Shining Moon Episode 02: Reading and the Working Writer

Hello, and welcome to Shining Moon: A Speculative Fiction Podcast, Episode 2. Today we’ll continue our series by asking a question not about genre or craft, but about how to keep reading, when you’re a working writer. We’ll discuss the impact working as a writer has on our reading time, choices, and pleasure, and we’ll discuss several stories we all read together. My guests today are Chloe Smith and Brian Hugenbruch. 

Stories discussed: "A Long Spoon," Jonathan E. Howard, https://www.amazon.com/Long-Spoon-Tor-Com-Original-Johannes-ebook/dp/B00N6LRIHS

“Give us the Swords” by Carlie St. George, https://kaleidotrope.net/archives/spring-2023/give-us-the-swords-by-carlie-st-george/

“The Year of Rebellious Stars” by Tanvir Ahmed, https://translunartravelerslounge.com/2023/02/15/the-year-of-rebellious-stars-by-tanvir-ahmed/ 

"Don't tell me that the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." -- Anton Chekov

Piano music for closure

Thank you for listening to Shining Moon! You can reach the host, Deborah L. Davitt, at the following social media platforms:

www.facebook.com/deborah.davitt.3

Bluesky: @deborahldavitt.bsky.social

www.deborahldavitt.com

Transcript

Deborah L. Davitt:
Hello and welcome to Shining Moon, a speculative fiction podcast episode two. I'm your host, Deborah L. Davitt. Today we'll continue our series by asking a question not about genre or craft, but about how to keep reading when you're a working writer. We'll discuss the impact working as a writer has on our reading time, choices, and pleasure, and we'll discuss several stories that we all read together. My guests today are Chloe Smith and Brian Hugenbruch. Let's get started with some introductions. Brian Hukenbrook, is a speculative fiction author and poet living in upstate New York with his wife and their daughter. He enjoys fishing, but only in video games. Scotch, but only in real life. And he spends his days explaining quantum quick photography to other nerds. His fiction has appeared in Analog, Escape Pod, and ZNB Presents. His poetry has appeared in Dreams and Nightmares, Apparition Literary, and Abyss and Apex. No, he's not sure how to say his last name either. Hi Brian, welcome and thank you for joining us.

Brian Hugenbruch:
Hi, Deborah. Thank you for having me.

Deborah L. Davitt:
It's a pleasure having you on. Chloe Smith is my next guest, and she writes fiction and fantasy stories. When not writing, she teaches English and history to 14-year-olds, which is never boring. She's also a proofreader for Fantasy Magazine and until recently for Locus. She was born and raised in San Francisco Bay Area and lived in Texas and Washington States, New York City, and rural France before coming back to California. Her short fiction has appeared in Three-Lobed Burning Eye, Daily Science Fiction, Bourbon Pin, and elsewhere. And her debut novella, Virginland, came out from Luna Press Publishing in 2023. You can find more of her work on her website, imaginaryresearch.wordpress.com, and by following her on Twitter or Mastodon's wandering shop, at Chloe H. Smith. Hello, Chloe. Thank you for joining us.

Chloe:
Hello, thank you for having me.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Well, let's get started. And on writing, Stephen King, and there's no greater authority than Stephen King, right? Surely. If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write. Simple as that. Do you agree with this assessment or do you disagree with this assessment?

Chloe:
I would say that yes, I do agree, but I also think that reading and writing don't have to occur at the same time. I mean, everything that it's all grist for the mill, right? And most writers come to writing out of a life of reading. So I feel like you can not have time to do as much reading as you want, but your writing is still drawing off of the things that you read and enjoyed and were moved by throughout your life.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Brian Hugenbruch:
I agree. I think certainly he meant it in the context of the starting writer. But reading is just a way to strengthen all those muscles inside your mind that help you learn how to build stories and relate to other folks. And I think that as long as you're reading, you're helping to strengthen those things. I know a lot of folks do like to talk up, you know, studying, getting degrees, that sort of thing. And while I did go the painful route of getting a degree in English literature,

Deborah L. Davitt:
Hehehe

Brian Hugenbruch:
I certainly didn't go for an MFA and I don't think anybody needs a degree to read or to write. You just need to start working on both.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah, I likely have a degree in English Literature and I went for my masters in literature because I was going to be...

