A Writer's Block

Interview with J.A. Campbell

2011-03-16T20:44:00.001-04:00

I'm not sure when Julie and I became friends. We've been in Kelley Armstrong's Online Writer's Group (OWG) for years. One instant message conversation turned into many, as well as mutual beta reading and a (stalled) collaboration. I was so thrilled to hear the news of her upcoming publication that an outsider would have thought that *I* was getting published, and I am proud that A Writer's Block is a stop on her promotional blog tour.

Hi Angela! Thanks so much for having me today. I’m not quite sure when we became friends either, but I’m glad it happened. The IM conversations, beta reading, encouragement and friendship have been so awesome over the last couple of years.

For the readers who will hopefully become your fans, tell us about your Into the West series.

Westward, Yo! is the first of six short stories in the Into the West series. They are about Jersey teenager Tina who’s life gets turned upside down when she has to move from her close by malls, easy shopping and typical teen life to ghost town Arizona. Seriously, the nearest mall is over an hour away. She’ll only survive if she can pursue her one outdoor passion… Horses. Fortunately a local ranch lets her come ride, and then her adventure really begins.

What makes Westward, Yo! different than other young adult books on the market today?

Well, I wrote it of course. LOL, oh you meant other than that? Okay. Westward, Yo! is a fast paced modern western with paranormal elements. I’m not aware of too many teen westerns out there right now and I like to think that I bring a different voice to modern westerns since I come from a fantasy, and horse background. Oh, and I asked one of my friends for help with this question. Allie O’Connor (horse trainer) says “the author is so awesome?”

I know you've got a lot on your plate in addition to the Into the West Series. Tell us what's happening in your writing world.

Into the West has six short stories, due monthly. By itself that is more than enough. I also have a young adult Urban Fantasy called Senior Year Bites, coming out this summer and a young adult fantasy Arabian Dreams due out August 1^st. Edits for those projects are keeping me busy. I’m also hard at work on the sequels to both of those novels.

A Writer's Block is about books--not just the ones I plug, but also my journey in getting (or not getting) published. Tell us about your road to publication from idea to...well, today! Meaning go beyond your acceptance letter to the steps that came after.

Well, the first part took years of writing, querying agents, writing more, sending out more queries, almost giving up a few times, rinse and repeat. Finally, on a whim, I queried too publishers directly at about the same time. I had one acceptance phone call and one acceptance email within a month of those queries. I was shocked. True, they are small press, but there are distinct advantages to small press. That is another blog post.

Once I got the contracts signed there was a bit of waiting, some edits on Arabian Dreams, more editing, learning to market, getting my name out there, and writing. Then Echelon Press, the publisher for Arabian Dreams, sent out an email about a short story concept. I immediately volunteered. That turned all my plans on their heads. Now I have to write short stories, and edit, and write my next novels, and I have some very tight deadlines. All of this on top of working the day job of course. Honestly it has taken a huge sacrifice of my free time, even more so than before, to keep up. All I do is write and work and sleep and play with my dog. Occasionally I make time for my friends, but that is pretty rare right now. It is completely worth it though.

So that’s what it’s like… lots of hard work J

The internet is full of advice for writers. Some we can use, and a lot we'll twist ourselves into knots over until we realize it doesn't work for us. What's the worst advice you've gotten?

The worst advice I ever got was “write what you know.” Followed by the other worst bit of advice, “stories don’t need fantasy to be interesting.”

Unless there are a lot more vampires, elves, wizards, and unicorns out there than I thought, writing what you know is crap. I’m not saying don’t do your research, but if you’re writing about horses traveling to other worlds, unless you have my horse, you’re gonna have a hard time experiencing it before you write about it. (No, you can’t have her) And damn it, yes it does have to have fantasy in it to be interesting. To me. There aren’t many books without fantastical elements in it that will keep my attention for long. Or even get me to pick it up in the first place.

Author Bio:

Julie writes fantasy novels. When she’s not out riding her horse, she can usually be found sitting in front of her computer with a cat on her lap and her dog at her side. You can find out more at her website: www.writerjacampbell.com

Into the West #1, Westward, Yo!

Tina Harker is a typical teenager. She loves hanging with her friends at the malls, shoes, and manicures. More than that, she loves horses. Life is everything she wants it to be, until her father packs their family up and drags them across the world to Arizona. Does he really think she’ll be happy living in a ghost town in the middle of the desert? It’s a million miles to the nearest shopping center, not even a real mall. Her only hope for survival is finding a new horse.

Trying to make the best of her horrible situation, Tina agrees to go on her first cattle drive. When one of the calves wanders off, Tina, in true cowgirl fashion and looking for excitement, rides off to rescue the poor little thing and gets a lot more adventure than she ever expected. A cowboy she’s never met accuses her of stealing cows, bandits kidnap her, and that’s not even the exciting part.

Into The West #1 Westward, Yo! Is available here:

OmniLit
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Smashwords

Blog Blahs

2011-03-09T08:22:00.000-05:00

I haven't dropped off the face of the earth. Sure I've got a ton of school work, and I'm behind in a couple of classes.Yes, I'm having new adventures in writing that take that much more time away from blogging. But I'm actually quiet because of the blog blahs. The format...the content...it's OK, but I need something new.

...Don't know what that new thing is yet.

2011-02-09T17:20:00.012-05:00

TTitle: Pale Demon

Author: Kim Harrison
Publisher: HarperCollins (22 Feb 2011)
Genre: Urban Fantasy (alternately Contemporary Fantasy)
Pages: 448 Hardcover

I have a love/hate relationship with Rachel Morgan. It's mostly love, or I wouldn't be here telling you about Pale Demon, book 9, of Kim Harrison's Hollows series. But hate has sneaked in once more. As I'm reading the book, I'm tucking away bits of info to go into the review: it starts with recognition of the heartache that the characters (and thus we loyal fans) suffered at the end of the last book; Trent comes in early and plays a heavy role (yay for those of us who have secret Trent redemption fantasies). It didn't take me long to think I'd be pimping this with a focus on those who aren't sure they're dying for next book. Believe me, you want to read this.

Then, at halfway through (my e-arc; there's not telling just where this scene will land in the edition you end up with), hate smacked me like a spell knocking me almost into the ever-after. A character did something absolutely unforgivable, and Rachel's reaction, after a bit of temper: I'd done some pretty stupid things in my day, too.

Rachel could be the poster child for stupid things, so she's got me there. But this...this is the sort of thing that evil characters are made of, not an "oops" that we can forgive our friends for. And Rachel lets it go without so much as a "My bad." Unacceptable.

Why continue reading? Because Kim Harrison is that damn good a writer. I've learned that, if I give the story the chance, not only will I be entertained, but Harrison will also fill the breaks that make me go, "Wait...what?" Things that I thought were mistakes turn out to be character and world building genius. Reading more, I discover that the genius had continued in Pale Demon.

If you new and you've read all that thinking "Thanks for avoiding spoilers, but what's this all about?" read on.

Dead Witch Walking starts off the Hollows series featuring Rachel Morgan, a "runner" (kinda like a cop) and witch in Cincinnati after "The Turn". See, the world has changed thanks to genetically modified tomatoes and the virus they spread that took out a quarter of the human population. Hidden in plain sight, supernatural races came out and stepped up, keeping society from crashing. Rachel, her pixy partner Jinx, and drop-dead-gorgeous living vampire Ivy make up a team of runners that help police the city since stand human cops are not equipped to bring in supernaturals who don't want to come quietly.

The bad news is that, if you're like me and a book or series first described as funny doesn't rock your boat, you might roll your eyes through a lot of Dead Witch Walking. Rachel's cases are on the sillier side of serious and I might not have made it through the first half of the book if I hadn't been so determined to see what all the buzz was about. Then the action gripped me and I was buzzing, too!

The effort to amuse is, in my mind, the worst part, and it is quickly replaced by the organic sort of humor that even we grumpy people can enjoy. The best part is the characterization. Rachel is flawed, as all good characters are. Her taste in clothes is hooker chic, she makes terrible decisions about relationships, and at the start, she doesn't begin to understand how screwed up she is. And everybody else knows it--a lovely factor in a genre where the worst personality traits are often counted as good things. Her friends see her clearly, loving her despite and because of her faults, and addressing them. There is adventure, action, love, and heart ache, but there's something more in the characters that makes me especially want to recommend this series.

The Iron Fey series by Julie Kagawa

2011-01-26T20:01:00.000-05:00

A wonderful thing has happened: The Iron Queen is out three weeks earlier than originally posted, at least in the U.S. International fans should check your local sites and stores to see if you can get your hot little hands on the book now, too. Go on. We'll wait.

If you're already a fan, what you need to know is that this book is even better than the last. I'm trying to think of what I can tell you without giving spoilers, and I think I'm going to have to settle for my own reaction...I had to start dinner when I reached the climax, and I was so engrossed in the story that I took carrots, the peeler, and a little bag into the room with the computer (ah, the joys of e-reading). I just barely spared enough attention away from the book to make sure I didn't accidentally peel my fingers!

Normally, I wouldn't post the trailer, but it does a good job of introducing Meghan, summing each book up shortly without giving too much a way, and doing it with lovely graphics.

I love...
1. The world-building. Kagawa's version of the Nevernever is memorable, both conforming to faerie lore that long time fantasy fans will find familiar but also breaking new ground. The Iron Fey themselves come (in)organically from the dreams of humans in the age(s) of technology in a way that makes one think, "Huh, how'd I miss that?" Good, good stuff.

2. The only thing Meghan Chase and I have in common is gender, and yet I spent close to no time thinking of that at all. There were a few moments of resistance when I had to remind myself that I was judging her choices from my own experience (and with a son her age, that's considerable) rather accepting her youth. But for the most part, I tagged along in her adventure joyfully.

3. Meghan Chase herself. The more-obnoxious-than-the-last heroine doesn't seem to as big a problem in Young Adult Urban Fantasy as it is in adult UF, but the genre does have more than its fair share of I-don't-think-I'm-pretty-but-the-hot-guys-love-me Mary Sue characters. Meghan isn't one of them. She's a girl who doesn't have it so easy, even before her world takes a turn for the weird, but she's full of heart and she tries. More importantly, over the course of the books, she grows.

...And if you don't want to try the series out because of all that, there are, of course, hot guys.

From beneath you, it devours...

2011-01-22T15:26:00.001-05:00

Maybe the title is a bit dramatic; the First Evil is not coming for me (10 pts for anyone who immediately recognized the reference). But the first day of the next semester is fast approaching and I'm looking at everything I don't have done. And my husband is the literary version of my brother's puppy.

I'd seen pictures, but unlike my dad and husband, I'm not a dog person. I haven't taken trips to my brother's house just to visit his pup. Then last weekend, my brother took his family out of town and got my husband to agree to dog-sit. This juvenile Great Dane is already bigger than the full grown Dobermans I grew up with, but with all the energy of a little yappy dog. Since he's crate trained, we were able to go out around his schedule, but the rest of our weekend was punctuated by, "Humans! I love you, you love me? Wanna play? I wanna play! Can I sniff your butt? Sit on your lap? Chew your house shoes? Playplayplayplayplayplay!"

Having put aside all that I'm working on to read the first half of his unfinished manuscript, I still had to go to bed last night/this morning (I've gotta work on my sleep schedule) to "I introduced a new character! Wanna read it? This who he is and what he does and how I introduced him. Do you like him? Wanna read it now? Whatcha think?!" Only to sleep in late and wake up to, "You gotta read my new scene! Here's who's in, this is what they said, this is what it's leading to. Wanna read it? Whatcha think? Is it OK? Why aren't you reading it?!"

On the upside, my husband doesn't smell like a dog and I don't have to take him for walks in the snow. On the downside, my brother took the crate with him when he picked his pup up.

Meanwhile, I've got to work on my own projects because, once classes start, who knows when I'll be able to sneak in the time?

Oh, but I can't go without mentioning that I was guest blogger for J.A. Campbell's Tea Time. All mentioned!

So far beyond OMG!

2011-01-15T23:49:00.001-05:00

I always try to blog in a way that will be understandable to people who don't know the first thing about me, but let's be real: most of you lovelies who visit A Writer's Block know me from somewhere, if only a forum online. You know that I'm pretty down to earth, generally friendly, and not too over the top. You'd have never guessed how I'd be a total gibbering idiot in front of (but mostly, thankfully, behind the back of) one of my favorite authors.

OMG!OMG!OMG! O. M. Friggin'. G. I had dinner with Kelley Armstrong!

Note that I've been a sci-fi/fantasy fangirl since I was too young to know what fandom was. And I was an officer in the sci-fi/fantasy club my first go 'round in college. But I'd never been to a convention. Note also that, while I'm not particularly impressed by "special people" (as I said to my friend today, "How impressive can they be when I know they poop, too? They're only human.") I am a little starry eyed about my favorite authors. A little. I thought.

Then I got all late-registered for my first con ever, and my husband and I slipped into my first panel: Introduction to Kelley Armstrong. I thought, "She's so much prettier than her photo!" (She's very cute in her photos, but more than cute in person.) Then I focused, cuz I can do that. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take notes until after she mentioned an anthology, Blood Lite, that I had never heard of. What I can tell fellow fans who have been anxiously awaiting any sort of development on a series based movie--it's off. What may or may not be on is a TV series pilot. Space TV green lighted the project, but after the whole movie thing, she's not holding her breath.

If, like me, you've got all the books but Counterfeit Magic (OK, OK, I don't have Men of the Otherworld either, but I read most of the stories so it was easy to put off) because you won't pay $40 to $100, rejoice! If you don't hate ebooks, at least. The Kindle edition is out now for $4.99.

I'm not going to list her favorite authors, and that's the end of my notes, so back to my geekdom! After the panel, we followed her out and introduced ourselves. Or at least, I meant to introduce myself. What I actually did was hold up my badge and explain (perhaps in spasms, I'm not sure) that I am An, Avangyline, Angela who moderates her writing forum so she may remember telling me to do stuff sometimes.

She very kindly did not respond as though I were the lunatic I present myself as. And she asked if we wanted to meet for coffee. Now, I was expecting coffee...Bea had contacted her in advance and then contacted me. But Kelley Armstrong asked me to go for coffee! I gracelessly got out of the way of other fans and the husband and I went in search of Bea, then in search of the next panel. Sure, I'd finally gotten my butt to my first con because it's in my city and Kelley would be there, but it was shear coincidence that she was a part of the next panel (Vampires,Gender, and Sexuality--Oh, My!), but good because Bea was able to confirm for coffee while I stood there like a nut...a silent, star-struck nut.

We had lunch, hung out more since there was no room at one panel we wanted to attend, staying in place so we could catch seats the next, Fail! (about, of course, Racefail--linked for Bea's benefit)...and then it was time.

I called on all my years of theatre training to only be a little bizarre. We made it through dinner, and talked about Kelley's books, books in general, my own writing (she scolded me; *squee*) and my husband's...yah know. Stuff. Then dinner was over, we took a coupla pix, talked some more, and said our good-byes. And when Kelley was out of sight, I geeked out so hard that I looked like a giant 12 year old freakin' out over Justin Bieber.

And I am only a tiny bit sad for my lost dignity because that, my friends, was so far beyond OMG.

Drunken New Year's Musing

2011-01-01T03:12:00.000-05:00

I love urban fantasy because it makes anything possible right here, right now. I realized this as my husband and I walked home from my cousin's house. We paused to speak to a gorgeous woman who could have been Eshu (harkening back to my White Wolf days [and look, totally sauced, I still found yahs a link]--think African storytelling fae) and sidhe/shee by the look of her, or Eshu and pooka, by my desire to have at least one good pooka showing up at any time. The dark woods nearby most certainly held sluagh (or an urban gang of young werewolves for those not following me and my love for fae). Near the bottom of my hill is a house that can't decide if it's a Cape or a Tudor, and there is most certainly something magical going on within. Two houses up from that is a brick Victorian that has definite opinions about its new occupants, though it hasn't shared them with me.

Considering all this I thought, "And any black car that passes might be a horse in its natural form." Sure enough, a black car slowly rolled down the street.

There was a world of mythic possibility just avoiding ice patches a few blocks on the way home from a party. I like to see that world reflected in what I read.

Jumbled assumptions

2010-12-22T14:05:00.000-05:00

The last day of class was Monday (before last, as this has sat here progressing paragraphs at a time), so, despite having a take home final and a rather large paper due this upcoming Monday (no past; someone should have talked me into just revising this completely), I've been an almost total slacker. I'm doing laundry as I type. I've taken care of mommy things. And I've stretched my wee budget to do some Xmas shopping. But I've done none of the fiction writing I promised to do as soon as I was "free" of academics, nor the academics I should finish to be really free. Maybe it's the guilt from scholarly procrastination that got me thinking of a class from last semester, and kid in it that I dubbed Mr. Whiner.

I'd blame his attitude on his youth, but since we attend a public, commuter university, the classes are a mix of old folks like me (and older by decades) returning for their degrees, and young, first time college students like him; he's the only one I've met with the attitude. And it wasn't just the class (which he could have transfered out of in the early weeks, or withdrawn from for quite some time after) or the perfectly lovely teacher (again, it was one of those classes with a bazillion sections from early morning to late night because every student who enters below the grad level must take it, so he could have left if they didn't click)...In addition to ridiculously loud music, he filled my mornings with other complaints like how his dad wouldn't just sell the family business already since he was sick of working there on the weekends.

My edited response was, "You should appreciate what you have." My inner voice said, "Get a grip, you little twerp! Someday, when your dreams of being the next celebrity DJ fall through, you're going to be glad your parents worried more about your future than their own early retirement. Enjoy getting into clubs you're otherwise too young for and the free tickets to more concerts than most folks with real jobs could ever afford; it'll only last so long.

I told you all that to tell you this: Mr. Whiner came to class one day more out of sorts than usual. I don't remember if I asked or he just assumed I'd receive his venting. He'd been on the commuter rail, making his way into the city, and dropped his pass. By the time he realized it and went back, the pass was gone. He'd been sitting near a black lady (no offense), and now he was out $100+...

Yeah, I was offended. If I am to be drafted to represent "black ladies" everywhere (offensive in and of itself), how come we're the thieves? Did she come from a special suburban ghetto and was commuting to her job as crack whore in the city? (And who visits crack whores at 8am?) Are all the white suburbanites magically immune to greed?

Never assume--it makes an Ass out of U, though it has relatively little to do with Me.

It's a side note, since he was already wrong without it, but at the start of the next class, he tried to sell his commuter rail pass. The woman had indeed seen the pass left where he had been sitting, and tried to locate him to return it. Like a modern romantic comedy, they must have just missed each other, but came so close to the meeting that would have changed the course of the story before it became tedious to its audience.

No, he did not apologize to me about his accusations toward her, which I would have accepted as the representative of black ladies everywhere.

The original plan, in keeping with this being a writing themed blog (as opposed to my free-for-all LiveJournal or the blog I should open for non-writerly things), was to write something witty about assumptions in fiction, and then turn that into a launch pad for why I love Kelley Armstrong's books...

But I came across Elif Shafak's "The Politics of Fiction" and thought that fit so well:

::whimper::

2010-11-14T20:34:00.000-05:00

I want to curl up in a ball and just stay there.

For a week, I was sick. I have lupus, it's a fact of life, blah-blah. I couldn't concentrate so I struggled to be just a little behind on school work (technically, I'm not behind in the two classes that I dreaded it most in...I just feel behind). My professors for the two classes I most worried about were great--understanding that it's a chronic illness, and if I could manage my work, so be it. In my 3rd class, it hasn't been an issue. It's just once a week on Mondays--I am a paper behind, but I've been averaging an A and the last class was canceled anyway. Now worries...

...X's "stomach virus" put him in emergency surgery to remove his appendix. (I wrote that and remembered this is not my journal and not everyone reading this knows that X is my husband. Now you know.) It was horrible. I was a little scared by the time that I got him into my brother's car to go to the hospital, but at that point, it was 1am; I needed to get my daughter and nephew to school in the morning and get myself to class, and I still believed that he'd get IV fluids and better meds than I'd gotten him over the counter. He called at 5am to tell me that his appendix had burst and they were about to prep him for surgery.

I was so not going to class. I explained the situation to the lovely two professors mentioned above with my assignments attached. They were great about it. So I foolishly didn't think to get anything on hospital letterhead explaining what happened. I was worried about how weak he looked, how I needed to feed him. They only kept him one more night, but he was so much stronger that I didn't question that. All I cared about was what I needed to know for his post-op care. So guess what Professor #4 wants to not smash my grade over my absences?

Hopefully, it will be easier to get in touch with someone who can give me something on hospital letterhead once the weekend is over. My bitchy-self says, "Or I'll just show her all the post-op info sheets and she can take 'em or leave 'em." My regular self is tired...tired from being so worried about my partner...tired from being worried about my grades...tired from my lupus flare...

I want to call in dead for the rest of the semester.

And I want to write.

In all the stress, I turned to fiction. Having read an *almost* satisfying novel, I want to put my own words on the page as though I might make a million and one mistakes, but I've been inoculated against those that made that piece of work *almost*. And that fear from suddenly learning that X was going into surgery and the awareness of what can go wrong even in simple procedures is with me in a little ball that I can't throw away despite it all ending well. I want to fictionalize it so it has a place outside my body.

But I can't phone the semester in so I'm going to hit the books.

...Screw it. I'll hit the books after writing for half an hour.

Strange young adult kinda dream

2010-11-08T07:23:00.000-05:00

I was young, pretty, white. I loved him and he was gone, my only lead--only REAL lead--a phone number. So I dialed and found this weird network like nothing I ever experienced before. And it wasn't him, but I was closer. I dialed again and again, til I had to take a break. I didn't like going out of his room, seeing his family trying to be normal while I was a stranger in their home so nothing could be normal. Mom cooked, twin boys tried to play only to freeze when they saw me. He got his parents to say yes to my coming by promising I'd stay in the kid sister's room, but I haven't done that since he disappeared and she looks at me with this longing like I'm still supposed to still stay up late braiding her hair and whispering Older Girl secrets. Kid brother's worst of all cuz he's just a couple of years younger than us, all punk rock/skater hot and getting closer to me while we looked for HIM.

