You’ll Probably Ignore Me Because I’m An Evil Straight White Dude, But…

Dear Internets,

Please do me a favor. If you ever find yourself speaking or typing words like the ones above? Shut up and walk away.

Cat Valente wrote a powerful post about Gender and the Fallout Over Christopher Priest, comparing the responses Priest received with the much more vicious, hateful threats and attacks women receive for similar posts.

Naturally, one of the commenters jumped in with, “I’ll probably get vilified for saying this, but I’m a guy…” Just in case you missed the point, he added, “Unfortunately, I’m a guy, and so far as I can tell, therefore I’m evil.”

I’ve seen this preemptive crap a lot lately. Look dude – it’s not that you’re a guy. It’s not that you’re white or straight or whatever. It’s that you’re being an dumbass and a coward.

A dumbass because nobody is saying anything about guys all being evil! Go read Valente’s post and show me where she says men are evil. Show me where anyone in the comments says it. Take your time, I’ve got all day. Nobody said it, nobody suggested it, and if you really believe that’s what’s going on, then I have very little hope for you, but I’d be happy to recommend some remedial reading courses.

A coward because in most cases, I suspect you know perfectly well that nobody’s saying that. You don’t actually believe Valente is suggesting all men are evil. You’re saying it to protect your ego. Because by preemptively writing crap like, “I know you’re all going to dogpile me for being male,” you’ve given yourself an excuse. Everyone who points out that your argument is full of crap isn’t doing it because you’re an ignorant, misinformed, condescending jackass. They’re just doing it because you’re a guy.

Bullshit.

Let me break it down as simply as possible.

1) Blogger writes a post pointing out the inequality in how men and women are treated online. She gives multiple examples of women who receive threats of rape and death, where men receive far less viciousness.

2) Random dude reads this post and immediately feels defensive and attacked as a man.

Why is that, I wonder? Is it because harassing and abusing women is, in your opinion, part of being a man? Is it because you’ve personally done things like this and you dislike being called on it? What is it that makes you read this as a personal attack on your gender?

Because you know what? If you haven’t done these things, then it’s not about you! And if you have, then it’s not about you being a guy; it’s about you being an asshole.

Like I said, it’s not just one commenter. It’s one person after another pulling out this same rhetorical garbage, and it’s tiresome.

Enough from me. Go read Valente’s post, if you haven’t already. I’d also recommend Seanan McGuire’s follow-up thoughts about gender and literature.

Harry Potter, Reviewed by Jackson (Age 7)

For months, we’ve been reading the Harry Potter books to our kids every night before bed. They get through a book, and then they watch the movie. (And then they talk about all the things that got left out or changed.)

My son Jackson is particularly into Harry Potter right now. He dressed up as Harry Potter for Halloween, had a Harry Potter themed birthday party, and recently created a book poster about Harry Potter for a school project. He also routinely casts spells around the house. (We’ve learned to use this to our advantage when we want him to come here. “Accio Jackson” works great.”)

They’ve finished the first six books/movies and are starting number seven, and I figured I’d ask him about his thoughts so far. What follows is all his words, with any comments from me in parentheses.

What are the Harry Potter books about?

It’s about Harry, Ron and Hermione trying to kill Voldemort. Voldemort is the bad guy. But Harry does need some help from Ron and Hermione.

What’s your favorite Harry Potter book?

The Sorcerer’s Stone, because it’s the very first one. That’s the most exciting book. And because the only part that’s scary is the last part.

You don’t like the scary parts?

Well, I kind of do and I kind of don’t. In most of the scary parts, Harry’s battling Voldemort or one of the Death-Eaters. It’s scary and exciting. But sometimes some of the good guys die, and I don’t like that.

What was your least favorite book?

I think it was the fourth book, because the editor didn’t do much! (This answer makes me laugh, but it’s possible he might have picked up this particular opinion from me and my wife…)

Who is your favorite character?

Harry Potter! (To truly appreciate this answer, you’d have to imagine the “Duh, Dad!” tone and expression.)

What do you think about the romance, like Ron and Hermione, or Harry and Ginny?

::Laughs:: I like them. Just because.

Which is better, the books or the movies?