Brian Hugenbruch:
Uh...

Deborah L. Davitt:
I thought I was going to be teaching. I thought I was going to be a professor. Let's just say that dream died on the line. But uh... Yes, I don't think anybody really needs a degree to read and I don't think anybody needs a degree to write. I think that they just need the passion and the interest, but you also have to put in the work.

Brian Hugenbruch:
Mm-hmm. It

Deborah L. Davitt:
So,

Brian Hugenbruch:
doesn't just happen.

Deborah L. Davitt:
no it really doesn't. So do you find that you still read for pleasure or do you find that as a working writer it's harder to find time to read for pleasure?

Chloe:
Well, it's definitely harder to find time, but yes, absolutely. I feel like, you know, I have a day job. I think a lot, most, the

Deborah L. Davitt:
Most

Chloe:
overwhelming

Deborah L. Davitt:
of us do.

Chloe:
majority of working writers have a day job. And so while writing is certainly pleasurable, it's certainly, you know, it's a passion project, it's still work. And so to have work and then to have writing work, it's really important for me to have something where my brain can just sort of lose after all of that.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Chloe:
And reading is one of those places, although I was, I was taking some notes on this last night. And I think it's also a really like The what's reading for purpose and what's reading for pleasure is a very fuzzy

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Chloe:
line, right? Because

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yes.

Chloe:
a lot of the things that I read and love, I enjoy them because I think they're really good. And then I think, oh, wow, how did this author do this? How can I do this? So it ends up being, you know, a professional, professional in quotes, activity as well. And similarly, when I read for research, which I do as well, That's

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Chloe:
often pleasurable and enjoyable. I actually didn't major in English in college. I majored in history and so that's that connects a lot to the sort of reading that I do for research and It's all stories

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm, it does indeed. Brian, how about you? Do you still read for pleasure or do you find that it's a little bit more like work?

Brian Hugenbruch:
I mean, yeah, I think I have to. I think I'll get lost in my own head if I don't. And I think I need to remember sometimes that reading and writing, both of them, are things that bring me joy. And that can be kind of hard to keep sight of sometimes when you're in the thick

Chloe:
show.

Brian Hugenbruch:
of 40 or 40,000 words into a novel edit or you're clocking in yet another rejection or some such. Or even if you just happen to pick up the story next year as an anthology and start reading it and. you know, start making comparing notes and doing the business reading side of the writing career. It can be a lot and having the ability to just read for fun is a refreshing and vitalizing thing. Not everything has to be about monetization and self-improvement and

Deborah L. Davitt:
and SEO and...

Brian Hugenbruch:
well,

Deborah L. Davitt:
..

Brian Hugenbruch:
at least that's what they tell me. But

Deborah L. Davitt:
haha

Brian Hugenbruch:
yeah, they, yeah, I think it's It's good to go back to the well and just relax. Writers often, a lot of the ones I speak to, beat themselves up a little bit more often than they really need to and forget to take breaks. And it's a good thing

Chloe:
Mm-hmm.

Brian Hugenbruch:
to do that and just let things go. And I know that's hard, because I tell myself that too.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah.

Brian Hugenbruch:
But yeah, I do agree.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Alright. How have your reading habits changed since becoming a professional author? I personally find that I read way more nonfiction these days when reading by choice than fiction. I find that I dip into that as the well of inspiration for stories and I don't even do it necessarily consciously. I'll read something nonfiction and then it'll spark an idea and I'm like, I'm off to the races. So do you find that you're reading more nonfiction these days, more fiction these days? How has becoming an author changed your reading habits?

Chloe:
Brian, do you want to go first this time? I feel like when I go first, you get the opportunity to respond to what I've said.

Brian Hugenbruch:
Okay. Yeah, no problem. What's, I, it's changed a little bit because I focus primarily on speculative fiction. I find that I don't read as much of that for pure pleasure anymore. I read an awful lot of it for other reasons, but

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Brian Hugenbruch:
I will go find non-speculative poetry. I will pick up historical fiction, I'll pick up non-fiction, biography, mystery, just, you know, or even just straight up New York Times literary fiction just to find something that's as far away from what I do that I can go get lost in it and not have to worry about it quite so much.