I'm getting out of that house and freeing us all, but just one more round of calls. I hide out in the bathroom upstairs and dial. There's an answer, it sounds like a party, and I thinking YES! I'll be pissed when he answers, demand why he didn't just say that things were too intense...or no, I love him so much I can let him go without that scene if he just picks up the phone....But I see IT, one of the visions I'd had through all the phone calls, this a repeat of the first where he's walking along the shoulder of a dark road and van pulls up, he gets in, and vanishes...

There's a clicking sound on the phone and the party noises disappear. The phone pressed to my ear rings as though I'd just dialed a number, and I can hear the echo of a phone ringing somewhere in the house. My stomach seems to drop, an shadow of the sinking feeling felt throughout my soul. Both rings stop and I'm already moving to hang up before I hear the little sister answer the phone.

There's a knock. "Come in." I'm scrubbing at my eyes when kid brother walks in, seriously hot, but not the one. He holds up a portable phone. "Were you...calling the house phone from a house phone? How is that possible?"

.....That last bit's not true. It's already morphed in the recording. It WAS the same number, so the best I should have gotten would have voice mail, but that's not what he said. It had been something about Lucy thinking I might need something...I said, "Um? Toilet paper?" and we both looked at the roll--not full, but full enough so that if I needed more I was probably about to go through something no one wanted in their bathroom. I shared a smile with him, but it was almost like there were two of me--the one sharing a moment with him and the one still totally engrossed by the search for HIM.

The dream ended with flashes of vision and...a Damien Rice song playing on loop.

______________________________________________

The dream that I had left this page open to write about was kind of like that. In a way, it was totally different--the woman I was in then was more solidly grown, a woman of color. There had been less urgency with no missing lover. But it was the sort that, upon waking, I knew was a story, not some sort of working things out from real life. I'd gotten up from that dream and wrote about it in a hard copy note book. Then, I'd set about trying to build a plot around the character study I'd been given in my sleep.

That was about two weeks before NaNoWriMo had started. We're a week into and I'l still trying to build a plot, plodding along well behind writing schedule.

There's still lingering urgency from this morning's dream. I feel like I could figure out what was up with that phone network, and spend the day writing the book, each bit missing from the dream unraveling as I reach. Reality's throwing cold water on that fantasy. Having a lupus flare, I phoned in all of last week, so I cannot skip class today. If I did, I would probably end up spending hours just trying to make sense of the phone thing alone, hours writing the opening (if I dove right in rather than hours spent outlining), and I'd hit the middle and run out of steam.

But it's recorded (shifts in tense and any other flaws) so I can come back and revisit this if I ever need/want to and you can see how this kinda, sorta works for me. Sometimes.

What the hell am I doing?!

2010-10-29T00:38:00.001-04:00

It's that time again...or, several times again. Halloween is just days away; beyond the anticipation of dressing the Wee One up, another Halloween means another year of staring at a computer screen at the moment--Eastern Standard Time--that October becomes November. November, of course, is National Novel Writing Month.

I do it every year, even when I shouldn't, like this year. I've done almost no writing that wasn't academic since the semester began. On the one hand, I've never "won" NaNo so what's one more time of not reaching the goal? On the other, I need the pressure I put on myself during NaNo like I need...something more creative than a hole in my head.

And thinking about it has me back in this place of, "What the hell an I doing? I'm not a novelist."

I am a writer. We've established that, right? I write great openings and decent endings, and shitty middles that never seem to get revised no matter how often I sit down to revise them. When do I say enough?

...Apparently not now. I had this great dream a few weeks ago; it was basically an introduction to a character--a woman who lets lost souls pass though her into...well, wherever they go. I dig her, dig the relationship with her sister and the potential relationship with the man I dreamt her meeting in a dark alley before a rift in the fabric of reality. All of my non-academic time has been spent between learning the Savage Mojo material for a project I've been tapped for and failing to build a story around this woman.

I create enjoyable characters. Sometimes, I string words together nicely. Whatever made me thing that would translate into being a novelist?

In a week when I've carved time out from my studies and I'm writing, I'll feel better. In a month when I've got a neat beginning, a character I enjoy with a pretty cool supporting cast, and nowhere to take them...I'll be right back here wondering what the hell I'm doing.

Rethinking self-publishing

2010-10-13T22:07:00.000-04:00

We've covered this. Self-publishing is a good thing...for Other People. If you're like me, you've grown up wanting to see your books published by the same folks who publish your favorite authors. You may or may not get over that; for me, the dream is still being published by Tor or Ace, but the goal (sometimes my dreams and my goals don't match) is to write for a living. This meant accepting, first, that my work (when finally ready) might find a home in at a small press. Eventually, I accepted that I may become an e-book writer. Self publishing was out of the question...until now.

Some great books have been self published, but their numbers are eclipsed by the many, many crappy books self published because no agent or editor would consider them. The list of self pubbed books that made the big time--sometimes remaining self published, but often bought by a big house--is nice and long...until you realize how many hundreds of thousands are never seen outside of the author's circle of friends and family.

And then there's the industry pressure. I've heard/read "Agents and publishers won't even bother with your work if they've learned you've self-published" enough that it's not worth looking for links. Even if your self-pubbed novel gets a serious readership, you're not eligible to join many of the writing associations that you may want to. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America association doesn't come out and say NO SELF-PUBLISHING, but they give a list of what makes you eligible and Lulu isn't on it. Horror Writer's Association are longer and more involved, and at the end of the active membership regulations (as opposed to associate or affiliate), they let you know that any non-comic book self-published author need not apply. And so on.

None of that matters if you just want a story "out there." But if your goal is to quit your day job, the emergency medical fund, insider track for future publication, and other benefits are pretty damn important...

Yeah. I can go on and on about why self-pubbing is my second to last choice. The above doesn't even touch on marketing and other such issues. So why rethink self-publishing at all? My friend Julie.

I have the urge to write about how fabulous she is as a writing buddy, how smart, how dedicated to her craft...What matters more, though, is praise for her work. When I read that post, I thought, "Wow, how fabulous! Too bad it's utterly useless!"

The chances of an agent stopping by, reading that review, and asking for the manuscript seem ridiculous to me, regardless of my sucking at math. IF she were putting that book out herself while her other manuscript is in agent limbo, it would be another story. Apparently, Julie thought so, too. She revamped her long idle site (love that logo!), added the Doc stories that are getting a following of their own, and put serious research into the details of what it would take to publish Senior Year Bites herself.

Rather than thinking of all the reasons for why she shouldn't, I immediately thought of why she should. Critiquing selected chapters of Senior Year Bites, I was impressed by Julie's talent and skill, but I didn't love it the way that Rabid Reader does (if you didn't click the "praise for her work" link, go take a look).

Young Adult books start with a strike against them when it comes to me, and SYB is "light" while my tastes run toward "thick" if not "heavy". It's a totally irrational bit of personal taste that I mentioned before with published authors Anton Strout and Mark Henry. I was randomly thinking the other day how Strout's Dead To Me has my all time favorite opening scene, though I'm not crazy about the book. Less randomly, I just reminisced about how fabulous parts of Henry's Happy Hour of the Damned were, though I gave up on reading the whole thing early on.

These books are well loved by other people, but were I an agent deciding whether or not to rep them, Henry would have gotten an encouraging "But it's not for me" letter and Strout would have gotten a request for the full manuscript, only to have to change major elements or to move on to someone else to represent him...

Industry pros will tell you, "That's the process" and "if the story's good, it will get published." I've swallowed that whole. But I've also watched Julie revise and fine tune Arabian Dreams, send it out, and learn that there aren't a lot of agents interested in young adult equestrian fantasy books. The chapters I critiqued were great, agent response reflect that, but alas...

I thought, "Send it to publishers that don't require you to go through an agent! It would fit right in with the equestrian adult fantasy published by Luna." Except that they don't publish YA books. "Carina! They seem to be looking for everything that doesn't easily fall into other categories." Except for YA books.

