Do Space Pirates Need Special Sheets

Do Space Pirates Need Special Sheets?

This Crazy Tuesday, June 2nd is all about SPACE PIRATES and regular host "Row-hard" Rowena Cherry will be joined by "Madman" Mark Terence Chapman, "Dastardly" David Lee Summers and Jacquie "jolly" Rogers to plunder the icy blackness of space.

That's the blurb up on the PIVTR site. I apologize for the dreadfully bad "pirate" names, but for an unscripted, "blogging aloud" show that begins at 10 am Eastern (which is seven am for my nightowl, West Coast friends) and runs until 12.00 noon, I prefer to set a low standard and deliver better than expected.

I'm sure we will get into deeper topics, such as cloaking; motherships that look no different from regular traffic until it is too late for their victims to respond; space barratry (scuttling ships to hide theft of cargo); corsairing and privateering; and star ship commanders who pay lip service to Star Fleet Command, but do not necessarily comply with their orders... because who is to know? And perhaps if the politicians and generals back home had real time information, their orders would be different.

All credit to my friend Jacquie Rogers for getting me thinking (again) about sheets, and the logistics of hygiene, sex, and repose in deep space. Are space pirates simply Jack Sparrow with an air lock? I think not.

If Diana Groe's historically accurate Vikings managed to sustain an unfair seductive advantage over their European sexual rivals by wearing reasonably clean underwear, I wonder what the competitive advantage would be of body odor inside the confines of a space ark. Would it tend to demoralize and depress the enemy?

I should imagine there would be a product much like Procter and Gamble's Febreze. I hear that college students are using the odor eating product to simply spray the unwashed crotches of their jeans.




David Lee Summers is the author of five novels, and here is an excerpt from a guest blog he wrote for me to promote our June 2nd show.



The first of my novels is The Pirates of Sufiro, which starts off as the story of a band of space pirates that are marooned on a distant world they name Sufiro. Over the course of the novel, the pirates who were stranded have to battle corporate pirates who try to take over the planet. Thus the book explores the idea of "piracy" from multiple angles. I have recently explored my space pirate characters even more in stories appearing in the anthologies Space Pirates and Space Sirens published by Flying Pen Press. Another of my novels, Vampires of the Scarlet Order, is a supernatural thriller, but it features a cameo by the real life pirate, Grace O'Malley.

The phrase "space pirates" conjures up images of marauding bands cruising the galaxy in space ships. Perhaps the blaster-wielding captain has a robot parrot on his shoulder and some kind of high-tech eye-patch with a heads-up display. Movies and television have invoked this image numerous times and I think such pirates can be a lot of fun, even though they're often extremely campy.

Look a little harder at the idea of space pirates, though, and an interesting picture emerges. To summarize the United Nations definition of piracy, it is a criminal act of violence, detention or depredation committed by the crew or passengers of a ship or aircraft directed against another ship or aircraft – or directed against a ship, aircraft, persons or property outside the jurisdiction of a country. Apply that idea to any vessel that is either in space or operating on a distant world, and you open up tremendous story potential.

My own love of pirates started at an early age. I grew up in Southern California and was lucky enough to visit Disneyland a few times as a kid. One of my favorite rides from the time I was about six years old was The Pirates of the Caribbean. I was also a Star Trek fan from a very young age. Though a bit too young to remember the original series when it first ran, I was exactly the right age to watch Star Trek: The Animated Series when it ran on Saturday mornings. One of those episodes was "The Pirates of Orion" written by Howard Weinstein. I already was a fan of pirates and I just fell in love with the idea of pirates in space.

In the years after that, though, most depictions of space pirates that I came across grew painful. I saw far too many actors with robot parrots on their shoulders hamming it up for the camera. As I mentioned earlier, they could be fun to watch, but they did get old. I probably would never have even tried to write a story about space pirates if I hadn't come across the Bio of a Space Tyrant novels by Piers Anthony. In the first novel, Anthony introduced space pirates that were colorful and fun, but at the same time very dangerous. These were the kinds of space pirates I was looking for.

In 1988, I set out to write my first story of space piracy for a writing workshop in Socorro, New Mexico. I wanted to create pirates that were larger than life, fun, but yet a bit dangerous, much like the good space pirates I had encountered before. That's when Ellison Firebrandt and the crew of the Legacy who appear in The Pirates of Sufiro, Space Pirates and Space Sirens were born.

As I worked to create my pirates, I spent time in the library reading historical accounts, trying to get some idea for the motivations of historical pirates and how they operated. As I read, I found the stories of Henry Avery, Bartholomew Roberts, William Kidd, Anne Bonny and Mary Read particularly captivating.