Deborah L. Davitt:
And you, Chloe?

Chloe:
I think I... take a minute, gather my thoughts again. So I used to proofread for Locust, like I said, and as a result I read both their author interviews every month, and what Brian said is actually what I feel like a lot of the authors who were interviewed said, which is this need to like... read outside of what you're actually writing, outside of the arena in which you're pursuing your professional activity. And I actually feel like I might be strange because I don't have that instinct at all. Like I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy and I write a lot of science fiction and fantasy. And sometimes I worry that will like color what I write too much. Like I recently read When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Bonehill, which is amazing. I strongly recommend it. But then I was writing and I was like, oh my God, my prose just got very Bonehill-esque. She has a very

Deborah L. Davitt:
Hehehehe

Chloe:
distinctive, beautiful style, which I mean, it's not a bad thing, but it needs to sort of like iron back into my process. I think the biggest change for me in terms of what I read is that once I've started, when I started trying to write short fiction, I started reading a lot of short fiction. And that's

Brian Hugenbruch:
Mm-hmm.

Chloe:
not like my normal place. Like a lot of people just are really drawn to short fiction, which is great because there's so many great venues and so much great short fiction being produced. But I had to be really intentional about making sure that I was reading a decent amount of short fiction and not just long form.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I have found that I, because of critiquing other writers' drafts and things like that, that is basically where I get most of my input from the speculative community, and that's where I get a lot of my ideas on how to form and shape speculative fiction in the short form. So I do wind up doing quite a lot of that. Do you find that you are reading other people's drafts? Do you work as an editor? Do you, where are you getting your inputs from other than from just picking up a magazine and reading something that's been already polished out there? Brian, I'm gonna pick on you first.

Brian Hugenbruch:
Okay. So I, yeah, I do. I'm a member of several different critique groups for folks in the industry, both for fiction and for poetry, in fact. So we do an awful lot of trading back and forth. And it's good to see the starting, where fiction starts. And it's a somewhat relieving for me to see everyone struggling in the same way that I struggle with a lot of the writing process. It's good to reaffirm that from time to time. But you know, I do also try to go out

Deborah L. Davitt:
It

Brian Hugenbruch:
and

Deborah L. Davitt:
does look so effortless when you just read the finished draft and you go, my god, they're so good and I suck so much. And that's the beginnings of imposter syndrome right there. So yes, absolutely.

Brian Hugenbruch:
Absolutely.

Deborah L. Davitt:
But go on.

Brian Hugenbruch:
And I go out and experience that for myself every time I pick up a magazine, if I'm studying markets, trying to understand their vibe, for example,

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Brian Hugenbruch:
or just doing general research or picking up a magazine or an anthology I happen to be in and reading what else was around me to see where I kind of landed in the middle of the field. It's an interesting thing to see the disparity between the start and the end. But you... especially at, you talk to enough writers, you can still see the kernels, I think, of where folks started, and that's reassuring because we all start in roughly the same place, which is, you need to do a lot more polishing.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah, and Chloe, I know that you said that you proofread for Locus and for fantasy, and when you were reading through all those, did that wind up shaping anything for you in terms of your own writing or in terms of wanting to just read more of it or was it a pleasurable activity proofreading? I don't know.

Chloe:
So, Fantasy Magazine, yes absolutely, oh my gosh, it forced me to read the whole issue every month and I've just, I don't mean to be a booster for it, but like I've just, Early Sorg and Kristy Yant have done such an amazing job and it's so sad that they're going to wrap things up because like they just, they created a really special... voice within the market and I recommend everyone go back and read all the stories because they're great. And I feel like I learned a lot from listening as well, from reading those as well. So reading Locus is different because it's a non-fiction publication, it's a trade magazine,

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Chloe:
and it was just super professionally useful because I would read all the book deals and I would read all the book reviews and I would read the author interviews so I feel like I was constantly getting all this like basically... doing research about what it meant to be a working writer. The actual doing of proofreading makes it kind of hard to write because I have to sort of mentally take the red pen and put it down

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Chloe:
when I'm doing my own writing. I also teach middle school, that's my day job, and so I

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah.

