Pandemic Past

Most of us are working to find ways of coping in the era of social distancing imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. My friend, Kenneth Silsbee, has come up with an innovative approach to create some social time by hosting a Friday evening “cocktail hour” where friends can gather via a Zoom conference call. It’s allowed me to connect to some of my college alumni friends and make some connections with Kenneth’s Seattle-area friends.

During the first of these cocktail hours, Kenneth asked whether any of the attendees had any family stories from the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. All I remembered was a brief mention that my maternal grandfather was serving in the Army Air Corps in France during one of the pandemic’s waves. However, the question did make me think of a book I read two years ago when I prepared to moderate a panel called “Magical History” at the Tucson Festival of Books. The photo below shows me with the panelists, Beth Cato, Mindy Tarquini, and Gail Carriger.

The book I’ve been remembering is Mindy Tarquini’s The Infinite Now. In the novel, Fiora Vicente, the daughter of an Italian immigrant fortune teller living in Philadelphia, loses her parents to the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 and is taken to live with a friend of the family in a tenement house. She takes possession of a magical curtain that allows her to see five minutes into the future. Afraid that the old man who has taken her in will die, she creates a bubble around the house to keep time from progressing. Meanwhile, a frightening healer seeks to entrap Fiora and take the curtain. The magic is subtle and metaphorical, and the author even introduces a bit of Clarke’s Third Law, the notion that sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic, at the novel’s end.

I’m sorry to have seen this year’s COVID-19 outbreak force the cancellation of the Tucson Festival of Books. That said, it’s clear from the way the virus is spreading that the organizers made the right call. Still, the Tucson Festival of Books has long been one of my favorite venues to meet and talk with authors from all around the country. In the panel, I not only discovered Mindy’s book, but I read books by Beth Cato and Gail Carriger as well. I highly recommend all their works if you’re looking for something good to read while social distancing.

As it turns out, the 2018 Tucson Festival of Books was not my first opportunity to meet Beth Cato. I had actually published her work on a few occasions in Tales of the Talisman Magazine. Volume 9, issues 2 and 4 along with Volume 10, issue 4 all have poems by Beth Cato and they are still in stock. As long as the post office is deemed an essential service, I’d be more than happy to pack up copies and send them to you. You can find all the issues of Tales of the Talisman at http://www.talesofthetalisman.com.

Tucson Festival of Books 2018

This weekend, I’m having fun at Wild Wild West Con at Old Tucson Studios in Tucson, Arizona. If you’re in town, I hope you’ll drop by and join the fun. You can find more information at: https://www.wildwestcon.com/.

Next weekend is the Tucson Festival of Books at the University of Arizona. It’s a free event running from March 10-11. There are vendors and exhibits spread across the University of Arizona mall. There are also presentations about the craft of writing by many of the top writers working today in the lecture halls near the mall. Among the featured writers are Amy Tan, Dave Berry, J.A. Jance, and Douglas Preston.

I’ll be involved in two presentations at the festival.

Saturday, March 10 – 10am to 11am – Scientists Who Write Science Fiction – Integrated Learning Center Room 141. Jim Doty and I, who are both real-live practicing scientists who use our knowledge to write science fiction, will talk about our process.

Saturday, March 10 – 4pm-5pm – Magical History – Student Union Santa Rita. I’ll be moderating this panel in which Gail Carriger, Beth Cato and Mindy Tarquini, authors of novels filled with magic and mystery will discuss alternative earth histories where magic, the paranormal or time travel are real.

In both cases, I’ll have my books along and can sell and sign them after each of the events. One thing that’s especially exciting about the Magical History panel, is that Beth Cato is a long-time contributor to Tales of the Talisman magazine, so I’ve long followed her work.

As it turns out, I also know Gail Carriger after we did several panels together at Gaslight Gathering in San Diego. Here we are on one of the panels at Gaslight Gathering.

One of the big events the festival is touting is a concert by the group called The Rock Bottom Remainders. They’ll perform on March 10, immediately following the festival’s close. This is a band formed by several bestselling authors. Those members at the festival are Mitch Albom, Dave Barry, Gary Iles, Mary Karr, Ridley Pearson, Amy Tan, and Scott Turow. The outdoor concert will be at Jefferson Field. There will be food trucks, a cash bar, and plenty of space to dance!

If you’re in Tucson next weekend, I hope to see you at the Tucson Festival of Books. You can get more information by visiting https://tucsonfestivalofbooks.org/

Discovering New Authors

On March 10, I’ll be moderating a panel at the Tucson Festival of Books called “Magical History.” The festival encourages moderators to be familiar with the works of the panelists and I think that’s an excellent idea, so I’ve been reading a selection of their books. As it turns out, I’m already a fan of Gail Carriger’s work, but this gave me a chance to read more of her books. I also am familiar with Beth Cato’s writing, because I published her poetry a number of times in Tales of the Talisman, however this gave me the long-overdue excuse to read one of her novels for the first time. Mindy Tarquini and Melodie Winawer are both new writers to me and it’s been a pleasure to see their take on the idea of “Magical History.”

Reading a book by an author you’ve never read before can be a daunting prospect. Will they satisfy your taste? Will their prose style transport you to a place you want to go? Will they move at a pace you’re comfortable with? Recommendations by friends who share your taste is a great option. In this case, moderating a panel with a topic that interests me and with a couple of authors I’m already acquainted with provided me with recommendations for a couple of additional new authors.

Another great way to discover new authors is by reading anthologies with themes you care about and that maybe include an author or two you already like. An anthology is a way for an editor to present several stories they like which address the theme. In a sense, the editor is recommending a bunch of authors to you. What’s more, you get a bunch of short stories so you may sample those stories without committing to a whole novel.

That said, I’ll bet if you look at reader reviews of almost any random anthology you will find at least one and perhaps several reviews that say, in essence: “There were some terrific stories and there were some terrible stories.” To be honest, I don’t find these very helpful reviews. Speaking as an anthologist, it’s my job to find a variety of stories that address the anthology’s theme. I like to find stories from a diverse group of writers with different backgrounds. It’s not always possible to know cultural background or even gender from a name on a submission, but a person’s background and experiences are often reflected in the stories they tell. I like to mix it up and give readers stories I think are a sure bet most readers will love and a few that I think challenge the reader. Because of that variety, I know there’s a risk not every reader will love every story. For that matter, I don’t love every story from most anthologies I read, but I often love some enough that I want to seek out more stories or even a novel by some of the authors.

There are lots of great anthologies out there to sink your teeth into. You can discover a lot of great ones just by looking at older posts here at the Web Journal (and if you keep reading, I’m sure I’ll be telling you about more in the future!) If you care to explore the anthologies I’ve had a hand in curating, visit: http://www.davidleesummers.com/books.html#anthologies