Journals, Science, and Baseball, (My) Oh My

Posted on August 9, 2023 by erictaveren

Welcome back to the far too infrequently updated Taverenbooks blog. I keep telling myself to post more, and as much as I do like to talk about myself, I like to write stories more. So my word count goes to Word instead of WordPress. But I’m here now, so let’s do this.

Since my last post, I received an acceptance for a short piece in The Avalon Literary Review, and just yesterday I got my copies in the mail. The piece, et tu Jesus, came from an exercise in my MFA point of view class this past spring and has loose parallels to my own summers in North Dakota when I was a kid. It’s a quick read, but one that’ll make you chuckle and put a smile on your face.

Last week I heard back from an anthology I submitted to, Space Brides, Inc, and they’ve accepted my story for that as well. I’ve always enjoyed reading sci-fi and it was fun combining things I’ve always had interest in (the moon Europa and extremophiles) with the scariest thing known to mankind… relationships. The anthology should be coming out later this fall, so something else to look forward to.

I just sent in a short story that takes place in the early 1500s in France and am currently working on a middle grade short about an eleven-year-old girl who, even though she just saved the world, can’t figure out what’s happening at her grandma’s house. I’ve read some of it to Westley (my five-year-old son) and he’s enjoying it so far. Though to be fair, magic and light potty humor are always golden with him.

Speaking of Westley, one of the reasons I’ve had less time to write this summer is because kids require a lot of attention and energy. In particular, he’s been super into science and we’ve been doing experiments and watching all sorts of videos. Some of the things we’ve done are a marble run, elephant toothpaste, creating S’mores “molecules”, and later today we’re going to combine baking soda and vinegar in different amounts to see what changes.

Driving some of that interest are some videos we’ve been watching. On YouTube we’ve been watching Science Max and Mark Rober, and on Netflix it’s been Emily’s Wonderlab. Science Max and Mark Rober are really good about explaining the science and presenting the results in fun, eye-popping ways. Emily’s Wonderlab is really good about including kids in the actual experiments, so it seems to him something he can do.

I’ll try to keep this next section short because as my wife can attest, I can ramble and ramble on the subject. Growing up near Seattle, I’ve always had a passion for the Seattle Mariners. The last few years have been great with their ever-improving record, and with reaching the playoffs for the first time since 2001 last fall. Since most of the games are on the west coast I don’t get to start watching until 9pm in Minnesota, which in turn makes for many late nights. So when they come to town to play the Twins, it’s especially exciting given how few chances I have to see them in person.

This year when they came I took Westley to his first Mariners game and made sure to get seats close enough to engage and entertain him, as much as can be expected for a five-year-old anyway. Of course it ended up being 95 degrees that day, so that sucked, but it was still a fun experience, even if his favorite part ended up being the Dippin’ Dots. By the way, if any Mariners person ends up reading this, I’ve got a great idea for a collaboration. Call me. :)

I keep saying I’ll try to post more often, and I keep meaning it. Hopefully it won’t take two months for the next post.

Exciting News and Other Updates

Posted on May 3, 2023 by erictaveren

Back at AWP, which seems forever ago now, I was going through the bookfair and came upon F(r)iction, a lit mag that caught my interest like none others all weekend. If they select your story, they will find an illustrator to fully illustrate your story. The magazine looks like a graphic novel. It’s amazing. Unfortunately the exciting news isn’t that I’ve been accepted there (though my story has been submitted).

F(r)iction also has an online contest they do twice a year called Dually Noted where they have a singular prompt that people write on each week and each week they publish a winner. The stories have to be less than 500 words. The prompt this round is “god sends out a resignation letter”. I don’t have a ton of experience writing flash, but I thought “why not?” and wrote a story. And they picked it!

A Divine Appointment is about Heavenly HR worker Winston and a particularly bad day at HR HQ. It’s a quick read, so I’ll let you see what happens.

Now for other updates.

