#bitingduck press

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New month, new handful of SPD Staff Picks!

20% off w/code SPDPICKS!!!

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Revolution and it's discontents. 

Pierre reviews Billy Tabbs and the Glorious Darrow by Michael P. Michaud. Another great YA treat from Bitingduck Press

[signal-failure]

In the tragic ending of The Mindtraveler, physicist heroine Dr. Margaret Braverman wins the Nobel Prize.

No, wait, I’m doing this in the wrong order.

Bonnie Rozanski’s The Mindtraveler tells the story of aging physics professor Margaret Braverman, disgraced 25 years ago when her secret experiments with time-travel led to an embarrassing electrocution. At sixty, she lectures in physics, lives alone, and half-heartedly attends faculty meetings, while indulging in the odd daydream about what might have happened if her great experiment had succeeded.

Margaret is pretty blunt about losing her love, about years spent alone, and her academic failures, at first, like the acceptance of age or the clear-eyed rationality of a career researcher. But it only takes an offhand comment from her grad student assistant to encourage her to give that great experiment one more go.

Back in her 35-year-old body, Margaret is re-experiencing her life and seeing the small events that set her on her current path. Margaret’s curiosity is always her strongest motivator, and she remains a blunt and not terribly emotional narrator. It’s hard not to sympathize with her here, re-experiencing a love affair that has ended quite badly in her own past, re-experiencing an embarrassing professional failure, and seeing her friends in the physics department back when they were young, healthy and hopeful. But if she can make a tiny change in the past, maybe she won’t end up sidelined and alone.

Blending wild time-travel with daily details of academic life gave this story the feel of magical realism. Margaret accepts the physics behind her great experiment, as well as the amazing opportunity she has with time travel, which makes it easy for reader to accept both.

The romance between Margaret and Frank is layered and believable. In one scene, 60-year-old Margaret hears and understands what 35-year-old Margaret is told by Frank, and didn’t fully understand at the time. But the story isn’t a romance — Margaret’s friendships with her colleagues in the physics department are very important, and she puts asides her own worries to try to help these bright, young men at 35 to avoid the problems she’s seen them encounter at 60. In one case, returning to 35 with the wisdom of 60 gives her new insights into her friend’s character, and not for the better.

She’s also a rare female heroine with deep professional ambitions, motivated by endless curiosity and a desire for glory. Academic backstabbing and departmental infighting are frighteningly realistic, although the sleazy department chair is just a little too shameless and predatory.

With multiple timestreams, crossing and affecting each other, and different versions of Margaret’s self, The Mindtraveler has so many opportunities to devolve into confusion or technobabble. Instead, Margaret’s no-nonsense narration keeps the story clear. Almost too clear for those of us rooting for happy ending, because she’s shown us her weakness for impulsive and selfish decisions many times, leading to an ending that is both heartbreaking and strangely inevitable.

Bonnie Rozanski’s Upcoming Novel ‘The Mindtraveler’ from Simpson's Paradox

[mooncanoe]

The "My Writing Process" blog tour.

The “My Writing Process” blog tour.

I’m hunkered on my spot on the couch, my creative place. It’s a brown leather loveseat, I’m on the left cushion, on the right is a stack of books I”m reading, including a book my main character finds in my latest story. A pile of paper. DVDs. Scraps. On my left, is a coffee table. It too is covered in work stuff.

I was sitting in this spot, working, when illustrator Val Lawton (http://vallawton.b…

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[mooncanoe]

On the writing of a fanitasy versus realistic historical fiction

On the writing of a fanitasy versus realistic historical fiction

Duck Boy is an urban fantasy. The writing of that book was difficult because one had to figure out a logic to the world that the main character in habits and make sure it all worked, and all made sense. In this sort of novel one has to think through plot decisions to a large degree. A large part of the mental effort of a book like this comes from this sort of thinking.

But this book also required…

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[mooncanoe]

The Art of Cover Art

The Art of Cover Art

When a book moves through the process, the publisher usually begins to work up some cover art with the help of an artist. The cover is a big deal, a bigger deal than ever before, I think. There’s so much to read and choose from, a reader is forced to judge a book by its cover.

So the whole story has to be on the cover. Not the whole story, but the heart of the story, in picture form. It can’t…

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[scifi4wifi]

Happy readers strolling.

by Laura Davis, managing editor

It was a gorgeous day at USC yesterday, as the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books (LATFOB) kicked off! The Trojan marching band got everything off to a lively start, and the truly amazing variety of books and book related products, readers, authors, and publishers kept the excitement going all day long!

I got to sit in on a panel where John Scalzi was discussing the transition of Redshirts from novel to television. I’m never sorry when I make a point to hear Scalzi talk. I’ll have a lot more details on this for you tomorrow, once the festival is over.

I also got a chance to visit with the Jay Nadeau and Chris Lindensmith, the mad cyclist geeks, at Bitingduck Press. We introduced them to our audience last year, and yes, they did pedal to the festival again this year: books and all! They asked me to let or readers know that today, Sunday, they’ll be giving visitors to their booth a coupon code to get a **free digital book download** of the book of your choice. And they have some good ones to choose from! Go say hi to Chris and Jay, they’re very fun geeks!

I’m off for another fun day at LATFOB. Hope to see you there!

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L.A. Times Festival of Books, Day One by Laura Davis, managing editor It was a gorgeous day at USC yesterday, as the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books (LATFOB) kicked off!

[mooncanoe]

Don't fear the black crayon

Don’t fear the black crayon

One of my beta-readers offered an interesting criticism of my new story, tentatively titled “Kill Shot”: My character’s stifled emotion in certain situations, like when he’s angry. His natural responses were muted. I had clipped the ugly moments of the new story. I’m afraid to use the black crayon.

I told him about a few readers’ criticism of my first YA novel, Duck Boy. It was called it demonic.…

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