchise. I may have seen them in release order or haphazardly. I may even have seen episodes of the live-action 1974 television series before any of the original movies, since the TV episodes were chopped and combined in 1981 into five two-hour “movie” presentations (but the TV series is a discussion for a different post).

Whatever order I saw the movies in, I fell immediately in lifelong love with the concept, the campiness, the make-up. And that love has only grown as the franchise has been re-worked and re-launched across movie and print media. (One of my greatest regrets is selling my Marvel Comics Planet of the Apes magazine collection; another is throwing away the Mego Planet of the Apes action figures I played with until they’d be worth nothing on the collector market. Hindsight is 20/20, or something like that.)

I recently re-watched the original five movies in release order, and I still love them. The ape make-up may be unrealistic compared to the motion-capture effects of the newest Apes trilogy, but it has such charm, and such consistency across the franchise (slight differences in the facial structure for chimps, orangutans, and gorillas, less diversity between individuals of a sub-set). I did always find the stratification of clothing (all chimps wear the same color, etc.) a bit less realistic. Why is it that SF (definitely in the 50-60s-70s, and even somewhat now) can imagine complex alien races but not imagine that they might have thriving clothing industries similar to our current day? I wonder if any writer has explored the idea that part of the Apes structured society was a dress code? (I’m not as up on the comics and prose canon-adjacent material released in recent years as I am on the filmed/televised canon.)

The body language of the various ape characters, especially in the first two movies, also fascinates me: the way most of the chimps are more hunch-shouldered and subservient despite being the obviously smartest ones in any room (even the teenager Lucius comes across as smarter, if not less impetuous, than the adult gorillas); the orangutan characters always seem to walk with their heads held high and shoulders wide; the gorillas all move like spacially-unaware linebackers. This changes a little bit in the fourth movie, when all of the apes are subservient and non-verbal, but it’s otherwise consistent.

As a kid, the cold war and racial strife allegories went right over my head. As an adult watching with a slightly more critical eye, they’re obvious without being too ham-fisted in the delivery. I can’t accuse them of being subtle, especially in the fourth and fifth movies, but I also don’t feel like every other line of dialogue is telegraphing the issue to the viewers.

Other things I didn’t notice back then but picked up on now: the fact that Roddy McDowell did not play Cornelius in “Beneath the Planet of the Apes,” the only live-action Apes entry of the 60s-70s that he missed out on; that the timing of Cornelius, Zira and Milo fishing Taylor’s original spacecraft out of the sea it crashed in, getting it working, and getting into orbit just doesn’t add up based on Cornelius, Zira and Lucius’ location in the first half of Beneath (there’s a recent novel that tells this story; I haven’t read it yet but I hope it doesn’t just hand-wave the time component); that Natalie Trundy is the Mark Lenard of the Apes franchise, playing a mutant (in Beneath), a human (in Escape), and a chimp (in Conquest and Battle). (Mark Lenard was the first, and maybe still only, actor to hit a similar trifecta in the Star Trek franchise, playing a Romulan, a Vulcan, and a Klingon) …

And the geography. Oh my god, the geography: at the start of the first film, Taylor’s crew crashes into a large lake in a canyon area. (I don’t know where they filmed it, but it sure looks like the American southwest.) At the end of the film, of course, we get the famous reveal of the Statue of Liberty half-buried in the sand of the ocean as Taylor finds out he’s been on Earth the whole time.  In Beneath, Brent and Nova track Taylor into the underground city, and we see mock-ups of famous NYC landmarks, including Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, where the Omega Bomb resides.  In Battle, we find out that the city Caesar led the rebellion in in Conquest is … New York City? Because Kolp is ready to launch that same Omega bomb… but the city we saw in Conquest and Battle looks absolutely nothing like Manhattan or any of the boroughs. I still can’t, even with my willing suspension of disbelief, figure out how the American northeast changes so drastically between the 1991 setting of Conquest and the 3978 setting of the first film. I’m still not even sure of the distance Taylor and crew travel on foot at the start of the first movie: are we to assume the lake/river they crash in is a transformed Hudson River Valley? That feels too close considering the number of days they seem to travel before the landscape changes to greener and they enter Ape territory. Is it the Delaware? That might be a little more plausible. The Susquehanna or Ohio? I just don’t know. it does occasionally keep me up at night.