This week I had my last class this semester for my MFA. The class was all about POV. You all know the basics of what first, second, and third are, and perhaps you’ve heard of collective and omniscient and objective. It’s all that and more. Infinite possibilities as my professor Sheila O’Conner says.

The end of class is nice in that I’ll get some more free time to write, both on projects and on this blog, but is sad for a couple of reasons. One, no more weekly meeting with fun classmates. Two, Sheila is retiring.

I had her for Novel Class as well as POV, and she’s just super smart and insightful and it’s going to be perpetually drearier on campus without her.

With class done, I’ve decided this summer to focus on short fictions. To get some publications under my belt. I’ve only submitted off and on the last couple years as I’ve written things for class or been inspired, and a 2/20 acceptance rate isn’t the worst. But there are grants and fellowships out there that care about publications, so I’ll be working on that.

On Sunday I submitted a fantasy origin story of sorts for a character I’m planning an eight-book arc for. Today I started outlining a sci-fi romance with a hint of espionage. Next on the docket after that will be re-tooling a literary fiction short I wrote a few years back now that I’ve got some more tools in my belt. One every other week might be too optimistic, but any goal is better than no goal.

Before I sign off, if there are any writing subjects, or not writing for that matter, that you’d like me to talk about, feel free to let me know. The level of expertise may vary, but I’ll try to engage in whatever way I can.

I hope you enjoyed the story above.

Until next time.

PS: Because it’s cute… our new puppy.

AWP 2023

Posted on March 7, 2023 by erictaveren

Way back in 1990 my family moved from the middle of nowhere North Dakota to a Seattle suburb. I grew up there and then went to college in Minnesota where I ended up settling down. Of course there have been trips to Seattle to visit family, but this marks the first time I’ve come back home without family being the impetus.

For those who haven’t heard of it, AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs) holds a conference each year and each year a different city hosts it. This year it happens to be in Seattle and so of course I’ll have to work in some family time too (I’ve a new niece not even three months old to see).

AWP has two main parts: the conference, stuffed full of so many panels you’ll never be able to attend all the ones you want, and the book fair, is “the nation’s largest marketplace for independent literary presses and journals, creative writing programs, writing conferences and centers, and literary arts organizations” that’ll blow every other book fair you’ve been to out of the water. In particular I’ll be searching out the Hamline MFA as well as the Great Weather for Media booths as I’ve got a vested interest in each of them.

As for the panels, hopefully my brain doesn’t explode. Here’s the crazy list of sessions I’ll be attending:

Writing about Culture and Place: Techniques for Vibrant and Ethical Worldbuilding
Reading at 24 Frames Per Second: Exploring Cinematic Influence on Literature
Demystifying the Application: Fellowships, Residencies, and Grants
Minding the Gaps and Mining Landscape in Linked Short Story Collections
How to Craft Enthralling Science Stories
The Sentence Is the Story: Reading, Writing, and Revising for Style and Sound
Nine Memorable Moments: Constructing Compelling Characters for the Screen
Filling in the Gaps: Folklore as Antidote to Forgetting
The Twenty-First Century Horror Novel
The Twist: Plot Turns That Make Movie Magic
Conjuring Thisness in Fiction: The Palpable Art of the Particular
Giving Helpful Feedback
Breaking Up with Shame: Writing Romance for Young Adults
Writing the Monster
Playwriting 101: Accessing Emotional Honesty in Storytelling

As you can see there’s quite the variety there. Obviously I’m interested in speculative content, but there revision and business sessions as well because like it or not those are part of the game. I don’t know exactly what I’ll get out of each session, but I’ll be taking copious notes for both my writing friends as well as MFA classmates to spread all that I learn.

I’ll sign off for now (I’m writing in the the hotel room and need to head out to meet up with someone attending AWP), but if you happen to be at AWP give me a holler.