The books. Because they got the idea for the movies from the books. Plus, in the movies, sometimes they fast forwarded through a bunch of parts, like in the third movie they fast forwarded through almost all of it! Like one minute you’re watching Harry, Ron, and Hermione and then poof! They find out that Serious, Pettigrew, and James are animaguses!

(I love this answer!)

What do you think about Snape?

I don’t like him! He killed Dumbledore! (I’m very interested to see what the kids think by the end of book seven.)

Who’s your favorite character who isn’t Harry Potter?

Ron, because he was Harry’s first friend.

What would you do if you were a wizard?

I’d probably decide to be an auror and fight Death-Eaters!

Who do you think should read these books?

Everybody!

What is it about these books that everyone likes so much?

Because there’s a bunch of magic. Even if something is a mile away, just point your wand in the right direction and say Accio, and it comes to you. Unless it’s protected.

Buy My Book

Buy My Book
by Jim C. Hines
(To the tune of “Be Our Guest,” with apologies to Disney)

Congratulations to you, brand new author,
on the publication of your masterpiece.
And now I invite you to stop, step back, and listen
as readers throughout the world beg you: Please don’t be…
That Guy.

Buy my book!
Buy my book!
Just a dollar on your Nook!
Click the banner large and flashing please.
Oh, won’t you take a look?
It has twists!
It has turns!
(True, my prose makes eyeballs burn…)
Try one chapter.
You’ll be hooked!
(Though my plot is undercooked.)
Wait don’t leave, please don’t go,
It has wizards, don’t you know?
Sparkling wizards fighting in the Famine Games!
Won’t you just read the prologue?
Or the praise on my blog?
Buy my book,
Buy my book,
Buy my book!

When I go
to a con,
don’t care what the panel’s on.
I digress and push my book until
the topic’s long foregone.
Afterward,
off I zoom!
I’ll be in the dealer’s room.
Stalking everyone who passes,
selling my book to the masses!
“Don’t read her. Don’t buy that.
This book here is where it’s at!”
And I’ll follow you all day
to wear you down.
Come on and grab your cash
I’m better than that trash,
so buy my book.
You look shook.
Just relax and take a look.
Buy my book!
Buy my book!
Buy my book!

Life is oh so stressful,
When I’m feeling unsuccessful,
As I wait for fame and glory. It’s my due!
Where are my movie deals and fawning groupies?
When will all my writing dreams come true?
Five years I’ve been shilling,
pushing books at the unwilling.
I won’t stop until I’ve sold this book to you.
Every night I dream about the future.
I’ll be rich and famous.
Buy my book, you ignoramus!

Buy my book!
Buy my book!
I wrote such a thrilling hook.
Just peruse all these reviews.
You can’t refuse to take a look.
One from Mom.
Twelve from me.
(From my sock puppets, you see.)
Just ignore the one-star haters.
Jealous writers. My book’s greater!
Copy, paste, and repost.
Normally I hate to boast,
but I’ll spread the word across the Internet!
And when you shout “No spam!”
I’ll just repost again,
So buy my book!
Buy my book!
Buy my book!

Buy my book!
Buy my book!
Would you please just take a look?
I can’t sleep until my sales rankings go up
by hook or crook.
I’m obsessed,
yes it’s true,
with selling my book to you.
And you know I’ll just keep trying
’til you break down and start buying.
I won’t leave,
I won’t stop,
’til you call the nearest cop.
Then I’ll thrust at you my homemade business card.
So if you enjoy reading,
then to you I’m pleading,
Buy my book!
Buy my book!
Buy my book!
Please, buy my book!

New Collection: Sister of the Hedge and Other Stories

I spent the weekend working on a new e-book collection titled Sister of the Hedge and Other Stories. Like Kitemaster and Goblin Tales, this one will be $2.99, and will be available on as many platforms as I can get it.

I have a little work left to do, but I’m hoping to post it for sale by the end of April. (To forestall any questions about why it’s not on Amazon yet.)

The stories are:

  • Sister of the Hedge
  • In the Line of Duty
  • Heart of Ash
  • Bloodlines
  • Images of Death
  • Ours to Fight For

“Sister of the Hedge” is one of my first stories about the Sleeping Beauty myth, and while it’s not canonical to the Princess books, readers will recognize a lot of the ideas. “Heart of Ash” is the story of a dryad, one with striking similarities to a character from Libriomancer (though again, this isn’t a canonical prequel).

