If My Career Was a Chimera...

For those of you who aren't familiar with the term chimera, here's a definition from Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online:
1 a capitalized : a fire-breathing she-monster in Greek mythology having a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail
   b an imaginary monster compounded of incongruous parts
2 : an illusion or fabrication of the mind; especially : an unrealizable dream
3 : an individual, organ, or part consisting of tissues of diverse genetic construction

Now, I would imagine that many of you are familiar with the first definition -- the classic image of the tripartite creature in Greek mythology. What some of you might not realize is that the definition of the monstrous chimera has expanded to incorporate sub-point b up there, which includes all manner of conglomerated creatures resulting from the fusion of two otherwise normal animals. Fantasy gaming is full of these, ranging from the owlbear to the duckbunny. (Avatar: The Last Airbender is particularly fond of this, to the point where every animal in the entire series is either over-sized or cross-bred.)

The most interesting and applicable element of this definition, however (and the one that I didn't know about), is the second definition: "an unrealizable dream." That's fantastic, though I doubt I'm ever going to use it in conversation that way.

Now, getting back around to the title, if my writing career was a chimera (both in the sense of a thrown-together construction of many other parts and  in the sense of "an unrealizable dream"), I would like it to have...

Author Roundup

Lightweight day today. Just wanted to mention a few pieces of author news that's interested me lately.

Here's a George R.R. Martin interview over at the Bear Swarm podcast. There's a content warning on this one, but the discussion is interesting. This is less significant now that there's been an announcement about the Dance With Dragons release date, but still...

Here's an interview between Brandon Sanderson and Patrick Rothfuss up on Amazon.com. It's from early March, when Wise Man's Fear was coming out. They talk a lot about some of the nuances of the writer's life, which is always a topic I'm ready to talk about.

A couple weeks ago, London "weird fiction" author China Mieville came to my university and spoke about the renovation of weird fiction in recent years. I had the opportunity to attend. Naturally, I took it.

Now, I have a confession to make. I haven't actually read any of Mieville's books. I know that he's a highly creative and skilled author, and I'm going to read his stuff eventually. Thus far, however, I have not.

That being said, I still really enjoyed the talk.

First of all, this man is well-educated. I mean, really well-educated. He was throwing around high-brow literary terms with a nonchalance and deft skill that kept me swimming furiously just to keep abreast of the discussion for most of the hour. My first reaction to this was intimidation. I was, essentially, thinking "Wow. I'm nowhere near this learned. This guy really knows his stuff; how am I supposed to be a writer if I don't know my genre as well as he knows his?"

Well, then I discovered that he's a creative writing professor at a London university. I guess that explains that.

Follow-up thought to that was, "Well, okay. He's got years of experience. You'll get there."

Second, he's a friendly guy. You listen to him talk and you get a sense of a laid-back, inviting personality. That being said, he's definitely working the "punk edge" look. Bald head, multiple piercings, massive arms. You don't want to tangle with this guy in a dark alley.

Third, this guy is really into octopuses. I mean, really, really into octopuses. To hear Mieville speak, you'd think that octopuses are almost superior to human beings. In a one-and-a-half hour discussion, the group spent at least forty minutes talking about octopuses. Their biology. Their place in weird fiction. Their lack of place in traditional folklore. Their lack of metaphorical impact. Again, a lot of high-brow literary discussion that kept me just gasping for breath... about octopuses.

But hey, it was interesting.

One final note. I've broken 65,000 words on Godchild, making it my longest single work yet. Huge news.