Chloe:
spend a lot, a lot, a lot of time coaching other people's writing. As

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah.

Chloe:
you saw in my mug, I... would not have bought this for myself, but one of my colleagues who's a math teacher got this for me. It says, I'm silently correcting your grammar, which is not always true, I should say. But I definitely

Deborah L. Davitt:
Hahaha!

Chloe:
have that like very strong, like, fix it voice in my head. And in some ways, reading for pleasure, I think helps me turn that off before I turn to my own writing.

Deborah L. Davitt:
It kind of depends, unfortunately, on how well edited what you are reading for pleasure has been edited, because very often my internal editor finds things that their editors did not find, and I sit there and go, how did this get out into the world?

Chloe:
That's true, actually. In fact, when I first, like way back years ago when I first started trying to write, it was inspired by a super guilty pleasure reading of a vampire story that was like, man, I just had my red pen out in my head and I was like, I could do

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yes.

Chloe:
better than this. But then, I think as I've got on as a writer, like Initially it was like, I can do just as good, you know, I can do better than this and to be really inspired by the things that I saw that I wanted to do differently. But I think it's been more helpful for me as I grow as a writer to try to be inspired by the things that I see authors do that work for me and think about like, well,

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yes.

Chloe:
how did they make that work?

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yes, we were having a really good conversation about that last time on the Literary vs. Genre episode, and we were talking about what makes something literary, and we had at least five different definitions of it, but we were very inspired by the stories that we read for the episode. So we'll probably be turning next to what type of reading do you do, and we've talked a little bit about that. So... Let's talk about some of the stories that we read for this episode. This is going to be a little bit shorter of an episode because we don't have multiple stories of each other to read and talk about and critique and everything like that. So instead we'll talk about three stories that we read for pleasure. And which one do you want to start with? Do we want to start with A Long Spoon by Jonathan E. Howard? since that was the longest of the stories, it's a novella, and it is the sixth in his Johannes Cabal series.

Chloe:
Yeah,

Deborah L. Davitt:
I personally

Chloe:
let's.

Deborah L. Davitt:
love everything that he's written. I love his voice, I love his wit, I love the rhineness of the humor, and I find that I learn from reading him. So what did you guys think?

Brian Hugenbruch:
I mean, I thought it was a really fun story and I appreciated that the fun came inherently from the characters and the conflicts that they had just interacting with one another. Certainly Cabal comes from a long line of modern necromancers and sorcerers, so there's a nice tradition for him to have sprung from in that context. And the fact that the demon, excuse me, devil.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Hmm

Brian Hugenbruch:
you know, twist a few of the tropes that you might normally expect to see from this kind of adventure, I thought brought a lot of delight. I think the interesting part for me was actually the voice. I think because I come from the school of Douglas Adams reading for fun.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm

Brian Hugenbruch:
Finding that balance between the fun in a narrative voice and the fun of the story is an interesting one. So, you know, some of the jokes landed for me and some of them did not. And I thought the loofah was great. I'll call

Deborah L. Davitt:
Hehehehehehe

Brian Hugenbruch:
that out rather particularly. But, you know, but the story excelled because, you know, there's a compelling story underneath the voice and the jokes. And you didn't necessarily have to have every single joke land to make it a really fun and engaging read.

Deborah L. Davitt:
what I find and I'm going to just step in a little bit before Chloe has a chance to talk is that since I've read all of the Cabal books, Cabal starts off as being this intensely unlikable character. He hates himself, he hates the world, and he's punishing himself and the world for a loss that has marked him. And everything that he does is in furtherance of his plot to undo the death of his fiance. And it's always done very subtly. And it's almost never referenced that that's why he's doing this. But it's always there in the background. There's always this underlying tension. So as you see him becoming more and more human, as he's regained his soul, and he's becoming more and more of a person in the later books, it's marvelous to see the character growth, even though he's still essentially an incredibly unlikable person. So it's an amazing balance for me to see that you can sympathize with the protagonist that you should really dislike. And he does the author does this fantastic job of maintaining that balance of making sure that you still don't like him entirely. Now, go ahead, Chloe. I'm sorry to have burst in.