Overall, these are some of my more serious stories. Each one includes an author’s note at the end. Author notes may or may not be serious.

Jenn Reese at Tiger Bright Studios helped me put the cover together. I’ve made some tweaks based on feedback I received on Facebook, but I’d love to hear what folks here think of it.

In Defense of Christopher Priest

This week’s genrefluffle is apparently Christopher Priest’s scathing condemnation of the 2012 Clarke Award shortlist. At first I was planning to stay out of this one, on account of I don’t care. Also, others have already responded, including folks like John Scalzi, Cat Valente, Jeff VanderMeer, and Charlie Stross. Stross is particularly wonderful here, by the way, and I hereby vow to respond to all my future haters in T-shirt form.

Hating on awards is nothing new, nor is mocking those who get a little too carried away with their hating. And Priest’s post went up on the 28th. In Internet time, it’s ancient history. What possible reason could I have to jump in and help beat this particular dead horse?

Well that’s the difference between you and me, my friend. When I look at this, I don’t see a dead horse. I see a delightful horse-shaped pinata full of– Well, it would probably be full of maggots and bloated organs, which is … yeah, that’s just gross. Okay, I didn’t really think this metaphor through.

But I’m gonna jump in anyway, and just to make it a challenge, I’m going to do my best to defend Mister Priest. And I’m doing this despite the fact that I’ve read ALMOST NONE OF THE BOOKS ON THE SHORTLIST!

First and foremost, “Have we lived and fought in vain?” is awesome. I love this rhetorical flourish, and I do think he makes a good point about some science fiction being stuck in the past. I’ve been to conventions obsessed with old dead white men, and I’ve hung out with the fans who don’t seem to recognize that there exist books published after 1960. So he’s got a point here. But even if you disagree, let’s still show some respect for the flourish, people!

Of Charles Stross, Priest writes:

Stross writes like an internet puppy: energetically, egotistically, sometimes amusingly, sometimes affectingly, but always irritatingly, and goes on being energetic and egotistical and amusing for far too long. You wait nervously for the unattractive exhaustion which will lead to a piss-soaked carpet.

Little known fact: When I first met Charlie Stross, he licked my hand, humped my leg, then ran off to chew on my jacket. So I find this characterization utterly appropriate. Unless that leg-humping thing was all part of a sugar-induced hallucination… I remember Cory Doctorow being there too. He was dressed up like Catwoman and screaming, “Copyright stole my girlfriend in 6th grade! I swore I would have my revenge!” Then he swelled up like a blueberry.

Upon further consideration, strike that last paragraph. Let’s move on to the fact that China Mieville has won the award three years running, and could now win it for a fourth time.

I do think there comes a time when, if you keep giving an award to the same person year after year, it starts to lose meaning. Unfortunately, I see no way of remedying this problem, because China Mieville is TOO DAMN SEXY. Imagine those poor judges, trying so hard to select books based on merit, all the while imagining Mieville’s smoldering good looks…

In all seriousness, two of Priest’s complaints appear to boil down to the fact that the works on this year’s shortlist are rooted in the past and/or are simply competent, but not excellent.

In general, I think these are great guidelines for an award. I enjoy “comfort books,” lighter, plot-driven stories with plenty of action and fun and rompiness, but I wouldn’t necessarily consider them award-worthy. When I think of stories that deserve special recognition, I think of stories that bring something new, that go beyond what’s been done before, and do so with excellence.

Now you could argue that “excellence” is all subjective, and that it’s all just a matter of taste. You could do that, but it would be dumb. If you think quality is purely subjective, go read slush for any magazine or publisher, and do not return until you’ve seen the error of your ways.

Also, one book apparently has horse puns. To hell with that crap!

Now like I said, I haven’t read most of these books, but when has lack of information ever stopped someone from talking on the internet? But the fact is, Priest is well-read, and lays out some arguments as for why other books were more worthy of recognition. That alone puts him ahead of a lot of internet rants, and while you might disagree with him, I don’t see a problem with having the argument.

Of course, he goes on to say the awards should be cancelled this year, and that they should FIRE ALL THE JUDGES! He also wants the award renamed The Christopher Priest Award for Books that Don’t Suck.[1. Not intended to be a factual statement.]

