Occam’s Razor is Wrong, Sharang Biswas is Right (my March newsletter)

In this newsletter:

• Thinky Thoughts: Occam’s Razor is Wrong

• Daron’s Guitar Chronicles new covers live at LGBTQ Reads!

• Newsletter Guest: Sharang Biswas! And an actual cover reveal!

• Book recommendation of the month: The Radiant Emperor Duology by Shelley Parker-Chan

• See you in Orlando, FL, later this week! In Ashland (MA) on May 18th! And at the SFWA Nebulas conference in June!

• WIP Report: *muahahaha* (I got bit by a dragon romantasy plot bunny)

• Would you like a free book?

• One Featured Backlist Book

Thinky Thoughts: Occam’s Razor is Wrong

This has been bugging me for years now, but especially in the world of social media, arguments are most often “won” by those who can make the shortest, most direct case for their point of view. Simplicity is king.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a punchy encapsulation, like PennyRed’s recent essay on why we don’t love Harry Potter anymore, (from Realms of the Imagination, the companion book to the British Museum’s recent Fantasy exhibit) which contains the nicely nindblowing insight that it isn’t just that JK Rowling went “full TERF,” it’s that the promise of the Wizarding world itself was that a neoliberal status quo would save us, when that’s actually led to Brexit, new rise of right-wing fascism, wage disparity, etc. As she writes:

“[In the Wizarding World] there was no question about who was good and evil, and cruelty always came with a cost.

“This is a simple, beautiful lie. But it was a convincing lie back when the premise of neoliberal worldbuilding seemed to be delivering, before the fundamental plot holes opened up and swallowed the future. The Wizarding World is a fantasy about the British class system in the late 20th century translated into a magic aesthetic, with none of the savagery and bigotry and sexism that kept the machinery of power working in the real world.”

(The essay is about much more than that, and about how crucial fandom is, and why fandoms set up camp in certain authors’ sandboxes, and I recommend reading it.)

But while I love and admire a complex argument that is boiled down to a pithy one-liner, I have to take issue with how some people—including some of my closest friends—have made almost a fetish out of simplifying every explanation.

Occam’s razor doesn’t actually preach minimalism nor simplicity per se. The philosophical principle it embraces is that the explanation for a given thing is more likely to be the less complicated explanation rather than the more complicated one.

That may work fine for philosophy, but human beings and the world we live in are complex. At a population’s scale, the most improbable things can and WILL happen. A worldview that states that there is a single explanation for *ANYTHING* is suspect, so far as I’m concerned. Investigate anything deeply enough and you’re likely to find there wasn’t just a single fatal flaw that led to a failure: there were almost certainly multiple factors at work that combined to cause the failure. “The perfect storm” model is probably a lot closer to real life than the “simplest explanation” model.

Okay, sure, once in a while there is an obvious single failure mode, like the sole reason the recent mission to the moon was almost a complete failure was because the for-profit company running the launch was TOO DAMN CHEAP. (Story at The Guardian.) To save time and money, Intuitive Machines decided not to test the laser landing guidance system on Odysseus, so no one noticed that the safeties had never been taken off of the lasers until it got to the moon.

There is something very satisfying about knowing who to blame, who to label the villain, isn’t there? This is why in a manuscript, in story or novel, we love it when things can be reduced to a puzzle with a single solution. Throw the ring into Mount Doom and all will be well. Solve the mystery and reveal the culprit, and all will be well. If only Chris and Pat can figure out their Big Misunderstanding, all will be well!

But real life is not a story. In the real world, why did Chris and Pat break up? I guarantee you there wasn’t just a single reason. Chris’s mood swings from meds was only one factor of many. Pat’s need for novelty clashed with Chris’s need for predictability. Pat’s mother triggered Chris’s paranoia. Etc. etc… (Chris and Pat are fictional, of course, but you get the idea.)