Maybe the idea should be "if the story's good, readers will read it." I'm not advocating doing away with agents (do you know how to navigate international rights? me neither), but in the days of social networking, more book blogs than you can shake a magic wand at, and relatively simple (so I'm told) tech to make great-looking trailers, why can't you write a good story, edit the hell out of it, and get it out to the would-be fans without:
~~~~~Shopping it to agents and waiting months between each for a "cool, but no thanks"?
~~~~~Waiting for where you fit into the schedule IF you get an agent who finds you a publisher?
~~~~~And still having to do a lot of the marketing yourself because you've just made the bottom of the mid-list?

To Julie, I say, "Go for it!" For anyone else (maybe myself included one day), I say put in the time for researching how to do this right. If the pros outweigh the cons, rock on with your bad self!

(Link of encouragement: Konrath ebook sales top 100K)

Characters

2010-09-04T18:44:00.000-04:00

My son's young personality was pretty much set before he ever met the man who would become his stepfather, so I'm constantly amazed at how alike they are. They fall into these patterns...for instance, they love to communicate while apart, which is most of the year since the boyo lives with his dad in a distant state during school. Then they spend the summer bumping heads, so much alike that living together makes them batty. Now I know what my relationship with my dad must have looked like from the outside.

I call my daughter "My Little Demon." She's a planet sized ball of willful energy squished into a skinny six-year-old package. Even when she's being good, she's pushing. She's completely her own person, yet shares a lot of traits with her brother that, I'm told often, were not inherited from her father.

My mind holds all these little facts, like any parent's, about my kids with no effort at all. I don't have to think hard to recall that, while the Wee One (my girl's other nickname) likes tomato slices and loves fried pickles, the Boo Man (a name he's outgrown, but I haven't, and that serves well enough to not spread his identity around the internet) hates tomatoes and thinks fried pickles are the grossest things he's heard of that don't come from an animal. I know their strengths and weaknesses, the music they like, the shows they are likely to watch...

It's like that with my characters, too. Or, rather, it's like that with the protagonists. I haven't written out what Quinn did for his tenth birthday, but I know him well enough to guess (can't really be wrong since I did make him up, but you know what I mean). I haven't taken the time to figure out Wade's favorite food, but just thinking the question, I know immediately that this chick is meat eater. The spicier, the better.

My antagonists, on the other hand, tend to be closed books to me.

Stories usually come to me from the character; some voice that isn't mine will seem to speak to me, or a physical/psychological quirk will stick in my head and I'll end up building a person around it. Then I'll discover what story they belong to. Unfortunately, that often leaves me with "insert bad guy here", with which I create a story that's never fully cooked.

Realizing that is a good thing in a G.I. Joe sort of "knowing is half the battle" way. But even when I was a kid, I always responded to that with, "Yeah, but it's the easy half." Figuring that out didn't mean that I could fix it. Trying to redo my villains following the hero template just made me feel bad for them; I couldn't help but want to write kinder, gentler versions....

I may have gotten the reality check that I've needed during last weekend's drunken celebrations.

Long story short, the liquor flowed and conversations turned to places they might not go while everyone is sober. I learned that my ex had told a nasty little lie about me, and to my family no less. The truth is simple yet complicated, and illustrates the character flaws of each of us. The narrative he created manages to paint him both as victim and hero, and makes me a bad, bad person.

In a life that I've gone through great pains to make drama free, he became my villain with that stupid, selfish act.

As a woman, I was furious. As a writer, something clicked.

Here's where my thinking gets convoluted, but if you've followed me this far, hold on! When I was a kid, my game of choice was D&D {Dungeons & Dragons Core Rulebook Set (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying, Three Book Slipcased Set)} with it's character alignments that dictated behavior. Lawful good characters were basically the white knights with good intentions. Lawful evil finds it's modern equivalent in the corrupt district attorney, following the law, but happily putting it to bad ends for a profit. And as good opposed evil, lawful personalities found their opposite in chaotic alignments. Chaotic evil characters were the baddest of the bad with no regard for anything but their own desires. Think serial killer, but not Dexter (Dexter: The First Season) since he does have a code--a sense of being more lawful evil--to live by.

I was once invited to a different game that I, alas, never became too familiar with. But it did introduced to a different way of viewing alignments; a system not so much of good vs. evil, but varying degrees of selfishness. I hadn't thought about that for years. Decades. Til my ex's lie was exposed.

Let's use him to build a better bad guy!

He's a regular guy. He's got his good qualities and bad. Yeah, he did plenty to contribute to the break up of our marriage, but that's enough water under the bridge that, after a few days' of deliberation, I accepted his Facebook friend request. The fact that he also friended my dad and brothers is creepy, but no biggy. The lie he told makes him an asshat, but not the biggest in the world. Not much of a bad guy in real life. But fictionally, those things are just the start.

Maybe he plays the part of the old-lover-turned-good-friend so well that, when little things start to go wrong in our heroine's life, she thinks it's all a coincidence. One small, self-serving act that he got away with leads to another; he's sure that he's right all the while, never seeing the has crossed the line until the climatic end. It can be all about recovering his lost love--psychological thriller; romance if his misdeeds are the obstacle between her and her new hero. Maybe befriending her was just a means to get to a family member--mystery or mainstream. Or maybe there's a supernatural element behind his selfishness--horror, urban fantasy.

OK, so the genre stuff is, perhaps, a red herring. The nut that I needed to crack was that I start at the end, with them filling in the space of evil; knowing how they get to that point might breath new life into my antagonists.

No matter what I do, Friday keeps coming

2010-08-21T19:34:00.001-04:00

Soon, school will begin again. I'll need to get up around the time that's been passing as a bed time for me, and the whole cycle of not-sleep-enough, get up, get the kid ready for school, somehow manage to get myself ready for school, come home study/cook/find time to write then not-sleep-enough will begin on Monday. I will join all the others who breathe a sigh of relief on hump day and eventually get to thank God it's Friday.

But for now, whether I settle onto the blog window or not, Friday means I'm looking at my writing productivity and lack of it.

....And, like now, sometimes that means I quickly do something else until Saturday.

That's not true, really. It's not that I go into avoidance mode, it's that I get stuck in what I *have* to do--and how silly is that when I don't have to post here at all? I don't have a boss who will pay me or not depending on what I produce. Can't tell you how much I appreciate my recurring readers, but I don't think your weeks are incomplete until you check out my latest babble on reading and/or writing.

Theoretically, I could write about anything (hopefully, but hell, not necessarily within the scope of the blog). Yet, I don't. I think "I have to get this down" or "I've gotta tell them this" and "ugh, I haven't mentioned that project in a long time..."

And since I don't give a crap about any of that at the time, I go on to read someone else's blog(s) and watch a season of La Femme Nikita, or something.

My writing is like that, too. The Hidden (generally known as Quinn's story to all you lovelies who have read chapters), might end up really being my first published novel....or it'll be the one in the bottom drawer forever (it doesn't suck, but it's got a fatal flaw that I may or may not be able to fix). My need to have it ready for the world and sent out is a good one. No one ever got published by leaving a work unrevised on her hard drive. But being unable to fix that flaw and unwilling to move on means nothing gets done.

Solution? Do something.

Not just any something, since for me, that can mean playing three hours worth of Plants Vs. Zombies. But if I'd written down all the ideas that have come at any given time while I wasn't blogging, I'd have enough to post for the next two months. While I was running around like a nut before my MiL came, I (in the true spirit of procrastination--in this case doing something productive to get out of doing something else productive) started two stories, each in a (slightly) different genre.

My new trick will be to build on that. The next time I've got the kid in bed with hours to go before the spouse expects attention, and I'm NOT revising The Hidden, I'll be writing something else. Anything else, so long as it's meant to be shared..no, sold. I have a funny resistance come up when writing that, which tells me that I need to call on my inner Harlan Ellison*.

I am, have always been, a storyteller. This is a truth of my being whether I ever make a living at it or not. It's like being right handed; it just...is. That gets all mixed up when the notion of money comes into play. "You should be focusing on the work, the craft, your ability to entertain and, in the right circumstances to enlighten" meets "What? Are you doing this for the money now? If it's about money, you should just quit!"

Bullshit. Yeah, the initial work needs to be for me, for the fun of a good story and the other joys I get from writing. But if I *can* succeed at it, I *deserve* to be paid for my work, just like a builder or doctor. Too many of us artsy types let ourselves believe that our work is worth less. I'm officially taking myself out of that trap.

So...If three hours are scheduled to write fiction in hopes of a sale, then that's what's going to happen for three hours. No blogging, gaming, or whatever instead. If it's time to blog, then I'm blogging. No fixating on blogging something I don't want to be bothered with because I got it stuck in my head that I HAVE post about that. Got it? Good.

*Ellison is famous for a lot of great spec fic writing, infamous for a couple of minor scandals that I don't currently care to seek out and link to, but perhaps best well known to me (besides for Deathbird Stories) for being out and loud about getting paid as a writer.

Links! Some yah gotta get before they're gone!

2010-08-14T02:55:00.003-04:00

"The law isn’t about justice, Malcolm. It’s about the law." ~Anita Blake

If you've been thinking about checking out Ardeur: 14 Writers on the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Series (Smart Pop), the Melissa Tatum article on Anita and the law is available for free reading just until Tuesday the 17.

Great Thea Gilmore video. Even if the music style isn't to your taste, take a few minutes to imagine along.

Are you a U.S. or Canadian citizen with a young adult novel that's done or will be between October 1st and December 31st? If it's not under consideration from other publishers or agents, you might want to send it to the Delacorte Press Contest for a First Young Adult Novel Makes me wish I'd paid more attention to WriteOnCon.

I'd forgotten around Heinlein's business rules:
1) You must write.
2) You must finish what you write.
3) You must not rewrite unless to editorial demand.
4) You must mail your work to someone who can buy it.
5) You must keep the work in the mail until someone buys it.

I just found them again at Dean Wesley Smith's Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing. There's a lot more that I'm going to check out in there before bed. Take a look!

ETA: Something weird has happened to the formatting so the links look like regular text (of course this happens in a post all about links, right?). Wave your mouse on other the whole thing, or the bits that are likely to be links.

Friday on Facebook, or at least the fun parts.

2010-07-31T01:26:00.001-04:00

If you really know me, there are some things that you are aware of.
1. I'm not a social creature.
2. Time only has real meaning to me when you are interrupting mine.
3. I'm a lousy housekeeper.

These factors have me running around today in a haze of OMG, my mother in law is coming! I can't stand yet another party right now, so what are we going to do for the Wee One's birthday? Crap! It's the 30th, and I haven't done any of my critiques for the writer's group! Oh my friggin' gaaaaaawd, my mother in law is COMING HERE!!!

With that playing on loop in my mind, I came up from the basement, put away some things that I purposely placed in my computer chair to force myself to not leave them where they should not have been, and thought: "I watched reruns of The Vampire Diaries and Moonlight last night, so it must be Friday again."

Ugh. Friday again, and I haven't done the research for the post that would cover not only Kelley Armstrong's books, but also what tidbits I could pick up from her on writing and the industry without reproducing the major posts on plotting and etc. she's put up for the writing members of her site (cuz she rocks like that).

Having skipped the last Friday post, I felt like I had to produce something. I thought, "Hey, I can scan Facebook for all the author news that people not on FB--or who are on but not following a lot of authors--might not know.

Ah, the best laid plans....I believe I mentioned that I'd finally given in to FB and followed blogger Tez and Kelley Armstrong over to the site, only to be "friended" by a bunch of authors who, either assumed I had to be good people if I hung with them...or who at least thought maybe I'd buy their books. Some of the others from the writing group friended me and introduced me to those obnoxious FB games that we all complain about when we're not playing them. To advance in those games, you often need a large number of fellow players, so I found myself adding hundreds of people that I don't actually know to my friend's feed. To be able to keep up with those I do know, I created a filter for friends and authors...

......I've got dozens of authors in that filter, but, I realized as I went searching for updates to post, there are also tens of second cousins twice removed and scores of people from my high school....

And then, the author posts are sorted out, they aren't all or even mostly about writing. Do you really want to know that Devon Monk (Magic to the Bone (Allie Beckstrom) ) wrote: Great. Mutant spider's on the loose on my desk. Sprayed it w/bleach, didn't faze it. Think it flipped me off as it skittered under computer.

Yeah, so do I! Maybe it's feeling like your favorite authors are accessible, or the joy of glimpsing the person behind the words, but I enjoy the status updates I get daily on Facebook and when I remember to log in to Twitter. So let's have some fun!

Gerrie Ferris-Finger (The End Game: A Mystery) linked to The E-books Article Drinking Game. In my defense, I was also sick of the articles, but had to add my two scents when I got an e-reader of my very own.

Mark Henry (Happy Hour of the Damned) turned friends and fans on to funnies.

RG Alexander did a cyber Snoopy dance over a pic of her (?) new release shelved early at a certain Borders. It's much like these other covers.... that are all primed and ready for me to put up, so you get the idea. I'm going to stop scanning updates because I feel a rant building. I mean, why aren't more covers like this? Not that I need all my books to be stamped with muscular men....one or two will do nicely. But if they're going to keep telling us that Urban Fantasy is a woman's genre, what's without all the female body parts on the cover? I'm rereading Dime Store Magic (Women of the Otherworld), which now has a nifty new cover. But I'm reading the original:
What the hell? Not only does the leg not make the book more appealing, but if you read just a chapter or two, you know that sure as hell isn't the narrator's leg! Poor Paige, replaced by some skinny witch. I'm not going to make the post too image heavy, but the urge is to show the sea of midriff and tramp stamps, broken up by the occasional over sized breasts or sexy thigh.

Humphf. Rather than talk about the mixed messages of kick-ass heroines that have to look like sex kittens (even when they don't), I'm going to head over to R.G. Alexander's webpage to try and figure out if any of the paranormal romances come close enough to urban fantasy...or look sexy enough to keep me distracted from the fact that my mother in law is coming!

Bad analogy, good idea

2010-07-17T16:26:00.000-04:00

Two Christmases ago, the regular Spades players in my generation of family taught me to play. We've pulled out a deck of cards at most social gatherings, and until recently, my team has always won. Sure, my teammate is always more experienced than I am, but I make dumb mistakes. Not to mention that I'll play with others and still cream whomever had won with me. I've beaten people in my generation who have been playing for at least a decade, and my parents generation who started playing a good decade before I was born. Until two weeks ago, I was undefeated, with little skill and nothing to explain it but beginners luck.

I thought of that the other day when agent Nathan Bransford asked why it's so hard to tell if our writing is good. Writing to me, is like that in a way. I've talked to a lot of creative people who are natural storytellers, but when you talk about writing, they're so sure they can't because their grammar sucks or they can't spell to save their lives. And others have gotten beyond that and learned the grammar, embraced word processing with spell check, but hold on to the "I can't" mentality that keeps them from finishing or sending out their work. (I may resemble that.) On the other hand, I've searched my soul for diplomatic critiques and some sort of honest encouragement for people--sure that they're the next big thing in fiction--whose work makes me think, "Dude, really? There's a story in this mass of words and semi-colons?"

OK, written out like that, the analogy is ridiculously thin...

But people from either group can fill in for me, never really sure of strategy, forgetting to count the cards that came before, but applying themselves and kicking ass. We don't know if we're good...or bad...because there's no real measure. We can't count adjectives like spades (I got on this metaphor and I'm gonna ride it til the wheels fall off, damn it!) and declare that we're "trump tight." So some of us sit on creative goldmines sure that no one will like our work while others come up with the lamest excuse for a story and know we'll be the next big thing.

I think we should take a page for the (in their own minds) writing superstars. They finish their stories and send them out. So what if an agent or editor doesn't like their work? The next one will. Since this is advice that I'm really force feeding myself, sure there will be lots of rejection, but the superstars are on to something. When the boy I feel in love with in college dumped me for a so-called friend because she put out, that was rejection. I lived through it. A few dozen, "sorry, this isn't for me" notes could hardly compare.

Breaking the Block

2010-07-09T20:57:00.000-04:00

A week ago Thursday, I decided that the Friday-post-that-never-was should start with: "A year from now, I'm going to write a post filled with all the good advice that I don't know to use now."

Thinking of that, I realized how much advice I've taken in over the years. And that advice you don't take isn't particularly helpful...

Everything, from seeing a shot of Vin Diesel as I channel surfed to waking up with the chorus of a once heard song in my head, has been giving me ideas for characters and setting. Meanwhile, the collaboration was staring at me with accusing eyes and a stagnant word count. I told myself to focus...and ended up playing a lot of Plants Vs. Zombies and Bejeweled.

Growing desperate, I desperate, I dusted off the my copy of The Artist's Way and started to do an exercise that had given me success in the past. It's a long term recovery sort of thing, so I also started to follow my own advice. "Just one line." I had a few days in a row where that's as far as I got on my little section of story. Then someone had posted what I'd been ignoring: use the ideas that you have. Instead of blocking out the inspiration that was coming to me and sitting on the story that was blocked, I wrote the ideas down.

It wasn't exactly a floodgate, but when I went to write "just one line" that afternoon, I was able to write to the end of the chapter.

Somewhere in there, you know, if you happen to be stuck, is my advice to you.

Books have gender? (Or 'Watch An Stick Her Foot in Her Mouth')

2010-06-22T15:08:00.001-04:00

I was looking up a certain interview to respond to the wonderful gentleman from Falcata Times when I stumbled upon Angry Chicks in Leather by Lilith Saintcrow.

What defines urban fantasy?

That's simple, you might say. Chicks kicking ass. Well, leather-clad chicks kicking ass. Leather-clad chicks kicking ass in an urban environment where some form of "magic" is part of the world. There. That’s about it.

The sound you just heard was the grinding of my teeth. It's just the old resistance; I grew up with the old UF that was really fantasy set in a modern, urban setting. It was bad enough when any urban setting got lumped regardless of time period (cuz no high fantasy has been set within a city?), and worse still when paranormal action adventures, not actually having a genre of their own with that title, became UF, but leather clad chicks kicking ass...Basically none of the original UF is UF. Fine for De Lint...he's long called his work "mythic fiction" rather than urban fantasy, but what about the...others who wouldn't give a damn to know that I'm defending their honor? On to what really got me to post...

But that's not all there is to it.

Urban fantasy, they tell me, is "hot" right now. Paranormal romance (vampire/werewolf/something girl meets vampire/werewolf/something guy, wackiness or danger ensues, happy ending happens) is just as hot, but the "romance" tag keeps it from being literature. The "fantasy" tag keeps urban fantasy from being classified as Serious Literature as well.

It reminds me of Tom's Glossary of Book Publishing, where LITERATURE is "Designation applied to titles judged unsaleable", and MAINSTREAM FICTION is "The pretense that there is a group of readers who can be reached through writing that is sufficiently unspecific as to exclude no one". There's just one thing lacking from this set of definitions--the fact that Literature and Mainstream Fiction are seen as highbrow.

They're genres you don't have to act ashamed of writing in. But romance or urban fantasy? You might as well start embroidering your own scarlet letter, honey.

Paranormal romance is considered lowbrow and trashy because it's female. Despite the fact that it's a multibillion-dollar business (and every dollar a woman shells out for it costs more because let's face it, we earn a lot less), it's still that pink-jacketed crap for bored housewives. Tom Clancy is supposed to be Real and Hard-Hitting, even if his "novels" are thinly-veiled technical manuals. Nora Roberts is supposedly less Real because she writes about feeeeeeelings. While we could debate the relative merits of Clancy vs. La Nora all day--and not agree, mind you, because Roberts is just plain the better writer--the fact remains that Clancy has a better shot at being considered "serious" because his is MAN'S FICTION.

Smell that testosterone, baby.

Urban fantasy is mostly women's fiction too. (Yes, I know there are significant exceptions, like Jim Butcher, Simon Green, and Charles de Lint. We'll get to that.) There's a lot of crossover between paranormal romance and urban fantasy. I like to say that UF is PR without the HEA (that's Happily Ever After, for those just joining us.)

I know that's a really long block of text to quote, but I really don't want to chop it up and remove context for anyone who chooses not to open the link (which, of course, you should do). Let's ignore my own Clancy vs. Roberts opinion. We can even ignore that I nearly fractured my jaw grinding my teeth on "UF is PR without the HEA." (What. The. F...no, I said I'll ignore and I'll genuinely pretend to.) The women's fiction bit hits the same "dude, what?!" bell with me as "no one reads any more" and "men don't read."

No one reads any more. All the bookstores we city dwellers pass all the time, and Amazon plus all the lesser known online bookstores are entirely products of our imagination. If no one reads, no one buys books, so there are no bookstores. (Of course, this has nothing to do with what Saintcrow wrote. In fact, my rant at her text is nothing that changes my adoration for her work. Like I said, though, it all rings the same bell.)

Men don't read. Those genres aimed specifically at men as well as those rumored to (like sci-fi) are place holders in the imaginary stores that don't exist because no one reads.

Those false facts have bugged me for a long time. I'd hear--or worse, read--someone going on about nobody reading and want to shake the silliness out of them. Now, lots of people don't read (er, beyond what's necessary to function). I don't understand these folks, but they exist. And while Jason Pinter wrote a really good article on why men don't read, if the actual words were true, how could there women's lit? Wouldn't it just be...lit?

Of course Lili's (it's how she refers to herself, it's how I think about her...'til I'm disagreeing and distance myself in case she reads it and gets annoyed) statement that urban fantasy is mostly women's fiction isn't as senseless. But it is...disempowering.

On the one hand, OK, a lot of it is written by women and/or marketed to women, so what else would you call it? On the other hand...WTF? I've written and deleted the following, rewriting it differently, many times over. I think I can divide it into two more hands...

1. There is an unfixable wrong in naming romance women's fiction. I come from a speculative fiction background, as do many of the woman who write UF rather than PR, and the fans who read one over the other. We have tits and ovaries. We're demonstrably as female as the women who read PR interchangeably with UF or who prefer all manner of romance, but a good amount of us hate that stuff. Unfortunately, it wouldn't do to start calling romance "fiction for a large group of women and a handful of men." It's irreparably labeled as it is.

2. A lot of men like UF and other spec. fic. with female leads. It's anecdotal, but I want to use one of my brothers as an example. He was, for a long time, a scary dude. I'm not going to put all his business out there, but ...yeah, scary dude fits. He turned his life around and followed in our dad's footsteps to become a big, burly fire fighter. He is, in short, one of the alpha males that most romances require. Hanging out at my place, he glanced at a certain book, and later couldn't get it out of his mind. He had to read it, then he had to have the whole series. With no one telling him it was women's fiction, his testosterone had no need to keep him in his usual non-fiction mode.

Why shouldn't he? Great characters, fantastic action, and being UF rather than PR, there were deep and complicated relationships beyond the romantic ones.

Aaaand (since this really isn't about Lilith's post so much as my angst each time I see these labels; she just happened to write in a way that allowed me to examine the reaction), does money from men have cooties? On the off chance that my fiction doesn't suck and I get over the issues that keep me from sending it out, could we please not convince men that the genre isn't for them until after I get my royalties? I'm just saying.

Part of what makes this so fascinating to me is the fact that female UF protagonists are almost without exception extraordinarily tough, and that violence is acceptable for them to use. This is a huge revolution in the type of stories our culture tells itself. Violence in our culture is a man's game...

Bat Girl. Rogue. Storm. Marvel Girl (though I've always thought that such an unfortunate name). Firestar. They and countless other comic heroines who don't make my list because they aren't mostly good (like Cat Woman) or are fall to late in my awareness 'cause I'm thinking pre-UF (Witchblade) or because the list is long enough (Scarlet Witch, et all)... all tough females for whom violence is acceptable for them to use. All from a "classically male" genre.

It's not that I think there is no room here to talk about the marginalization of women or that I don't think that's still a very real thing in this day and age.

But.

Every genre sucks. The day I moved beyond See Spot Run, I dove into spec. fic., augmented by the occasional good mystery, and that has barely changed in the decades since. It's how I'm wired. That same wiring gives me a huge distaste for all non-paranormal romance and most mainstream. All spec. fic. lovers have had to deal with highbrow lit. fic. lovers lecturing about the useless escapism of their genre, and none of us like lit. fic. either. And while we make obnoxious comments about one another's genres, those who prefer non-fiction think we're all filling our minds with junk.

Hmmm...maybe it's time we all stop alienating one another and focus those who can't appreciate a well written fiction of any type.

Just Anita Blake and Me.

2010-06-18T17:31:00.001-04:00

Here, there be spoilers. If you've read the series, have no intention of reading the series, or, like many, are a mix of both, the spoilers won't bother you. If you're don't fall into one of those categories, seriously, there will be spoilers. And TMI of other sorts.

Why even go there?

This is not yet the world famous blog that it will be (..yeah, go tell your writerly or readerly friends to get in now), so most readers are long time internet buddies; you know my stance against reading more of Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake books. If you're not a long time internet buddy, and can't infer that I have such a stance from what I just wrote, I don't know what to tell yah.