Some people might say this is where Priest crosses the line from cranky rant to cartoonish supervillainy, but I disagree. Lots of people complain on the internet; far fewer offer concrete suggestions. You’ve got to give him props for offering an action plan.

My only complaint is that he didn’t go far enough. Priest should have made an excellence-themed costume and kidnapped the Clarke judges, along with the prize money and trophy. (I’m assuming there’s a trophy? I told you, I’m utterly ignorant here.) Then, from the security of his underwater volcano base, he could have broadcast his ultimatum to the SF/F world! SFWA would dispatch the crack team of Seanan McGuire and Mary Robinette Kowal to rescue the judges. Seanan’s trained scuba-diving ninja velociraptors would take out Priest’s laser-wielding team of squid, while Mary incapacitated the human guards using her extreme puppetry skills, all leading to a final confrontation involving a malfunctioning cyborg Stephenie Meyer.

And if that’s not deserving of an award, I don’t know what is.

In conclusion, I probably shouldn’t write blog posts while overtired.

—

Promoting ALL THE THINGS!

I try not to go overboard with promotion here. I’ll mention my own stuff, but I don’t want to turn the blog into an infomercial. And while I like to share good books, promote friends, or just point people to projects I think are cool and should be supported, there’s just too darn much going on to capture it all.

So this is my attempt to catch up on some of those things. Comments are open to talk about these or other books/projects I’ve missed that you want to promote.

#

Elizabeth Bear’s fantasy novel Range of Ghosts [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] came out this week. I enjoyed this one, and reviewed it here.

Michael M. Jones is doing a Kickstarter project for Scheherazade’s Facade: Fantastical Tales of Gender Bending, Cross-Dressing, and Transformation. He’s already raised the $5000 he needs for the anthology, but is keeping the fundraiser open to see if he can do a second volume.

Juliet E. McKenna is trying her hand at self-publishing, and has released an e-book collection titled A Few Further Tales of Einarinn.

John Scalzi’s book Fuzzy Nation came out in paperback this week. (He’s also got a preview of his novel Redshirts up at Tor.com.)

Laura Anne Gilman is doing a Kickstarter for “Miles to Go” and “Promises to Keep,” two new Cosa Nostradamus novellas.

Tales of the Emerald Serpent is another Kickstarter project. This one is a shared-world anthology, with authors like Lynn Flewelling, Harry Connolly, Juliet McKenna, Martha Wells, Robert Mancebo, and Julie Czerneda.

Bradley P. Beaulieu’s e-book The Winds of Khalakovo is currently available for free on Amazon.

Seanan McGuire launched a new series this month with Discount Armageddon [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy]. Have I mentioned that one already? I can’t even remember anymore. Haven’t read it yet, but I heard Seanan read the first chapter, and it sounds like a lot of fun.

Stacia Kane’s new Downside novel Sacrificial Magic [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] just came out too. I reviewed the first one in this series here.

Finally, and perhaps most randomly, Charlie Stross is selling Internet Puppy T-shirts. (This is in response to Christopher Priest’s post here.)

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So, what all am I forgetting? 🙂

Online Self-Defense

On Monday, I was called an antisemitic whore. Yesterday, I was told twice to go f*** myself. It’s turning into an eventful week, and I can’t wait to see what today brings.

I’ve written before about trying to apply Sanchin-Ryu (karate) to other areas of my life, particularly my writing. Some of my interactions this month have gotten me thinking about how those principles of self-defense might apply online.

Take yesterday as an example. Over on Twitter, I posted, “Dear white folks trying to defend, justify, or minimize the shooting of an unarmed black kid. Please just shut the hell up already.”

I knew perfectly well that this will piss some people off. (I’m amazed I haven’t yet been accused of censoring or hating free speech.) “Please shut the hell up” is an aggressive statement, and given the public nature of the internet and the number of people following me online, I know some will get angry and tell me to go f*** myself. The question is what I do next.

Walk away. It is really hard to walk away from someone being wrong on the internet. It’s hard to recognize that I have a choice about whether to give someone my time and energy. I’ve only got so much; why should I spend it on this clown?

There’s a part of me that wants to DEFEAT ALL THE OPPONENTS, but that’s just ego:

“Hines, you’re nothing but a punk, and I should kick your ass!”

