The Big Idea: Chuck Rothman
Jun. 25th, 2025 05:01 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
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Royalty is by blood. So what if a princess wakes up in a body that isn’t hers? And what if that body was previously a corpse? Author Chuck Rothman has the answers and is here to share them in the Big Idea for his newest novel, Cadaver Princess. Follow along to see if “blue blood” really does run through royals’ veins.
CHUCK ROTHMAN:
Cunningham’s Law states that the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer. The webcomic XKCD created a popular meme where someone is staying up late because someone is wrong on the Internet.
The Cadaver Princess started due to someone being wrong on the Internet.
I am a storyteller. I also like to try to find new ways to do it. No Hero’s Journey for me! No planning, either. I start with a situation and see where it leads.
By the time I began writing The Cadaver Princess, I learned to lean into my strengths: short chapters and many point-of-view characters. I call it a “mosaic novel,” where a bunch of small vignettes slowly reveal the main plot (and subplots). And my goal in all this was to make it all work.
As to how this book began . . .
Matthew Foster is an excellent critic of fantasy and SF films. In his review of Boris Karloff’s The Body Snatcher, he said, “There were more movies about Victorian body snatchers than there were Victorian body snatchers.”
But body snatching was a major concern in 1831. Cadavers were needed to teach doctors. “Resurrectionists” would dig up the freshly buried, and medical schools would pay for them, no questions asked. People went to some lengths to protect the bodies of their loved ones.
I had learned this from a book called The Italian Boy by Sarah Wise, about a group called the “London Burkers,” led by John Bishop. Obscure today, their actions were more important historically than the better-known Burke and Hare, and, like them, Bishop and his crew didn’t just dig up graves at night: they turned to murder.
I decided to start with them. But since I write fantasy, the idea of a cadaver lying on the slab is too mundane, so I had her sit up. And to make the stakes higher, I said she was Princess (later queen) Victoria — in the body of another young woman.
So I had a setting and an incident. I started to write about what happened next.
I spontaneously generate ideas as I write. Most of what I’ve encountered in books about the period (not counting Dickens) dealt with the upper classes. I wanted to write about the lower classes.
I had started with the point of view of the anatomist who received the corpse, but after a few short chapters, I realized there was a better main character: Pablo Mansong, a Black man who had been taken by slavers but was freed before he got to America. The name came from Pablo Fanque. Beatles fans might recognize it; Fanque was a Black circus owner and a major Victorian impresario.
Pablo is quite at home among the poor and the street vendors of London. There are chapters about royalty, but most of the book deals with Pablo and Victoria, including the shock when someone from royalty is face to face with poverty.
I had already dabbled in what I call “hidden history” — fantasy set in a real historical setting, but with fantastic events that are not recorded in history books. I see it as the opposite of alternative history, since it doesn’t change what’s known. But there are plenty of possibilities and ways of dovetailing the events to match the records.
Since I had introduced Victoria, I had to research her. I read about how she was raised, which gave me motivation for her villain, John Conroy. I also learned of how Victoria’s governess, Baroness Lehzen, tried to protect her charge.
As I write, connections come to me. Sometimes, a scene that’s just for background becomes an unplanned but essential plot element by the end. In one scene I’m describing one of the street vendors of the era. Later on, I realize it is important for a key moment.
The real joy of writing this was figuring out how to make the connections, and how to make them dramatic. It was like a puzzle, and I enjoy putting all the pieces together.
But ultimately, the novel originated from Cunningham’s Law: correcting something on the Internet that was wrong. I just turned it into fiction.
Cadaver Princess: Amazon
How am I viewing my looming unemployment, you ask?
Jun. 24th, 2025 07:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catherineldfand ... done?
Jun. 24th, 2025 05:13 pmjazzfishMy group members stepped up at the last minute and helped out with the paper, so I turned that in on Thursday. I also explicitly abdicated all responsibility for putting together the five-minutes-each video recordings for the group presentation. I recorded that last night, realised this morning that it was actually under five minutes but also how to fix it, re-recorded it, and sent it off. And just now I hit Submit Quiz on the final.
I'm ... done? Grades will be out at some point to confirm that I did in fact pass, both "sufficient unto graduation" and "sufficient unto my own arbitrary standard". (Pretty sure I did, but grades for this class have been Not Terribly Forthcoming, so there's the possibility of an unpleasant surprise. Not at all likely, but possible.)
Onward. After credential: chop wood, carry water. Time to get (more) serious about ye jobhunt.
You cannot know what happens next.
