Tanya Huff and Her Keepers

The title of this post sounds as though Tanya Huff belongs in a cage, but nothing's further from the truth; she's a perfectly respectable author from Eastern Canada, who has written a score of stories which have been very well received.  I'm in the middle of one; I seem to often be impelled to write about these while I'm just halfway through them, I don't know why.  One good consequence of that is that if the story ends unsatisfactory, at least I won't be discouraged from reviewing it.  (I don't review stories I don't like; it's not worth the effort.)

The present story---"Summon the Keeper"---is the first in a set of three (?) about the same characters.  It is about a youthful woman, who has paranormal powers, Claire, and her talking cat, Austin.  Austin comes across as the straight man, though that's not obvious, and Claire as the comic, though that's not obvious either.  A lot of the humor is the author's editorializing on the ongoing events, which is absolutely hilarious!  There is also an extremely sweet young man from Nova Scotia---or is it Newfoundland?--- who is so wonderful (and people from the maritime provinces are often the absolute salt of the earth, to begin with),, that I'm honestly scared to keep reading, for fear that the young man might be the Devil in disguise. 

----

(Added later, after I finished reading the book)

No such luck; Dean remains true-blue to the end.  I have to say that the setup is fine as a springboard for at least three stories, with a host of characters with potential for hilarious cameos in future books!

I found my head spinning with all the Canuck jargon and inside jokes (and possibly 'Canuck' has a pejorative---er--- thing, when it is used by non-Canucks).  (Connotation!  That's the word.)

Anyway, two thumbs up, and all that.  And all the intimate moments don't just fade to black, they start out black, and get even blacker, which I appreciate. 

Kay

Doorjambs

I had always been taught that the vertical parts of a door frame---the thing you lean on, casually---is the door jamb.  And when I first learned the word it was from a book, so I assumed that the terminal 'b' was actually sounded, not silent, as in 'bomb', for instance.  I'm increasingly seeing the word spelled as 'jam', as though it were a preserve made out of doors; and I'm going to address the issue as though my prejudices were rock solid fact.  So that's another weird entry for our list of homonyms.  (Actually, it isn't.  A spoonerism?)

I'm reading a promising book about a young lady who has magical powers, and an assistant who is a talking cat 🐈: Summon the Keeper, by Tanya Huff (1998 or thereabouts).  Tanya has a fun sense of humor, and I'm going to finish this one. 

Promotional

Well, as many of you know, my stories on Smashwords are essentially free, except for a couple of them.  Well, they're having a sale, so the whole lot are free now.  With great forbearance, I refrain from taunting you as tightwads!  If you download any of these books, all will be forgiven.  The sale begins on July 1st.

Kay

My Feelings About My Creations

This is a subject I haven't talked about very much: what do I feel about these stories I have written; these characters I have invented?

For the longest time, I felt a little embarrassed about revealing too much about these things, because I felt that my anonymity was sort of fragile; would people recognize me from what I said?  Now it is clear that few if any readers have identified me, and the few who have aren't confronting me with it.  Anyway, as time goes on, I don't really care; I'd love to be able to be out and proud of my achievements (even if my fiction isn't as great as some other stories I have read).

Just last night I was reading something from Concerto*, and I was thinking how much I loved Helen Nordstrom.  Actually, it was the love for Helen that drove me to make the manuscript publishable in the first place.  Once it was published, I began to believe that Helen was not an easy person to love.  She was so focused on music, that ordinary readers--that is, those who were not as crazy about music as I was--would find Helen boring.  Well, I have done as much as I'm going to do to make her approachable; and now it's up to her. 

In the earliest (Helen) story, she was an innocent, naive kid of 15 (a little too young to be attending college, I know, now that I've taught college for a couple of years), who had fallen head over heels for Janet.  Once she got to college, she gradually began to notice other girls.  At first, she related better to kids younger than herself, as she was an assistant to Janet on the weekends, for when Janet conducted a summer tennis clinic. 

After a while, she made friends with Leila, a young dancer in Florida, and their relationship became physical; the first physical relationship outside Janet.  

The following year, Helen began to form physical relationships with several girls, which Leila could not tolerate, and I thought that this wasn't a good thing.  Then came Lalitha, a freshman from India, and that relationship became very serious, and lasted over twelve years, through amnesia, and adopting Gena and Alison.

Once Helen was in graduate school, her sexual adventures became a little embarrassing to me. I was torn between writing a permissive, promiscuous lifestyle for Helen, and a more restrained one that I could really get behind.  This brings us to Westfield, where Helen battles her instinct to give physical comfort to girls whom she likes, or loves, on one hand, and a more responsible conduct, suitable to a sedate college professor.  Still,  Helen winds up setting up a menage a trois, which I thought the plot needed, but I was embarrassed more than before.  This promiscuous behavior comes to a head in the summer of Helen's second year at Westfield, and then the Press turns on her, Helen has a terrible accident, and announces her retirement.  At this time, I felt more sorrowful about Helen than admiring.  The outrage in the story was over trivial things; Helen was behaving moderately well. <to be continued.>

Avatar: The Way of etc.

Some friends and I watched the new Avatar sequel last weekend.  I realized how confusing it would be for someone faced with a large crowd of protagonists all at once (which I inflict on my readers sometimes); most of Jake's offspring-- Jake is the main male character, an earthman-- look like him, which means they're hard to tell from each other, except for the girls, and the youngest one (who is cute).  I just decided to stop worrying about the identity problem, and to go with the flow.  That simplified things for me a lot, except that one of the sons tended to need to be rescued pretty frequently. 

Of course, in the post- Star-Wars world we live in, movies need to have visuals that are suitably mechanically fancy, and when the Earthmen come barreling in, they come in vehicles that are big and frightening.  Meanwhile, the landscape has to be depicted as suitably alien, which results in occasionally crowded visuals.  The overall impression I got was of a movie that was both threatening (which the designers will be happy about), and cluttered.

I'm still battling my confusion about the characters, but I've become quite fond of the littlest Sully (Jake's little half-Navi girl), so I'm committed to watching the whole thing.  By the way, we decided to watch the movie over four days, not successive days either.

The native fauna--including whale-like creatures, who're very endearing--are just delightful, though they do contribute a lot to the clutter factor.  And of course, there are the dragons!  So much potential!  I hope some of it is realized!

More as we watch the rest. 

Kay

Illusive, vs. Elusive

Another pair of homonyms, that need to go into our list. 

Transphobia

I have always been uncomfortable about the T in LGBTQ+; I keep thinking it isn't time to slide them in with the remaining Queer folks, and their rights and privileges.  (J.K. Rowling's discomfort about Trans folk is a cousin of my own, but I'm not ready to discuss it.). But I'm reading a book about a Trans lesbian, and I'm so sad that I might be lumped in with the people that this girl has reservations about.

In fact, in the story, she says that, growing up she was terrified that some homophobe would come at her with a baseball bat.  No, it isn't just trans people that I'm uncomfortable with, just for being trans.  I'm unhappy with parents who support their minor children in their insistence to become trans. 

Since I've formed my opinion, I'm reading that it's difficult for a person who has undergone puberty with the "undesired" gender, to successfully get hormone therapy once they're adults.  I'm still puzzling over how to reconcile this fact (if it is a fact, and a truly insurmountable problem) with my reservations.  But you can be assured that I'm not going to assault trans people (except possibly in self defense, if they get fresh with me).

I just wanted to put that out there, before I went back to reading my book.

Kay