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Katharine Kerr’s new novel, LICENSE TO ENSORCELL, is published February 1 (which is today already for most of you) in the USA by DAW Books. LICENSE is an urban fantasy set in San Francisco, a thoroughly enjoyable and fast paced novel about psychic agent Nola O’Grady, the very secret agency she works for, her peculiar family, and the unexpected new colleague, Ari Nathan, she has to work with on a case that has deep and traumatic personal connections for Nola.
Just read it. It’s funny (it made me laugh out loud a number of times), it’s San Francisco written by someone who lives there and knows the city, and one of its many joys is the way there is always more than meets the eye as the story unfolds.
For this post, I want to talk about something else that interests me that this book in particular has made me think about.
I read first read LICENSE as a beta reader. That is, I read an early draft, made comments, read revised scenes and sometimes the same scene several times as it was refined. I have also followed the development of the series (I have read book 2 and partials of book 3) in a constant exchange of emails with Kit. She has, by the way, done the same for me with my current Spiritwalker books. I am not sure who has bitched or whined most (I’m pretty sure I have), but we’re not keeping score.
What interests me is that no matter how many times I read a rewritten scene, or Kit writes me to bounce a question or thought off me, I never get tired of talking about Nola and Ari. Obviously Ari and Nola are imaginary characters in a novel. And yet I feel a sense of investment in them as people I know and care about.
When you think about this process, this is the brilliance and radical nature of narrative. It’s also kind of weird.
When I mentioned this to Kit, she replied:
Indeed. And it's something that I don't think is explored enough, the way a well-done narrative engages our emotions and our senses, even though what we're reading or hearing is quite simply not real, untrue, a packet of lies.
When I read really vivid descriptions, pictures build up in my brain. I hear the voices not just of the characters, but of the author. When I read your stuff, I hear you telling it to me. For someone like Proust, whom of course I'll never hear in real life, I still have a voice that's only his and that appears every time I read something of his.
What does this, I wonder? It's really strange, when you think about it.
It is really strange, when you think about it. I know people who don’t read fiction because "it isn’t real," (as I wrote about a bit in this post) and yet, for me, somehow it is "real" even though I know it isn’t.
Comments?
Just read it. It’s funny (it made me laugh out loud a number of times), it’s San Francisco written by someone who lives there and knows the city, and one of its many joys is the way there is always more than meets the eye as the story unfolds.
For this post, I want to talk about something else that interests me that this book in particular has made me think about.
I read first read LICENSE as a beta reader. That is, I read an early draft, made comments, read revised scenes and sometimes the same scene several times as it was refined. I have also followed the development of the series (I have read book 2 and partials of book 3) in a constant exchange of emails with Kit. She has, by the way, done the same for me with my current Spiritwalker books. I am not sure who has bitched or whined most (I’m pretty sure I have), but we’re not keeping score.
What interests me is that no matter how many times I read a rewritten scene, or Kit writes me to bounce a question or thought off me, I never get tired of talking about Nola and Ari. Obviously Ari and Nola are imaginary characters in a novel. And yet I feel a sense of investment in them as people I know and care about.
When you think about this process, this is the brilliance and radical nature of narrative. It’s also kind of weird.
When I mentioned this to Kit, she replied:
Indeed. And it's something that I don't think is explored enough, the way a well-done narrative engages our emotions and our senses, even though what we're reading or hearing is quite simply not real, untrue, a packet of lies.
When I read really vivid descriptions, pictures build up in my brain. I hear the voices not just of the characters, but of the author. When I read your stuff, I hear you telling it to me. For someone like Proust, whom of course I'll never hear in real life, I still have a voice that's only his and that appears every time I read something of his.
What does this, I wonder? It's really strange, when you think about it.
It is really strange, when you think about it. I know people who don’t read fiction because "it isn’t real," (as I wrote about a bit in this post) and yet, for me, somehow it is "real" even though I know it isn’t.
Comments?