What I’m struggling with these days in my fiction is that I want to put in more complexity for the sake of realism. When stories are too simple, then everything can feel too pat, too overly worked out. Fortunately for me, my characters rarely want to behave; they lie to me, and their Goals, Motivations, and Conflicts are moving targets… perhaps a bit like some real people I know. Also, things being “too simple” rarely happens when one is writing at the crossroads of multiple genres. Trying to make all the puzzle pieces fit together can be such a challenge, but it feels so good when they all snap into place!

I have to remind myself, though, that even if it feels good, I should not just storify my understanding of the world and the complicated people around me. Sirius tells Harry at one point that the world isn’t divided into good people and Death Eaters… but then both he and Harry proceed to act as if it is, anyway. Social media wants us to pick sides on every issue, but isn’t one of my bedrock principles “No False Binaries?” Because a binary is yet another form of oversimplification which is detrimental to wisdom and knowledge. I feel like as a storyteller I want to use my storytelling gifts to make the world a better place, but at the same time I am like Sirius, stating that it isn’t all as simple as the story wants to make it out to be.

COVER REVEAL… over at LGBTQ Reads!

It’s finally here! I’ve been teasing the brand new covers for Daron’s Guitar Chronicles for a few months now! Well, you can finally see the full covers of books 1 through 4, as revealed on the LGBTQ Reads Blog! Link: https://wp.me/p7lpmr-9PB

I’ve sent them not just the new covers but “old versus new” comparison shots. Remember the old ones were all stock photos that I searched and searched for, trying to find images that would fit? I’m SO much happier with commissioned art from Cheyanne Bueno, aka Milkychai. See their portfolio here: https://milkychai.weebly.com/ or give a follow on Insta: https://www.instagram.com/milkychai

The reveal also means book one is back on Amazon, for sale in paperback or digital, but also available to read in Kindle Unlimited for the first time! The new edition will be exclusive there 90 days and then go live everywhere else. If I’ve clicked all the right buttons, you should find the new book one here: https://amzn.to/43gJ79m

AND NOW… *another* Cover Reveal, this one for Sharang Biswas!

If you don’t know Sharang, I’ll briefly describe him as a force of nature driving much queer speculative sexuality into role-playing games. His publisher sent me a very boring author photo and one thing Sharang is not is boring, so I snazzed it up (as seen above).

Sharang is more than a game designer, artist, and writer, but to get a feel for him as a writer, have a taste of his fiction in the form of the short short story, “The Birds I Pull.” We are hotly anticipating his upcoming novella from Neon Hemlock Press, which is part of Neon Hemlock’s 2024 novella kickstarter campaign, which is going on RIGHT NOW (for the next 2 weeks). Sharang’s novella is entitled THE IRON BELOW REMEMBERS, and you can get it as part of the Kickstarter rewards: http://kck.st/3TjeDjN

Here’s the official description:

Set in an alternate version of the British Isles where South Asian imperial interest colonized much of the globe thanks to their advanced technology, Professor Laxman Yadav is dating Saviour, one of the world’s most famous superheroes, while also investigating the most important archeological find of all time.

Equal parts pulp caper and meta-textual academic text, this novella leans as heavily on footnotes as it does on explorations of queer romance.

I have it on good authority (Sharang mentioned it) that he was trying to figure out how to put sex scenes in the footnotes of the new novella. I of course has to ask him about that, so here’s a mini interview:

• CT: You know one of my gigs is editing an academic journal, right? Tell me about this “footnote as a sex scene” you mentioned?SHARANG: Haha! There are no full-blown sex scenes in the book—they didn’t suit the tone and rhythm, really. However, there are a few fade-to-black scenes, plus many moments where the narrator Laxman describes various sexy things he’s been up to. Since Laxman is a scholar of archeology, the book is peppered with his footnotes, and a couple of them do include such sexy moments:Here are two teaser footnotes (subject to edits, of course):

• [54] Yes, I know what you’re thinking, and no, I haven’t ever dressed as a cowboy for a drag show, or for a roleplay scenario or anything like that. I made an ex do it. And then I rode him till he screamed like a horse and shot his bullets straight into me.