Now, I believe it's important that a writer create a world where it's believable that space pirates exist. That said, if we postulate a universe where humans are colonizing other planets in the galaxy it's reasonable to expect that pirates will exist. In my "day" job I operate telescopes at Kitt Peak National Observatory. It's actually hard to imagine a star empire or galactic alliance with so much money that they could patrol every possible planetary system imaginable. Likewise, it's hard to imagine a future where everyone is so well off that someone won't be motivated to try to take what someone else has. Just recently, we had the incident of Somali pirates taking an American ship not far from American warships. Even with only a small boat and a few guns, they created a very difficult situation for this country. The galaxy is a much bigger place.

In my universe, Earth recognizes that it simply cannot patrol much of its territory at all with warships of any sort. It becomes much more practical for humans to issue Letters of Marque to pirate crews and allow them to harass ships from competing systems and colony worlds.

My pirate captain, Ellison Firebrandt, comes from a poor family. His father was a miner in the asteroid belt and it looked like Ellison's fate would either be to follow in his father's footsteps or go into some other hard labor for the rest of his life. As with the pirates of old, life aboard a pirate ship seemed to offer more freedom and opportunity for young Firebrandt than a life wasting away as a miner or a laborer for one of the giant corporations of Earth. Because Firebrandt is the protagonist of the stories in which he appears, I felt it necessary to give him a moral compass. He is loyal to Earth because the government provided his Letter of Marque. He kills and robs, but he does so with the intention of aiding Earth.

In the story "For a Job Well Done", which appears in the anthology Space Pirates, Firebrandt tries to fence stolen items through a gang that secretly pulls the strings on one of Earth's colony worlds. The gang maintains control through the torture of the planet's populace. In the process of discovering this, Firebrandt meets a woman named Suki Mori and a romance is born. Though Firebrandt is, himself, a criminal, his moral compass can't abide the self-serving interests of the gang he encounters and he feels compelled to stop them. Even though the story is science fiction, it was heavily influenced by contemporary headlines.

In the follow-up story entitled "Hijacking the Legacy" that appears in the anthology Space Sirens, Suki Mori discovers the cold hard reality that her new-found "friends" really are bloodthirsty pirates. She tries to escape but throws herself and the pirate crew right into the hands of a military captain that doesn't recognize Firebrandt's Letter of Marque. This puts Suki into a crisis of conscience. She recognizes that the crew of the Legacy is composed of criminals, but she also realizes that they're the ones who saved her from an even worse criminal gang. Can she simply let the pirates be killed?

Historically, not all pirates were clear-cut villains. They often came to piracy through a series of circumstances and choices. Often times there were no good choices for these people. Sometimes it was live as a slave or live as a pirate. Sometimes being a pirate seemed less horrible than being a crewman for a ship of the "legitimate" military. In creating my space pirates, I worked to create a universe that presented my characters with many of those kinds of difficult choices from history. I worked to create characters with enough of a moral compass that those choices were interesting ones to explore. Hopefully the stories are an exciting, fun ride as well!

If you would care to learn more about my novels and the anthologies where my stories appear, please visit davidleesummers.com and click on the links for "Books and Audio Books" and "Short Stories and Poems."

Or, visit David Lee Summers's blog on barratry
http://rocketpunk-manifesto.blogspot.com/2007/10/density-of-power.html



Mark Terence Chapman adds:

Rowena: Here's the premise behind the pirates in My Other Car is a Spaceship.

In my "universe", there are a number of alien civilizations in our sector of space, but none of them large enough or wealthy enough to patrol the space outside their respective territories. So pirates run amok in the "in-between" places, attacking remote settlements, mining colonies, and cargo ships traversing deep space. In addition to swag, some of the pirates trade in slaves.

Seeing the growing threat to commerce, a number of commercial outfits formed the Merchants' Unity, a sort of police force funded by the member merchants and tasked with the mission of suppressing the pirates and keeping them from disrupting interstellar commerce.

For many years, this worked. The Unity held the pirates to a nuisance-level only. Then one day, a pirate leader (a human ex-slave, whose grandparents were kidnapped from Earth) got a number of the pirate chieftains together and formed a corporation (BAE, Inc., short for Buck-an-Ear). Now organized (with stockholders and profit sharing), the pirates begin to attack in swarms instead of individually, overwhelming the Unity patrol ships and pushing the Unity to the brink of defeat.

Present-day Earth is unaware of any of this. But when a Unity ship patrolling our solar system (a pre-interstellar, and therefore embargoed system) loses both its pilots, it's forced to scour Earth for someone suitable, someone with the rare hypertasking gene that gives his mind the ability to handle thousands of simultaneous inputs.