The things I did notice, even as a kid?

1) The very clear shift in who the audience was supposed to be rooting for. In the first two movies, we’re clearly meant to root for (if not identify with) misanthropic Taylor and chivalrous Brent, lone speaking humans aided, mostly in secret, by one other non-verbal human (Nova) and at most three chimps (Zira, Cornelius, and their nephew Lucius) working in secret against their own obviously oppressive government and a hidden city of mutants. The third movie isn’t subtle about flipping this dynamic on its head: now we’ve got three chimps (Zira, Cornelius and poor, doomed Milo) trying to escape the clutches of an increasingly-oppressive human government with the help of only three humans working in secret (Dixon, Stephanie and Armando). Conquest is almost a complete flip of the dynamic of the first movie, with our solo hero (Caesar) and his non-verbal female interest (Lisa) being aided by only one sympathetic human (MacDonald). Battle completes the transition by relegating even the friendliest humans to supporting cast status (at best) and centering on ape vs. ape politics and those pesky evil mutants again.

2) Those apes looked nothing like the real chimps, orangutans and gorillas in our world. Even then, I wanted some kind of explanation as to how they evolved. How did chimps become human-sized? How did orangutans and gorillas all become so slim? And how did they all become so uniform even within species? It’s what I now call the “one line of dialogue” rule – if it can be explained in one or two lines of dialogue (and this certainly could have been), then the writers need to make that happen. But obviously, in the original Apes franchise, none of the several movie (or TV series) writers cared enough to postulate some kind of human gene-manipulating interference.

And I think that’s the interesting dichotomy of the original Apes franchise: while it did try to comment on weighty topics of the day (not just the Cold War and race relations, but the treatment of women and human abuse of nature vs. stewardship of it and fears of a threat from outer space wiping us out), it also didn’t really expect to be thought about too deeply, and so some gaping plots holes sit in plain view without a patch-job in sight.

Still: plot holes and weird geography are a part of the original franchise’s charm, and I will never stop loving it. It will stay near the top of my Favorite Movie Franchises list, always.

(Since it’s not a part of a series and thus doesn’t really fit into any of the posts I’m planning, this is probably the place to mention Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes remake/reboot/whatever-you-call-it. I didn’t see it until just last year. I found that it had a lot of the original franchise’s charm in terms of make-up and costumes and plot-holes and that it seemed to be trying to tackle some weightier subjects like the original franchise (militarism in particular, this time). I didn’t hate it as some people did. But I did find the “twist” ending to be gratuitous and unnecessary, almost as if someone (Burton or the studio) thought that in order to make this the start of a new franchise, they had to twist the original twist. And it just didn’t work, on any level. Even as meta-commentary, it fell flat. But I am glad I finally watched it, and I had fun watching Tim Roth and Michael Clarke Duncan chew the scenery.)

Catastrophic Attraction Complex: Book Edition

“Catastrophic Attraction Complex.”

I’m not sure where I first heard this phrase. I’ve done Google searches that only bring up the times I’ve used the phrase in my own blog posts and guest blogs, so I might even have made it up myself. Who knows. What I do know is: it’s the phrase I use to describe those attractions that are so intense, immediate and pervasive that common sense and logic fly out the window. We all have them, but they’re different for everyone. Usually when I refer to my Catastrophic Attraction Complex, I’m about to talk about my attraction to men (and occasionally, yes, women) with red hair, from the strawberriest of strawberry blonds to the most merlot of wine-dark gingers. In fact, a look back at a 2012 guest blog about My Literary Crushes on Roofbeam Reader’s site shows a preponderance of redheads. But that’s a whole different post from today’s topic, which is….