So I was exploring the not-so-wonderful world of borrowing ebooks from the library--fantastic concept, less than stellar inventory--and I saw Flirt (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Book 18). Yes, I know better. But it was free! My rules for buying Anita Blake books went from MORE! NOW! getting each new release the weekend, if not the day, they came out, to never again at cover price, to not for one thin dime. I put it out of my mind completely as I slipped into "Um...well, maybe if someone's paying me, but probably not."

....That requires back story. Many, many years ago, I needed, desperately to replace Diana Tregarde (Children of the Night: A Diana Tregarde Investigation). Mercedes Lackey, for both personal and publishing reasons, decided to stop the series at book three. I decided to stop reading at book two, for the silly impulse of "if I don't hunt down the last, there will always be one more book." What can I say? I was in love.

In my mad search, I discovered Guilty Pleasures (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter). Perfect! Same type of story, Anita even looked like Diana...but, not so perfect...I didn't actually like Anita. I put the book down, unfinished, and eventually did this twice more with consecutive books. It seems the fourth time became the charm. Facing a long overnight shift in which I would have to do a flurry of work and then simply stay awake until I could do another flurry of work, I grabbed a book, *any* book so long as I hadn't already read it.

Burnt Offerings (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Book 7) gave me something that allowed me to embrace Anita's flaws. I devoured the book, went back and read the first three, then quickly bought the missing books in between. Then I had to wait for the next to be published, so I read them all again.

An discovers the wider world of fandom...and the ick factor

I always knew I wasn't alone in my geekhood. All of my close friends and I read the original Dragonlance books at around the same time. A boyfriend introduced me to Anne Rice, and a buddy dragged me (happily, as it turned out) back into reading sci-fi by forcing eluki bes shahar. I'd had friends, of course, who didn't read the same things as me, and more rarely, who weren't readers, but I hadn't really thought about the throngs of fans out there until connecting to others on the internet.

And one of the things I did was look for other AB fans. One person, reporting on a convention, wrote about LKH cuddling with a man who was not her husband. I felt a little greasy, just reading about someone else's private life and tried to put it out of my head. You don't really think of writers in the same celebrity terms that you think of actors, especially back a little more than a decade ago, so accidently receiving the information was a lot more uncomfortable than knowing way more than is my business about Sandra Bullock and Jesse James.

It was nastier still when the AB blog--which I followed seriously, both as a fan of the series and a would-be novelist soaking up all the tidbits about the writing process that were dropped--turned into LKH's blog and she shared details about her and hubby #2 that bordered on graphic. Yeah, ick.

As she let us (or pulled us...for those who really just wanted the character and writing stuff) more into her personal life and the content of her novels changed more and more, a grumpiness grew among her fans until a large faction became anti-fans. I was among them, hoping upon hope to get the old Anita back, trying to shoosh the loudest complainers--or at least those who had to take their complaints to the source--because she told us, repeatedly, that she was contrary by nature (her words) and would keep writing crap (our words) if anyone tried to tell her she couldn't.

Why we loved it and why we split into those who still do and those who want to scream

Oh, my. How do I put this? Have you ever had a place that was part of who you are? For me, it was Paragon Park (opens to video...::sniffle:: I gotta share on Facebook so my brother can see this..::misty eyed sniffle:: ). I could try to explain the dynamics of my family and how this was one of the things that pulled us all together every summer, but the highest rated reply perhaps says it best for both those who miss this place or any other, including the world of Anita Blake: I would give every remaining second of my life to ride in the kooky kastle just one more time. Maybe that's going a bit far for me, but it gives the idea...

Hamilton made the "Anitaverse" such a place. Maybe even back in the early days we'd complain about Anita's version of feminism being taken from a confused ten year old, or other wee problems of the character or the prose. But when you got down to it, a part of us moved into a Saint Louis where vampire politics sometimes spilled out on the innocent, and that teacher you crushed on was secretly a werewolf. We shared the characters' sufferings and triumphs. Having Anita's ultra violence by proxy helped me through a painful divorce. We were invested.

And then there was the sex.

I went looking for LKH's old blog post where she defended the sex--and insulted old fans still clinging to hope--but alas, she's got a new integrated version and the archives are gone. (I wonder if it were just for the better look or if something happened like the shit storm on the old deleted guestbook that broke out when my husband flipped over her remarks....I digress.)

Just the facts, ma'am. Anita was (annoyingly to some) celibate in the early books. Her heart had been broken pre-novels, and unlike everyone else on the planet, she didn't hurt and get over it, she metaphorically glued her legs together and nurtured the pain as only Anita can. But you can't stay celibate surrounded by the hottest guys in fiction who want you. Who would she choose...the sexy French master vampire, or the gorgeous All-American alpha werewolf? If you use a sliding scale for the definition of "choose", she picked one. People who don't use a sliding scale (obviously, that would be me) accepted it, and others rejoiced. Surely, there would a deepening of relationships and the stories would be even better!

...Or no. Don't get me wrong--two of the three next books were the best she's written, and the odd one out, though it happens to be the one of three with sex (real sex and on the page, as opposed to sensual situations that don't go that far or off-stage rape) isn't bad at all. But the sex just meant there was more whining, not that things went deeper. Anita had been a good Catholic girl before the Church excommunicated all necromancers; while that did not keep her from having sex before marriage, it did make her a stickler for monogamy. For a while...

There were arguments, back in the day, about which was better: Burnt Offerings (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Book 7) or Obsidian Butterfly (An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Book 9). OB does read as though LKH wrote it while reading Burning Water (Diana Tregarde Investigation), but I'm sure that's a tribute to the lesser known series rather than something less pleasant. Either way, it's a damned fine book, that maybe edges out BO by virtue of taking place out of town, away from the angst that loving two men has caused...(Oh, had I forgotten to mention that once she had one, she had to have the other?)

I remember that LKH's A Kiss of Shadows (Meredith Gentry, Book 1) came out around the time of OB. I thought "Ah, here's the sex she wanted to write before. I'm glad she has an outlet." And I wasn't just happy for her; I actually enjoyed the book. I didn't know that I should've taken it as a warning.

Things got bad while Anita was out of town and Narcissus in Chains (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Book 10) starts with violence that nearly kills her. But there are (see how I change tense when I get like this?) new shifters in town with the power to bring her back from the brink. A few pages/minutes after regaining consciousness and meeting Micah, the leader of the group, he rapes her and becomes the (additional) love of her life...

In one printing of the story, at least. The next--and sadly, I am missing one of the texts and the patience to go through the archives of the one place where I know I've faithfully copied each--edition changed the text so she finally gave in before he enters her. That was the beginning of the end.

Anita gains the ardeur from her vampire boyfriend, which makes her have to feed on sex everyday, several times a day.

Yeah.

It wasn't painful yet. The sex didn't get in the way of the plot yet, and the plot wasn't bad. Some of it, combined with knowing too much about the author's personal life was ick, (and super-Mary-Sue-meets-are-you-fucking-kidding-me) but there was a solid story and resolution.This became less and less true until, four books later, she totally phoned the ending in. Screw resolution, there were just too many penises to examine.

Seriously.

Upon purchase of the book before, the clerk felt the duty to explain that there wasn't any actual plot (as fans of a paranormal thriller would see it--if you were in the market for stupid relationship angst, there was plenty) for the first 200 pages. But but that couldn't be true, right? By the end, more than wanting my money back, I wanted those hours of my life back.

But I still bought the next one. Yeah, this time I waited until it was sold at significant discount, but I bought it. I read it. I stared in horror after reaching the end that was basically a letter reading, Dear good guy, I was the bad guy all along. Bwahahaha! I commiserated on message boards, read all the posts saying, "OK...you've got a lot of readers drawn to the sex and your career has exploded, but what about those of us who have been here since the beginning? We've gotten all our friends to read your novels. We've put up with the bad editing and fought the urge buy plane tickets and find your house to personally hand you a thesaurus. We're not even asking you to take the sex out, we just want real stories again."

Anger grew as we read interviews explaining that Americas are repressed sexually. Certainly far too many of us are, but do you really think these are the same people reading your books? Hell, anyone who bought into the series through book clubs got the book in spite or because of the explicit sex warnings. I can't speak for all of us, but lemme tell yah, I like sex. A lot. Most of us read other series that include sex--some, I'm given to believe from the boards, come from romance or erotica backgrounds and don't read much that doesn't include sex. But remember when the adventures were so much more than that? We just want to come home.

That, if you haven't guessed, is why so many bitched for so long while the stories got worse and worse. Why so many talked about the books (often for years) after we stopped reading. And why so many still complain and yet buy the books as soon as they come out, taking what they can of the characters and world no matter what happens. Some of those who "type" the loudest about Anita and her magical vagina will still pre-order the book or be in the stores for the first day of sales, wanting to come home.

I would give every remaining second of my life to ride in the kooky kastle just one more time.

So I read Flirt. By the end of the first chapter, I knew what the action of the story would be--and had a moment of being annoyed that Anita pulled a 'too stupid to live' move and didn't see the threat coming--but I didn't care. It was Anita. The "why do you all love me?" and revelation of her grandmother's nastiness was little more than a rehash of crap from before I stopped reading, and almost kept me from going on. It certainly made me want to sit character and author both down and introduce them to (a) the wonderful world of therapy and (b) the real world where millions of white women are not blond haired and blue eyed, let alone billions of non-white women, and neither dark hair nor bitchy relatives make you ugly.

I kept reading. I lived through the almost sex and the inevitable sex with the bad guys (no less), because there was plot. There was the old Anita, using her mind and her power, and not just her magical vagina. It was almost like coming home.

Connections...

2010-06-11T13:44:00.000-04:00

When I was...a junior, maybe a sophomore...in high school, I hung out with this particular senior. I don't think we had anything in common besides a love of Julian May books, but that isn't the point. He lived on Beacon Hill, a place that circumstances had me near all the time, and he dragged me around one night. He showed me his job--some shop that I no longer remember--and took me into the cellar to show me the tunnel that had been used first for the Underground Railroad. It was, for a few feet in, anyway, just extra storage by then, but he said that there were lots of secret holes and tunnels in odd places about the Hill. He had me at "secret."

My mind would wander to those tunnels over the years, wondering if they connected to the subway at any point, if Fairies had moved within like sidhe mounds now that they've been abandoned. I've searched the net--you know, now that it's decades later and ordinary people can search the net, for info that's never there.

Beauty and the Beast - The Complete Series introduced me to ordinary (and in Vincent, not so ordinary) tunnel dwellers back in 1990, while Gaiman's Neverwhere: A Novel made the idea more magical, and took me to the rooftops and over suspension bridges in 1998.

This morning in the shower, for no reason in particular, I imagined a Boston where the fay rule the underground, urban shape shifters mingle with humanity in the streets, and vampires and angels fight for supremacy in the skyscrapers.

That's usually how it works for me. Rather than a lightening bolt of inspiration that develops into a book, I have a spark, that might sit in my mind or in a notebook for years, meeting other sparks along the way until I have something to work with. I have built stories from flashes of inspiration, but those are all waiting for pieces to make them whole, while the book that I'm revising to eventually send out came from bits and pieces collected over a good handful of years.

A quick glimpse into An's mind

2010-06-05T20:58:00.000-04:00

Usually, I'm late because I've got too much classwork (but I'm free 'til September) or I've got writer's block. This time around, I've had too much crap in my brain. I wrote overlong posts that even I didn't want to read by the end, nevermind hoping anyone else would. I'll share the bit that I like from Monday's post, and then tell you why e-readers have won me over.

My son is arriving from Texas tonight. This threw me into a fiction finding frenzy. I'm reading, and loving, The Blue Girl, by Charles de Lint, and wondered if he'd like it, too. Actually, I so relate to the main character, I considered making him read it whether he liked it or not. Then there's Kelley Armstrong's The Awakening (Darkest Powers), and Cassandra Clare's City of Bones (Mortal Instruments). How many female protagonists can a young man take? Maybe he'd dig Unleashed by Kris Reisz? Speaking of Reisz, wasn't him compiling a list of young adult fiction for guys? I'd look it up but how could I forget Elsewhere?

This book redefined my youth (don't let the Aug 2004 date fool yah). Sure, I had Moonheart (which came to mean more to me as grew older) and then War for the Oaks: A Novel, but Elsewhere really marked a place where I became an urban fantasy fan. More, some inner part of me said, This is who I am.

OK, I never hopped a train to Bordertown where The World meets Faerie. Not physically. Emotionally, I'd been squatting there since I was 12; Elsewhere, and the follow up Nevernever, gave it a name and me someone to hang with while he blew up his life and found himself.

...I could go on about that, but I'll follow the twist my thoughts took.

Now about e-readers.

They're neat.

....I'm tempted to leave it there because the discussion about it seems...pointless. And this from a chick who likes to discuss. The people who insist they're here, and they'll do to books with CDs did to albums and MP3 players did to Discmen (who was the winner who came up with that name?) are probably right. Then again. there may be enough people who insist that you'll take their physical, paper books away when you pry them out of their dead, cold hands to make e-readers additional technology rather than replacement tech. We won't know 'til we know.

Years ago, my hubby bought a handheld computer and I thought it was a dumb waste of money. It came in handy, though, when we were called out of town suddenly and I was able to buy a couple of ebooks. Some time later, our toddler broke it and, other than my being still annoyed about the money, neither of us missed it. We still went to bookstores (or ordered online) and libraries, and barely batted a lash when the Kindle came out. OK, I liked the hype. I batted a lash, until the price drew my hard stare. I was even excited about the iPad, but I'm spending my rent money (or two car payments if I were to actually buy a car, or...well, input your own "this is way more important to me than a gadget" bill) for tech that makes tech I already own portable. When I can fully use it as a laptop without Steve Jobs keeping me free from porn, I'll think about it.

Then my husband got me a Sony Pocket Reader on sale for Mother's Day, I...was OK. With two ebooks waiting for review, I thought that would be a good thing, and at the price, I could barely argue. He loaded all the backup Kelley Armstrong books that he had bought (ok, cool, but I've read all the hard copies several times and wasn't about to do so again) and his Star Wars ebooks (I haven't read a Star Wars book since Mara Jade was first introduced, what? 20 years ago?). It was more interesting when a series of links while net surfing landed me at the Ellora's Cave free short stories page. Woohoo! Now I could really try out erotica (if I only I could stop editing it as I read).

Long story slightly less long, if you're ever in place where you need 1500 (or 300 for those of us with the cheap version) books, you'll be too screwed to read. If you discover, like I just did, that the "First Time in Print!" stamp that St. Martin put on the book you bought does not mean "first book in the series" (jerks), you could spend a couple of minutes finding, buying, and downloading the right book. Quick and easy....assuming there's an e-version of the book. I guess I'll go look.

As a total side note....

2010-05-31T16:01:00.000-04:00

...I don't care much for moderated comments, but if I have to delete one more Japanese porn spam message, I'm going to go nuts. What to do, what to do?

The 'Lost' finale and how it gave me permission to let go of 'Happy Hour of the Damned'

2010-05-28T10:41:00.000-04:00

You would think that sometime between giving up on the Anita Blake series and accepting that paranormal romance and urban fantasy are not interchangeable, I should have gotten that not all stories are for everyone. I did get it. And yet, I've read the same opening paragraphs of Happy Hour of the Damned over and over in my quest to get through the first chapter. I wanted to like it because Mark Henry's such a likable guy (and what if he's been watching the blogs of everyone who got an e-arc and has been heart broken by my silence?) and the book has fabu potential.

Right. So my husband and I watched Lost's finale on Sunday night like millions of other people. I cried. We enjoyed and discussed. He Tweeted, I updated my Facebook status. And we awoke to a world in which, for all of us that ranked it among the top show finales ever, almost equal amounts either just didn't get it, or didn't get everything they wanted and therefore hated it. Not wanting to follow the episode's theme of letting go, I mistakenly tried to enter into rational conversation with one of the haters. Bad move. He didn't want his questions answered, he wanted answers to questions that had never been apart of the show (i.e., the writers suck no matter what). I turned my need for further discussion to Lost's official FB page where, among the heartfelt goodbyes there were posts of rage, some causing head/desk (not necessarily my own head) desires.

Why didn't the finale answer the question about the polar bear?! Um, cuz it was answered like, two or three seasons ago. The writers can't help it if you didn't watch or forgot.

What was with Richard?! They did a whole episode to explain that. Hulu is your friend.

What happened to Walt's storyline?! They cast an 11 year old to play an 8 year old; puberty had the bad grace to occur on schedule.

I'll leave alone any Q&A about the actual episode for anyone who's holding off, and I left alone discussion because...well, we're not all wired to like the same things. I'm a woman; I don't know why the so-called women's networks offer so little that appeals to me while I can watch Spike for days. Who knows why some of us watch sports while others hate them, or why one person's favorite band is audio crap to the next person? I'll never get why anyone would prefer dark chocolate to milk...

And thus, I finally loaded Happy Hour of the Damned into the e-reader I got for Mother's Day, started to force my way through, and found it was OK to let go. It was still smart and witty, even if I didn't like it, and I could still tell you all that. Funny thing is, now that I've allowed myself to not like it, I sorta like it.

“Happy Hour of the Damned—is it a comedy? An urban fantasy? A whodunit? Who cares! Mark Henry’s written such a clever and engaging story that fans of any genre will totally adore it. Amanda Feral is the freshest,funniest character to come out of fiction since Bridget Jones,and my only regret is she’s not real and we can’t go out for drinks.(Because,really? Zombies are the new black.) In short?I loved this book!”

—Jen Lancaster,author of Bitter Is the New Black

My problem is that I wouldn't go out for drinks with Amanda. I might not use a quicky two minute Access Hollywood segment on her as a bathroom break, but I would not be a fan and I was not thrilled about reading her pov like she was a female Perez Hilton and my brain was her blog.

Released from my need to like it, I loved the wit that went into the character and her voice, the "breaks in the 4th wall" that make it like Amanda really is telling you this story, and the fantastic footnotes. I'm totally going to go liquor shopping one day soon and make myself a Flirtini.

My taste didn't exactly change; like a brilliantly crafted hors d'oeuvre, the book leaves me hungry for a meal--a setting that I want to live in for a while populated with characters I want to spend time with. But now I do appreciate the hors d'oeuvre's flavor and can suggest you try it, too, without watching to see what face you make.

If too many cooks spoil the broth, what do too many writers do?

2010-05-16T12:26:00.000-04:00

We have fun...and maybe some frustration, but mostly fun!

After months of pretty good activity, my little writer's group got an infusion of new blood from the larger group. I don't know how twice as many people translated in half as many posts, but it did. Poking Julie (the muse and task master) to have something for the group next month, we found we're in the same boat--working on edits with nothing else we're prepared to share.

A couple of jokes later and we started to work on a pretty serious collaboration.

My experience working with other writers pretty much consisted of two childhood friends and I doing rounds for a few pages and then not, and with my husband who lays out fantastic story ideas and then decides that his work there is done. Yep. I've had experience in *not* collaborating.

I went in search of advice on the web and found a ton of crap. But knowing I'd seen something worth while out there, I went through a few blog archives until I found Holly Lisle's How To (and how not to). It covers the obvious issues of who writes what, and also the the business aspects that you might not consider when you think, "Hey, won't this be fun!" And Julie linked me to the two authors writing as one Moira Rogers--a good look at joint writing from a pair successfully doing it.

For me, the last 24+ hours have been a crash course in compromise. It certainly started easy: she took my not-really-kidding joke seriously and we discussed genre, then narrowed down the genre elements. For good or for ill, I "said", I've had this idea that fits, but I've never fully developed it. Instant progress! But as we developed the idea, it went places I would never take it. That was a little less fun. But part of collaborating is having that fresh mindset and seeing beyond your own point of view, right? Right.

It got later. She presented me with a host of ideas for the main character that, if I saw them on the back of a book cover, I'd put it back on the shelf and look for something better. I knew, even in my tired and grumpy state, that "better" really translates into "more my taste," but tired for me translates into bitchy, so I think I just projected, "You're wrong." Lucky for our friendship, if not for my mood, being sleepy becomes being silly for Julie, so the ideas she gave got more and more humorously away from what we were trying to do, but she never told me to go to hell.

Sleep came to our rescue. In the morning, destructive personality quirks were gone and we were able to get down to business; for me, that meant I could articulate the flaws I saw in certain things and stop holding on to others that kept my world from becoming ours. After a few hours, magic happened--we'd type the same thing at the same time, like old friends who knew each other's mind. Then we were back to negotiating, 'cause this stuff isn't easy.

If you must be distracted, may it be by books!

2010-05-08T10:57:00.001-04:00

I should not have started reading the sequels I ordered, but I couldn't help myself. At first, I used them as rewards: finish some bit of homework and I could read a few chapters of Jabril. Fortunately, I got a lot of work done before I reached the point that I couldn't put it down. Now I've gobbled up all three, and I think I'm having Seanan McGuire withdrawal. Not that the others weren't great, too, mind. But finishing A Local Habitation had me walking around the house like a junkie, as though if I looked long and hard enough, I'd find the remnants of some former stash (or, ah, the next book would just appear in my apartment, four months before it's supposed to hit the bookstores).

In my original Raphael post, I wrote: "Cynthia Leighton is an ex-cop P.I.--I know, I know, been there done that. BUT she's her own character, not a rip-off of any P.I.'s we've seen before. She's "smart, tough, and sexy" without crossing the line into obnoxious. When a certain powerful vampire (and yes, he's a hottie alpha male) hires her, she holds her own against the creatures of the night with her brain and a few high calibur weapons, and without losing her humanity."

Hmnph. I so hate spoiling anything that my "reviews" are terribly vague. It's worse for sequels, generally, since telling you about them may reveal something you wanted to find out for yourself from book one. Can I be more detailed without giving things away? Maybe. I'll tell you this: Jabril doesn't disappoint--in fact, the danger was pushed to a higher level. Cyn gets called to Texas to find a missing girl, only to discover that the girl, and the sister still trapped by the vampire that hired her, need to be rescued. She's in strange territory and working under circumstances where even winning might mean her death.

For those of us who read a lot of paranormal/urban fantasy, there's a little voice in our minds going, "Yeah, sure. Even if she 'dies', she'll survive." But the mortal danger to the girls, and the possibility of other damage to Cyn, was so real that I was held captive until the end.

My post for Blue Diablo (click to go to it) was more detailed, so I'll let that stand. Hell Fire (Corine Solomon, Book 2) gave me pause. It seemed a little more "American Gothic" than I was in the mood for reading. Though delving past the preview chapter left me with that same sense, in typical Ann Aguirre fashion, the book was just too good to set aside for something else. Corine made a deal with Chance in Blue Diablo--if she helped him with his problem, he would help her discover who killed her mother and why. In Hell Fire, he makes good on that promise.

Kilmer, Georgia has more secrets than the mystery behind Corine's mother's death, and someone is ready to kill to keep them. The town seems lost in time--so cut off that neighboring towns don't even know it exists. Something dark and hungry haunts the woods around Kilmer. While it reads more like horror than urban fantasy, it's a damn fine story. The only draw back is an ending that makes you want to know what happens next NOW, but the book three won't be out until April 2011.

Of Rosemary and Rue, I originally wrote: "It struck me as a fantastic blend of the "old" urban fantasy with its emphasis on the mythic and the "new" hard-boiled/kick-ass urban fantasy." October Daye was...a Changeling knight, a P.I., a wife, a mother... At the start of her story, she's on the case for her liege lord, thinking she'll be home in time for dinner. Caught in a fairy trap, October becomes lost to the world for fourteen years. Unable to understand what happened, her human husband and child want nothing to do with Toby. Faerie wants her back, but having lost so much to it, she refuses. A spelled phone call takes the choice away from her; Toby must solve a murder mystery or die herself.

See? That's the problem with reviews...with the appearance of book two, you know that Toby lives. What you really should know is that this is a world where the magic of Faerie is alive but hidden in the streets of San Francisco. Kelpies lurk in foggy shadows ready to run into the sea with anyone foolish enough to ride them. The King of Cats slinks through alleyways and a flock of pixies makes its home in the produce section of a local supermarket.

Did I mention I'm going through withdrawals? Finishing any good book makes me want to read more by the author, but Seanan McGuire has become an instant favorite. I don't know how I'm going to make it until book three's release in September!

Kill your distractions!

2010-04-24T14:48:00.001-04:00

Well, don't kill all your distractions; I love my family and murder is illegal, so I'll just continue to grumble at them. But the others...

For me, it's people being wrong on the internet. There's a graphic out there for that somewhere, but finding it would be just another distraction...