Chloe:
No, no, no. I really appreciated that. And in fact, both of what you two said about character and voice, I think are so key to what makes reading fun or pleasurable. I thought a lot about like... what makes one story, because you can read something and be like, this is amazing and I loved it. And also it was not fun at all. But what makes something feel particularly fun to read? And I think for me, it's a lot about like feeling a connection to the character. And I think it's interesting that of the three stories that we picked, one was from an ongoing series and one was a retread of a like. a classic story by another author. And so I think there's something about like, recognizability. And when I think about like, the stories that like, give me the most pleasure to read, it's like, Oh, I get to spend more time with this character again, like, oh my goodness, like, you know, story

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Chloe:
books like Martha Wells's series, the Motorboat Diaries, or like, the Expand series by James S. A. Corey, like, I just really want to spend more time with those people. And I think that that's something that's harder to establish in short fiction, because you have so much less time to connect with the kid to build a relationship with the character. I definitely think it can be done, but like feeling like you, you know, when you care about the character. is definitely important. And I think, you know, like Brian said, it's a balance with voice. Like there can be the Douglas Adams stories where it's much more about the voice and you don't build, like feel tied to the character. I'm more of the Terry Pratchett school of humor where I want

Deborah L. Davitt:
Oh yes.

Chloe:
the like to care intensely about the people and also it's freaking hilarious.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah, I am definitely in the Pratchett school. I like my Douglas Adams, but I really love Pratchett. So I sense your distinction between them is a matter of distance because Adam stays very much outside of the characters and he'll waft between their heads periodically. Whereas when Pratchett's in someone's head, he's in their head. There's the occasional footnote to let you know that there's authorial, you know, narrative perspective, but he's very much in their head when he's occupying them. He's a much tighter point of view. So, yeah.

Chloe:
Yeah. And I think it's also has to do with how much, and I mean, obviously we're projecting into the authors, but how much you feel like the, um, the author cares about the characters and how much you trust the author to, um, like shepherd them through growth. I mean, fiction, reading fiction is different from reading history because there is authorial intent. History is. famously one damn thing after another. And so like if everything

Deborah L. Davitt:
Hehehehe

Chloe:
falls apart and there's no good plot, you understand. But when you're reading like a complex flawed character, it's much more comforting, even if you never like them, to feel like you're on a journey with them and that their journey is important and that you won't. you won't suffer unduly for your liking of them. I think about the

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Chloe:
difference between

Brian Hugenbruch:
Mm-hmm.

Chloe:
reading, say, the flawed characters in Georgia O'Murton's books, which you care about and too bad for you, as opposed to the flawed characters in, say, CL Clark's The Unbroken, which I recently read and thought was really, really good, and I haven't read the sequel, so I can't be sure that, like, they don't like that their journey can doesn't like just make me pointlessly suffer. But I'm pretty sure from reading the first book that the, you know, the difficulty and the injustices and the poor choices that they make a part of like a satisfying whole.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah, that is one thing that I find that I dislike about when I watch TV is the poor decision making and I usually wind up suffering enormously watching it. And then I bail and my husband laughs at me because he says I have my hand basically positioned over the parachute long before he does because I will watch a couple of episodes of something and go, no, this is dumb. There's two... too little time in life to watch something dumb and I will bail and then like about Two seasons later he'll go. Yeah, this was really dumb There was a lot of poor decision-making and I'm really not enjoying this and I'm like you could quit but I'm committed now No, no, you're allowed to stop if you're not enjoying something. You're allowed to stop

Chloe:
Yes.

Deborah L. Davitt:
So Brian,

Brian Hugenbruch:
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt:
we didn't give you a chance to talk yet. I'm so sorry.

Brian Hugenbruch:
Oh, I mean, well, partially because I kicked it off and partially I was just waiting for an opening because it was fascinating listening to the two of you talk about it. And what I was thinking was that going back to Chloe's comment about the author shepherding the reader through the story and going back to with a long spoon, the narrative voice is it's close, but it's not too close. And to me, that kind of implies that, you know, we're looking out for you. You know, you're going to get to know these people. We're not going to put you in too much danger. You're not in the thick of things. You're not in George R. Martin territory with your characters. But, you know, some stuff will happen, but we're not going to, I think, because Johannes himself apparently will keep you at arm's length. The humor seems to work to that effect as well, that it's propulsive. It'll carry you along, but it won't, it's not going to grab you by the scruff of the neck. either and I think that I found that reassuring especially as we got into the finer bowels of hell.