My Catastrophic Attraction Complex to Matching Book Cover Designs.

I’m sure at least some of my fellow bibliophiles will be able to empathize with me here.

Now, I’m not talking about books by the same author in the same series that have consistent cover design elements (like every volume of the Dresden Files having Harry, with hat and staff, in a dramatic pose above or below the book’s two-word title, or Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael books all having a nicely-painted medieval dead body in a box under the book’s title). It’s a given that readers of such series want all the titles in said series to match, and get very upset when, say, the publisher decides to start issuing the series in hardcover after years of issuing it only in paperback.

I’m also not talking about an author’s non-series books all being reissued with common cover design elements (as seems to happen every few years with the works of Stephen King). If I own most of the author’s non-series works in earlier editions, I’m usually not interested in buying newer editions just to get the covers to match. (Now, if I don’t already own most of those works, sure – a few years ago Lawrence Block brought some of his long-out-of-print crime fiction out as LB’s Crime Classics, with a very simple matching cover design, and I ate that up. Likewise if the re-issues have new material added, as when Titan Books re-issued a bunch of Philip Jose Farmer books with matching cover designs and new forewords and afterwords by Farmer scholars.)

What I’m talking about primarily is publishers bringing out themed sets of books by different authors all with the same front, spine, and back cover design. (I recently asked the hive-mind on Twitter if there’s an industry-specific term for this other than “trade dress,” and so far the response seems to be “no,” but I look forward to hearing if there is one.)

I fall, and fall hard, almost every time.

The most obvious examples in my personal library right now are the ever-enlarging collection of slipcased hardcovers from The Library of America, which I started purchasing intermittently several decades ago and which I may never successfully complete as a collection, and several bookshelves worth of the complete-to-date run of titles from Hard Case Crime with their matching spine logos and painted retro-crime-pulp covers (there is still hope, however dwindling, that I will someday read every HCC title; at least I’m keeping up with current releases).

And this doesn’t include the shelf of Lawrence Block HCC titles!

My friend Dave (who enables and encourages my weird “must have them all” book-buying habits) can tell you all about my frantic NYC bookstore searches to find all the volumes in HiLo Books’ “Radium Age of Science Fiction” after discovering all but TWO of the series in a book store in Chelsea Market. Yes, reader, you know me well – I bought them all, then spent months tracking down the remaining two. (My obsession with buying books in actual book stores as opposed to ordering online is the topic of a whole different post.) Something similar happened upon discovery of Knopf Doubleday’s “Vintage Movie Classics” series, although I didn’t find the majority of those in one store to start with.

When I first started traveling the country for my full-time job twelve years ago, I also started haunting used-book stores. Mostly to fill in or rebuild paperback series I’d lost over the year (Perry Rhodan, Doc Savage, Tarzan, and the like). But then I started seeing these Wordsworth Editions anthologies of supernatural stories, all with sleek black/grey trade dress covers.  Now I have a bookshelf of them, although I’m pretty sure I’ve a long way to go to have all of them.

About a year ago, I found Melville House’s reissue of George Eliot’s “The Lifted Veil” in a bookstore in Newark Airport, and found it was part of their “The Art of the Novella” line, all with matching cover designs. Yep, I’m a subscriber now.

I try to resist. I really do. I asked myself recently, “Do I really need to buy the complete Otto Penzler “American Mystery Classics” re-issue series when I have so many of the titles in dog-eared paperbacks I found in used-book stores over the years?”  The answer seems to be “Yes,” because I have a bookshelf with the full run Penzler has issued to date. (And it looks like a third series will be issued in Fall, 2019!)

Okay, the cover design changes from Set 1 to Set 2. Sue me.

