Cheap 2nd Hand Books

Yay! I got about a half dozen books on pirates - ranging from fantasy to high adventure to thriller to historical - from the public library where I work. 20 cents each! Now that's a bargain. Unfortunately for the pirate books I'm too busy with my stuck in Mira Grant's 'Deadline' (from the Newsflesh series) to read them, but once I'm done dealing with conspiracies around a zombie-infested future, I'll dig deep into pirates.

CBT: How Beliefs Affect Feelings & Actions

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy uses a model of human emotion which basically states that it's not the circumstances of a person's life that make them unhappy but the views they take of them. While it does, of course, admit that certain circumstances would make any sane person unhappy, it still holds true that just HOW unhappy they make a person and HOW that person will react to those circumstances will depend on a person's thoughts and beliefs.

For example, let's say your elf warrior is walking along and notices human tracks through the forrest. If he believes in the tales of legendary gold-bearing humans who come to bear tribute to any elf that they find, he'll likely react with excitement and joy. If he believes in the tales of forrest-destroying, war-mongering, and ambitious humans, his reactions are likely to be resentment and horror. The prints are the same. The person who left them is unchanged. But the elf's perspective can be very different and he will react according to that perspective.

Should the elf find the human, he could either approach according to the friendly customs of his people or attempt to frighten the human away. Let's say, the custom is to shoot an arrow into a tree near the individual to show you could have killed them, but didn't, and thus are open to peaceful talks. The human, depending on their knowledge and biases, might see it as a threat, a missed assault, a friendly greeting, a foolhardy custom, or the sign of a stupid hunter who saw him as a deer. Again, the human's reactions (and feelings) will depend on their beliefs.

This ability to interpret, reinterpret, and misinterpret events according to one's beliefs is what can be used to add so much drama into a story but, unfortunately, it can also damage the story's credibility when the beliefs are stretched to illogical lengths to justify bad reactions. The difference is the logical consistency of those beliefs. If enough contrary evidence is given, most people are willing to make an exception for an individual, even if they won't change their whole belief system. This is how you get racists who espouse racist beliefs but who are on really good terms with a local Asian or Aboriginal family.

And it does take awhile to change your core beliefs, which is something I'll go into next week.

The Feed, Mira Grant

'Feed' is part of the Newsflesh Trilogy by Mira Grant and it's a first-person story revolving around three bloggers who are hired to follow a presidential campaign a few decades after the Rising. The Rising is where the Kellis-Amberlee virus (a combination of a viral cure for cancer and a viral cure for the common flu) started taking over human hosts and giving them a desire to either spread the infection either through swapping fluids (i.e. biting) or consume meat that can be used for viral replication in place of the body's own meat.

It's a very well-researched and interesting read and there wasn't a moment when I doubted the authenticity of the people, locations, or technology -- even the zombies seemed realistically portrayed. It's rare that you find a zombie novel that deals with what society might look like after the Rising and how people might grow to adapt to the possibility of loved ones gnawing off their head but Mira Grant captures it all in spades.

This novel made me cry a total of three times. It's the first time I've cried in a novel in a VERY long time and I do read a fair bit so that is saying something.

I can't recommend it enough.

Read It For: Brilliant characterisation, well-written point of view, touching tragedy moments done well.

Gendered Characterisation

This is a fantastic article from TV Tropes on the different media expectations, tropes, and reasoning behind certain gender norms on television and in other forms of media. There's no real way for me to summarise all the brilliant details here but I do encourage you to take a look. It'll help you understand why your characters don't seem feminine or masculine enough for your readership and what the perspectives behind the issues are.