I wake with coffee and the internet on weekends (I can't spare the time Mon-Fri). Mostly it's seeing what witty thing my brother has posted as his Facebook status or reading the political battles between old high school "friends" that have landed on the far left and far right with a libertarian (big L, in my mind) in the mix to make it worth my time. But today, I clicked over to Livejournal, too.

Oh, my! One link lead to another, and another, until I was reading the long Tweet by Tweet (by post, by comment, by...) of how Neil Gaiman is a racist asshole--you know, if you choose to take his words completely out of context to further your (albeit worthy) agenda. I managed, just barely, to keep myself from writing, "yes, but what you're saying has nothing to do with what he was talking about." He's a big boy, who replied for himself, not to mention his many fans. Still that controversy and the one that lead me to it lasted through several cups of coffee, getting the girl dressed for the day, moving on to a whole other meal...

If I don't kill it, I won't get any of the research done that I need for my academic survivial, nor the revisions written that I need for a healthy psyche.

Ordering Jabril, A Local Habitation: An October Daye Novel, and Hell Fire (Corine Solomon, Book 2) (yay sequils!) helped, and writing this out helped more. Baking with the Wee One should put the final nail in the distraction's coffin, and I will be free--once she's settled--to get down to some serious writing.

What are your distractions and how do you kill them?

Update...

2010-04-20T22:33:00.000-04:00

...because it's awful when so much time passes between posts.

Nearing the end of the semester, and all things academic are coming at me fast. Little time for anything outside of that and mommydom, BUT... I've got the feedback from Ms. Beta Reader Supreme, so I'm slipping in revisions.

More to come!

Late night posting...or....what week is this again?

2010-04-03T22:08:00.000-04:00

As I write, my clock just hit 1am. I feel like I'm type-whispering. Shhh...

My mind's a jumble, but I'll try and spin a few things out coherently. Last thing first: after I tweaked the layout*, I went bouncing about to catch up on a few things. Brooke, from the aptly named Brooke Reviews, has a new post spotlighting Anton Strout's urban fantasy series. Yay! Not only do I like seeing other people's points of view, but I wanted to link this one because I prefer it to my own. Strout's cool. Granted, I know him only so well as you know anyone you've never met whose words you read every other day in passing, but I appreciate his online persona. I don't necessarily appreciate his fiction, so I point you to Brooke.

Dead To Me starts off with a brilliant opening scene that manages to be hillarious at the same time that it's informative and even touching. Speaking of touching...(::waggles brows::) Simon's a psychometrist. He touches an object and knows it's history--that came in useful in his earlier life as a thief, but catching flashbacks of your would-be-lover's past hot fling will keep you single. Unfortunately, reading the book, I felt like each time I scratched the surface, I found a lot more surface. The geek in me requires a certain amount of detail that Strout didn't provide. Go judge for yourself!
__________________________

It's 12 hours later, and my mind is no less jumbled.
__________________________

Seven and a half hours later still...and I'm less jumbled. I was going to post about gender in response to the last line of Brooke's review. And then I was going to write about race because I stumbled upon this while looking for something else completely.

Before and after, I had coffee, fed the kid, showered, bathed her, sketched out the 1000 words of imaginary history I have to write by 11am tomorrow (and glad I took another look at that since the deadline has been moved up an hour), did too many other wife/mommy things to jot down, took the kid out with Grandma, came back, and tried to focus on two things at once until my Task Master beat me over the head and got me writing.

So let's talk about writing buddies! A year ago, I wrote my plug for joining a writer's group. In general, I think they're a good idea so long as you find one that works for you. If you find one where everyone just loves everything you write and you don't need any corrections because you're just so fab, run. Ditto if you find yourself in one in which all the "encouragement" feels like a punch in the gut. You don't need a group that will hold you back either by giving fake critiques that never show you what to improve or one that's so critical that you end up feeling that suck beyond any chance of improvement.

Maybe you don't need a "group" at all. I appreciate everything I've learned in mine, but it's got a serious draw back. You can post one chapter/section of writing a month, 3,500 words or fewer. Sometimes, you can't wait (grabbing the nearest book to me) a year and a season to have your work critiqued. If learning to look critically at my own work is the best thing I got from the OWG, Julie comes in right after...As my muse, she's there to bounce ideas off of and to take the work I've been staring at until gray matter began to leek from my ears (ok, only in my imagination) to view it with fresh eyes. As my task master, she's ~~bullied me~~ er, encouraged me to set a 200 hundred word goal a day**--something small enough that I can slip it in around all the student/mommy/wife stuff. Sometimes I get to the goal and think, "great, that much more crap to delete later." But sometimes, I get there, have plenty more to say, and keep going.
In the comments for my last (real) entry, the man behind Falcata Times wrote:

Great blog and one that is always of use especially when writing is concerned as it does feel at times that you're the proverbial hermit stuck in the cave with no other contact.

How sweet was that? I'm glad that this is being received in the spirit in which it's offered. And that reminds that before the OWG and task master Julie, there was a blog that I read religiously. She'd post her word counts and I'd try to keep up, as well as picking up any tidbits of writing advice. Maybe that's where you are now; there's nothing wrong with keeping your writing to yourself for a while longer. But while you're interacting on the internet or with other friends in your real life who like to write as well, keep your eyes out for that person who gets what you're going through, and who may be willing to help you get to the next phase.

*Yay Blogger for finally offering something better than the lame-ass templets of yesterday. Miserable with them, I'd tried for an outside source. It was lovely...and it ate a lot of my old info (...and if your blog was some of that info swallowed from the original Blog roll, drop me a line).

**While she dragged me to 200 words earlier (I spent a lot of time staring at the screen; every once in a while, she'd IM me her word count--usually something like 580--and I'd reply with mine--usually something like 31) she told me she had something for me to see once I reached goal. Seems I'm not alone in taking my bite sized chunks.

Insert blog post here

2010-03-27T00:16:00.000-04:00

I'm late. I'm off. I'm...

Um, you know. I'll catch up tomorrow. Um..or so.

Things I found wandering around book industry blogs...

2010-03-19T10:58:00.000-04:00

Agent Janet Reid tells us to make MORE mistakes, not fewer--great advice for any of us who's fear of "not getting it right" has kept us from getting anywhere at all.

I've had mixed feelings about starting Wade's story. On the one hand, I was itching to write, but on the other, any story that I've gotten anywhere on has come from some flash of inspiration, not by following an outline alone. I pushed out the intro, but since have been writing a line at a time...Seriously...a line, then maybe doing four hours worth of laundry or catching up on Lost or whatever, then coming back to force another line out. I've been keeping Reid's post in mind to get me to not junk the whole project in order to wait (foolishly) for the type of inspiration I require.

So it doesn't thrill me. The opening does what I need it to do, and I can edit it into literary joy-joys later. Maybe it feels like a mistake, but I need to get through it to produce something better.

I've been casually watching Jim C. Hines gather information for a survey of how writer's broke into publishing. Here's his first results post, complete with graphs! While the first entry deals with how the writers in his survey broke in--short stories first, no short stories, agent or direct to publisher--the second covers how long it took.

As you can guess from scattered reviews of books that have just come out mingled with long running series and things that are just new to me, I don't spend a lot of time worrying about what's next on the horizon. Still, it's nice to get a heads up from time to time. The lovely Tez has a list of April releases that reminds me to put two of my favorite authors' work back on top of my TBR list, and informs me that another favorite has turned to Young Adult books--something I'll be sure to check out.

Is it that time again?

2010-03-12T22:30:00.000-05:00

I ache. I'm trying to see it as a good thing since it's keeping me in when I'm supposed to be at a party. How anti-social does that sound? Fact is, I do tend to be hermit-like, but this is a kid's party for the nephew I see five or so days a week, and who assures me that I won't be missed tonight. At all. (I was not too sick to throw pennies at him while he giggled at me.)

Anyhoo, this means I've got a little bit of time alone to write. What should be recorded about the past week?

~I spent some time working from the villian's point of view; didn't get far.
~Itching to get started, I let someone talk me into doing sprints; discovered that is not my preferred way to begin a story, but it was still good to actually begin.
~It's possible to plot and "pants". I think. We'll see if I succeed. But I need a solid knowledge of the first act--to actually see how it unfolds and what the details are, before I can outline the second act. I'm thinking a little combination of technique is what I need.

Mostly, I need to get back to it. Parting thoughts...

From my notes:
John Grisham's Ten Commandments:

(rumored to be sitting beside his typewriter)

Start with action. Explain it later.

Make it tough for your protagonist.

Plant it early. Pay it off later.

Give the protagonist the initiative.

Give the protagonist a personal stake.

Give the protagonist a short time list. Then shorten it again.

Choose your character according to your own capacities as well as his/hers.

Know your destination before you set out.

Don't rush in where angels fear to tread.

Don't write anything you wouldn't want to read.

pre-coffee process post

2010-03-06T10:50:00.000-05:00

OK, I wrote the title then made a cup of coffee. I couldn't take it. I'm only a few sips in, so forgive me if I'm foggy.

I stayed up late working on the outline until it became staying up late not working on the outline, or at least hitting a certain block in the road and not making anymore progress. Maybe my erstwhile title of Queen of the First Chapter should have been Queen of the First Act (all right, sure, maybe I was just a princess). Up in the wee hours, I finally realized that I've stumbled in this same spot again and again; maybe it wasn't obvious before because I have managed to move a bit past in a story or two, only to hit the middle and stall out (even if I kept writing to the end).

Here's a wiki on Three Act Structure for anyone not familiar. There are unboubtably better ones or ones more directed toward printed fiction, but again, first cuppa.

So I hit the end of Act One....and I got nothin'. Zip. Nada. While outlining (rather than writing by the seat of my pants) leaves me a little vague on the opening scene--I know what should happen with none of my usual vision on just how it happens--at least I have something to go on. I get to the end Act One...surely there's an organic "something" that'll rise out of the story....

...That until now has focused solely on the reactions and actions of my main character while the antagonist has sat thumb twittling in my notebook with just a wee bit of diabolical masterminding to get the ball rolling.

Good thing yah can't see me blush.

The rest of Week 3..and a vampire!

2010-03-05T18:59:00.002-05:00

Gotta be quick, 'cause I've been a bad, bad girl. I cheated. I should have studied more and rested more and done more story background. It wasn't all naughtiness; I've been sick and dealing with sick child (who seems determined to defy gravity when my back is turned). But I kept peeking at a book until I ended up reading it, so I feel like I've committed adultry against my school work, the books that were already in the queu to be read and reviewed, and my own story waiting to be born.

I'd hesitated getting Raphael, and not just because each of my classes demands an uber amount of reading. The author and I had a...disagreement about a character in someone else's novel. We were both speaking (well, writing) English, but her words made no sense to me...Until I realized that I was reading the urban fantasy the story's creator meant it to be but she was reading a paranormal romance. Made me worry about how I would react to her characters.

No need for a genre rant (I've sworn off them, really) because I loved them. Cynthia Leighton is an ex-cop P.I.--I know, I know, been there done that. BUT she's her own character, not a rip-off of any P.I.'s we've seen before. She's "smart, tough, and sexy" without crossing the line into obnoxious. When a certain powerful vampire (and yes, he's a hottie alpha male) hires her, she holds her own against the creatures of the night with her brain and a few high calibur weapons, and without losing her humanity.

Check it out. Urban fantasy fans will find that the heat between Cyn and Raphael doesn't overpower the investigative plot, paranormal fans will find that the heat is worthy of their time. Readers of either genre, or not hung up on genre at all, will find great character establishment and worldbuilding--a win for everyone.

Now I'm going to go peek at her web site for info on the next book before I finish plotting out my own act one. See? I'm still workin'.

Week 3, part of it anyway

2010-03-01T12:42:00.000-05:00

Day One--
I woke to news of an earthquake in Chile. One of my very best friends is in Chile, so I spent the morning...and afternoon...and early evening hovering about Facebook waiting for news. I cursed her husband for dragging her down there for a season every year. I cursed myself for not being psycho enough of a friend to have gotten in the way of that. I prayed. Now I'm writing this, not so that she'll read it someday and want to kick my ass, but because reading this someday might bring back that sense of moving from task to task, tearing up, coming back to the computer in case there's news...

What are those lines in the U2 song? "Every artist is a cannibal/every poet is a thief/all kill their inspiration/and sing about their grief." I don't know about killing my inspiration, but now that the news has reached me that my girl is okay, I'll all right with mining those feelings later.

During my aimless wandering about the house, I turned on the TV (catching up on Past Lives via Hulu might have distracted too much from Facebook hovering). There was an old episode of Grey's Anatomy playing a song that clicked...

One of my attempts at writing Wade happened during NaNo. In those early hours of the month, recreating the story by the seat of my pants, I found her falling for the most inappropriate hero. (As a total aside, that scene/storyline was surely born of the earlier mentioned best friend and I walking down a stone paved street in Austria and falling hopelessly for a gorgeous priest/monk as only teen-aged girls can do. Almost 20 years later, it just appears in my writing.) I'd been considering dropping it; it had been fun, but...That woman's voice and those lyrics told me keep that bit. And that led to a few things that will have to happen...so plotting and the start of a soundtrack where I least expected it.

Day Two--I started off with some story work, but, knowing that I was clueless on a paper due Tuesday. I wish I were still clueless. It ate my whole day, and I still don't feel prepared to write the thing. Or, to be more honest, I expect As out of my papers, and this material makes me feel like I'll produce a C. I want to fight Andy Warhol, mostly because he's dead growling at him is less dangerous than growling at the man who will grade my assignment.

I hear Nathan Fillion's voice in the other room, so I'll cut my bitching short and move on to...

Day Three--I've got many hours left on this day, but I stumbled on a post about a guy who has 11,000 rejection letters, and if that's not worth sharing, I don't know what is. If nothing else, THIS is the guy I need to track down to teach me about organization. How does he find the time?! Sure the message is supposed to be "keep at it!", but I'm finishing my bachelors almost 20 years late, with nothing ready to send to be rejected, while he's gotten seven degrees and that many rejections plus 100 shorts published. Damn.

These distractions aside, I've been itching to actually write the fiction I've been working on. I'm off to create that infernal paper so I can get to it.

Week 2--Can dreaming dangeriously be scheduled?

2010-02-26T11:41:00.000-05:00

Day Zero--
Wade has always been pretty kick-ass, both in actual game play and in my attempts at novelization. As I focused on reworking her story, I found myself longing for the urban fantasy that was less kick-ass and more mythic. Sleeping in the 'tween time between weeks, my subconscious said, "Why not have both?" And it played "Landslide" on a mental loop--Billy Corgan singing. Maybe that last bit is neither here nor there, but I woke up with a new challenge and theme song for Wade's softer side.

Day One--
I worked on the "what if", or in this case the, "wait! why?" Basic to the background of this character is her being one of three, separated at birth and hidden away. This should be more than background! Babies are adopted everyday, but there was a great mystery aound these triplets that has never been solved. I got a few basic ideas on that, and jotted down a few thoughts about themes.

Days Two-Six--
Classwork, motherhood, and a wee bit of writing group moderation. Two weeks in and the picture is already forming. I've got to find a way to organize my life so I can be a good wife/mother/student without disengaging from writing for days at a time. Other people manage it, so I know it's not some unreachable goal. BUT, my life has been categorized by disorganization for so long, I have no idea where to begin.

For now, I'm going to shower and get back to working on characters. Another failure in my past has been devotion to primary characters and near ignoring everyone else. So...shower, characters, more on setting, plot, fold laundry, clean daughter's room, and give some attention to the texts that I'm more than a hundred pages behind on. (Food and sex will happen without any lists.)

Week 1

2010-02-20T14:01:00.000-05:00

Free of "The Hidden" by way of a kindly beta reader, I began posting "Becoming" for critique. Written as a NaNo novel one November, "Becoming" has a lot of promise, and I know just where it went wrong--written in haste, I left out a lot of the background that made the world as interesting to me as the characters. Unfortunately, I discovered that this was not the only way I screwed up. Aware of how many times computer crashes have wiped out my work, I saved it on both a hard and a flash drive...I thought. You know how when you "save as", a file will continue to save that way until you do it again? I forgot.

Yeah, that sucked.

With most of the story lost, I didn't have the heart to pick right up. I decided to work on another old story that has (for me a least) enjoyable characters amid a mess of plot. A zillion years ago, I played in an online story (shout out to Phoenix by Night!) with great potential for novel translation. I've explored it a little bit, recreating the characters since I technically only had the right to my own, fleshing out her story...and setting it down because her story was too interwoven with the other characters and the game's storyteller had pretty much just ripped off Clive Barker.

Still, Wade persists as one of my favorite characters. So...

DAY ONE-- I decided that I would, indeed, write Wade's story.
DAY TWO-- I got a notebook and started writing down everything I know about Wade. Decided to do the same for the other characters and the setting...and didn't.
"I didn't" pretty much covers the rest of the week. I revised an English paper, completed by Pre-1877 assignments, and still failed to catch up to my 1960s reading, but I didn't do any work on the story.

I did decide to blog about it. I need to get a clear view of what works for me and what doesn't. And you, dear few gentle readers, might be able to say, "Wow, look how An crashed and burned. I can think of a better way to get my novel written."

a little encouragement

2010-02-13T15:00:00.000-05:00

No, I didn't throw away my keyboard--or forget about the blog--after my last post. I have been too wrapped up in Columbus, not focused enough on the '60s (if I want to stay on the Dean's List), and just caught up enough in maps and changing perspectives. My inner writer needs feeding. I went through my old notes and found a wonderful Ray Bradbury quote:

To sum it all up, if you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling.

You must write every single day of your life.

You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next.

You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.

I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime.

I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you.

May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories - science fiction or otherwise.

Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.

I love that! Before my wrestling match commences, my inner reader wants to encourage you to try Seanan McGuire's Rosemary and Rue. Rather than trying to sum it up, I'll give you one of the author blurbs on the back: "...everything you'd ever need in an urban fantasy. It's a smart story, cleanly told, that allows both humor and heartbreak to take their turn on stage, but more importantly, the 'urban' and the 'fantasy' are of equal importance."

It struck me as a fantastic blend of the "old" urban fantasy with its emphasis on the mythic and the "new" hard-boiled/kick-ass urban fantasy.

Well, it's An Again

2010-01-15T12:11:00.000-05:00

"I have done nothing with time."

I know I'm entering a funk because snatches of Jim Morrison poems keep coming to mind. Maybe it's the nearness of the "spring" semester (which won't seem silly to me in March, but sounds misleading while we're celebrating days when the temp goes up to 35 degrees F.); I had big plans for a revisions push during the break, but all I managed was one slip into a rabbit hole and many hours of staring at the screen.

A dear friend announced that I'd been at it too long and I should give the project to her to look over, and start something completely fresh. Brilliant idea! Er, in theory.

After handing it off and working on something brand spanking new...I was shocked to find that new sucked. Fascinating world, a half-baked character, and no plot to speak of. And the more I worked on the plot, the more it sucked. I didn't just spend a long time writing The Hidden, I spent a long time pre-writing. An idea--just a whisp of a thought--crossed my mind while I was doing dishes one night long, long ago. I recognized it as something worth persuing, so I dried off my hands, wrote it down, and then went back to doing dishes. It was months before a minor character in another (never to be finished) story said, "Hey, that's about me." And ever so many more months later, I understood him and what his story was about.

"To make works in the face of the void..."

If it takes me that long just thinking about it...

Why share this funk? Well, because it's my blog, and I can. Because I'm thinking of keeping a log like some messed up food diary, but instead of counting calories I'd count minutes, days, hours passed not writing. Because I want something to click while I'm typing. Something that will begin a great change and I will go from someone who has taken years to produce a not-really-done book to someone who creates several fabu works in a year. And because after I get this crap out of my system, I can move through it and get things done.

Maybe it isn't all about guilt?

2010-01-13T01:34:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was my birthday. Not being big partiers, my husband and I decided to celebrate by getting a babysitter (thank you, Grandma) and finally seeing Avatar. He's the type that tracks down every trailer on the internet, listens to several scifi podcasts and takes note of what's said about the film, and reads a lot of fan discussion. I'm not. I saw the commercial, liked it, decided I'd be willing to see it. Not cut off from the outside world completely, I heard the buzz about it being a huge blockbuster, but that was it...until the news started flashing bits of conservatives bashing it for being anti-military and anti-capitalist.

So I went into to the film trying to keep an open mind about the conservative point of view (if only as a mental exercise). I loved it. I adored the effects--extra special for me because my eyes don't work together as eyes should so previous 3D has been mostly movies marred by bad coloring with a rare thing popping out in a cereal box hologram sort of way. I enjoyed the story. Yeah, you could see that plot coming from a mile away, but...."There are only one or two human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they never happened before." (Thank you, Willa Cather.)

The conservative commentary on the movie seemed more like a secret admission from the critics than anything else. James Cameron probably isn't anti-capitalist. He didn't hang himself in disappointment that he's making serious money on this movie. It's anti-EVIL-capitalist. Unless you're evil... The only thing that I could say I wasn't wild about when my husband pressed me later was, "It did seem a little Rambo Syndrome, didn't it?" Surely I'm not the only who saw the first Rambo movie as a kid and thought that if vets were really like that, the war would have ended way differently.

My husband disagreed. After all, Sully didn't do it all by himself. "Fair enough," I said, "but isn't it still more of the white guy riding in to save the day?" We went back and forth on that, letting it go in the end because we did agree that, if you have to look for a message rather than just enjoying the movie, that wasn't the most important message.

That was the end of it until coming across author Jim C. Hines's critique lead me to When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like Avatar? If you have seen the movie, or at the type that doesn't mind spoilers, take a look (skim if yah gotta) at the links. In case you haven't and don't want the spoilers...

But Avatar is just the latest scifi rehash of an old white guilt fantasy...

Whether Avatar is racist is a matter for debate. Regardless of where you come down on that question, it's undeniable that the film - like alien apartheid flick District 9, released earlier this year - is emphatically a fantasy about race. Specifically, it's a fantasy about race told from the point of view of white people. Avatar and scifi films like it give us the opportunity to answer the question: What do white people fantasize about when they fantasize about racial identity?

As I've said before, I think that racism is still relevant to our society and to our fiction. The conversations are a good thing, and I'm certainly not going to tell a white writer not to critique....er....whites in the media. But what I keep wondering in all the negativity about Avatar I've checked out over the last 24 hours is, isn't there room for a kinder view of the narrative? Maybe it is a fantasy about white guilt, but within that is also the story of someone who stopped viewing people--er, aliens--through differences and stereotypes, and learned to respect and understand. That's not so bad.

An gives YA a thumbs up

2009-11-27T17:16:00.000-05:00

This Turkey Day, I was thankful for coming across a young adult book that had me laughing, crying, and reading well into the night.

Midnight Girl by Will Shetterly is about Cat Medianoche, whose father hosts a paranormal show, mother is dead, and grandma lives in the basement. Every year on her Halloween birthday, before the separate parties for each side of her family, a mysterious costume appears. This year, the mystery will be revealed.

Shetterly made this great YA urban fantasy available for free on Scribd, for $3.95 in several e-formats on Smashwords, and at Lulu in trade paperback and hardcover.

If you're unfamiliar with his name, don't let Scribd and Lulu scare you off. Shetterly's work has earned a place on the International Reading Association’s 20 favorite books of US teenagers, Minnesota Book Award for Fantasy and Science Fiction, and finalist status for the World Fantasy Award.

While I'm in YA land, I know that I've mentioned City of Bones, book one of Cassandra Clare's Immortal Instruments, but did I tell you how much I enjoyed the series? There is controversy about the author's history as a fan fiction writer that comes up enough that I feel compelled to mention it, but isn't so deep that I won't rec the books. They're imaginative and fun with a heroine that I quickly came to care about and a leading "man" that I wish I were young enough to crush on.

No worries about less-than-appropriate crushing with Kelley Armstrong's The Summoning, but I do appreciate the understated adventure poor Chloe finds herself in when meeting a ghost gets her diagnosed as schizophrenic. Learning the truth about the group home she gets put in is one thing; getting out alive is something else entirely.

I don't know it all, but...

2009-11-20T22:57:00.004-05:00

Other people's words often inspire me to write my own. With a scene half existing in my mind's eye, but not quiet clear enough, I opened up an ebook ARC I've been looking forward to reading. If I found any inspiration, it was to count the paragraphs of info dump (18), then to check the publisher while composing my complaint: Don't give me Dickens-like language unless you're going to give me his depth. Actually, since I've never read any Dickens that I wasn't forced to, don't give me either.