It's into this universe that Colonel Hal Nellis, retired USAF fighter jock, is thrown. As pilot of Adventurer, he, along with Captain Kalen Jefffries (a son of human slaves), must find a way to defeat the seemingly overwhelming might of the pirates, or face the destruction of the Unity and the pillaging of a defenseless Earth.

[Bio: Mark is the author of three published science ficiton novels: The Mars Imperative, The Tesserene Imperative, and the just-released Sunrise Destiny. My Other Car is a Spaceship is his fourth, recently-completed, novel.)




As for the sheets question.... That is a matter of individual taste. Jacquie Rogers's pirates in her yet-to-be published novel that predated Fifth Element have special sheets to cope with bedding (verb) in zero gravity. Mark Terence Chapman's spacefarers are to be a surprise (to me). Some don't. In my first alien romance, Forced Mate, my high and mighty hero Tarrant-Arragon steals the love of his life's bedding from Earth to encourage her to feel more at home in his bed.

I've never visited a pirate's bed (in my books), but my Scythian pirates are a bit like downsized Chewbaccas with claws so with all that reddish hair, there's little need for modesty in bed.




Rowena Cherry
Space Snark

By the way, for those who do not know, you can download royalty free wallpaper and fabulous images from http://hubblesite.org/gallery/

When a story doesn't work, part two

First off, jazzed to say Twist was nominated for a Prism in the Time Travel category. Fellow blogger Linnea was too. Thanks for posting this earlier this week.

Now more on the journey of my proposal. Below is chapter one. When I envisioned this story, the world was a dark and dreary place. I cannot imagine one part of this story taking place in the sunshine although I'm sure I would have worked some in. Its just the overall concept is just dark.

While I usually am pretty regualr at writing stories from the H/H pov, (unless in first person like Twist) I decided that I needed to do some pov of the antagoist. You will noticed the tone is omnipotent, which is how Swaim sees himself.

Also adding, I am dyslexic and horrible at grammer. The follow has not been edited.

The Real

They were like insects scurrying to their holes. Vile creatures. If only they could be exterminated. But even insects served their purpose and these would serve his. He watched them move from his position fifty feet up in the air, safe on his thoptor as the LED’s tracked back and forth on the uneven ground below.

“We’re locked.”

Swain turned from the view port to the console where a young techno, fresh out of academy, stood over a holi-vid. His nostrils flared as he approached the younger. Only purebloods were allowed to be near him. He smelled the usual array of bodily odors, more so since the younger was nervous. But no admanium. There was not any mechanized enhancements on this techno as there would be none on anyone else aboard this craft.

“Here,” the techno said. His finger trembled as he pointed to the ruins of a building. It cut through the blue line of the three dimensional representation that hovered over the surface. Inside the building a lavender blob could be seen, accompanied by a smaller red blob. They moved quickly through the ruins on the surface as if they knew where they were going.

Luckily so did he. Swain allowed himself a small smile.

“We’ll take them here,” he said and pointed to a place where three paths converged upon the ruins. The techno tapped the screen of his vid and the image was transferred to the terrain transport below along with an image of his finger, pointing out the places where he planned to lay his trap. “Place your men,” he said to the land unit below, as usual being proper in his address even though his skin crawled at the thought of referring to the hybrids awaiting their orders below as men. But even one of the members of the Protectorate must obey the chosen guidelines of society so that no grievances may be filed against him. “Here and here,” he continued.

“Command accepted,” the ground commander said as if he had a choice in the matter.

“These readings are off the chart,” his assistant, Foster, hissed in his ear. “I’ve never seen anything like it except for…”

Swain turned quickly less Foster give something away. “Show me,” he said and Foster turned his scanner so the screen was visible. The lavender blob covered most of the screen, greatly overshadowing the companion red blob. “Any way of knowing which one it is?”

“Not until we’re on the ground and I can separate the scans.”

“Make sure they are not harmed,” Swain said.

“Ground.” Foster tapped his earpiece. “Both are to be taken unharmed.”

“Accepted,” ground came back.

“Get me down there,” Swain barked. “And quickly.” He didn’t trust the hybrids with his find. Especially if there was a new one among them. There had been occasions when their programming was faulty. There had been occasions when the “Kill” order was the only thing they could comprehend. He was not one to trust others to do something when he was capable of doing it himself. It was the only way he could be assured that it was done the correct way. His way.