Deborah L. Davitt:
So moving along to our second story, which is Give Us the Swords by, let me see, I had her name, there we go, Give Us the Swords by Carly St. George, which originally appeared in Kaleidotrope, and quite recently at that, if I understand this correctly. This is a story that is a retelling of Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare, which is my absolute favorite of his comedies. Only it's done in the style of a slasher flick. So I enjoyed the verve of the voice in the story. I didn't enjoy the story as a whole. I had to sort of pull myself back from it and sort of observe things at a distance to see why I was reacting with dislike to the story. And I think it's just because I love the original so much that I was not able to distance myself and get into the whole idea of, well, now there's a serial killer working their way through the cast. And I'm sitting there going, but hey, Nonny Nonny. So what about the two of you? Since I know that Chloe suggested this as one of our topics for discussion, I know that there must be something about this that you really enjoyed. So why don't you talk about that and then we'll turn it over to Brian.

Chloe:
Well, Deborah, first of all, thank you for holding space for a story that like tears apart something that you really love. I know that it can be really hard to approach a retelling or a parody or a different version of something that you care about, like how many of us have been horrified by TV or movie adaptations that didn't follow our vision. So

Deborah L. Davitt:
Oh yeah.

Chloe:
I appreciate

Deborah L. Davitt:
No,

Chloe:
that.

Deborah L. Davitt:
it's absolutely a question of taste on my part and I am always willing to accept the fact that other people have different tastes than me. I mean, just look at all the poems that I have written and I have sold and I've gone, how the hell did they actually sell?

Chloe:
Hahaha

Deborah L. Davitt:
But somebody liked them. So I'm not the best judge. I'm not the only judge. So talk to me about what you liked about this story so that I can learn.

Chloe:
Well, I read a lot of YA because I teach middle school and so I like things that happen in that genre and right now like thrillers are really hot in the YA world and so I

Deborah L. Davitt:
Hehehe

Chloe:
think it kind of scratched that itch like honestly like motor in high school is what is selling and this is motor in college and I also really liked it because I felt like it like put its finger on, I also really like matcha do, but it put its finger on the fact that at the heart of the story it is a kind of uncomfortable interpretation of how like sinful it is for a pure young woman to like have a sexual encounter before her marriage. and that can, if you look at it with a feminist lens, that can in some ways like spoil the pleasure of the play. And so I liked how the author was going back through it and kind of like doing a little bit of a corrective from a very like bloody and toxic angle for sure. I also just really liked the voice. I really liked the cognitive dissonance of having this like scream movie kind of feeling in a Shakespeare story. And I think that there can be a lot of enjoyment from like a mashup.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay. Brian, what did you think of this story?

Brian Hugenbruch:
Uh, so, uh, I think, um, the first thing that, that occurred to me was the, uh, the, the rule when it comes to cover songs. And that's a, please, please don't remind me of a song that I, that I like, that's been played by somebody else. Uh, and that, that's, that, you know, then that's, you know, that, that was always my reaction when I see something that's a riff on something else. And, uh, so I always have to take a step back, take a deep breath and, and judge a piece on its own merits. And so. Step one was, okay, set aside all the Shakespeare,

Deborah L. Davitt:
Hehehehe

Brian Hugenbruch:
which took me a couple minutes, because that's a pretty big piece.

Deborah L. Davitt:
It's a pretty big

Brian Hugenbruch:
Yeah,

Deborah L. Davitt:
book.

Brian Hugenbruch:
yeah. So what I thought was that, I enjoyed it, it was fun, it definitely pulled you along. I found this one, the voice, I think, because it was so set, well, the voice in this one was actually really its own character.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yes.

Brian Hugenbruch:
And, you know, definitely more so than the previous story was. And so I found myself having quibbles with the character of the narrator as I was going along because they kept interrupting the actual story.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm.

Brian Hugenbruch:
So I think that, I mean, I definitely loved it as a revisitation and exploration of some of these social politics and definitely thought. that while I saw the ending coming, that it was very well executed. I feel part in the pun.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Ha.