Briefly, Venice
Jun. 24th, 2025 10:09 pmscalziwhatever_feed
For our 25th anniversary, Krissy and I were planning to go to Iceland and spend a week or so there, getting to know the country. Then the pandemic happened and we ended up spending the anniversary at home. Fine, we would just reschedule Iceland for our 30th anniversary. But then I was invited to do a convention in Iceland last year, and we tacked on an extra five days after the convention to do all the things we planned for our 25th anniversary. This left our 30th anniversary suddenly unscheduled.
Fortunately, I had a backup: I had always wanted to visit Venice, not just for Venice itself, but also, goofily, for the fact there is a Church of the Scalzi there, and a Scalzi Bridge, and, heck, why not, even a Scalzi restaurant. Honestly, how could I not go? Krissy indulged me, and on the week of our anniversary, off we went.
We spent a full week in Venice, which appeared to surprise the people there when we mentioned the fact to them. Apparently Venice is usually a couple-days stop at most, tourists grimly marching themselves from the Doge’s palace to the obligatory gondola ride to wherever else they went before they were hustled back onto a bus or cruise ship and sent off to whatever the next destination was. The fact we were in town for a whole week impressed the locals. They seemed to appreciate that we wanted to take in the city at a leisurely pace.
Which is what we did! We did have two days where we had a private guide to give us a walking tour of the city (including stops at the aforementioned Doge’s palace, St. Mark’s basilica and the Scalzi church) and to take us over to Murano to watch glass being blown. And of course we rode in a gondola, because, hey, we were in fact tourists, and not afraid to do touristy things. But most of the days there we woke up late, wandered around the city and maybe took in a museum or church, and then ate at a bunch of restaurants and hung out in a bunch of bars, mostly on the water, and watched the city go by in various boats. Venice, as it turns out, is a lovely city to just be in. Krissy and I mostly did a lot of not much, and it was pretty great.
Mind you, Venice is one of the most overtouristed cities in the world, and as a visitor you can certainly feel that, especially on the weekends, in the space between the Rialto Bridge and the Piazza San Marco. It’s Disneyland-level crowded there. I can’t complain overmuch about that fact without being a full-blown hypocrite, but we did understand that our role in town was to drop a lot of money into the local economy in order to balance out our presence. We were happy to do that, and, you know, to be respectful of the people who were helping to give us a delightful vacation. By and large the Venetians were perfectly nice, did not seem to dislike us merely for being Americans, and in any event we got out of town before Jeff Bezos could show up and make everyone genuinely angry. No one blamed us for Jeff Bezos, either.
One of the things I personally genuinely enjoyed about Venice was just how utterly unlike anywhere in the United States. Yes, I know there are places in the US where they have canals; heck, the Venice in California was once meant to have them all over the place. But it’s not only about the canals. It’s about the fact that no matter what street you’re going down, what bridge you’re crossing or what side canal you’re looking down into, parts of everything you’re looking at have been there longer than the US has been a country, and none of it accommodates anything that the US would require. There are no cars in Venice, no Vespas, not even any bikes. If you’re going anywhere, you’re walking or going by boat. It’s very weird to have no road noise anywhere. You don’t realize how much you get used that noise, even in a rural area like the one I live in, until you go some place without it. I mean, there are boats with engines. The sounds of internal combustion are not entirely gone. But it’s dramatically reduced.
As mentioned, we stayed in Venice for a week, which I think is probably the right amount of time to be in the city. We didn’t see everything it had to offer, but then we weren’t trying to; if and when we go back there will still be new things to explore. But I did get to check off visiting the Scalzi Bridge, Church and restaurant, and the last of these was where Krissy and I had our actual 30th anniversary dinner. It’s was pretty good. I did not get a discount because of my last name. Alas. Here’s picture of the interior of the Church of the Scalzi:
Slightly more ornate than the one in Bradford, Ohio, I admit. But in defense of the one in Ohio, it’s much easier to dust.
Would I recommend Venice to others? Definitely. Spend more than a couple of days. Be respectful. Spend a decent amount of money. Have an Aperol Spritz. If you’re from the US, enjoy the fact there is nothing like it in the American experience. Maybe avoid the Rialto Bridge on the weekend. And there you have it: an excellent Venetian vacation. I hope you’ll enjoy yours as much as we enjoyed ours.
— JS
New collection: The Atlas of Anywhere!