“Avast, random internet person! You smell like goblin farts, and I shall pwn you like Éowyn pwned the Witch-king of Angmar!”[1. Yeah, I really need to work on my trash talk. But at least I’m using pwned correctly!]

What’s the point? Is my ego so insecure that I can’t tolerate one person hating on me? If so, I probably ought to get out of the writing biz. Or am I worried my readers will see this person’s Frothing Tweets of Hines-Hate and say, “By the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s meaty balls, he’s right! Jim C. Hines is a punk with a highly kickable ass! I bite my thumbs at him, and shall never read his books again!”

If the only reason to engage is to soothe my injured ego, then I need to walk away. If I have so little faith in my friends and readers, then that’s my problem, one I have to work on.

But sometimes walking away doesn’t work. Sometimes people bring the fight to you, whether it’s a bully who follows you after school or a troll who comes to your site to attack you and others.

Everything begins with stance and breathing. If someone hits me, I can’t strike back effectively until I regain my balance. If I try, I’m going to end up flailing around like a Muppet gone wild.

In a real fight, I’ll have little time to take a breath, settle into a stance, and take control of the situation. I train so that this will become automatic. Online, I usually have more time to regain my balance. The trick — the thing I always struggle with — is remembering to take that time, to just breathe and get past the initial HULK SMASH adrenaline rush.

Don’t react. Act. Monday night, I was working with a sensei who talked about controlling the pace of a fight by deliberately slowing your strikes. The opponent will follow suit to match your speed, and you can start to speed the other person up or slow them down with your own actions.

If I swear and yell and go ALL-CAPS on someone just because that’s how they wrote to me, then they’re controlling the interaction. The hell with that. If I choose to respond in kind, that’s one thing. But I’ve also had success online by responding in different ways, at which point the other person changes their replies to match mine. Suddenly I’m controlling the interaction and determining how things will go.

It’s hard. When someone punches me, I want to punch back twice as hard. But I think back to another sensei describing an interaction where the other person threw the first punch. The sensei howled, “I think you broke my ribs!” and hobbled away, hamming up his injury for the whole crowd.

He was fine. He knew how to take a punch. He could have broken his opponent into bite-sized snacks. But he didn’t have to. Instead, he took his opponent’s mental balance and ended the fight just like that.

#

Confronting is not the same as fighting. Speaking out is a form of confrontation, and I think it’s important. And sometimes, confrontation does lead to fighting. But if that happens, I want it to be my choice, and I want to make that choice for (in my opinion) the right reasons.

If someone is abusive to me or others on my blog, I’ll step in to end that behavior. If a stranger talks crap at or about me on Twitter, I need to recognize that they’re probably not worth my time or energy.

These are all things I’m struggling with, and posting these ideas  doesn’t mean I’ve learned to live them yet.

Thoughts and comments are welcome, as usual.

—

My Birthday Present

I’ve put aspects of myself into characters before. Jig’s nearsightedness and his trouble getting picked on by the bigger goblins. Danielle’s interactions with her son. Hephyra’s relationship with her three-legged cat.

Until now, I’ve never had it work the other way.

Isaac, from Libriomancer, is a SF/F geek. Like many of us, he’s fascinated by space travel and the planets and so on. He has an autographed space shuttle print in his office. While it’s not in the first book, he most certainly owns his own telescope or three, and has spent many a clear night in the U.P. staring up at the planets and the stars.

A month or so back, I decided that sounded pretty darn cool. This past weekend, I received my early birthday present from my parents, my in-laws, and my wife: an Orion 8″ Dobsonian telescope.

The last time I looked through a telescope was over a decade ago, at a friend’s place in Nevada. Before that, I remember a school trip to Paris … we went up to the top of the Eiffel Tower at night, and I used the viewing binoculars up top to look at the moon. It was amazing.

Naturally, it was raining the day my birthday present arrived (several weeks early, but I’m not complaining!) I used that night to assemble the base and get it all put together. I adjusted a mirror to get it focused. And then … I waited.

Saturday was cloudy and rainy as well. By now I was ready to jump out of my skin. Like many geeks and fans, I tend to obsess, and I’d been looking forward to trying this sucker out for weeks.