There are, I think, far worse Catastrophic Attraction Complexes to have. And of my two, it’s probably better that this is the one I act uncontrollably and impulsively on (I may be catastrophically attracted to redheads, but that usually manifests as an inability to complete simple sentences around them; no rash impulses getting out of hand there!). Of course, the friends who have helped me move house in the past few years may not agree with this assessment!

2018 Holiday Poem

‘Tis The Season…

To set the table and lay the feast

However plentiful or meager –

The intent matters more than the amount

To welcome those who bless us with their presence

However long or short the stay –

The quality matters more than the span

To celebrate the good and acknowledge the bad

As they affect us in equal measure –

What matters is how we grow from them

So lay out the cookies and milk for Santa with cheer,

And fruit and nuts for Dasher and the reindeer;

Lay out bread and water for the holy husband, mother and child,

And wine and cheese for the roaming revelers wild;

Lay out fishes and meat for the loved ones living,

Leave equal amounts for the dear departed, midnight-visiting.

Light a candle in the window,

Leave a seat at hearth or table,

For the homeless wanderer or

Neighbor in need, as far as you’re able.

“For whatever you do for the least of these,

You do for me.”

May the light and love of the season bring you

Love, Hope, Peace and Prosperity.

MERRY CHRISTMAS,

HAPPY HANUKKAH,

JOYOUS SOLSTICE,

AND A PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR!

GUEST POST: Changing The Grade

Today's post is by guest blogger Jonathan Cornue.

So friend Anthony says to me, “Congratulations on your new book!  Would you write something for my blog?”

“Sure!” says I, because I am a twit who struggles to recognize his limitations.

Two days later I think to myself, “How do I write a piece about my education-focused, non-fiction book in a manner that will be interesting to Anthony’s typical audience, which is primarily fiction focused?” 

Four weeks after that, I think I have an answer. 

Let me tell you some very short stories that most people, having at least attended school, can relate to.

A high school English teacher looks at an on-demand essay and gives it a 94.  Her colleague across the hall looks at the same essay and gives it an 86.  Another teacher in a neighboring district gives the same essay a 72.

A middle school mathematics teacher is told that he must assign homework, as district policy states that homework will account for 20% of a student’s grade.

A third grade teacher sees that a student with an IEP has placed significant effort into a project, and even though the student does not have a full grasp of the materials, she bumps his grade up to reward him for his hard work.

A difficult student does little work over the course of a marking period.  She earns a 32, but district policy states that the teacher must give her a 50.  Some teachers complain about this policy.

An elementary teacher assigns a project to be completed at home.  The grades on the project clearly delineate student income.

A middle school teacher assigns a project in class.  Students are then graded not only on the project, but on how well they present their material to the rest of the class.  They have never been taught presentation skills.

A wonderful, driven, and kind young lady is placed in remediation courses during her first year of college due in large part to her application essay, which is disjointed and poorly written.  Her high school report card shows that she received straight A’s in English.

A teacher is surprised by a student’s low unit assessment grade, as he aced all of his homework assignments.  What she doesn’t know is that he copied the assignments during “homework club” at the lunch table.

A parent requests a different fifth grade teacher for her child because he is an “easier grader,” and she feels that her child needs his confidence boosted.

A district moves to a four-point standards based grading system over the summer.  Teachers are not given time during the school year to ensure that everyone sees a “3” the same way.

A high school student does his homework in an abandoned car at the edge of his parents’ property because his father thinks that he has had enough of an education and should go get a job.  He will not allow school books into the house.

An elementary student’s report card indicates that he needs to place “more effort” into his work in art class.

These are stories found in the reality of the American education system, and every one of them is true.  I have seen them. 

Here are a few things everyone should know about grading:

·         A grading system should not be based on 100 point scale that gives students 64 chances to fail and 36 chances to succeed. 

·         A grading system should not average a learning process, but identify what was learned. 

·         A grading system should be based on the standards, and those should be evaluated separately, because “Social Studies – 72” does not tell a student how she can improve.