  [67] The complete poem has unfortunately been lost. As a result, the annual Critical Karthik Literatures Conference commissioned a “reimagined reconstruction” of the poem from celebrated poet Mehreen Pimpli-Montgomery a few summers back. The organisers had not bargained on the fact that Pimpli-Montgomery was going through complicated gender-transition-feels at the time, and the final poem ended up as an extremely unsubtle ode to the truck-stop fuck that first made her truly feel like a woman. It’s a marvellous piece of literature. I once made Ezra recite it to me wearing a lacy bra and panties.

  CT: Who was the first superhero you had a crush on, and what was so hot about them?

  SHARANG: Oh wow, I can’t remember which came first: Wheeler, the fire-wielding redhead New Yorker from CAPTAIN PLANET or Burt Ward’s Robin in the 60’s Batman TV show.  Either way, my interest in twinks clearly came at an early age. Also, Robin kept getting tied up and left in interesting predicaments…another interest of mine!

  CT: If you could do a book tour event for this book anywhere, where would it be?

  SHARANG: I mean, I’d be down to do a tour of various archeology departments or dig sites around the world, just to see what reaction I’d elicit! Like, I’d love to read out the book in front of an Aztec excavation!

• Cover illustration by Veshalini Naidu

Monthly Book Rec(s)!

Okay, I am here to sing the praises of the Radiant Emperor Duology by Shelley Parker-Chan, perhaps better known by the titles of the two books:

• She Who Became the Sun
• He Who Drowned the World

You might be thinking because these books have been so universally lauded that they must be full of boring, respectable content. I am here to make sure you know these books are deeply subversive and the kind of thing that ten years ago publishers would have said could only be “niche” published. Oh how glorious it is that these extremely queer books have hit it big!

I will now attempt to recommend these fine books without actually giving away any spoilers. You’ve probably gathered that there is an ancient China setting. These read much like historicals rather than fantasy, because the fantasy element is subtle: the Mandate of Heaven is an actual visible power (and also, and the ghosts of Chinese folklore are real). But most of it is really just about the people, the larger-than-life characters.

If you thought there wasn’t anything new to be done with the “girl dresses as a boy” trope, then She Who Became the Sun is the book for you. The second volume, though, is where Parker-Chan really stretches their wings, taking everything that was in the first volume and cranking it up to a new level. The interiority of the narrative (despite being 3rd person) intensifies and deepens in the second book, and adds the points of view of a few new antagonists that are absolutely chewy and delicious in a way that left me not wanting to read another book for a while, because nothing else was going to live up to how good it was.

These new characters broaden the interrogation of gender that began in book one into multiple viewpoints, and there is a great deal of sadism and masochism and shifting of boundaries and negotiations in ways that feel very informed by BDSM without ever being explicitly “a kink.” Our main character, Zhu, starts out as a “girl dressed as a boy” but grows into being a truly genderfluid character, a person of great strength who ultimately seems beyond gender.

Bottom line is these are extremely extremely queer and kinky books, and that hasn’t kept them from being #1 bestsellers and award winners all across the sf/f and bookselling universe! They’re just THAT GOOD.

Right now, He Who Drowned the World is only in hardcover, audio, and ebook. The paperback is slated for release this summer.  Bookshop • Amazon

She Who Became the Sun meanwhile is in paperback and all the other formats. Paperback: $17.99, Hardcover $29.99
Bookshop • Amazon

Upcoming Appearances

Tomorrow I’m flying to Orlando to attend ICFA, the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, which has been one of my favorite conventions for a while now. It’s just a lovely mix of academics, both young and old, and professional sf/f writers who enjoy the brainy atmosphere. I often get a lot of writing done beside the pool, in between attending thought-provoking academic research presentations. I had to miss it last year because of my dad going into hospice care, and so it’ll be good to be back. 

Romance-lovers in Massachusetts! Get ready for the one-day “RomCon” put on by the Ashland Public Library! I will be there to speak on a panel and autographing books, along with Loretta Chase, Kosoko Jackson, Caroline Linden, and more!