Then it was Sunday … and the skies were clear. Some clouds rolled in during the afternoon, but they were gone by evening. I paced through the living room as the sun slowly disappeared, and I kept peeking out the window to see if the stars were visible yet. The moment I spotted the moon in the west, quickly dipping into the trees, I was out of the house and setting up.

I’m a total newbie at this. I’ve downloaded an app for the phone to tell me what I’m looking at. (A week ago I pointed out Mars, Venus, and Jupiter to some friends after karate). But even as a newbie, this was amazing.

I saw Jupiter well enough to make out a few of the horizontal bands across the planet, along with three of its moons.

I don’t have any of the equipment for proper astrophotography, but I’ve got a digital camera and my iPhone. I was surprised to find that the iPhone took slightly better pictures in this situation. The pic to the left is Jupiter and two of its moons, photographed by simply placing the phone against the eyepiece.

I also saw Venus, which was about half full.

I spun the scope around and saw Mars.

And oh yes, even though it was behind the upper branches of the trees, I saw the moon. The craters, the shadows … it was incredible.

I brought the kids out and showed them everything I could find. This was right in our driveway, with a streetlamp across the street and the lights of Lansing not too far off. I’m planning to bring the scope up north when we do our annual vacation trip to the Upper Peninsula this summer, and I can’t wait to see what we can find up at camp, away from … well, just about everything.

I’ll leave you with the best of the iPhone pics of the moon. The trees cut off the lower right corner, and it’s a little blurry, and it’s certainly not professional quality, but I don’t care. I’m geeking out, and I love it.

The Broken Kingdoms and The Sagan Diary

Subterranean Press was kind enough to hand out copies of John Scalzi‘s novelette The Sagan Diary [Amazon | B&N | Subterranean Press] at ConFusion this year. As the title suggests, the book is a collection of mental diary-style entries from Jane Sagan of Scalzi’s Old Man’s War universe.

The book begins with a preface from Lieutenant Gretchen Schafer, an analyst involved in reviewing and transcribing BrainPal memories from Special Forces soldiers like Sagan. Written as a letter of protest, Schafer complains that “what we have to work with are data-poor bits in which Lt. Sagan thinks about what appears to be a romantic partner of some sort…” She describes the files as “of some anthropological interest … but for our purposes these files are near useless.”

I read this as a nicely-done warning to the reader: this is not Old Man’s War. This is not action-heavy space battles and supersoldiers. It’s the musings and philosophizing and reflections of a soldier. A rather loving character study. It’s almost poetic at times:

I am not Death. I am killing; I am the verb. I am the action, I am the performance. I am the movement that cuts the spine; I am the mass which pulps the brain. I am the headsnap ejecting consciousness into the air.

I am not Death but she follows close behind…

It’s a fairly quick read, and an interesting change from the other things I’ve read by Scalzi. I definitely recommend reading his Old Man’s War books for context.

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I also just finished reading N. K. Jemisin‘s The Broken Kingdoms [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy], book two of the Inheritance Trilogy.

I liked Jemisin’s first book a lot, but it’s been almost two years since I read it, and unfortunately my memory of the details from that first book were a little fuzzy, because my brain leaks. The Broken Kingdoms works as a standalone, but I think I would have gotten even more out of it if I had the first story clear and fresh in my brain.

This is set ten years after The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. From the back cover:

In the city of Shadow, beneath the World Tree, alleyways shimmer with magic and godlings live hidden among mortalkind. Oree Shoth, a blind artist, takes in a strange homeless man on an impulse. This act of kindness engulfs Oree in a nightmarish conspiracy. Someone, somehow, is murdering godlings … and Oree’s guest is at the heart of it.

Oree is a fascinating character. While blind to the mundane world, she can see magic, and can perform magic of her own through her paintings and drawings. She is not a typical fantasy warrior or kick-ass heroine. Like all of Jemisin’s characters, she feels very real, with her own struggles and desires, her own history and scars.

Heartfelt. That’s the word I’ve been struggling with as I work on this review. Jemisin’s writing feels heartfelt. She understands and loves this world, these characters, and it shows.

Shiny, the homeless man who refuses to speak, was particularly interesting. He appears mortal most of the time, but is unable to die (permanently, at least – think of a glowing Jack Harkness), and manifests powerful magic when protecting Oree. He’s arrogant and rude, but even before you learn his backstory, you can tell he’s also lost in the world.