You should also know that change is hard, and systemic change is even harder, so be patient with your school districts if they haven’t gotten there yet.  At the same time, feel free to ask them about standards-based grading and their grading policies in general!

There is more of course.  Homework and assignments and how we evaluate group work and the like, but for that you should probably read the book.  (Oh yeah, it’s called Changing the Grade:  A Step-by-Step Guide to Grading for Student Growth.)  Or you can send me an email – jcornue@moboces.org – I am always happy to discuss this further!

Jonathan Cornue is a staff and curriculum development specialist for the Madison-Oneida Board of Cooperative Educational Services (MO BOCES). He creates and presents workshops on, among other topics, brain-based learning and rubric development. Jonathan has served on the board of the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum and as a member of the New York State Amistad Commission and the New York Statewide Professional Development Group. He presented his thoughts on grading changes at the 2015 ASCD conference in Houston.

WORLD-DELVING: Seanan McGuire’s “Incryptid” Short Fiction

Delve: verb (used without object), delved, delving.

1.       to carry on intensive and thorough research for data, information, or the like; investigate:

to delve into the issue of prison reform.

2.       Archaic. to dig, as with a spade.

verb (used with object), delved, delving.

3. Archaic. to dig; excavate.

Synonyms: research, inquire, probe, examine, explore.

(from dictionary.com)

I admit it: I am fascinated by Seanan McGuire’s productivity and creativity. I cannot imagine how she keeps track of the myriad worlds she’s created under her own name and her Mira Grant pseudonym. By my count, she’s got 6 current on-going series (novel series October Daye, Incryptid, Newsflesh, Wayward Children, and the “Deep” books; and the short story series featuring The Fighting Pumpkins cheerleading squad) and several that seem to be on hiatus but could return at any moment (Parasitology, Velveteen, Indexing). They are a marvelously disparate group of worlds featuring an endlessly diverse group of characters. Seanan McGuire builds worlds that readers love to become immersed in. But she doesn’t just build worlds to hang series of novels on – she delves those worlds, too.

“World-delving” is a term I may or may not have made up. I haven’t seen anyone else use it, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been used. Regardless, it’s the perfect word for what Seanan McGuire does in the short stories she writes to accompany her on-going novel series. She’s written short stories and novellas (and even, I believe, a poem/song or two) to dig deeper into the worlds of October Daye, Newflesh, and Incryptid. These stories occasionally take place in the “present” of the parent series, filling in events between novels (and usually featuring favorite supporting characters). But more often, they probe and explicate the past events that shaped the world the current characters live in.

Take world of Incryptid as an example. The novels (six so far, with #7, “Tricks For Free,” due in bookstores next week) give us the adventures of the Price siblings (Verity, Alexander, and Antimony) as they work in secret to protect the cryptid populations of North America from extermination by the Covenant of Saint George – a European-based secret society the Price kids’ grandparents and great-grandparents split from, on pain of death, in the early 20th century. While the novels throw in occasional references to that past, the majority of the plots and sub-plots and even sub-sub-plots are about the here-and-now of the Price kids’ lives (romance included).

There are short stories available filling in events between novels (mostly featuring Verity or her cousins) or events shortly before the novels begin (most focusing on Antimony’s roller-derby career), but fully half of the Incryptid stories McGuire has published for free on her website explore the Price family’s history. These stories deepen the reader’s understanding of the history that affects every one of the modern Price kids (whether Verity and her siblings and cousins are aware of the influence or not), as well as the reader’s understanding of the North American cryptid population the family strives to protect.