Brian Hugenbruch:
I should be a writer.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Brian Hugenbruch:
But yeah, no, the voice, I think, for this one just threw me personally. So, I mean, it was fun. It was just, you know, not, probably not the first thing I would have picked up myself, but it was interesting to see.

Chloe:
I think that that's a really good point about voice as well, because we talked a lot earlier about how voice makes things fun, but it's also super suggestive. And a voice that one person can love can just throw someone else completely out of the story.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Chloe:
And by suggestive I meant subjective, sorry. I think it's also true that their voice is very driven by culture and by the culture that the writer comes out of or that they've moved through. And so for me, spending a lot of time in the teen world, I found it very recognizable and less distracting than I think someone else would have. And I think that's true when you talk about cultures that grow up around different languages and different communities.

Deborah L. Davitt:
something that definitely applies to our next story which is... let me see... of course put the everything on a different page there we go. The year of rebellious stars by Tanvir Ahmed which first appeared in trans lunar traveler's lounge and this is definitely a voicy story as well but it couldn't be any it couldn't be more different from uh give us the swords if it tried. It is a remarkable uh lush lushly written uh story written in the the high Islamic style, I would call it. It's written by someone who is a specialist in Islamic religion and history. So the language is absolutely authentic and beautiful and it has elaborate rhetorical flourishes that I greatly enjoyed reading. However, it was a little on the distancing side, I found. So we were, again, instead of being right with the characters, we were again pulled back. All three of these stories were fairly pulled back from the characters I found. And the distance was a little bit. Hmm. The distance definitely made me less inclined to enjoy overall. I would have liked to have been a little bit closer to the characters, but I can see why the author did what they did because that's the style that they were writing in. It was

Brian Hugenbruch:
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt:
very historical. It had. the texture of the times in it. So what did you think, Brian?

Brian Hugenbruch:
I mean, first off, I'll say that this was actually a business read for me when it first came out because I have a story in that issue. So yeah,

Chloe:
Congratulations.

Brian Hugenbruch:
so I got to, you know, I read it at the time because I'm like, okay, let me see what else is around. I read it. I thought it was fantastic. Was mildly jealous. Set it down and didn't think about it for a while. So being able to come back and reread it purely for pleasure was really nice. as you say, remarkably well executed as a story in that style. And certainly as a ethnically Western reader and writer, any time that it's not Western European fairy tale style, I get to sit up and enjoy something without carrying an awful lot of my own cultural context with me. So it was good to immerse myself in a world that was a lot more foreign to me personally than some other stories that I would see. What I found was that it took me a little while to get into it because it took a long time for the story to settle on the focal character.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Brian Hugenbruch:
And I know that was completely intentional. It took a little while to get from the Caliphate down to the Sears and to what we would call the beginning of the story, quote unquote, but it did such lush world building up front

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Brian Hugenbruch:
that I was nicely carried along. And then when the story actually got going, I had all these colors in my head for how everything looked and appeared and felt and it all just came together

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah,

Brian Hugenbruch:
beautifully.

Deborah L. Davitt:
it definitely breaks the rules, the quote unquote rule that you have 250 words to hook someone. And I was definitely sitting there going, okay, I'm hooked by the lushness of the prose, but where is the story going? But because the prose was so beautiful, it did carry me along until, yes, we did. find our focal character, our protagonist at long last, and move forward with them. So Chloe, you're the one again who recommended this story. Why did you recommend this one? And what gives you pleasure in reading it?

Chloe:
Well, I was looking around for something to recommend and Translator Travelers Lounge, Theo Masthead says they do fun stories. So I thought we'll all look and see what they have here and I read other stuff by Tanvir Ahmed and So I read this one and I thought it was beautiful as you said, I think I Agree with both of you that the plot is less It's not very, it's a little loose and it's definitely not what hooks me into the story. I thought it was satisfying in the end, but it wasn't, I felt a lot of distance from the characters. And really what I remember and what I enjoy about this story is the narrative voice. And I think it's interesting to think about how, what you said, I think Deborah, about how all three stories is like some distance between the characters. And

