Cynthia Ward

This is good and probably very helpful to others - maybe even very helpful to me sometime in the future - but it's also very reliant on exercises. I have trouble with exercises, in general: partly because I'm impatient and want to hurry through the book, and partly because for me exercises work better if I can integrate them into my current work somehow, and as of reading this I'm in the midst of a bout of earthquake-induced writer's block so, well. Something to come back to and try another show more time. show less

Lucy is an agent for the crown charged to ensure important plans being delivered to the American government actually arrive and don’t fall into the hands of a hostile foreign power: especially as tensions rise and Britain’s new Martian technology is in high demand.

As a dhampire, a half-vampire, she is uniquely qualified for this role – and for vampire slaying. Which is complicated when a vampire joins her on the HMS Titanic – and a vampire that conflicts so strongly with what she has show more been taught and tempts her away from both her duty and her mission.

This is one of those books that frustrates me immensely – because it’s only a book. Worse, it’s only a short story. Because, by all that is awesome, why is this not a book series? Why is it not a book series covering many many many books?

Bisexual female dhampire secret agent working for the government in a Steampunk setting that has the feel of both The League of Extraordinary Gentleman and Penny Dreadful pulling in all those Victoriana stories from Martian invasions to vampires and men raised in the wilderness – and so much more. All of it mixed in with real world politics of the time adding some nice intrigue to the story of the supernatural secret agent. All of this world building is nicely hinted at, included briefly but not overwhelming the actual plot and development of this short story.

Of course the bitterness of that is there’s so much of this world building which we could so play with! I want to see it all, the martial technology, the supernaturals incorporated into the world and government agencies and Lucy’s own personal situation and development and growth as a dhampire.

With this world we have a nice plot that does an excellent balance between action and development and world building that really just left me wanting more because there’s so much potential. Lucy’s story and development, lots of intrigue and lots of action which is really well written along with lots of emotional; development and world building all perfectly balanced.

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I read this story in brief spurts, and then read the main section a second time in about a day. The book is an interesting read. If you've spent any time at all on tumblr, or any of the numerous social awareness websites some of this will seem fairly tame and "well duh." Regardless it's a good, basic read through that offers up both new, and common sense ideas. I will admit that one of the things I took away from it was a sureness that adding "the Other" to my writing is okay, done properly show more of course. That's something I worry about as a white, cis female writer, but I'm also dead set against writing a make believe, all white, all cis, all straight cast. That's not what the world looks like, and I might be writing fantasy, but that's zero excuse to whitewash every bit of it.

This is definitely a book I'll keep and refer back to as I edit, etc. A good one for a writer's book case. show less

I haven't found much else out there on this topic: writing fiction about characters who don't share your subject position in terms of race/gender/sexual orientation/ability/age/etc. So I was glad to find this book and glad science fiction writers wrote it. It's got some writing exercises I can imagine using in a creative-writing class. There are people to whom I'd like to give a copy (anonymously). But I wish it was better than it was, more challenging, hadn't intentionally and for confusing show more reasons left out class... show less