The publisher wasn't easy to find--no listing in the ARC itself, no declaration on the garish blog; more like a trail of cyber crumbs that lead to a new e-publisher with two books each under "Now Available," "Recently Released," and "Coming Soon." New doesn't have to equal bad. I was ready to stop checking out the book's background and go back to reading the book itself, hoping that beneath the painfully flowery prose, the promise of the premise would be fulfilled. (Now who's being painfully flowery?) But I stumbled upon one more bit of info: the author is one of the company's editors.

Ugh.

As a writer, I'm still floundering with a broken middle and won't pretend to be any kind of expert. As a reader, I say:
1. No one's going to tip you by the adjective. Less is more.
2. Write what you mean. While your metaphors drip with analogies, some things end up just not making sense.
3. There's only so unreliable your third person narrator can be. It ends up reading like I hold this thing to be true, and I will continue to hold it as true and cram it down your throat (in case you missed it during the initial info dump) as everything I write around it contradicts it.

Okay, unpublished writer to kinda-published author, having a guy who sort of works for you as your editor is like having your mom be your beta reader. Don't do it.

Not taking helpful advice

2009-11-09T09:43:00.003-05:00

I should be, at this moment, sneaking an illicit smoke before rushing into my Physical Anthropology class. Instead, I'm fighting with my body. Again. Since I've been absent more than I can stand already, I will win in time for American Identities. The struggle got me thinking of something my mom said just a few days ago as I lamented about the the pain I was in and the classes I was missing: "I don't know why you're even putting yourself through going back to school. Why don't you just stay home?"

It came from a place of love; she's the mother of a woman with a chronic illness--one I've managed very well by rejecting the steroids the docs would have me on, and by moderating my activity level. For all the great things about going to college, there has also been the painful reality of my flares increasing.

Why am I putting this in my writing blog? Because my answer to her question also applies to my writing: The benefits are worth the struggle. And it got me thinking about other advice that shouldn't be taken as well.

Someone recently suggested I change something about a group of people in a story I'd posted for critique because she couldn't relate to them. I had to fight down my knee jerk reaction to fix that. She wasn't supposed to relate to them. What she showed me, however accidentally, was my failure in showing how the main character is disconnected from them for much the same reason.

A better example comes from the experience of friend. She sent out several queries for her young adult novel, and got back some really good feedback--and some feedback from one agent saying that 85K was pushing the edge for YA and that she should scrap it and start over.

Seriously?

Anyone who's semi-actively followed this blog knows that YA isn't my thing, though that's changing slowly as I stumble upon (or have crammed down my literary throat) more and more YA that is good urban fantasy regardless of the intended age group. Of those, two seem thinner than the typical 85K plus I find in adult fiction. Even if I tend to read the exceptions, "pushing the edge" suggests the work needs to be trimmed not scrapped!

If, say, two out of three had given such advise, maybe the passive-aggressive message would have been, "You've got great story ideas here, but the delivery is all wrong." Don't just ignore the input coming at you; mine it for gems. But as it is, I think that agent's hidden advice was, "You've got talent enough for me to respond personally rather than shooting out a form letter, but I'm not really the person you should be wasting your time on."

Drive by post #1

2009-11-05T19:34:00.003-05:00

Praise is a funny thing. I sat in my Pop Culture professors class today listening to how good a writer I am and thinking, "Who, me?" And I was wishing that he'd tell that to my Women in Global Perspectives professor. :-) But then, that was why I was in his office.

I'd decided to go back to college for American Studies because (1)I can't go back to my former career so I need to learn something else and (2) since I'm pretty anti-academia, I needed something that would good for my writing without being/leading to an English MFA. One look at my school's American Studies program and I was geared up for learning. Then one look at the syllabus and an hour in his class and I knew I wanted to teach it.

Exciting stuff. It might be more than exciting if I can stop denying the good and learn to make it better.

Meanwhile, I'm behind on NaNo, so I've gotta run.

For fun?

2009-10-25T10:11:00.005-04:00

Even when I just do it for fun, I don't just do it for fun.

I realized that last night while IMing to a writing friend. I've had no time, as evidenced by the long gap between the last post and this. Like so many others, my family has been hit hard by the massive economic drop. In the years prior, I was a work-at-home and then a stay-at-home mom, and that had to change. My spirit was willing, but my use to employers was weak; there are too many people who have not been out of the work force for so long and who have the proper skills and/or degrees competing for the same jobs. I decided there would be no better time to return to college and get that degree.

Jumping in head first and late, I selected five classes for my 'add/drop' plate (one more than required for full time in case I didn't get one of the others), never realizing that they would all be reading (and most also writing) heavy. I'm having a horrible time balancing full time student with wife and mother, other things in my life are being neglected, yet I decided to participate in National Novel Writing Month again this year.

My brother pushed a small (but still heavy and painful, damn it!) T.V. on my head when we were little and apparently the effects are just being seen now.

There are better reasons for me to do NaNo than insanity. It's tradition. I do it every year and fall short of the goal; why change now that I have good reason to fall short? It might actually force me into better time management skills. I love the feeling of community NaNo brings. And I haven't really written fiction since school started, and I miss it.

So I was chatting with my friend about NaNo and explained my big idea...See, with no plot or characters calling me into November, I'd decided to use pre-NaNo October to populate a city. I dedicated a spare notebook, and in between studies or riding on the train, I could jot down character ideas. At midnight, when Halloween becomes All Saints', I would sit and write for whatever character "has the most to say."

Why not? It's just for the joy of it and to get the creative juices flowing. But then came my "ah ha moment." Wouldn't it be fun to make a play on all the mystery books/movies that have a killer staging murders out of some hapless author's books? What if some psycho ill-casts all the characters into urban fantasy scenes? It sounds, to me, dumb and brilliant and a blast to write.

I went on about the legalities to my friend who said something like, "Who cares? It's just for fun. Don't worry about that until you're getting published."

Heh. I treat every story like it's going to get published, don't I? Is that a good thing? A sense of striving that will someday push me over from would-be novelist to novelist actual? Or is it part of the pressure that gets me hung up on poorly paced middles and unsatisfactory endings--so hung up that these things never quite get fixed in revision? Hmmm....

untitled. don't even read it.

2009-08-07T00:06:00.003-04:00

...As a writer having fun with story, I understand doing what you want because you want to.

....As a fangirl sort of hoping that the last book in a series will literally be the last, that the engaging author will let go of characters that managed to hold interest for two and a half out of three books, and perhaps come up with something that will hold interest again....As that fangirl, I'm thinking that if you didn't write the great and rousing speeches in Braveheart, The Two Towers, or Independence Day, let's not pretend you did.

...If you must, and you choose to twist a phrase in tribute, just quote. It makes it clear that you are honoring a classic and keeps grumpy fans from writing stupid blog posts like this one when they should be finishing your book.

Fell deeds await... Now for Wrath... Now for Ruin... and the Red Dawn...

There's a good one.

not giving up the ghost yet

2009-07-30T11:10:00.005-04:00

If I'm still at it a year from now with nothing to show but not-quite-ready manuscripts, I'm packing it in.

I'm dealing with a lot, internally and externally, and it's taking its tole on my Work in Progress (WiP). Plus I've had the weight of the above statement pressing on me. Thinking that the self-imposed deadline was in September, I decided that I could turn it all around. There are a few mandatory events for August, but otherwise, it would be a month of getting over June and July and prep for school. With a little negotiation with the family, I could get in an hour or so of daily "finish the revisions or die" time.

Then I went looking for the actual "packing it in" date and discovered it wasn't in September after all. August 13th. Frak. I could do the smart thing...recognize that my heads been churning out bits of story and proclaim that I will not go silently into the night...or...something. But a funny thing happened on the way to psyching myself up get this work done...

My husband spends a lot of time in Treks in Sci-Fi (yes, he is the uber geek to my geek). Leaving out the details that have nothing to do with this post, that means I spend a lot of time hearing about stories that I am neither writing nor reading. And while I was filled with angst over revisions, he was having the time of his life over a new character based on Han Solo (you know...if Han had been a Romulan). The fun was infectious. Before I knew it, I'd reimagined Han as a woman in an urban fantasy setting. The next thing I knew, I was world building and having a blast!

Yeah, I'd been right that I would never have a writing career if I continued to create lovely "half books" that fizzled out just past the middle (which is, technically, better than lovely first chapters so I've made progress). But I'm also not getting the desired career by transforming a once beloved story into my own literary hell. So August is going to be my fun writing month.

Totally fun. No freaking out over the hoped for career. No WiP angst. No fear of what anyone might think of my choices of characters or plot or inspiration.

Go me! And if you've had any of the same hang ups, maybe you should try it, too.

How do you get a publisher to listen?

2009-07-24T23:17:00.003-04:00

I'm in a mood. More than a mood. I'm battling depression with City of Bones by Cassandra Clare and strategic internet reading. The latter lead me to Ain't That a Shame, a fantastic blog post by Justine Larbalestier about why the U.S. arc of her book novel has a white girl on the cover though the story is about a black girl. If you don't follow any other link I give you (though, of course, I hope you do), please follow that one.

While reading the responses, I kept reminding myself that I *am* in a mood and should appreciate how many people commented in appreciation of the post, rather than keeping an eye out for those who don't get it (um, and ask questions about my psyche and what it means that I was so pleased when Tor editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden did get it--but that's a whole other post that will never be written). What gave me pause was a response of an entirely different nature:

Thank you, Justine. Well said.

But Bloomsbury is not off the hook. One needs only look at how they “screwed” over the author of an earlier book (by “burying” the book upon release) to know there is a systemic issue at that house regarding books featuring an ethnic protagonist. And when properly embarrassed (outed for their behavior), continued to bury the book but began heavily promoting the a new book which featured a white protagonist on the cover. I thought things would improve when the marketing person left. Now it seems they hired a twin to replace her.

This is a business. We get that. And I applaud you for taking a difficult stand. But you are right – the only way for us to make a statement is to exercise economic clout.
That means I can’t buy this book – or a subsequent paperback, nor can I recommend it. I’m a writer – but also an affluent mother (read “book buyer) with college bound kids who are sick of being ignored. The damage is already done.

The local city paper recently ran an article about my family and reading. We often buy two copies of a book – one for each daughter. African American book buyers are not as “invisible” as Bloomsbury would have people believe.
If Bloomsbury releases the book without the original cover, the games over for many of us. I don’t advocate protesting you as an author (or any author) – but Bloomsbury as a publisher in general for it’s sustained and continued stupidity in the sales and marketing arena.

Will this help? My immediate thought is that if others follow this woman's example, the publisher will dump the author for low sales, not rethink it's obnoxious policies. Worse, it might not just harm this author, but every author who's main character is a person of color if they jump to the wrong conclusion for the bad sales.

Yet, I don't have a better solution. A write-in campaign? Someone spending the time and money for an exhaustive poll of all American high schoolers to discover how many of them read for pleasure and, of them, how many care what color the protagonist is and/or will only pick up a book with a white girl on the cover? Those ideas don't sound any better, but at least they aren't an accidental attack on the author.

Any suggestions? (And I'm nosy--anyone know what book Bloomsbury buried in the past?)

I am almost....

2009-07-16T18:55:00.003-04:00

...but not really...in a professional writer's group.

I was deleting something on my Facebook invites page because it's an event that'll take place six hours from here (assuming one doesn't hit traffic) and I don't have a car. But it was sent by Anton Strout, so I took a peek anyway. There's going to be a multiple-author signing at the Borders Express in Paramus, New Jersey on August 1st. Strout, Jackie Kessler, S.C. Butler, Barbara Campbell, Laura Anne Gilman, and Joshua Palmatier. If you live nearby, or can get there, check 'em out!

Meanwhile, thinking that was a brilliant idea, I clicked on their link for the League of Reluctant Adults. The first thing I noticed as I tried to discover the identities of the 18 paranormal romance and urban fantasy authors who make up the group was that I'm already a member. Not one of the authors, of course! But some time in the past, I apparently agreed to be one of the fans they're gathering about the group. What a wasted resource! Sure, it's totally my fault I had accepted an invite to join and then, among the several dozen invites I accept or reject each week, forgot about it, but still! With a full 18 members, that's minimal work from each a month to remind old fans of their books and sling them over (by osmosis, almost) to the other writers.

Judging books by their covers (yes, I'm shameless), I'll be checking out Seanan McGuire, Diana Rowland, Kelly Medig, and J.F. Lewis. The site also reminds me that Jaye Wells is on my TBR list. Check out the blog, and if you're already familiar with these authors, gimme the skinny on their books.

Advice for Published Authors on Reviews

2009-07-07T21:49:00.007-04:00

Somewhere along the line as would-be-authors, writers learn that not everyone is going to like our work. Mostly, it has nothing to do with the work itself: though they're grouped together, some people who like sci-fi don't care much for fantasy and vice versa; sci-fi/fantasy readers often don't care for romance, none of the above are known to like literary fiction. Sometimes it feels more personal than that.

Alice Hoffman made the New York Times Books section when she responded to such a review by tweeting that "Reberta Silman in The Boston Globe is a moron." Reading the article, first in my mind was, Good thing Anne Rice didn't have Twitter back in the day. Five years later and that is what makes me think of Anne Rice.

Dear authors, don't make this short list (granted, there are a few others) longer.

There's an old show biz adage that states 'All publicity is good publicity.' A children's book publisher (blast it, I didn't bookmark the link to share) recently explained how even bad reviews end up being good reviews. Shoppers in real world stores tend to remember the book being mentioned, but not exactly what was said; they'll buy the book and decide for themselves whether they like it or not.

So is the author supposed to keep quiet no matter what a reviewer says? Well, no. Showing appreciation for a positive review might make sure that future books get featured by the reviewer, though granted that's more likely to work with blogs than newspapers. And with fangirls like me giving our opinions on books along with professional reviewers, no one could fault you if someone went a little overboard and you made a correction (just note: "The pacing was slow" is not overboard, "She clearly knows nothing about the subject" is).

Take a deep breath before you respond to a negative review. Then take a few more. Maybe call up a friend to vent instead of doing on the internet where it can last forever. F.O.R.E.V.E.R. Screen shots, my friends. You can't necessarily delete even the things that allow you to delete. Let it go. Or offer it up--appropriately--to fans who won't let it go. Whereas Alice Hoffman tweeted name calling and the number of her reviewer (inappropriate, though Silman's e-mail is at the end of her reviews so giving that isn't bad), spec. fic. romance author Anne Aquirre tweeted a negative Amazon review without blasting the critic or telling her fans to do so. A few gave their own comments, creating a short discussion. We'll never know if anyone buys the book as a result, but at least it's not a situation that leaves readers talking about the high strung author rather than her books.

And that's the thing. We may or may not take what reviewers write to heart, but any personal opinion the reader forms about the writer isn't going away quickly or easily. Don't show your crazy or over-the-top side in public unless you want to own it.

ETA: In 2006 a Swedish reviewer slammed a book that was never written. That, dear authors, you could respond to freely!

A little laugh

2009-06-21T16:17:00.003-04:00

I know I've been MIA. Worse, I've got an MIA post half done. Summer's taken over my life. So this is me, peeking in and adding a funny that's started making the rounds...

Don't throw me under their bus.

2009-06-04T22:43:00.003-04:00

I'm having one of those nights. Ill, it's been way more than I could do to handle half of what I needed to get done today. And when I'd declared enough, I went to the particular pain that is my work in progress. Don't get me wrong. I still believe in the story and love the narrator. But understand that the story was conceived years ago, gestated on an elephant's time clock, and was "played with" for about as long while I started to get my shit together in order start taking my would-be career seriously. I'm ready to be done.

It's like that period of pregnancy, especially if the babe is past the due date, in which mother is ready to dig the thing out with a spoon. She loves her little bundle of joy and doesn't mean to call it "the thing", but enough is friggin' enough.

I needed to get a little encouragement from my peeps, and one just happened to be online. She shared a link with me...A Raspberry to Ranters. Adorable babe, I wrote back. And I wonder who provoked the post. It may not have been this particular rant, wrote my peep who sent another link, but it was certainly one like it. The Talent Killers: How literary agents are destroying literature, and what publishers can do to stop them.

It's a fairly long essay on why agents suck. But, of course, that alone wouldn't bother me much. I would consider it unfair as not all (probably not most, but it's not like I've personally made the rounds) agents suck. Some don't acknowledge that they've received your submission, demand exclusivity, and blow a vein if the writer has the nerve to contact them to find out if they've indeed received the submission. At least, so I've read. And there are tons of other things that writers have vented about that I'm not going to list.

From the outside looking in, barely sticking my toes in the water, it's a crappy system on this end. Your heart and soul goes into this story, much time and labor goes into revising it (or time, labor, bitching about wanting to get on to the new stories blossoming in your head and reading posts that in no way speed up the revisions). You learn everything you can about the submission process, do all you can to draw inside the lines because, realistically, you're auditioning for someone that you then have to pay (?!!!?), and maybe you still get rejected because, though the guidelines called for urban fantasy, the agent really wanted a futuristic pirate paranormal romance. Oh, and they send you a generic form letter, so you think it's just because no matter how you hone your craft, you suck.

I get being sick of the system. If it weren't for the fact that I can see the other side, I wouldn't buy into it either (you know, the side where every third person wants to write a book, half of them actually go though with it, and 9 out of 10 produce prose so lame that the mind goes numb with the first few pages; yes, if I were an editor, I'd like to have agents sift through the worst of it before I had to read it, too). I get it, but...

I can tell you why your desk is piling up with flimsy bits of vampire
literature, fantasy, romance, detective stories and the kind of first-draft
bubble gum that used to be called chick-lit but is now shuffled in with other
women’s writing in order to give it heft—although as far as you can see, neither
the quality nor the subject matter has improved—which you are required to
somehow turn into publishable books. It is because the vast majority of literary
agents do not, in fact, have any interest in literature. They are only
interested in jackpots.

Seriously? Your first book didn't sell, you can't find an agent for your literary brilliance, and you want to toss genre writers under the bus with the rejecting agents? How dare they write stories that people actually want to read! It can't be art if it's enjoyable.

Within the first couple of comments, the obvious was said (self-publish!), so why am I bothering with this silliness? Damned if I know. Maybe because she has gall to write in the comments that she's thinking about self-publishing but can't find an editor. I guess Google doesn't work in her universe? People through out Western civilization need to...you know...eat, pay rent or mortgage, silly things like that. Independent editors, being a subgroup of people, do things like make websites so you can find them. (Why look, half a thought and three seconds of typing and I've found a group that claims to have worked with Maya Angelou and Jorge Luis Borges among many others.)

Maybe it's because she's just wrong. Forget the great, artistically crafted genre fiction among the pulp (which is worthy and enjoyable in it's own right, thanks just the same). She not only sites Mark Twain among her literary greats (he who said, "Literature is something everyone wants to have read, but no one wants to read.") but Margaret Atwood who's literature isn't mind numbing, but her best works are spec. fic. that she calls literature so academics will still consider them "important."

Or hell, maybe I'm just falling into her trap and giving her some of the free advertising she'll need when she does self-publish. Yeah, that's likely it.

It's not all about the books.

2009-06-02T17:45:00.003-04:00

Granted The Witches of Eastwick was a book before it was a movie, but had I not peeked at Wiki, I may have never known that. Either way, it's coming to TV as an ABC series. I'm not sure that I see how they can keep the story going week after week, but I'd thought the same thing about The Dead Zone - The Complete First Season and ended up loving it.

The Witches aren't the only thing making me excited for the Fall season. When I was a kid, the streets cleared when it was time for V - The Original TV Miniseries. OK, yeah, that was before TiVo, but still! The Trailer gives me tingles!

But wait, there's more!

Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake is coming to cable (or satellite or whatever) next year. Personally, I like to pretend that the series stopped with book 9 so don't expect me to go promo crazy....But with plenty of necromancing and slaying in the early books, I have high hopes for this movie.

And slaying on the big screen with none of the camp (or the Joss) of the original or the Scoobie Gang goodness of the series (or Joss), will be Buffy. Fan reaction has been almost unanimously, "Seriously, WTF?!" I'm trying to reserve my judgment. I loved the series all the more for its dark turns, so maybe slaying that way from the start will hit the spot. Or maybe the magic was in Joss Whedon, and starting over without him will spell disaster. Only time will tell.

A FanGirl Goes Wild

2009-05-31T17:29:00.001-04:00

This isn't new news, but others like me who aren't into fanfic may not have caught wind of it. I'm writing about it now for your education and because it's popped into my mind every once in a while since I read about it, always coupled with the thought: "Dude, seriously?"

A fan of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series wrote a fanfic. But Russet Noon isn't the run of the mill slash fiction that I imagine (since I haven't looked) keeps the series alive in certain corners of the interwebs. The author of this novel length story didn't just post it for other fans to enjoy; she tried to sell it. Copyright infringement, you scream. Ah, but it's not because:

Writers and readers all over the net have opened their eyes to the truth: authors sell their fanfiction and get away with it. Sure, published authors play a safe game around copyright laws and change the names and circumstances of their characters around just enough to claim they've created a new character. Yet, in the end, every single author out there weaves their stories around archetypes that have existed since humans started telling stories in caves and around fires.
Ask anyone in Hollywood. Every story you see in movies and books is a recycled formula where authors merely plug in characters with different identities and histories. No author truly creates characters. The characters already exist in the archetypal world that Jung, Freud and Joseph Campbell have described in their books. The author is a medium who channels these characters. The origin of all characters is the Shared Mind, the only mind that truly exists. Our minds are all one single ocean of shared memories, fantasies, dreams, nightmares and visions.

She's not a thief because we're all thieves. Silly me. All this time I've been toiling away trying to bring my own characters to life and tell my own stories when I could have ~~stolen~~ borrowed Kelley Armstrong's or Patricia Briggs', changed a few minor details, and gotten paid.

But is there any merit to the "author's" metaphysical claims? Maybe. While it seems more likely that people writing in the same genre will have similarities due to drawing on the same source material, maybe each time we read something and think "oh, that's just like what so-and-so put in her book" it's because both writers dipped into the same spring in the universal unconscious.

Yet, I can't help but note that she didn't create her own characters and offer to share them with folks of like mind...

A Whine with My Cheese

2009-05-20T02:34:00.004-04:00

Actually, I get to pimp books while I whine. What could be better?

I'd long thought of writing a story from the omega's point of view rather than the alpha's--that is from the weakest member of the group's pov rather than the leader's. When I focused on epic fantasy, I thought I would feature the sidekick who would change and grow yet not be the hero who saves the world. In urban fantasy, I imagined a story told by the lowest shifter in the pecking order who sees everything but is largely ignored.

So was excited (in that, "Great book, but damn, I wish I'd stop thinking about writing these things and actually do it before every old idea I have is done by someone else first" kind of way) when I started reading Kitty an the Midnight Hour and discovered she was just such a character. Kitty's a werewolf--yeah, ha ha--but don't let the humor fool you. After the brutal attack that changed Kitty, she was stuck with a pack lead by a brutal alpha pair. It's been years since the book debuted, but I vividly remember how I cringed and couldn't decide what was worse: what she suffered through or the fact that she took it. She had two sustaining things in her life--a good friend and job as a radio D.J. When the pack's alpha male tried to take the latter away, Kitty stuck up for herself and got on the path from victim to victor.

Each book was better than the last with character growth and more revealed not just about lycanthrops, but vampires as well. I *almost* missed out on book 4 having somehow convinced myself that I'd read it. Certain things had drastically changed in the opening of book 5, though, so I went back and devoured the story. Kitty came full circle, and with a vengeance.

That's where my whining came in. Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand isn't bad, but that's not exactly a glowing recommendation. How do I describe it without giving spoilers? Let's say it's a good idea gone a bit cheesy. By the time the steaks rose to an emotional high, my response was, "So what? Whatever." There were definitely some interesting things in the story. Sooner or later, series like this tend to take on the question of who's really a monster, and this book did it well. And when we got a peek of some of what's out there besides vampires and lycanthropes that actually made me tingle. Otherwise, it was like the comic relief episode in a serious show.

You know...horrible murders, more powerful that last demons combined enemy, and an oncoming apocalypse for the poor, hunky hunters of Supernatural leads an episode featuring a six foot tall, depressed teddy bear and bullied nine year old who gets his by canneling Zod a la Superman. Kneel before Todd! Only it's not so brilliant in the book.

