December blathering meme

[hedda62]

Just popping in to say that I am really enjoying everyone's talking meme posts, and while I'm not doing it formally this year, I may have spare headspace to blather about things, so if you want to ask me anything, do. (I haven't yet posted any requests on anyone else's meme, because I honestly couldn't, at that point when they were put up, think of anything, but possibly I will sneak something in belatedly.)

I just blathered about series fiction and my relationship to it as reader and writer here. Next I need to write a review of a book about tomatoes! Or possibly a blog post about squash recipes. The varied joys, etc.

Comments

[pendrecarc]

Came to this late, but I read and very much enjoyed your post on series fiction. I've often wondered why I tend to have the strongest emotional attachment to certain types of genre fiction, and it occurs to me that there's a significant overlap between series fiction and genre fiction, and that might account for part of it.

Interesting that you classified Bujold's Five Gods series with Davies'. (Is she planning to write more?) I think I was hoping it to be the first or second type, and that the third book would give us more of the same characters we met in Chalion. Hallowed Hunt did seem to push it in a different direction, though I admit I didn't get very far when reading it, and I'm not sure how much of that was down to expecting something else and how much was just that I found it less compelling.

Can I ask which three POV characters you're using in the next book?

[hedda62]

I think the overlap is significant, yes, and I know I have a different head-space for, say, the Aubrey-Maturin series than for single-book historical fiction. Sea stories are a genre, okay, but that's not all that accounts for it.

Bujold has said repeatedly that she plans to do a book per god (having covered the Daughter, the Bastard, and the Son so far), but I don't know what her current intentions are. I loved the overlap between the first two, but considering THH I'm assuming the others could take us elsewhere in that world. No telling, though.

I could and might do an essay on choosing POV characters - but right now I'll just answer your question. :) Not Time's Fool uses Janet, Beatrice, and Olivia as POV characters (with one chapter and a piece of the epilogue turning to other minds). Book Five is likely to flip this and use all men; I'm pretty sure about Rinaldo, George, and Charles at this point.