Lil is another great character, a godling who is both disturbing and fun. (I just realized why I like her. At one point she unselfconsiously devours the bodies of the dead, because that’s just what she is. She’s like a superpowerful version of my goblins with scary-big teeth.)

Storywise, it was fascinating to see some of the fallout from the events of the first book, and to learn more about the history of the gods and the godlings. There’s a fair amount of action as Oree struggles against enemies with the power to kill godlings … perhaps even to kill the gods themselves. It gets pretty dark and intense for a while toward the end, but the ending works. A story of mortals warring against themselves and the gods isn’t the newest idea in fantasy, but ideas are easy. It’s the execution – the thoughtfulness, the characterization, the history – that make this book work.

I’m having a hard time talking about the book in more detail without spoiling things. So I’ll just say this is the second of Jemisin’s books I’ve read, and I’m looking forward to picking up her third.

Diabetes Details 11: Doesn’t That Hurt?

A quick recap for newer blog readers: I’ve had type 1 diabetes for 13+ years, and I blog about it occasionally for several reasons:

  1. Because I know other writers read this, and it makes me cranky when stories get the details of my disease wrong.
  2. I’m comfortable talking about it, and I think helping people understand this stuff is a good thing.

Previous diabetes posts are, shockingly enough, tagged with the diabetes tag.

Anyway, one of the questions I get fairly often is “Doesn’t that hurt?” People asked that more back when I was taking 6-7 injections every day. Now that I’m on the insulin pump, all they see is the fingertip blood tests. But they still ask, and understandably so. Diabetes is a pretty needle-happy disease. (So if you’re needlephobic and don’t want to read about ’em, this is your cue.)

The answer is … yeah, sometimes. It depends.

Let’s start with a picture I’ll call Jim’s Collection of Stabby Things. On the left is a typical insulin syringe. I keep some around just in case I ever have trouble with the pump.

In the middle is a spring-loaded tool designed to insert the catheter for my insulin pump. That white thing on the end is an adhesive sticker and a metal needle threaded through a teflon (I think) catheter. The spring jabs it into my belly, I pull out the metal needle, and the sticker holds the catheter in place for 2-3 days at a time, allowing the pump to deliver insulin.

I love technology.

On the right is the finger-stabber I use to draw a small drop of blood from my fingertips to test my glucose levels. I’d describe it as essentially painless. I test my blood without thinking, and I can’t remember the last time I noticed any pain. Which is odd, considering that this was the hardest thing for me to do that first time back in 1998. I remember holding that thing for several minutes, sweating as I tried to make myself press the button. These days, I don’t even think about it.

The ones they use for finger checks in the hospital, on the other hand, are the real-world equivalent of a gom jabbar from Dune. They’re one-size-fits-all, designed to pierce cave troll skin. Thankfully, mine’s adjustable, meaning the needle goes just deep enough to draw blood.

Diabetes syringes weren’t usually painful either. The needles are very thin. Every once in a while I’d hit a nerve or a blood vessel, which stung like hell, but that was the exception.

Getting the pump catheter into place … yeah, that hurts sometimes. It’s a slightly longer needle, and the spring shoots it in quickly to prevent the teflon catheter from kinking. I’d say about half the time it goes in with little-to-no pain, maybe 30-40% of the time it stings, and 10-20% of the time I shut the door so the kids don’t hear me swearing.

Beyond that, it’s been a fairly painless disease so far. Every once in a while someone at karate will forget and punch me in the insulin pump site, which isn’t fun, but it’s not crippling pain. More like getting whacked on a cut or bruise. And there are potential complications that could change things for me eventually — nerve damage being a big and nasty one. But considering this disease would kill me in days if I stopped treatment, I think the occasional painful jab to the belly is more than worth it.

I should point out that my experiences aren’t universal. Some people find the fingersticks very painful. (There are meters now that will let you test a blood sample from the forearm, which has fewer nerve endings to irritate.) I have a harder time with the pump than some people. I had to try several different styles before finding one that worked, for the most part, with my body. So take this as Jim’s Diabetes Experience, not The One True Path of Diabetes Pain.

Questions are welcome, as always.

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