Steampunk Research Part Two

Posted on January 20, 2023 by erictaveren

Infernal Devices, Boneshaker, The Anubis Gates, The Difference Engine, Homunculus

I write this at 1:37 PM and so greet you all with a good afternoon, and not in the Will Ferrell/Ryan Reynolds way (unless you deserve it). As of yesterday I finished the last of my research for revising my novel and it’s time to hold myself accountable and report in.

Previously I mentioned three things that stood out in steampunk: Transportation, Science/Magic, and Weirdness. The five books I’ve read since then reinforce those observations with the addition of one more: History.

It just so happened that the books I previously read weren’t indicative of the Victorian locales commonly found in the genre. Of the five I just finished, all but Boneshaker were based in London. For me, this won’t play too much into the writing as my story takes place in a completelyfictitious world, but I do still want to talk about the setting and the history of it.

As a Theatre Arts and English major, I had plenty of exposure to British writers, and of course Britain played a major role in global politics (I’m using that term very loosely as I don’t want to fall down the rabbit hole of colonialism). With that, there is a lot of opportunity in period pieces for authors to embrace or tweak history and historical figures for the sake of the narrative and the world they’re inventing/adapting.

I particularly enjoyed how this played out in The Anubis Gates. The protagonist is a literary scholar who is an expert in Coleridge. It’s a time travel book and I’m not ruining anything by saying those characters meet. But that’s not where the literary and historical connections end. Many real-life persons are introduced and historical events help shape the narrative journey. I found myself wondering how much of what I was reading was factual (I knew some parts definitely were) and how much was invented. The fact that there were parts I was unsure of made it that much more engaging.

The Difference Engine was much more liberal with its treatment of historical figures and events, enough that I could lump it into the alternate history genre. But in staying true with the setting and technological advancements it solidly fits with the rest of the steampunk I’ve shoved into my brain the last couple of months. Boneshaker too did this, though in Seattle instead of London. As someone who grew up just south of Seattle I found that personally engaging as well. The author made a point at the end of the book to acknowledge what liberties she took with historical accuracy, giving a look into the massive amount of research that goes into period pieces.

As I pivot from reading to re-writing (and starting up grad school again on Monday), I’ve got not only a stronger idea of the genre that I’m piggybacking off of, but a much better handle of genre expectations, both to adhere to and to subvert. Whereas I was initially really trying to scientifically explain how the technology works in my story, I’ve learned that a lot of that can be hand waved away. Brandon Sanderson used an iceberg metaphor regarding world building that I think can be co-opted for this. He (paraphrasing) said that if you have enough surface level complexity, the reader will assume the unspoken parts of the world are known to the author and also have legitimate explanations/reasons. That works with the technology of steampunk. It’s basically magic, but as long as it’s explained in part, the rest is assumed to work as well.

That’s all I have for today. I try not to make these too long, though if you ask my wife I could go on about these books at some length. I’m starting a class focusing on point of view on Monday, so between that and rewrites my brain is going to be working overtime for the foreseeable future. Enjoy the weekend and I’ll try to have another post soon.

Distractions: A Writer’s Nemesis… or is it?

Posted on December 31, 2022 by erictaveren

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. Most people in the world don’t celebrate Christmas, and far fewer celebrate it in a religious fashion. I celebrate it in a benevolent commercial way. I don’t believe in a higher power, but I do enjoy the opportunity to be with friends and family and the exchanging of gifts in the process.

My wife and I alternate which family we visit each year and this year we went to Seattle (where I grew up) to visit my family. We rented an airbnb and had over 20 people under one roof. That being said, any hopes I had of writing or continuing my reading goals were thoroughly dashed, and the only productive time I had was on the plane where I managed to get through about two thirds of Boneshaker while helping to manage our four-year-old and his airplane-bathroom-shy-bladder problems. There were a lot of trips to that bathroom.

This delay in productivity however gave me the idea of what to write about today. Distractions.

