Some ideas are their own

My idea, up on the screen. It should swell my heart like the Grinch’s on Christmas day, but no. It’s . . . I’m not going to write ‘bittersweet’, because I like bittersweet. That never struck me as exactly the right metaphor. Beet pie is more like it – lovely to look at, quite good for you, and tastes like a fraud.

The new Disney show, Star Wars Skeleton Crew opens in a delightful suburb on the planet At Attin. The cars, trucks, and trams move through the neighborhood like slot cars, tillers in tracks. I use the same idea in my novel The Tongue Trade. In my future, the troughs supply vehicles with power, so they don’t have to cart stored energy around. They also help manage traffic, preventing accidents and ameliorating congestion. Slots are also a metaphor for the kind of ruts in which people become stuck, language being the deepest one in my book.

But that’s writerly stuff and not nearly as cool as seeing what I envisioned, from gifted artists, on my television. I was thrilled my concept looked amazing and sad that it was not at all MY personal concept. No one at Disney got the idea from my novel. They probably got it the same way I did, by growing up playing with toys.

It’s not the first time this has happened to me. In a way, I hope it’s not the last. It’s lovely knowing someone else liked the same idea you liked, it’s good for a writer to know your ideas have value, and it leaves a pasty taste in your mouth.

Review, from Paul Di Filippo at Locus

This review of The Tongue Trade is extra special, me being a Di Filippo fan since Ribofunk in 1996. I like great reviews - who doesn't - but it is touching when someone appreicates the more subtle aspects of a novel. Di Filippo quotes one of my favorite passages in the book, smiling along with me and my hopes that someone else would get it. There is no higher compliment.

Publishers Week Review (and it's good)

The Tongue Trade By Martineck, Michael J.

Interpreter William Kirst is trapped between a word and a hard place in Martineck’s unique and inventive science-fiction thriller. For William, language is his livelihood: as an Interpreter, he bridges the gap between parties whose languages have splintered into unique and often inscrutable dialects, based on their trade specializations. However, when William’s newest client, businessman Arthur Loam, admits to murdering a man after lying to the police, he’s held to a professional silence that would destroy his career if broken. Desperate, William finds himself spiraling down a dangerous rabbit hole as he searches for a way to bring the truth to light without landing himself in the unemployment line—or worse, at the wrong end of a gun.

Martineck’s construction and investigation of a world where language and its barriers are paramount results in a poignant, well-conceived slab of science fiction. From the witty prose, the individual argots and how they shape the dialogue (and characters), even down to William’s love of 50 Cent and other hip-hop acts—each nugget of detail is carefully considered and artfully executed. William is endlessly entertaining as a sunny inverse of the noir archetype: he stumbles through each escalating situation in a terribly vulnerable, human, and relatable way that harmonizes, rather than disrupts, the gravity driving the narrative.

Martineck (author of The Link Boy) flexes his experience in actualizing the high-concept world of The Tongue Trade, smartly written with crisp pacing, creative twists, and energetic characterizations backdropped against a sweltering semi-futuristic New York, where even those with William’s specialized training can be tripped up by semantics: “Interpreters who spend too much time with the same clients, conversing in the same language, can develop expectations” he acknowledges. Martineck has crafted a sunny noir, a charming spin on a storied genre that makes for an ecstatic journey readers will struggle to put down.

Takeaway: Words speak louder than actions in this sunny-noir sci-fi thriller.

Comparable Titles: Richard K. Morgan’s Thin Air, Matthew Farrer’s Enforcer.

Review: Limited Verse, David Martin

Would you rather be loved or respected? David Martin’s new book, Limited Verse, made me ask the question as I read. It is a series of well known poems written in New English, which has only 850 root words. There is a thoughtful story explaining the transportation of words from the old, big group to limited new group, written by a man going to prison. He will no longer have Old English. He will no longer have words that are not roots.

This transportation of words from the old group to the new group has value. It’s also a pain in the ass, and I can’t do it anymore. I don’t now how Martin did it for a whole book – even a short one. I couldn’t do it for much more than a paragraph. It’s maddening. Trying to limit your ideas to the confines of 850 base words cramps your ideas. If you can’t express something, you drop it. Your ideas stay inside you and eventually die. Heart wrenching, frustrating, frightening.

Which makes Limited Verse challenging to love, but demanding of respect.

At first, I read this book the way one watches figure skating. Wow. That’s cool. The trick of writing within a highly limited lexicon is impressive. Martin translates, amongst others, Gertrude Stein, Carl Sandburg, or William Shakespear (who made words up ‘cuz there weren’t enough for him) with aplomb. Maintaining meanings, even as the rich imagery fades (to no fault of his own) billows out the breadth of the book. As the level of difficulty increases, and the greats begin to slip on the ice, you realize this silly, ill-mannered, hodgepodge, potluck old English language is a deep and wonderful gift.

We can think a lot and freely. I love this book for reminding me of that fact. Respect.

Give a hoot, this review is cute.

Special thanks to my friend Arlene Marks, who read my novel The Tongue Trade and really got it. I certainly love when people enjoy the book, but it is so terribly gratifying when someone like Arlene understands its lighter charms. Check out her thoughts here.

Big Ideas, Best Books

I love Shephard.com, a site devoted to discovering books. They do it like one of your friends might, but they are not using an algorithm, they're using real people, with original opinions. So you can get recommendations that might be a off-center, a bit of a stretch, things never dreamt of by math or machine.

Check out my first post, on books with big ideas.

Harris and Walz: A rich, gooey middle

Cusp babies are a little different. I’m a Cancer sign, but only a couple of hours from being a Leo. At a party several years ago, an astrologer refused to do my chart. Beliefs aside, it made me feel special. Odd but special. In a good way. I have felt that way all my life. On the edge, leaning on the door jamb. Living in liminal space.

By birthyear exacerbates the effect. 1965 is the shadowy year between the baby boomers and generation x. A transition period. I feel – as I bet many of my graduating class does – affiliations to both groups. I am as likely to listen to Simon and Garfunkel as I am to Jay Z. Liminal time.

While I don’t think about it all the time, I can’t say it’s infrequent either. Dwelling in misty time/space gives you a different angle from which to view the other, fixed time/spaces. I have always felt more like an umpire than a player. An observer. It could be just me, but I don’t think so. Working with others in my cohort, I’ve noticed the subtle differences in values and temperaments. A small, alien effect. Mork reporting to Orsen. Alf calling Melmac. Trevor Noah or John Oliver commenting on what we too are seeing, but from farther back. It’s not that we tweeners are not invested, were just a little careful.

Kamala Harris was born within six months of me, Tim Walz a little more. They do not share my particular cuspiness, but they are from Sesame Street. Regardless of how you feel they feel about variety of issues, I am quite certain they bring measured perspective with them wherever they go. They are of the middle and that is a great place to start.