The thopter moved quickly, arcing up then quickly down to a wide empty space among the ruins of the former metropolis. At one time it had more than likely been a parking lot. Now it was simply a flat place covered with a thick and cloying grass that encroached upon the pavement instead of sprouting from it. Not that it mattered to him what was beneath his feet beyond the fact that his shoes would have to be destroyed upon his return. The Real was dirty, unkempt and wild. Swain preferred the orderliness and cleanliness of the Dome.

“Savages,” he spit out as the thopter settled. Yet they did have their uses. Where else would they find workers for the lesser jobs since those on the inside had long ago learned the consequences of going against the gentle reminders of how life should be inside? Peace must be maintained. Those who did not maintain the flow of peace would be assigned a better way to serve the general populace.

The truth be told, they needed them as a barrier between the Dome and the droves of bandits called Scrabbers that roared down from the mountains every time the full moon came round. They needed them to replenish the army that was the only barrier between civilization and chaos.

The same army that awaited his orders as he stepped out of the thopter. He looked right and left. The squads had better be in place and waiting to ambush the two that would be coming this way or there would be a reckoning.
The commander of the ground forces stood well away from the thopter blades with his expressionless face turned towards him. Swain saw the thin red beam cross over his goggles which meant the commander was scanning him for proper identification. The lights from the ground transport shone across the area and cast distorted shadows upon the cushion of sprawling grass.

He would have to make sure that all records of his actions here tonight were erased. There was nothing to worry about. Foster would see to it. He could feel him on his heels even now.

“Squad Four and Five is still in pursuit sir,” the commander of the troop said. The voice sounded familiar to Swain and he spared a look at the square jaw and mobile mouth that showed beneath the visor. He must have come across the hybrid at sometime. Possibly in his youth before the soldier was adapted. The society in the dome was such that it was possible. The hybrid had been in the service long enough to rise to commander.

Why are you even thinking of this metal remnant? He is not important.

“You are positive that all other escapes routes are covered?” Swain snapped.

“As you ordered,” the commander said without a sound of emotion in his voice.

“Foster,” Swain said. “As soon as you are sure.”

“I will let you know,” Foster said. Was there a note of surliness in his voice? Swain refused to turn and look at his assistant. If there was, he would rout it out later. What was about to happen was too important. “The only way to tell is to separate them.”

Swain motioned upwards with a finger, casually turning it in the air and the thopter lifted off to hover above and await his next order.

“This way sir,” the commander said and turned to lead them to a safe place to watch the proceedings. Four men closed ranks around them. The transport backed away and turned off its lights. The only sound to be heard was the soft thump-thump of the thopter’s blades.

The commander was one of twenty-five in a squadron which consisted of five five man squads. Each member was designated as a number depending upon seniority and each squad was numbered. The commander was known as One-one, if he needed to be called by name which Swain was disinclined to do. The Squadrons all had different codes to discern them from the others. There were 100 squadrons in all, each one named after cities from the old world order. This squadron was called Dallas. Something he needed to remember for later, when their work was done for the night.

“Reissue the no-kill order,” Swain said. If Squad Five was in pursuit then it was the least experienced squad and the most likely to make a mistake.

“Accepted,” One-one replied. “No kill,” he said into his mouthpiece. “Repeat. No kill. Acknowledge.”

Swain heard the strange chirps that signified a response as a litany of Accepteds coming in through One-one’s earpiece. Foster’s echoed the same, only without the chirp. It was something in the hybrids programming. Something he found strangely annoying as if they were privy to some sort of secrets. Perhaps he should look into it upon his return.

There was nothing to do now but wait. He stood off to the side with the five mechs surrounding him with their Lasters charged and ready. Foster squirmed in anticipation beside him and kept up a running monologue with his scanner as if it would reveal more about the two that would soon fall into his hands. They had too. There was no place else for them to go.

Swain studied the layout once more. The ruined buildings that surrounded him seemed strangely elegant in the dim glow that shone from the dome in the distance. Almost as if they could come to life at any minute. Ivy twisted around columns that arched over broken steps and the trees that grew against the buildings swayed gently in the breeze created by the thopter that hovered above. Generations ago this had more than likely been a center of learning for the old world order. A college or university of some sort. Now it was nothing more than a haven for the rebels that roamed the real and tried to eke out a life among the ruins.

A strange shiver ran up his spine and he felt as if he were being watched. As if the buildings around him stared him down and whispered threats into his ear.

Nonsense. It was more than likely there were people inside, hiding in fear, watching and waiting, just as he was. He would order the area purged when this was over. When he found what he wanted.

One-one turned to him, his face strangely vacant beneath the visor.

What does he see? Does he see what I see or an image translated onto a screen? What was behind the visor? Would One-one’s eyes look upon him with respect or contempt for what society made him? What he made himself…Swain corrected his train of thought One-one chose his path. He knew the consequences of breaking the laws.