I’ll be the first to admit that my main distraction is my phone. Facebook, mobile games, internet rabbit holes, they’re all regular culprits for my lost hours. For a while I was actively playing far too many games: Disney Emoji Blitz, Hero Wars, and Clash Royale being the main culprits. In October I cut myself off from all games except Clash, which was to be my kill-five-minutes-game as opposed to a regularly played thing. The idea was I’d have more time to write and work.

That didn’t exactly go as planned. I did cut out all but Clash, but still play it a bit more than planned. The upside is I did get more writing done and I have larger chunks of time for reading. So distractions reduced, but not eliminated.

The next distraction I want to mention is TV/movies. I’m a huge cinephile. It’s got to the point when I make references in my friend group that I just assume no one will get them and usually that’s what happens. With my kid around I watch much less than I did before since he needs attention and I can’t exactly put John Wick on in the background. That means once he’s asleep I’m much more motivated to catch up on a show or movie I’m behind on than to be productive.

Practically speaking, I wouldn’t be able to write if I wanted to. He’s asleep at 8:00 and my brain has checked out for anything more than entertainment input. A book is entirely feasible, but more often than not the TV gets powered on, the hum of Netflix triggering those endorphins. I haven’t found a good way around this distraction. There are too many interesting shows and movies out there to watch them all, so I do what I can.

The last real distraction I struggle with, and I challenge any writer to deny their struggle as well, is the new idea. No matter the project, something you write or see or dream will inspire and drag your thoughts to something new, something unconnected with what you’re trying to complete. For me it’s usually dream based as that’s where most of the kernels of my ideas come from, but this distraction can come from anywhere.

My current distraction came from a dream and is a murder mystery. The dream played out like watching a movie, the roles featuring well known actors playing characters and I was the viewer following the drama and intrigue. But before I witness the resolution I woke and was left with a legit “whodunit” thought. And so for a couple days I completely forgot about my novel and my reading and thought about this new story.

I don’t want to give much away in case I do write this at some point, but Tom Cruise was killed, and Hailee Steinfeld was Nancy Drew-ing her way through suspects to figure out who did the deed. Alongside those two were Jack Black, Delroy Lindo, Helen Mirren, Stanley Tucci, Eugene Cordero, Ben Mendelsohn, and Timothee Chalamet among others. But based on what I’d seen in the dream and what my detective fiction knowledge told me to do I’ve now figured out the killer(s), motives, and opportunities. I’ve also assigned backstories to each character as well as each set of characters. There’s no reason two suspects might not be at odds with each other as well as with the deceased.

This distraction was particularly hard to ignore given my fondness for the genre. My senior thesis was on detective fiction, specifically Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins stories. I’ve a list of mystery plots already on file and I try to watch them whenever I can (I just watched Glass Onion which was good in presentation but sad in that there are visual tactics that just don’t translate to the written word, and I recently rewatched Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, which if you’re an old noir movie fan you must give it a watch).

While I was victim to this distraction, I was able to limit it. I had to scratch the itch, that was a given. But once the itch was scratched, I couldn’t just leave it alone. So, like so many other ideas, it went to the idea notebook.

My notebook is digital so I can access it on any device, but any notebook will do. I use OneNote since it’s very good at simple organization and the interface is very user friendly. Once I have a story idea, whether it’s an inkling or more fleshed out, it goes there until I’m done with my current project. It’s a great way to group ideas, not just to write later, but sometimes to combine and weave together. A good story doesn’t have just one through line to engage the reader, but many smaller stories told in conjunction. By grouping ideas together in one place or side by side, many complimentary ideas can be combined that may have otherwise been overlooked.

I see that I’ve derailed somewhat from my topic of distractions. But isn’t that was a distraction is? Our minds inherently want to discover, to learn or experience something new. And we need that for creative growth, for those subconscious influences and at times the more overt ones. So is my advice to cut out all distractions? No. Just limit them. Find out what distractions are beneficial to your craft (Glass Onion) and what ones are less so (Emoji Blitz). Embrace your distractions, but do so on your terms, not theirs.