Jun. 24th, 2025 01:36 pmswan_tower
Well over a decade ago, I first had the idea of reprinting my short fiction in little collections themed around subgenres. When I sat down to sort through my existing stories, I found they fell fairly neatly into six buckets, each at or approaching roughly the cumulative size of a novella: secondary-world fantasy, historical fantasy, contemporary fantasy, stories based on folktales and myths, stories based on folksongs, and stories set in the Nine Lands.
Five of those six collections have been published so far: Maps to Nowhere, Ars Historica, Down a Street That Wasn't There, A Breviary of Fire, and The Nine Lands. The sixth is coming out in September, but it's not surprising, given the balance of what I write, that secondary-world fantasy has lapped the rest of the pack -- more than once, actually, since The Nine Lands is also of that type (just all in a single world), and also my Driftwood stories hived off to become their own book.
So yes: as the title and the cover design suggest, The Atlas of Anywhere is a follow-on to Maps to Nowhere! Being short fiction collections, they need not be read in publication order; although a few settings repeat (both of them have a Lady Trent story inside, for example), none of the stories are direct sequels that require you to have read what came before. At the moment it's only out in ebook; that is for the completely shameless reason that replacing the cover for the print edition later on would cost me money, and I have my fingers crossed that in about two months it will say "Hugo Award-winning poem" rather than just "Hugo Award-nominated." ("A War of Words" is reprinted in here: my first instance of putting poetry into one of these collections!) But you can get it from the publisher, Book View Cafe; from Apple Books; from Barnes & Noble; from Google Play; from Kobo; from Indigo; or, if you must, from Amazon in the UK or in the US (that last is an affiliate link, but I value sending readers to other retailers more than I do the tiny commission I get).
Now, to write more stories, so I can put out another collection later!
Tuesday word: Hornswoggle
Jun. 24th, 2025 11:23 amsimplyn2deep posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
1word1dayHornswoggle (verb)
hornswoggle [hawrn-swog-uhl]
verb (used with object), Slang., hornswoggled, hornswoggling
1. to swindle, cheat, hoodwink, or hoax.
See more synonyms on Thesaurus.com
When To Use
Where does hornswoggle come from?
Hornswoggle, as noted in our definition above, means "to swindle, cheat, or hoax." But, it would be cheating for us to say we know where hornswoggle comes from exactly. Its earliest known appearance so far is in the U.S. around 1815–25. Is hornswoggle supposed to sound like some hullabaloo from some sort of trumpet? Did a hog get all washed up? Well, sometimes nonsense words are just that—nonsense. Ultimately, hornswoggle is probably just a fanciful, funny formation.
Origin: 1815–25 origin uncertain
Example Sentences
He continues: “Down the road, it’ll be just one more instance when voters thought they were doing the right thing and they were hornswoggled. It fuels cynicism and bitterness and mistrust in government.”
From Los Angeles Times
His ability to hornswoggle tens of millions of voters is no laughing matter.
From Washington Post
Or, had President Trump hornswoggled multiple Congressional leaders, hundreds of Congressional Republicans and key players in his administration into believing he would sign this particular package?
From Fox News
Here are some things you can do afterward to see if you’ve been hornswoggled: Check the font of the logo.
From Golf Digest
The only sensible conclusion from all of this is that the superrich will settle, plead or hornswoggle their way out of any attempt to cancel their status.
From Washington Post
New Interview
Jun. 24th, 2025 11:46 ammarthawellshttps://www.nexuspointnews.com/post/interview-murderbot-ep-andrew-miano
First and foremost, my partner Paul Weitz read the book for pleasure, not with any eye towards adaptation, and came in with it and said, "this would make an amazing TV show." We all read it and really sparked to it and thought it was unique and special and funny, which is not something that you always get in a lot of sci-fi. [It is] also very meaningful and emotional. It was the whole package so it was very exciting and we went about it. We met Martha... One of the biggest things to focus on is how do you honor the book? How do you translate that to the screen? It's not easy, but I'm very fortunate to have Paul Weitz and Chris Weitz — two smart, talented partners — creating and running the show with their guidance and Martha's support and involvement to sort of capture and stay true to the books.
The Big Idea: Travis Kennedy
Jun. 24th, 2025 03:20 pmscalziwhatever_feed
We’re gettin’ the band back together! And this time, they’re gonna rock the political climate in foreign countries. Author Travis Kennedy is bringing you the best of hair metal bands with espionage on the side in his debut novel, The Whyte Python World Tour. Follow along to see how his Big Idea will shred… your expectations of 80s bands!