I started asking a question that I know the answer to. How do you know when you've got a hit? Of course, you don't know. As writers we doubt our work when the stories are great. We cling to bad ideas, or good ideas with bad execution. And there's no way to know which is which except by trusting others who may also be wrong.

My story has gotten a few fans before it's ready to be seen by agents. What if those are the only fans it ever gets? What if the agents hate it? Worse...what if an agent loves it and convinces an editor who gets his publishing house to give me a fat advance, but then the book comes out and everyone declares it the worst book since what they thought was the worst book possible and... Yeah, I was panting by this point, lost in my own newbie hell.

I got over it. Mostly. Even better, when I went to mark this off as 'read' in my litte virtual bookshelf, I saw reviews from a whole lot of people who also thought that book 5 was good-but-not-Carrie-Vaughn-good and they say that book six rocks. I'll be getting that soon as I can. If you haven't tried the series, check 'em out!

Kitty and the Midnight Hour
Kitty Goes to Washington
Kitty Takes a Holiday
Kitty and the Silver Bullet
Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand
Kitty Raises Hell

How frustrated am I?

2009-05-15T10:30:00.004-04:00

I was deep into a discussion--um..no, I was writing alone so a monologue? Well, at least it wasn't a tirade on genre. See, I want to start reviewing urban fantasy (and close enough paranormal romance) series, and I'd decided to start by looking at "the old guard" of the genre. In the middle of it, my browser exploded, the autosave that looked like it was working hadn't been, and..well, there were a host of problems that my head is still spinning from.

While I recover, does anyone out there want to discuss urban fantasy and paranormal romance in general?

Book Pimpin'

2009-05-02T00:14:00.000-04:00

Yeah, I've got Jay-Z's Big Pimpin' on my mental soundtrack while I write this. Hey, if I don't listen to the lyrics, it sounds great! But on to the point...

The fabu AztecLady wrote,

An author with ten titles under her belt or more will already have built at
least a small core following which will build up, and prompt sales of the older
titles as the new ones pick speed.
But the newbie author who has one book coming out one year and another the
year after? How does s/he keep her name out there so that, when that second book
hits the shelf, people actually remember that they were waiting for it?

Let me go backwards a bit with a personal example. Months ago, browsing through a bookstore, I decided I'd get a sure bet and a new author. There are a ton of authors that I haven't yet tried so how did I pick? Devon Monk's Magic to the Bone had a plug by Patricia Briggs on the front cover. I'm not sure what got me to read that original Briggs book, but it was like literary crack: I had to get another fix. Sometimes the authors' plugs leave you wondering, once you're done, if they've read the same book, but I was willing to take the chance.

As an aside, I could see the end coming from the earliest pages and knew it was going to piss me off to high hell. But it was a good book, nonetheless. Since you probably don't have that same particular neurosis (seriously, I'm over the top about this certain thing), if you're a genre fan, you should check it out.

There are a bunch of things I knew I'd do if --wait, power of attraction--that I will do when published: send copies to reviewers, do a signing at the local spec. fic. indie bookstore, maybe book a reading at the local library branch, get my friends across the country (oh, and lovely online buddies in OZ, Canada, and the U.K.) to order copies from their local stores, and actively push the blog.

Monk did something I hadn't thought of: she joined better known authors at Deadline Dames. I've seen other writers group together, of course. I catch Ann Aguirre posts over at Something Wicked and occasionally end up reading something good by someone else. When I get around to checking LiveJournal, I watch the Fangs, Fur, & Fey community (and I see as I go to grab the link that Monk is there, too) mostly with an eye on joining when the time comes...

This is how it worked for me: got the book, enjoyed it (even with my reaction to the ending), forgot about it other than thinking that I do need to tell others to enjoy it. Toni Andrews friended me out of the blue.* I followed a link of hers to Deadline Dames, saw that Monk's second book will be out soon, and immediately started itching to get my hands on it. Once there, I realized I've read many of the books (Keri Arthur's Destiny Kills is by my bed waiting to be read and Tempting Evil, already read, is inches away from me as I type) and am familiar with *most* of the names. Now, I'm practically bouncing in my seat to get three books by new-to-me authors, two books by authors I've read but hadn't been thinking about, and the next Monk book.

Of course, not every reader will think like that, but many will. That's a lot of marketing for the price of a shared blog.

*This friending thing is brilliant. I followed an author and a reviewer to Facebook. My earliest activity there was clicking on a 'friend request', thinking, "Who the hell is this?" and following the link to an author whose request I then accepted. I've bought several books from this and greatly expanded by TBR list. Since they're on my flist, every time I catch one of their updates, I think either "I love his/her writing" or "I've gotta remember to get his/her book."

Money, money, money...

2009-04-29T20:48:00.000-04:00

I've got books on the brain. I've decided that it isn't particularly helpful to write about the latest book in a series--I'm too uptight about giving spoilers to those who haven't read the earlier books so I'll end up posting the same thing that annoys me in other places. "If you like the first two books, you'll like this one, too." Really? You felt I would never guess that on my own?

While I've been working out which series and just how to go about this, I ran across L. Viehl's post on what a writer really makes. There's actually a lot of information there that should be looked at with more care* (such as her lack of promotion--great for her, but since I want to read your new urban fantasy or paranormal book, don't follow her lead), but in keeping with the title of the entry, what I'm interested in is how her $40,484 earned in royalties dwindled down to just over $27,000 in net earnings and $0 in actual earnings.

David Hewson wrote a great post explaining the money involved in quoting song lyrics. Some of my best work has been done in just-for-fun gaming forums where I've built chapters around songs that perfectly fit the scenes. I haven't done this with projects I meant to publish because I wasn't sure just what was involved in getting permission. Thank goodness for bowing to ignorance!

One line from the Rolling Stones' Street Fighting Man? If I recall correctly they wanted a couple of thousand pounds. Dylan didn't come much cheaper. Some artists simply refuse to allow their work to be quoted in any way at all. Others settle for a few hundred pounds. In all the permissions cost me some £3,500 or so for that book - and they excluded North America. So if the work had been published in the US I would have had to pay all over again.

I'll keep my soundtracks for personal inspiration, thanks kindly.

*Real quick, why put off talking about Viehl's lack of promotion until later? When it can be nutshelled.

I’ve never had a 100K first print run. I don’t do book signings and I don’t order massive amounts of my own books from certain bookstores (I don’t even know which bookstores are the magic ones from whom the Times gets their sales data.) I do very little in the way of promotions for my books; for this one I gave away some ARCs, sent some author copies to readers and reviewers, and that was about it. I haven’t attended any conference since 2003. To my knowledge there was no marketing campaign for this book; I was never informed of what the publisher was going to do for it (as a high midlist author I probably don’t rate a marketing campaign yet.) I know they did some blog ads for the previous book in the series, but I never saw anything online about this particular book. No one offered to get me on the Times list, either, but then I was never told who to bribe, beg or otherwise convince to fix the list (I don’t think there is anyone who really does that, but you never know.)
Despite my lack of secret handshakes and massive first print runs, in July 2008 my novel Twilight Fall debuted on the Times mm list at #19

Nutshell: having never read a Lynn Viehl book, I immediately recognized the name as someone [whose work] I have to buy. Putting out a new book is almost all she has to do for advertisement; her fans will handle the rest. We noobs--those who need the info as opposed to the reader who's merely curious or the published author who either knows or is getting a crash course-can't afford to be so passive about sales. (Yeah, but don't go bribing anyone, either.)

Unblocking: to self-publish or not to self-publish?

2009-04-18T09:17:00.001-04:00

For me, the answer is simple for now: self-publishing isn't my dream.

My parents took me to see Star Wars before I could read and I knew right then that I wanted to tell stories like that. Then there was the first grade and the letters started to mean something in the books whose pictures I'd stared at. Sometime around puberty, I knew that my destiny was to be published by Tor. As an adult, I can't even begin to recall which favorite author made my adolescent imagination got for Tor rather than ..::shrugs::..Ace or whomever. I no longer hang my hopes on a particular imprint, but I am too new to taking the process seriously to drop my dream of being traditionally published for a goal of being published by any means necessary. I'll finish revising, revise again, submit my query packages and receive my rejections as expected.

But why get rejected? Why send the words you sweated over to people who will hold your hopes in their hands for months and might reject it because you had a passive sentence in the query, which they won't mention if they can be bothered to send you a quick, "It's not for me"?

Hopefully, you're writing because you love to. If you don't get real enjoyment from seeing your characters come to life on the page and turning an idea into a story, why are you torturing yourself with all the hard work along the way? Love is the first part, but it's not the only part or you wouldn't be worrying about publishing one way or the other.

1. It's nice to be paid. Advances are good; this does not mean that we should ignore small presses that may not be able to afford them, but don't sell your work short, either.

2. It's good to be recognized for your work. If you've set fingers to keyboard and finished--hell, even started--a work of fiction, I hereby declare you a writer. Tell your friends if you like. I'm afraid that the publishing industry isn't going to accept you as an author if you pay someone to print your book. That seems completely unfair you've written a good book that you know is being rejected for being "not commercial enough". Why should your art have to be commercial?

It's also completely realistic considering that anyone with the cash can self-publish. Have I complained enough about the issues with my manuscript? I can pay for a publishing package and have my book in print right now, complete with the red text reading "this is unclear; revise" and "then this happens."

3. Because of the sweat and tears we to put into our words, we tend to think of them as golden. Sometimes we're wrong. It's good to have an editor to point out that the three page description of the room that is only in the book for the one scene kills the pacing. It's nice to have a copyeditor to catch that we wrote 'diety' ten times when we meant 'deity'. (::wink::)

That goes along with #2. Publishing companies offer a standard of quality, from bookbinding to editing that readers have come to expect. If we even manage to get our hands on your book, people like me will report all across the internet about the pages coming loose and the awkward phrasing. We don't hate you, it's just what we do.

4. And how are you going to get that book into our hands? Bookstores won't order your self-published work until a paying customer requests it, so it won't be on the shelves for browsers to pick up. Newspapers and magazines won't list it with the new releases, nor will they review it. With all that free publicity lost, there's a good chance that even if your book is as good as you think it is, the rest of us will never know.

If you want to self-publish because you’ve sent your manuscript to a few (or half a dozen) agents and have nothing to show but form rejections, take a step back. Have you followed all the submission guidelines for each submission package? (Know the agent’s name if it’s going to a specific agent, did not send the same query/synopsis/10 pages for the Irene Goodman Agency to the Rappaport Agency that wants query/synopsis/5 pages or the Bradford Agency that wants a synopsis/3 chapters?) There are no typos and you’ve included everything else you should?

What about the story itself? OK, your mom thinks that Nora Roberts and Stephen King have nothing on you, but have you shown it to someone who (a) knows what they’re doing and (b) is more interested in seeing the work be all it can be than in stroking your ego or sparing your feelings?

If all your ducks are in a row yet every door seems closed to you, maybe it is time to open your own by self-publishing. Christopher Paolini’s mom thought his writing was all that so they self-published and took it on the road. Long hours, not a lot of pay off…until there was. Maybe they would have saved themselves a lot of gas money if they had gone the traditional route first. Or maybe a few dozen agents/editors would have said, “Robert Jordan meets David Eddings with just a touch of Weis and Hickman, just like the last hundred and fifty fantasy novels to cross my desk. Don’t call us and we won’t call you.”

There are lots of reasons other than a book’s quality for publishing houses to pass. Religious fiction might be a large niche, but it’s certainly a niche market. And when the novel in question is New Age with a just a hint of a plot to get the author’s spiritual ideas across? No wonder publishers originally passed on The Celestine Prophecy.

I’d never considered the market for middle-class, African-American, bi-sexual coming-of-age stories; apparently, neither did the publishers who rejected E. Lynn Harris’s Invisible Life.

As I wrote in Writers, Unblock!, the list of self-published books that made it can go on for quite some time. We still need to be realistic, though. For every rich best-selling author who has gone the traditional route, there are hundreds in the mid-list who are lucky just to pay the rent or mortgage. And there are thousands more who never get to quit their day jobs. The chances of making it are much lower for the self-published. If that’s the way you want to go, take your time researching just what you’re getting into.

Sick of Fail

2009-04-14T10:27:00.004-04:00

I'm supposed to be writing a more in depth post about self-publishing before diving back into fiction (I stopped putting up with blockage and pushed through that bit of dialogue). What I'm actually doing is feeling guilty that I have not taken down my beloved Amazon carousel widget. Can I condemn Amazon's "de-ranking" of adult (i.e. gay/lesbian/transgender) titles while keeping that on my blog? I mean, it's to promote the authors and it's cute. It's not really supporting Amazon, is it? Surely, it doesn't make me a hypocrite?

You're right. I'll take it down.

But what do I do instead? I'm all for retuning to indie booksellers, but there's a catch. Pandemonium --the fantastic indie sci-f/fantasy/horror store--introduced me to Roger Zelazny and otherwise made my youth a better time than it would have been without them. As my life is now, however, they are well out of my way and the cost of this special trip is more than standard shipping. Now double that since, even on the days in which I want to run away and join the circus, I will eventually return home.

Plus, that won't help me convince you lovely people to support my favorite (and not so favorite) authors. I'm not saying that you're lazy, but it is easier to click a link and buy the book you want than to go out of your way or keep a list on you just in case you happen by the bookstore.

Borders and Barnes & Noble are online, but aren't they part of the mega-store culture as Amazon that put indies at risk even before the economy tanked? Yeah, after my long and previously happy relationship with Amazon, it's a little late to worry about that.

Or maybe there is no too late. Maybe there are only actions and consequences. In February, Amazon started blocking a title or two for being "adult" products or material. (Note, those of you who aren't going to click the link, that the title in question is a memoir, not erotica or even romance.) The creators complained, but most of us never heard of the problem, so Amazon felt free to "de-rank" hundreds of books, mostly with gay/lesbian/transgender themes. Mark Probst's book, for instance, is a young adult title. People noticed. The Internet practically hummed with all the entries on Amazonfail.

"It was a glitch!" announced Amazon. What? Nothing to do with adult content? Or not a glitch, as reps told some, and about sales rather than censorship. Apparently the idea was to make it so that if you searched for something like "Harry Potter", you wouldn't end up with something like "Harry Does Patty", get offended and end up not buying anything. That, of course, still doesn't explain why LGBT titles (even the children's book with the two daddy penguins) were de-ranked but most (and I admit that some were) flat out heterosexual porn wasn't.

They did it because they thought they could get away with it, and I'm afraid any mega-seller I turn to will do the same. So what now?

Writers, unblock!

2009-04-11T23:19:00.002-04:00

I've been a living, semi-breathing Mucinex commercial recently. That isn't a very good excuse for not updating, unfortunately, since I wasn't sick when the entry was due. At the time, I suffered from a lesser recognized form of block where the writer has too many ideas. My head overflowed to the point where I could not settle on one thing and go with it. And, of course, all that excess pushed out the simple thought to write it all down for the days when I come up with zip.

Stupid block.

Unblocking in that case would have been stepping up and having the sense to (a) pick something and (b) take notes on the rest for later.

I'm having the same problem in reverse with fiction. In the middle of revisions, I came upon a bit of dialogue that has me stuck. But like many people who lack the wisdom to give up on the dream of being among the handful out of tens of thousands who "make it", I don't write because I want to; I write because I have to. While two characters from my Work in Progress are stuck between words, new characters are being born, old characters are pointing out what was missing from their original stories, and entire chapters are being written on the pages in my mind.

Thank goodness for MicroSoft OneNote. All these would-be rabbit holes are mapped and waiting for a more appropriate time to be addressed.

There's another form of block that's been on my mind recently. The creator of Queryfail has moved from defending that educational snark fest to plugging anything against Agentfail, which if you somehow managed to miss it, was the official writer reaction. It was angsty, true. But among the silly ("You agents should be responding to my brilliant prose instead of blogging and tweeting!") were some valid points ("If you don't want us e-mailing a dozen times to find out if you've gotten the query, let us know you got the friggin' query!"). Why acknowledge the valid when you don't have to?

The tweet that got me babbling at you read: The Guardian UK on Agentfail Day: Venomous, sad & desperate: Link (Hey, I didn't say it - THEY did.) Though the words venomous, sad, and desperate were indeed in the text, that's not quite how the writer was describing the whole thing. More interesting than the twisting of words was the link at the end of the article for "beating the system". What? We shouldn't anonymously air angry at agents laundry in public; we should self-publish!

It's an idea for some. Those of us who have puttered around the outer fringes of publishing know that self-publishing is the kiss of death. People in the industry won't take you seriously; maybe you've written a great piece of work that just wasn't commercial enough for a traditional house, but more likely, in their minds at least, your work wasn't good enough to get an agent. Readers will hesitate for the same reason, plus the fear that the binding won't even hold up with use.

And yet...Is it possible to own a television in the U.S. and to have not heard about the new ABC show "In The Motherhood"? The publishers Melinda Roberts took her book to told her it wouldn't appeal to mainstream audiences. Somehow, it still got her a show of her own and a spot on Oprah. I recall hearing that Chicken Soup For The Soul had been rejected hundreds of times before the author self-published it, and how much of a mega-seller is that? The Christmas Box by Richard Paul Evans was rejected, but word of mouth from the mere 20 copies he self-published was so great that Simon & Schuster bought the rights for a reported $4.2 million! (Imagine the faces of the rejecting agents upon learning they missed out on 15% of that.)

The list goes on. Sadly, no matter how long a list I make, the fact remains that an even smaller percentage of self-published authors than those who go the traditional route will make a living off their work, let alone millions. Yet there are reasons for why it's worth thinking about. More babble on the subject to come!

The Internet is Eating My Brain...

2009-03-23T19:30:00.003-04:00

....Or at least my time.

I woke up, got the girl off to school, and worked on revisions. Proud of my progress, I didn't think about how taking a little break might derail me for hours. I peeked in at my personal journal's 'friend list' and saw that Will Shetterly (a literary hero from my youth, World Fantasy Award nominee with Gospel of the Knife) had reactivated his account. That didn't exactly surprise me; I've joked that I could almost make a drinking game out of his dumping and reinstating his account. The shocker was that I let myself get sucked back into RaceFail 09.

Since it's there for the skimming (though a link page that had no "Mely is wrong" slant might be better, this one serves well enough), I can explain my thoughts without a recap. Everybody was wrong. Yes, darlings, those words sum up my thoughts and the explanation.

Even the people who right (which each "group" was at one time or another) managed to argue long enough to be wrong. What could have been (in another time and place, perhaps with different participants) an important conversation about race Sf/F between fans and industry professionals very quickly turned to Epic Fail. And it just won't stop.

Instead of cringing and backing away, I checked the links dating back to the last time I cringed and backed away. The Author Shit List sent me into a whole different tangent. "The Nielson Haydens were unfairly misjudged; I'll read more Tor as soon as they publish something I want to read." I've been meaning to read Elizabeth Bear for years. Guess I'll add the book that helped set off this firestorm to my list. Bull and Shetterly are mostly misunderstood...I'd only heard of three of the next six on the list, and one of three I knew only from RaceFail. Since I've got Stross's Accelerando on my desk waiting to be read, I was glad that his great sin was mainly intelligent commentary with a stupid quip about trolls. That makes for guilt free reading.

So I started to think it might all be guilt free for those of us not on the "you're evil if you don't agree with everything we say" side until my mind stumbled on Orson Scott Card. Years ago, and for writing other than was linked, I decided that I couldn't maintain my self respect and generate royalties for him. This was a quiet decision, just between my husband and I--at least my part was quiet; he practically crowed, as he showed me Card's literary spitting on everything I believed in and we fools who dare believe. I no longer have the link, but the one provided offers reason enough....

That's why I checked out the Ellison link. I read very little of H.E.'s work, but I appreciate the altered state it always leaves me in.

Gawd Damn. I'd not stuck my nose into what someone had referred to as "the Connie Willis scandal" because I'd assumed it was something dumb--she got mad at a fan maybe, or drank too much at the con. You know, something small that was no one else's business. Before I knew it, I was backtracking for firsthand accounts of what happened...

To the writer that I am: The manuscript wasn't rewriting itself while you followed paths to nowhere. You know better.

To the author I hope to become: Don't ever do that shit. Any of it.

Soundtrack Revisions?

2009-03-20T08:59:00.000-04:00

Whenever I hear anything off the Violent Femmes debut album, I'm sixteen again, just for a little bit. "Blister in the Sun" in particular brings me back to summer days spent with my friends, screaming lyrics out in a buddy's garage.

Tori Amos's album, "Little Earthquakes", isn't actually about multiple generations of a psychic Franco-American family struggling with their powers while the world teeters on the brink of catastrophic war, but you wouldn't know that by me. The CD was on such heavy rotation while I read Julian May's Intervention (out of print again, but worth getting used) that hearing one of the songs brings certain scenes or characters right into my mind.

My Work in Progress has been years in the making. I'd been working on a story that was important to me, but wasn't going anywhere. I had the main character and the idea, but idea does not equal plot. Then things came together, like they sometimes will in writing. I'd started fleshing out secondary and lesser characters in hopes of creating story from conflicting motivations. One of them insisted (in that way that is not schizophrenia) that he deserved attention. Low and behold, I'd already started telling his story in bits and pieces, I just hadn't known it belonged to him. When his theme song popped into my head, I knew that I knew this guy.

As important as knowing him, was being able to find him again.

Sometimes I suffered from writer's block. OK, I felt blocked a lot. Other times, I succumbed to the imaginary pressure from being surrounded by romance and paranormal romance writers. Was there a place in urban fantasy for my non-female driven work? Quinn got put on the back burner as I explored stories that didn't mean much to me but might mean something to one of the many editors seeking the next kick-ass heroine. I'd lose the feel of him. A play through (or five) of his song, though, and I was back in his head space.

Considering all that, plus that I've discussed the use of music while writing in various forums, I have no idea why it took a post over at Something Wicked to get me to expand Quinn's theme song into a full soundtrack. I have yet to write with the playlist, but it's already helped to block out the dozens of distractions that tend to suck me right out of my story and send me down various rabbit holes.

Blue Diablo by Ann Aquirre

2009-03-11T07:18:00.004-04:00

Eighteen months ago, Corine Solomon crossed the border and wound up in Mexico City, fleeing her past, her lover, and her “gift.” Corine, a handler, can touch something and now its history—and sometimes, its future. Using her ability, she can find missing persons—and that’s why people never stop trying to find her. People like her ex, Chance.

Chance, whose uncanny luck has led him to her doorstep, needs her help. Someone dear to them both has gone missing in Laredo, Texas, and the only hope of finding her is through Corine’s gift. But their search may prove dangerous as the trail leads them into a strange, dark world of demons and sorcerers, ghosts and witchcraft, zombies---and black magic….
~from the back cover.

The morning after finishing Blue Diablo’s advanced reader copy, I lay in bed wondering how I could explain more than the blub does without leaking spoilers. I could note how the first four pages are in present tense, like an odd holdover from Aguirre’s sci-fi series, only to suddenly move to past-tense for the last page and a half of the first chapter and ever after. Of course, this is the ARC, so that may not still be the case for the actual print run. Even if it is, it only takes you out of the story a little; I was in the middle of the second chapter before I thought, “Wait. Huh?”

I could tell, I thought, about how the heroine has an enjoyable personality with the sort of self-esteem issues that we get a little tired of in our friends but put up with. That’s when it hit me: not only did Corine’s thoughts and fears remind me of real life conversations, everything from those issues to the description of her looks, down to what she wore—in the text, not the obligatory sexed up cover-- reminded me so much of one of my best friends that I wanted to post a picture. (Don’t worry, D. I won’t do that to you; not only do I know it would be wrong, but also you’re scary when you’re mad.)

Aguirre managed to create a character who really could be one of us. Her power isn’t so bizarrely out there. I attended an intuition workshop that included psychometry. Each participant handled objects much like Corine goes—granted, with far less success and none of the price our heroine has to pay. She’s kick ass without being able to kick everybody’s ass; in a combat situation, she’s better armed with a cell phone ready to call 911 than with a gun, but she’s no damsel in distress waiting for the big strong men to come rescue her.

What would you do if you gathered all your courage and moved to a brand new place to escape the relationship that had almost gotten you killed? And if the ex who could still make your knees go weak tracked you down looking for help on something even more dangerous than what you had left behind? Pre-order Ann Aguirre’s Blue Diablo, due out on April 7, 2009, to read what Corine Solomon does when it happens to her.

Rethinking #Queryfail

2009-03-06T21:45:00.003-05:00

When I posted about #Queryfail, I said that it was snarky but educational. Some just settled on snarky. You can read about the fallout here (expand comments) and here.