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Chloe:
I think- that connects to that sense of safety. When you read something and you love it, but you don't necessarily feel like it's fun, you have, often that's because you're so deeply connected with the characters and they are in the moment and it feels so intense. And when the voice is what's strong, it's like someone is telling you a story. And I think what I liked about this is it felt very connected to an oral or a folktale tradition.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Chloe:
And that is something I grew up reading a lot of mythology and folktales, traditional stories from different cultures. And I think that it made me feel kind of like a kid again being told a story. Like that's what I liked about this story.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Well said. All right. So what did we learn? Since we're all working writers and we can't really divorce from ourselves the tendency to need to learn something from each of the stories. Did we learn anything from reading any of these? Did we get anything out of it that we can apply to our own writing? Or was this just pleasure reading pure and simple?

Brian Hugenbruch:
I turned off my brain. I have that unique

Deborah L. Davitt:
Hehehehe

Brian Hugenbruch:
ability to just, you know, zone out and read, which is perhaps rare amongst writers. But yeah, no, in the case of the third story, certainly I'd read it previously, so I'd already picked up what I needed to from that. And in this case, I just said, yeah, no, I'm not, you know what, I'm not going to learn today.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Woof woof.

Brian Hugenbruch:
I'm just going to enjoy today. I'm going to look at, you know, impose a philosophy of composition, looking at the idea of, you know, learning to, you know, reading to learn, reading to be, have an emotion evoked. I went the latter path and I was happy for it.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Well, I envy you that ability, because I find it very difficult to turn it off. Some of that is the analytical background of having the master's degree in literature, and it's something that applies to when I watch TV too, which is I am enormously picky, and becoming a professional writer has made me even pickier in terms of what I will read for pleasure, because like I said about TV, life is too short if you're not enjoying it I, even authors that I really enjoy, I've found in the last year, I've picked up their books and I've started reading them and I've gone, no, I usually like you and I usually have a really good time reading you, but not today. I will come back to you when I have the brain circuits available to not be picky. And sometimes it requires brain circuits to just to turn off. It takes willpower to turn off the critical part of my brain.

Brian Hugenbruch:
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt:
And sometimes I just don't have that willpower, so it's just easier to do something else. And I guess that brings us back around to asking, how do you make time? I mean, I know, Chloe, you were talking about how you have ways of talking to your kids that you teach about finding time to read and making time and things like that. What are your recommendations that... that we can take even as adults.

Chloe:
Um, well, I, uh, I, I listen to audio books when I commute and when I exercise, I always have like at least two books going because I've gotten audio one and a paper one. So that's, that's a big, um, and talk about voice, like off, uh, books that have like a strong, uh, narrative voice or a strong character voice are like so good on audio. I just want to shout out Ben Aronovich's Rivers of London series, which is narrated by Cobhna Holbrook Smith, who's amazing and it's just talk about characters I want to spend time with. So audiobooks are big. I also, my school has silent reading, so I read when my kids are reading and I try to also have, on my phone I usually have a tab open with either AC Wise's previous year roundup, or Charles Pesur, or Maria Haskins, or one of the other great short fiction reviewers who do recommended reading lists, and then I'll pop open a story when I have a minute.

Deborah L. Davitt:
That's a great idea. That's a wonderful idea, thank you. All right, that brings us to the end of this episode. Thank you both for having agreed to be on the podcast. It was a pleasure speaking with both of you.

Brian Hugenbruch:
Oh, thank you.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Next time on Shining Moon, we'll be talking with Nebula award-winning author William Ledbetter, M.V. Mercer and A.T. Sayre on the topic of hard science fiction. One of our topics of discussion will be Holly Schofield's Maximum Efficiency. The story was a finalist for the 2022 Analog Analytical Laboratory Award and is available to read for free online if you want to read along with us.

Chloe:
That's

Deborah L. Davitt:
Again,

Chloe:
it.

Deborah L. Davitt:
thank you for having listened to Shining Moon and we will see you next time.

Chloe:
Thank you, Deborah. This was a great conversation. I have lots more things I want to read now.

Brian Hugenbruch:
Absolutely.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Good.

Brian Hugenbruch:
Thank you very much for having me on.

Deborah L. Davitt:
It was a pleasure. Thank you so much.