TRAVIS KENNEDY:
In my debut novel, The Whyte Python World Tour, the CIA recruits a hair band to foment regime change in the Eastern Bloc at the end of the Cold War.
That’s not the big idea I want to write about here, though, and I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t dream it up on my own. There’s nearly a century of evidence that the CIA has meddled with popular music to influence public sentiment all over the world. More specifically for my purposes, there’s a longstanding rumor – made popular by the fantastic podcast “Wind of Change” by Patrick Radden Keefe (2020) – that the CIA wrote the hit Scorpions song “Wind of Change” after the Berlin Wall fell, to rally Eastern Europeans into harmony with the Western world through the power of soft metal.
By the time I heard the podcast, I had been thinking about writing a book in the world of glam metal for almost twenty years – and even earlier on some level, since I was a little kid in the 80s watching MTV even though I wasn’t supposed to. Eight-year-old Travis saw metal guys as zany party animals without a care in the world. The cool kids in the back of the bus. In more recent years, I read autobiographies and biographies and watched documentaries from the era, believing all along that there was a story to be told there that could be bigger than the standard “Behind the Music” drama about how everything was great until it all came crashing down.
I didn’t entirely know why the genre captivated me so much. The entertainment factor never let me down, of course; a lot of their adventures are objectively funny. These borderline-feral Muppets were suddenly swimming in fame and fortune, and they didn’t have any of the tools to handle either. That was a good place to start. But I did learn quickly that my childhood impression of the glam metal bands was all wrong.
Because more often than not, these guys were not the cool kids in the back of the bus. They were misfits. Outcasts. They had abusive and tragic childhoods.
They usually weren’t popular. They did badly in school. People had no expectations for them. And they didn’t have much expectations for themselves. But they had this one thing they loved and were good at.
Music.
And while they were misfits on their own, when they found each other and played together, they unlocked these superpowers. The castaways and dropouts – with their massive hair, and makeup, and spandex – dominated the zeitgeist of the back half of the 1980s. It was one underdog story after another, like the Mighty Ducks or the Bad News Bears.
There it was: that simple but true BIG IDEA, proven over and over: that when misfits and outcasts find their communities, they can accomplish really big things together.
By the time I listened to “Wind of Change,” I knew already that metal dudes shared a lot of hidden traits. They were resourceful. They were adaptable. They were willing to live in circumstances that most other people weren’t. And they were constantly underestimated.
Those are actually really good qualities for spies!
So, while the concept was still hilarious to me, it was also weirdly kind of plausible. Now I was off and running, and a fascinating thing happened – the big idea kept finding different ways of telling itself in the story. Without spoiling too much, the band Whyte Python is not the only group of underdogs in this book; and whether it’s their Agency handlers or the people living under dictatorships a world away, the spark of music becomes a pretty powerful connector for disparate outcasts who go on to accomplish big things together.
Make no mistake, The Whyte Python World Tour is a satire. But always present is the belief that art – even if that art is party metal, played by feral Muppets – has immeasurable power when it’s shared. When it means something to people, and helps them find other people who have the same feelings about it. You’re doing that now as fans of this website, and every time you give a recommendation for a book or an album or a movie you loved. Participating in culture means that you’re a part of a thousand little movements, inspiring others to seek new ideas and talk about them with each other and maybe build something amazing out of it.
So on behalf of the band, let me be the first to say: welcome to the revolution.
Tell your friends.
The Whyte Python World Tour: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop
Author Socials: Website|Band Website|Facebook|Twitter|Rikki Thunder’s Facebook|Davy Bones Facebook|Spencer Dooley Facebook|Buck Sweet Facebook
What is a B Corp? And why do they matter? : A basic name, but a big impact!
Jun. 24th, 2025 02:19 pmkingarthurflour_feed
Every bag of King Arthur flour proudly sports a “Certified B Corp” logo on its side. But what exactly does that mean? And why does it matter? Read on to find out.
The post What is a B Corp? And why do they matter? : A basic name, but a big impact! appeared first on the King Arthur Blog.
Rhapsody to humid heat
Jun. 24th, 2025 07:22 amasakiyumeI love the way the medium of humid air makes you intimate with every other thing. The way everything is right on your skin and in your lungs. The glass of water sweats, you sweat. Time dissolves, sound travels nonlinearly, odors are more vivid. I love the lassitude, the exhaustion.
lolsob
Jun. 23rd, 2025 08:16 pmwaterswordI tripped coming back from the garden after watering and skinned the hell out my left knee and twisted my right ankle, plus minor scrapes on my palms. Ow.