So I started to think, "Did the snark outweigh the benefits? Should the agents and editors who participated be ashamed of themselves?" My simple answer is, "No."

I mean no disrespect to those who think this was mean and unprofessional--they're entitled to their opinions, and I don't even think them wrong, even if my opinion doesn't fall along the same lines. I just keep coming back to the fact that #Queryfail gave us--the newbs who will always be newbs if we don't learn how to be navigate this hurdle--information that we're not getting anywhere else.

Another look at the Tweets I reposted:

Three paragraphs, no plot, no hook, and lots of "me, me, me, look how wonderful I am! The writer should have known better. Even the questionable query advice available online gives the basic clues. Yet, in the heat of writing and thinking about selling your story, it could easily end up you're too focused on selling yourself. You can bet your advance that we'll all be checking to make sure we haven't lost the hook and plot in our bids to get agents to "pick me".
"What if everything you knew to be true, turned out not to be true? What if it were, in fact, false?" Wow, a first sentence #queryfail. {That could have been me. I started out writing my pitch like a movie ad, too.} Like I wrote, that could have been me, and it was more writers than the one qf I quoted. Because we don't know any better. In advice on how to write a query, I must have missed that doing this is an auto fail and I've seen it again and again from myself and others. I got clued in by a fellow would-be (who got it from an agent). There are a lot of other newbs out there who don't have groups or partners who are now clued in, too.
Please consider my erotic novel 4 publication.I have attached the synopsis & complete manuscript as per you submission guidlines. OK, yes, the editor in question could have gotten this information across by writing "Don't txt-tlk in your queries and spellcheck!" Most of us already know that. Maybe some of us will remember that spellcheck won't catch the dropped 'r' on 'your' and have a second pair of eyes check our work before sending it out.

It would be lovely of the contributors to #Queryfail to reword the more unique entries so writers don't discover from Tweets why they've been rejected, maybe even before the rejection letter reaches them, or end up feeling humiliated even if no one else knows who they are. But it would also be lovely for us newbs to keep getting the info that might keep us from auto rejection.

The First #Queryfail Day

2009-03-05T18:45:00.003-05:00

I had a wonderful surprise waiting on Twitter yesterday, but let me give a little background first.

An age or so ago, I decided to stop dreaming about becoming an author and to start working toward it. This meant an end to major fantasies--like accepting an Oscar from my novel turned screenplay that the studio couldn't imagine anyone writing but me--and and end to minor fantasies--like finding an agent for a manuscript that might never be ready to send out.

I focused on finishing the story most important to me. Then, with a few missteps like putting it aside to focus calls for submission, I went into revision mode. This was working just fine until The Amazon Breakthrough contest came around again. The first year, I couldn't even think of submitting anything. But now I had working manuscript, half revised. Surely, I could get the other half ready in time if the judges showed any interest.

At worst, I thought, the manuscript would be tied up in the judging process when I really wanted to send it out the old fashion way to agents. At best, it would make it through several stages and I'd have something to put in the credentials section of my query letters since school anthologies (with titles I don't even remember, no less) don't count. Who am I kidding? At best, my book is even better than I believe and I'd win the publishing contract.

First, I'd have to write that pitch, though. I sat in front of a blank screen, turning words over in my mind, until two experienced query writers from the writing group came to my rescue. They talked me through the process, corrected the worst of my silliness, and helped me breathe through a minor panic attack. Am I all set to go? Not at all. But they laid the foundation that might keep my work from being featured in some future #Queryfail Day.

Agents and editors on Twitter took the time to write about the queries they were rejecting (with a few that were accepted) and to explain why. Yes, it seems mean. How much would it suck to discover your work has been rejected while others got a giggle over it, even though they don't know who you are? But knowing why you got a "thanks, but no thanks" will keep you from making the same mistakes while educating the rest of us along the way.

Here are some examples from the three whose Tweets I follow:

1. Three paragraphs, no plot, no hook, and lots of "me, me, me, look how wonderful I am!" {Remember, the point is to sell the book.}

2. "What if everything you knew to be true, turned out not to be true? What if it were, in fact, false?" Wow, a first sentence #queryfail. {That could have been me. I started out writing my pitch like a movie ad, too.}

3. "Easily the boldest novel so far written in this fresh century of ours." Sure it is! And I'm dating Angelina Jolie... {I stand corrected. The point is to sell the story.}

4. Amputee porn. No, really. Just stop. {::shudder::}

5. Please consider my erotic novel 4 publication.I have attached the synopsis & complete manuscript as per you submission guidlines. {Really? You txt-tlked your hopeful editor to be? And explained the attachments--what?--in case she forgot her guidelines?}

6. I understand that my synopsis needs some work but I am not so great at marketing myself.

7. "A joyous and memorable journey that is both humorous and enjoyable."

8. "My book is differentiated from Twilight because the vampires have wings, and are half-breed angels."

9. fantasy romance query about a nun?...

10. A photo of author in full BDSM dress in body of query email. Yes, I got that.

It wasn't all failed queries and snarky education. The contributors also gave examples of what they accepted, but the 140 characters allowed on Twitter is too short to be of much use to us struggling neebies. For advice on how to do it the right way, check out agent Nathan Bransford's Query Letter Mad Lib, Anatomy of a Good Query Letter, and Anatomy of a Good Query Letter 2. Also see Jessica Faust's Personal Tastes and Holiday Critiques #1 (you can find subsequent Holiday Critiques by scrolling down to the "newer" link).

Speaking of Writers' Groups

2009-03-02T12:26:00.003-05:00

If you're just coming to A Writer's Block, or have been one of the four supporters all along but have forgotten, this is the blog of a would-be-novelist on her way to making it or failing miserably. My babbling about books isn't just filler; writer's are grown from readers and seeing how others make the page come alive (or fail to, in our own estimation) can teach us more about the art than any "how to."

My first writing group consisted of best friends inspired by The Dead Poets’ Society. We were teenage girls who loved words and stories and each other. While I didn't know near as much as I do now to apply to the group, The Weird Writer's Society managed to do more than ego stroke. Sure, we were encouraging, but we were also honest about what we thought worked and didn't work.

Sometimes, that's all you need. I can see that with 20/20 hindsight, looking back to when I let an older poet coax me into showing my work. He was kind. He was also professionally published (as opposed to my poems and articles that found themselves in school publications) and offered critiques I wasn't yet ready for.

Fast forward to just a few years ago. I had the beginnings of more novel than I could count, all without a middle--or even a fourth chapter--let alone an ending. I'd dubbed myself the Queen of the First Chapter, so isolated in my writing that I didn't realize there were hundreds, maybe thousands, vying for the title. Then I discovered Kelley Armstrong's Stolen, second in the Women of the Underworld series. I loved it so much that I pestered my husband into reading it. He loved it so much that he bought all the books to date and dragged me to the web site.

The Online Writer's Group--a members’ only section of the site--almost intimidated me too much to join. But I was ready to relinquish my title and opening membership was on a trial basis, so I could quietly slink away if I discovered the group to be too much for me.

What I found was writers of various "levels", all working improve their own and one another's writing. Some of it was so good that I couldn't immediately see why it needed critiques at all. I knew, of course, that it wasn't easy to break into publishing; I didn't get yet how polished a piece needed to before an agent or editor would give it the time to discover how good a story it was. And other pieces were so bad that I marveled that the writers were brave enough to post them alongside the others. These submissions were neither ignored nor ripped apart. The writers, with full respect for their efforts, were shown the issues with their work.

I'd found a place were I could safely learn and grow in my craft.

The best advice that I never received as a would-be-novelist is to find a good writers’ group. They won't fill your head with how great your works is, as friends and family sometimes will, while ignoring every flaw that an editor will spot right before sticking your story under the slush pile. (If they do, let them know what you need. Then, if the members aren't in a place where they can help you, start looking for a new group.) Yet they are still encouraging (if, once you can step back enough to look objectively at your work and what's been said, you feel that they are more attacking than critiquing, find another group).

In learning to critique others, we learn a great deal about our own writing. It doesn't hurt that, along the way, we end up with the kind of support system we'll never find by sitting alone staring at the screen.

Speaking of Howard....

2009-02-19T10:51:00.004-05:00

I'd written that Kassandra's half of Seaborn read like a YA book with chapter's missing...

I have avoided reading Saltwater Witch for fear that (not knowing where it falls chronologically), it might give me spoilers.

And, I have just discovered that this is actually the missing chapters that got shoehorned into Seaborn as backstory. So you can read it first and dig all cool artwork!

Seaborn and Night Shift

2009-02-13T07:14:00.002-05:00

I'm late, I know. My paltry excuse is that I'd planned my next post to be a "review" of Seaborn by Chris Howard and Night Shift by Lilith Saintcrow--two books connected only by my reading them at the same time. In my mind, I toyed with titles like, "Two OK Tastes That Taste OK Together."

To be fair, half of Seaborn is much more than OK. Half of the book follows Corina, a California college student possessed by a seaborn sorcerer. (The book lends itself to alliteration--it's not all my fault!) I didn't know it when Tez's Review prompted me to put Seaborn at the top of my TBR list, but Corina's story is exactly what I've been missing since keeping up with new urban fantasy and close-enough paranormal romance has distanced me from Charles de Lint's back list and old favorites like The Borderland books. She's an interesting heroine with a story I really feel. Howard's on Boskone's 'Men Writing Women' panel tomorrow and Corina makes me sorry I'm going to miss it.

Then there's the other half of the book. Kassandra is a Seaborn royal, exiled to the surface because her grandfather, King Thasaleos, is a murdering son of a bitch. His being such a jerk is the only thing that keeps me from wishing literary harm on Kassandra; I want him to get his in the end so she needs to live long enough to do it. Despite a promising beginning, her story reads like a young adult novel that I did not sign up for. Worse, there are chapters missing--a whole book's worth (that might explain why her dialogue is so tediously stiff) that gets shoehorned in as a few paragraphs of backstory.

It's entirely possible that no one else would be bothered by the narrative mode(s) of the novel. Third person omniscient exists even if it's mostly more "third person limited with multiple characters." In fact, this is mostly that until suddenly we jump heads just long enough for my teeth to itch. In Corina's story, with another consciousness sharing her body, that actually makes sense. In Kassandra's, it's one more reason for me to push through to the end so I can reread the book, skipping her chapters.

And that brings me to Night Shift. I'll usually read one book at a time, but I found myself finishing Corina chapters and thinking, "Well Night Shift is going to have to go back to the library so I'd better read that now."

Working for the Devil grabbed me with its title and its back cover blurb held on until I bought it. I loved the worldbuilding and writing. Unfortunately, if I don't really like Howard's Kassandra, I hated WftD's narrator, Dante Valentine. The feisty, kick-ass woman that books of this type can't do without became bitchy and obnoxious in the form of Dante Valentine. I couldn't stand her, couldn't stand her friends, and couldn't accept that a demon was the only likable character in the novel. Yet, the writing was so damned good that I went back for book two.

I polled the fans, learned that Dante was no better in the third book, and put away my Saintcrow cravings....until I heard about Night Shift. Jill Kismet is a Hunter, trained to walk on the nightside and take down demons and other creatures that make the city streets unsafe for humans. She's already running on empty when five cops are ripped apart and the police need her help more than ever.

There is no doubt in my mind that Lilith Saintcrow will someday make my short list of favorite authors, but "this is not that day." Kismet's setting has the same lovely dark grittiness as Valentine's with a more likable narrator. The upside is that I don't find myself pulling for the bad guys in this book. The downside is that the story doesn't suck me in, and more likable does not translate into loving Kismet.

Flashbacks of Kismet's dead mentor both spice up and slow down the narrative is they explain why the Hunter is so deeply damaged. The hunt for the killer is OK. The possible love interest is OK. It's all just...OK. I keep reading because (1) Saintcrow has a way with descriptions that makes me want to see what else she'll describe, and (2) I need to get to the end in case the next book is the one where all of her impressive talents come together in a story that I won't want to miss.

Race in Spec Fic

2009-02-05T09:30:00.000-05:00

Here's a crappy thing: there aren't a lot of people of color in spec fiction. I don't totally feel one way or another about it, so you're safe from a rant (um, from me; there will be links). On the one hand, all I'm looking for is a story that will hold my interest. Hopefully with something magical. Maybe with robots. If you make a world that I want to live in, or at least visit frequently, I don't particularly care who you people with. Mostly.

On the other hand, I vividly remember the first moment Lando Calrissian filled my eyes. I remember Uhura and Sulu on deck, just doing their jobs, a part of the crew like everybody else. And if these characters meant the world to me on screen in sci-fi--my vacation spot--there aren't even words for finding people who looked like me in fantasy novels, my home!

Yet as an adult would-be-novelist, race isn't a focus of my work. I don't have an agenda; I have characters in my head that clamour to be out onto the page and a bit of natural writing talent that I hope to hone into real skill. My characters aren't multi-cultural because I want to make a social or political statement; they're multi-cultural because my world is.

Recently, a certain section of the blogosphere has blown up with discussions of race. Mostly, I've watched in silence as anger rose and feelings were hurt. I couldn't be much help, except maybe as a target. Dear anti-racist people of color: you've got great points, but you've got to understand that your world view is not the only right way to see things (and your delivery ensures that those who don't already agree with you won't). And: Dear white authors, editors, and assorted spec-fic fans: You aren't necessarily wrong, but it's not all about you. Listen and you might just learn something.

Both groups (in this example of imagination) then turn and rip chunks out of An. But they would be united in kicking my ass, and unity is good, right?

I passed on chiming in. But I believe that the conversation is an important one, and I've watched it get dismissed out of hand in other forums. Through it all, I thought of authors who'd been asked why none of their characters were [insert whatever they may consider Other]. The answer is generally some version of, "I don't know how" or "I'm afraid I couldn't get it right."

Sci-fi/fantasy author, Elizabeth Bear, wrote a great blog post on the subject. If you get there and cringe at the length of the scroll bar, take heart. Most of that length is due to comments on the post. But then, the comments are, at times, really important, too. This is a subject we should all take our time with; Bear titled her post "whatever you're doing, you're probably wrong" and she was right.

And that goes for everyone. When I wrote started the novel that would be my jump from playing with classic fantasy (classic because I can't stretch my imagination enough to call my little attempts "epic") to really writing urban fantasy, I stalled out, in part, due to a Middle Eastern major character. Could I do him justice or would he look Middle Eastern but be a combination of the black and white men in my life?

Back to the linkage. Here is an Open Letter in response to Bear's essay. Harsh? Yeah. Right? Yeah. While I could argue that it should be two posts as Bear isn't responsible for twenty years of Roddenbderry-done-wrong and Sci-fi Channel fuck ups, it's all part of the same conversation. And don't miss out on the link to Deepad's essay there.

....Feel free to come back here and tell me what you think.

Giveaways! (Super fan joy-joys!)

2009-02-03T08:01:00.002-05:00

I am, as usual, doing something other than what I'm "supposed" to be doing. Before I get to the two articles of non-fic, the manuscript of doom (yes, I think I'll call it MoD from now on), and cleaning the kitchen, I thought I'd stop being selfish and share all the giveaways I stumbled into this morning.

Patricia's Vampire Notes is hosting the Hatchette Books' Kitty Norville Giveaway through Feb. 17. Five lucky winners will get both five and six of the series!

From now through March 3, U.S. residents can win a signed copy of Eric Nylund's Mortal Coils. I haven't read Nylund before, but based on the synopsis, I'm definitely willing to try it. (And that could lead to a whole other post...I play Halo like a madwoman, but I had no interest in checking out the books. Looks like I've been missing out!)

And while I was over at Fantasy Book Critic, I noticed a giveaway from Patricia Briggs' Bone Crossed. This ends in less than seven HOURS of my typing this, so if you love Mercy like I do, and you're reading this prior to 11:59 a.m. PST on Feb 3, click the link NOW.

Do we really pay attention to reviews?

2009-01-24T15:46:00.000-05:00

Or maybe a better question for what I'm thinking is when should we put our faith in them.

Mostly, I check out reviews after I've read a book. I'll peek on Amazon and see how many others thought that it was the best story since the last one that totally captured my imagination, or how many also thought "I paid money for this?"

Recently, I've used reviews to sort of rank books. Having grown up with movie critics that rarely like the flicks I adore, but rather praise the sort of films I can barely sit through, I only take the opinions of those who have proven they have similar taste. Yet, since joining Facebook, I've got a To Be Read list a mile high. A bunch of writers friended me, and I'm pathological in wanting to support them. Reviews help me to put books in their place from "OMG, gotta read that right now!" to "How bad can it be? I'll get to it eventually."

Lynn Flewelling's fantasy has earned a permanent place at the top of my list. It's only through a combination of wanting to reread the Night Runner series before picking up the last installment and having so very many books on hand that I stumbled across Homophobic Content in 'Shadows Return' before I formed my own opinion. As it was, I stood in a bookstore, novel in hand, frozen with doubt. In the end, I bought the new (to me, at least) Keri Arthur book and a debut novel that had a blurb by Patricia Briggs (if Patty likes it, who am I to doubt?).

That review really threw me! My first reaction was anger; how could she?! Then denial; surely the reviewer misread! I looked for other reviews and found only the unhelpful from "you/your books are so great! (on the author's blog) to "yay, you get to read about the characters you love again!" (because...that wasn't implied by this being the next book in the series?).

So how much should this one review affect me? Flewelling has given me six fantastic books in two great series...should I deny my reading pleasure based on one person's opinion? Should I ignore the opinion and perhaps set myself up for bitter disappointment?

What would you do? How much attention do you pay to reviews?

Squee! I mean, go vote!

2009-01-17T17:54:00.002-05:00

I went to bed with a total fangirl geeky grin last night. Not only did I have a full belly of Battlestar Galactica joy-joys from watching the marathon ending with the first show of the season, but I put off bed to cast my votes for the Urban Fantasy Readers Choice Awards. You should go do that, too, right after you read this.

So I'd voted for Chris Howard as my favorite debut, and then had to swing over here to grab my blog addy (it, like my cell phone number, is impossible for me to remember without aid) and who had posted a comment on my last entry? That's right. Squee!

....Now go vote!

Book Meme..and Stuff

2009-01-15T17:07:00.003-05:00

This isn't supposed to be a meme kinda place, but I'm sitting here not (apparently) getting back to revisions, and this was just chillin' in my links ...

* Grab the nearest book.
* Open it to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
* Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

Chris Howard's Seaborn was just a hair closer than Patricia Briggs's Iron Kissed : His jaw started working before he could get sound from his throat.

If I'd cheated, I could have offered up a nearby sentence with oozing blood. Oh,and since I'm here, I should talk about books!

It's too early into Seaborn--Chris Howard's book about two exiled ocean dwellers and the poor girl possessed by one of them--to give much of an opinion. So far, I'm enjoying it. The only drawback, which happens a lot in multi-POV stories, is I'm drawn to one character and want to rush through reading the other to get to her. I wouldn't change it, though. There's a certain value in the tapestry of story woven this way.

Speaking of difficult POVs, I've been trying to find just the right words to "review" (who am I kidding? I'm not a reviewer--I'm a fangirl who likes to babble about books) Will Shetterly's The Gospel of The Knife. This coming-of-age book of "magical realism"* is told in second person present tense, giving many readers the response of, Dude! What?

We're used to reading "I did" which makes us feel like the narrator is sharing their story with us, or "He did" giving us the sense that someone outside of the characters is telling us what happened to them. Stories using "I am doing" (like Ann Aguirre's Grimspace) are sort of like a patient under hypnosis reliving the story as she speaks it. And a lot of folks have reported taking issue with the use of first person present. Shetterly's use of "You are doing"--second person present--is damned uncomfortable at first.

I know from reading his blog that I am not the only person who read "You are..." and responded with, "No, I am not!" BUT once you get past any Choose Your Own Adventure prejudices, there is a really good story in there. OK, to be fair, there may be more prejudices to get over. Chris Nix is 14 year old boy in 1960's Florida. As an artistic young hippy, he doesn't fit in with the "straights"; still, somehow his liberal counter culture upbringing doesn't keep him from some pretty unenlightened thoughts when he meets a young black girl who clearly takes an interest in him.

Funny thing is, as much as that'll get the back up of certain readers (like, say, mine), it's one of the blessings of the book; there are no Mary Sue's here. There's a young man who discovers that he is going to inherit the earth, and who has to make some hard choices because of it.

Before I move on to from that to a young woman who has to save the earth, let me add that Shetterly says that anyone just starting to read his work should read Elsewhere or Dogland first as they're better. I don't know about better, but the former was a defining book in my life. I would say the difference is that I've revisited Elsewhere more often than I can count, whereas I imagine that if I reread Gospel again, once will be enough.

Now, saving the world (so you don't have to) is Phenomenal Girl 5 by A.J. Menden. Lainey--alias the title character--is a superhero. She's worked all her life to become a member of the Elite Hands of Justice, the best group of superheros there is. All she has to do is survive two years as apprentice to the Reincarnist...not a piece of cake.

I had a lot of fears about reading this book. A.J. Menden is also in Kelley Armstrong's Online Writers' Group, and not just a generic member of the OWG but rather someone who I've developed a cyber friendship with. What if I didn't like it? That was fairly likely since the book is considered "action romance" and we all know romance, generally, isn't for me. What if it were worse than not my cup of tea? What if it were one of those things that leaves the reader going, "Really? They published this?"

This book squashed all doubts.

Menden manages to tell a fun story without going campy. She tells a fun story with real seriousness and heart. Yeah, at one point, I cried. If you tell anyone, I'll deny it. But have I mentioned that this is a fun story?

*I nearly got derailed by looking for a quick definition of magical realism and how it differs from urban fantasy. More on this...eventually.

Sales!

2009-01-12T19:24:00.002-05:00

I've got a post in the cue waiting for me to edit it. Meanwhile, here's the link to the Fangs, Fur, & Fey thread on book sales. Great info for readers who want to keep their favorite writer's writing and fledgling authors wanting more info on the business side of our craft.

Shiny New Year

2008-12-26T22:12:00.003-05:00

I perhaps should have named this blog "How to Post Irregularly and Expect People to Still Be Around When You Manage to Update Again."

Generally, I don't do New Year's resolutions. I've found that if I haven't forgotten them by the time I remember to write the correct date, I've put them aside anyway. Still, it's a good time to rearrange priorities and my writing, both of the blog and of fiction, are shooting to the top of mine.

A Writer's Block will still be about reading and writing with a heavy emphasis on my beloved urban fantasy. I will still post whenever I want, but it'll be with a minimum of once a week. Oh, and it will still have much to do about my shift--or lack thereof--from would-be novelist to novelist.

Welcome to my shiny New Year.

Post NaNo Update

2008-12-08T16:48:00.002-05:00

Middle thing first...I'd never heard of Nathan Bransford the literary agent; now that I have, check out his 2nd-Sort-of-Annual Stupendously Ultimate First Paragraph Challenge. If you're another fledgling writer with a manuscript (and read this by Thursday, 4pm Pacific), why not give it a try?

First thing second, I made it just under 30,000 for NaNo. As much as "this is the year", I'm not all that upset. I like the story, I like that I can finished it with a lot more thoughtfulness, and I like that I can then go back and rework the themes and ideas that got lost in the mad rush to 50,000.

Last, but absolutely not least, A.J. Menden's Penominal Girl 5 has been nominated for Romantic Times' 2008 Reviewers' Choice Award for Best fantasy/futuristic romance. You go, girl! (And those of us who haven't already should give the publishing industry a push by picking it up and seeing what all the buzz is about.)

Mid (almost) NaNo Update

2008-11-12T16:58:00.002-05:00

A Writer's Block is lucky that dust does not accumulate in cyber space. Poor neglected blog!

And the neglect only builds. I made the title a few days before the mid-point and am only coming back to finish the post now, a couple of days after. Here's a quick update before life pulls me away again.

I'm way behind on NaNo--16,000 words behind. I went to my second mini write-in (mini because it's just me and another newbie in our area) and they are helping to propel me forward. There is a chance, however slight, that I'll catch up and make goal.

My big "DAMN IT" happened right after the write-in. Since half of our meeting happened at the library, I took the time to return and pick up books. I've found that I can keep a certain balance, stories are great while I'm writing. If the story's good, it makes me want to write in celebration of it. If it's not good, it makes me want to write something I enjoy more. So long as I don't go unbalanced and read to the point of not writing, it's all good. So I cracked open C.E. Murphy's The Queen's Bastard knowing nothing but that it was a C.E. Murphy book so there was a significant chance that I would like it.

I cracked it open and was interested immediately. I only had time for a page or so, then I flipped it over to finally find out what it was about. And there was a pet character of mine that I kept promising I'd write about when I finished other projects.

Oh, she's not MY character. Murphy didn't hack my locked LiveJournal entries and steal my ideas. It's just a horrible, disheartening coincidence that, save her character being the bastard of a queen and mine the bastard of king and whose sister is the monarch she serves, the characters are eerily similar and Murphy--at least at first glance--did it better than I probably would.

Let that be a lesson to those of us who would start are careers someday. All these nifty ideas seem to be floating in the ether, and if we keep putting it off, some brave and talented writer will beat us to the punch.