It’s happening Saturday, May 18th. Details on the Ashland Library website.

SFWA NEBULAS CONFERENCE

I’m excited to attend the Nebulas conference in person for the first time since the BeforeTimes. It was the most fun convention to attend virtually during the lockdowns, because of course a bunch of sf/f fantasy writers leaned in to the virtual reality premise that we were all on the Airship Nebula together, merely separated into our own cabins because of laser bats attacking and other silliness that folks made up along the way.

Registration is open now for the conference in Pasadena, CA, June 6-9, and in addition to the awards ceremony, there will be various panels and professional development seminars aimed at genre writers at all stages of career. We don’t have details on the program yet, but I’ll share them when I know more.

You DON’T have to be a member of SFWA to attend the Nebulas conference, and registration includes access to a bunch of virtual programming all year long, as well. Register before March 14 to get the early bird price.

To register: https://nebulas.sfwa.org/nebula-conference/

Works-in-Progress Report

Don’t laugh. My writing time the past 2 weeks though has been taken up with a project that caught fire very suddenly: a dragon romantasy idea.

I know I said I wasn’t going to chase trends anymore, but I was looking through my old notebooks and this idea that I started making notes on in the year 2000 (24 years ago!!) ambushed me and will not let go. I’m four chapters in already, and still high energy. I haven’t written this fast or this enthusiastically in years! What’s changed?

Some might say my muse is feeling liberated by the fact we’re not tied to Tor anymore. But there’s also the fact that I started taking tryptophan supplements in November/December while trying to alleviate my post-COVID brain fog, and it’s not only helped the brain fog, but I feel like it’s restored my brain almost to a pre-menopause state! My libido woke up a bit, too, and some other personal life things that have happened, plus the house renovation nearing completion has meant I’ve been able to order my living space much better than the past few years, too…

So which is it? As I mentioned above in Thinky Thoughts, it’s the combination of ALL of these things that has brought my writing back to life and back up to speed. I wrote 6,000 words of fiction this week, which is very close what my old average used to be!  (I used to average 1000 words a day, though it was usually 200 words one day and 2000 the next…) Here’s hoping I can stay healthy and keep this up. This manuscript, which has the working title of Windmark, has me rubbing my hands together and laughing like a villain while I’m writing. So you know it’s going to be good. *muahahaha*

Help Me Do Stuff: Get a Free Book

If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I like to give away books. 🙂 Would you like to get a copy of the new paperback edition of Volume 1 of Daron’s Guitar Chronicles in exchange for helping me launch it? I need folks to:

• write reviews on Amazon and Goodreads
• share the cover and buy links on social media
• talk about the book or series on TikTok, Insta, or Youtube
• host me as a guest on your blog or podcast
• something else I haven’t thought of…?

Fill out this Google form if you’re interested in any of the above, or proposing some other launch thing you’d enjoy doing! The form will collect your shipping address and email: https://forms.gle/9tEzhZ9xYrt9W9CD8

(I also would like to give folks copies of the DGC books 2-6 paperbacks in exchange for reading through the PDFs for typos and errors. Hit me up if you’re interested.)

One Featured Read

I end every newsletter with a throwback of some kind, either to a book in my backlist, or, this time with an online story you can read. Sharang’s academic and his footnotes reminded me of this one:

Back in spring 2016, writer and editor Molly Tanzer launched a new online erotic sf/f magazine called CONGRESS. I sent her a story I entitled “Crowdthink Consensus Thresholds: A Study.”

http://www.congressmagazine.com/article/crowdthink-consensus-thresholds-study/

A few months later, Trump got elected, and a bunch of life events hit Molly, so, alas I don’t think there’s ever been a fourth issue of Congress. (Note: the website has weirdly removed all the author names and replaced them with repeats of the title… but “Crowdthink” is definitely mine!)

 

 

 

Next month we’ll have photos from ICFA, DGC vol 2 will launch into Kindle Unlimited, and maybe I’ll have a sneak peek excerpt ready…? Maybe. Maybe.