Hobbled home, rinsed everything off (because of course I had some dirt on me from wrestling the garden hose and whatnot), smeared on antibacterial ointment, iced both joints (not super successfully), taped bandaids to my knee, and ordered delivery of a bento box. Now I need to put on enough clothes to get downstairs to receive said delivery, and get back up the stairs to eat. Ow ow OW.
This was a perfectly pleasant heatwave until then! I got the window unit into my bedroom window yesterday, have been eating popsicles and drinking various flavored waters, and made summer rolls last night. I was going to make peanut noodles. But no. Did I mention OW?
Back in the Day and Here and Now
Jun. 23rd, 2025 09:39 pmscalziwhatever_feed
My friend George sent me this picture of me and Krissy — which I had been literally trying to find for years! — where she and I were at the wedding of my friend Clete. I was a groomsman, which is why I’m dressed up; Krissy is dressed up because, you know, wedding, you’re supposed to look nice. I seem to remember the wedding taking place in 1995, although I might be off by a year; either way, this is us, roughly 30 years ago.
And here we are now!
30 years is a lot of time and also, not nearly enough time with someone if you love them a lot. Fortunately for us we get to keep going. Not gonna lie, though, I miss my hair. Krissy’s still looks spectacular, of course. That’ll have to be enough for the both of us.
Also, hello, we’re back in the United States now. Venice was lovely. I’ll post some more pictures of it soon.
— JS
Media Round Up: June 23, 2025
Jun. 23rd, 2025 11:56 amforestofgloryThe Gate, the Girl, and the Dragon by Grace Lin— Read out loud to the kid. I loved Grace Lin’s other MG books so I was very excited for this! It was very charming. As always I enjoy the author’s illustrations. I enjoyed having Chinese mythical creatures in a modern city. I don’t love it quite as much as some of the author’s other work, but it was good and worth reading.
The Transitive Properties of Cheese by Ann Leblanc— I heard about this novella from a WisCon panel on recent trans SFF. It's about a space cheese maker who finds out the asteroid that houses her cheese cave is about to be yeetted into the sun. She is one of many people who is a copy of an original human, including the person she sells her cheese to and the woman she goes to for help. This book was maybe not as weird as it was presented to me, and some of the politics are exactly like current earth queer community debates. Still I loved all the details about food, and the bits of community building that were present around the edges of the story.
The Truth Season 3 cases 6 and 7— This is labeled as two cases but it's really one very long case! I was a little disappointed to have to wait a week for resolution. This case also featured some upsetting queer phobic violence as part of one character’s backstory. But there were a lot of fun things too. They fought zombies with bubble guns!
The Treasured Voice Season 6 ep 1 — I started watching this while I was waiting between episodes of The Truth. It’s a singing reality show featuring people pairing up to sing songs. It’s got Liu Yuning! I’ve only seen the first episode but it seems pretty chill so far though there are some judges who make negative comments.
( Maiden )Music For Your Monday: 6arelyhuman
Jun. 23rd, 2025 05:16 pmscalziwhatever_feed
Feeling the Monday Blues? Have I got the cure for you. Introducing one of my recent favorite artists, 6arelyhuman (pronounced barely human)!
Imagine the most hype, energizing club music that makes you want to take shots and dance till the sun comes up. No, not Kesha, but pretty close in vibes.
I came across 6arelyhuman on TikTok last year, and their song “Faster N Harder” ended up becoming my number one song on Spotify for 2024. I listened to 6arelyhuman’s songs on repeat daily for months last year, and I’m still loving them. They self identify as a freaky alien here to create absolute bops.
Here’s the song that started my obsession:
Don’t you just wanna dance your pants off?! Well let’s keep the party going with some others I really love from them:
And technically on this next one they’re only featured and it’s actually Odetari’s song, but I still really like it:
So, are you feeling amped? You simply can’t be in a bad mood after you listen to this music, trust me, I’ve tried.
Don’t forget to check 6arelyhuman out on Spotify, and let me know which song was your favorite in the comments. Have a great day!
-AMS
How to fix broken buttercream — it can be saved!: Don’t throw it out.
Jun. 23rd, 2025 02:12 pmkingarthurflour_feed
If you’ve only made simple American buttercreams before, attempting a Swiss or Italian buttercream — which are made by first beating egg whites or meringue powder until fluffy and voluminous, then beating in butter bit-by-bit — can feel daunting.
The post How to fix broken buttercream — it can be saved!: Don’t throw it out. appeared first on the King Arthur Blog.