The first arc of stories, now seemingly complete, runs from 1928 to 1945 and gives us the love story of Jonathan Healy and Frances Brown (the Price kids’ great-grand-parents). Johnny is the only child that Alexander and Enid Healy were allowed to take with them when they split from the Covenant of St. George; he’s grown up in hiding and learning what it means to protect rather than destroy cryptids. On one such mission out west, he meets the fascinating and frustrating Frances Brown, nick-named “The Flower of Arizona, The Star of New Mexico.” Over the course of fourteen stories (each 20-28 pages in length, all but two available for free on McGuire’s website), we see how timid, uptight Johnny finally lets his guard down and brings new blood into the Healy family fold. We experience, in short bursts, not the entirety of Johnny and Fran’s life together but rather the highlights – the grand love story of a quiet man and bold woman that will reverberate through to those same great-grand-children. And if you’ve read the novels, you know that despite their outward demeanor, the Price kids all want to find lasting love like that of their grand- and great-grand-parents. Through Johnny and Fran’s cross-country trek home to meet his parents, we also get to know cryptid families that will play a role in their great-grand-children’s lives, to examine how those relationships were formed and firmed, in particular the folks who inhabit the traveling circus Fran was a part of when she and Johnny met. But these stories aren’t just about romance and building friendships: the shadow of the Covenant of St. George falls over everything the Healys experience, regardless of the Covenant’s physical presence. The fear of discovery, of their carefully-built world coming apart because of one slight slip in awareness, is palpable throughout – and that’s disregarding the very real dangers Johnny and Fran encounter from cryptids who don’t want their help or don’t believe they should have to stay hidden from humans any longer.

The second world-delving arc probes the next generation, commencing from 1954: Johnny and Fran’s headstrong, willful, adventure-seeking daughter Alice and her eventual husband Thomas Price (this is not a spoiler, as one of the sub-sub-plots of the novels is Alice’s interdimensional search for her missing husband). While the tension of the earlier arc involved the Healy’s (and particularly Johnny’s) willingness to let someone completely unknown in, the tension of this arc (three stories in, so far, all free on the site) sits firmly in the realm of “what happens when the enemy moves in next door, but doesn’t seem so bad?” Thomas is being tested by the Covenant, punished for recent failures, and the Healys have every right to be concerned he’s about to bring the wrath of the Covenant down on them, no matter how much he may profess otherwise. Again, the threat of the Covenant is clear and present, even if they never make an appearance. And again, through headstrong Alice and quiet, bookish Thomas, we see opposites attract, and we get to experience more of the Michigan-area cryptid community that will play roles in the adventures of Verity, Alexander, Antimony and their cousins. They say “the past is prologue,” and in these short story arcs, Seanan McGuire takes that adage to heart. She excavates here the nuggets of wisdom and experience that have been handed down to the present-day carriers of the Price-Healy banner.

For readers of the novels, these stories are world-delving, deepening our knowledge of the family history and world around them. But I don’t want to drive potential new readers away from a great free opportunity to dip their toes into the world of Incryptid. These short stories work as well as introduction as they do explication. Someone completely unfamiliar with the Incryptid novels could read these short story arcs and not feel like a clueless outsider dumped into a world the author presumes the reader is familiar with. McGuire peppers the stories with everything you need to know to understand the world and time these characters exist in; there are no references to what their grand/great-grand-kids will experience in the novels. For folks new to McGuire’s Incryptid world, these stories are world-introducing. They work on expertly on both levels.

Each story in each arc is complete unto itself and vital information is repeated from story to story. But the arcs also have a beginning, middle, and end. The Johnny-and-Fran sequence, essentially complete unless McGuire decides to go back and add more installments later, really needs to be collected in print form (Subterranean Press, I’m looking at you). It works very well as a mosaic novel of inter-connected short stories.

If you’re not familiar with the Incryptid novels and want to get a sense of the world, I recommend hoping over to Seanan McGuire’s website and clicking the sidebar menu for Incryptid. You’ll find links to descriptions of the novels, as well as to the page for all of the short stories. (Fair warning, though: events of the novels will be spoiled if you read the Verity-and-Dominic  or Sarah-and-Arthur stories on the page.) If you’re already familiar with the Incryptid novels but somehow didn’t know there were more world-delving short stories out there … well, now you know.