What is wrong with you? For some strange reason he felt morbid tonight. He was seeing motives that could not possibly exist; he was assigning emotions where there could be none. Why did he feel so unsettled when he was on the verge of finding the very thing he’d been searching for?

“The target will be acquired in mark ten, nine, eight…One-one intoned.

Swain kept his eyes locked on the building before him. From his peripheral could see the two squads on either side move up on the building. He saw lights flashing across the black holes that at one time were windows. The squads were herding them out, right into the trap. One-one motioned his squad forward.

Swain stopped when Foster touched his arm. He looked down at the offending hand and his lip curled in contempt.

“Shouldn’t we stay back?” Foster asked. “In case they are armed?”

Swain swallowed his temper. He was too anxious. Too excited. This was too important. “Of course,” he said. He allowed Foster a reassuring nod to let him know he was forgiven for encroaching upon his personal space and moved to the side to wait.

He heard a crash. Swain willed his eyes to pierce the darkness and was suddenly blinded as the transport and the thopter lit up the area at the same time. He squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them.

Two figures ran across the front of the building. A man and a woman. The man held the woman’s hand, keeping her close to his side. She seemed ethereal against the dark color of the building. The light shining upon her enhanced the white of her dress along with the shimmering silver of her hair. Both flew about her body as the thopter hovered overhead.

“Anything?” Swain had to raise his voice to be heard over the thopter.

“Still too close,” Foster said.

The three squads converged upon the duo. The man feinted one way, turned to run the other. He kept hold of the woman’s hand until he realized there was no escape. He pushed her behind his body and backed her to the wall. Swain willed his body to stay at a walk as he and Foster moved toward the two who were now surrounded. At least twenty Laster’s were aimed at the two.

“Metals!” Swain spat out curse in disgust. “We’ll be lucky if they don’t kill both of them.”

“Stand down,” Foster yelled into his earpiece. “They’re not going anywhere.”

The Laster’s were lowered as he walked into the circle of mech’s. As one they stepped back with their weapons pointed safely upward.

The man stood tall and strong. His chest moved with the exertion of his flight but his dark eyes betrayed no fear as they moved back and forth across the mechs, seeking an escape route. There was none, still his hands curled into fists as if he would fight his way through. Swain saw a spark of hatred as he stepped forward. The man knew Swain was the one responsible. He knew the mechs were just following orders. He knew where to direct his frustration.

“What do you want?” the man said. The woman peered over his shoulder, her eyes wide and pale in the light. They shone with something… not fear… was it anger? She had spirit. He felt something he had not felt for a long time. A challenge? How extraordinary. His loins tightened suddenly. The feeling was a pleasant surprise because it was not something that happened for him, at least not this easily and never without a certain type of outside stimulation.

Which one? No matter which, he would keep the woman. If it was her it would certainly simplify things.

Swain kept his eyes on the man but he spoke to Foster. “Anything?”

“We must separate them,” Foster said.

“Do it,” Swain ordered.

“Two-one, Three-one,” One-one said. “Take the male without regret.”

“Accepted.” Swain watched as two of the mechs from either side of the circle handed their weapons off and moved to take the man.

They approached him from both sides. He watched them warily with his eyes darting back and forth between the two. Suddenly he moved. He dropped into a leg sweep and with his shoulder shoved the falling man into the other one while removing the stunner from the mech’s hip. Before Swain could blink the man fired and rolled. He came up beside another mech and caught the Laster before the hybrid hit the ground.

“It’s her,” Foster hissed as the woman moved after him.

“Are you sure?”

The man leveled the Laster on another mech and fired. The proton blast hit the man square in the chest plate and he fell backwards and shook violently. A scream tore from his throat as the admanium in his system exploded from the minute nuclear blast and he was torn apart from the inside out. It happened so fast that there was no time for the mechs to react as they had not received new orders from One-one. They were still on stand down mode. Held in place by the No-kill warning.
The man handed the downed mechs Laster to the woman.

“I’m sure,” Foster said. He ducked as a Laster blast went off over their heads, aimed toward the thopter. The thopter pulled up and away as another blast followed it.

“Take out the man,” Swain said.

“Revoke kill on male subject,” One-one said calmly. Instantly weapons were leveled. “Take the female unharmed. Repeat. Kill male subject. Take female subject.”

“No!” the woman screamed.

The man shoved the woman forward and swung the Laster in a wide arc, firing the entire time. Swain and Foster both dropped with their hands over their heads as if that would protect them from the blatant destruction of body that the Laster would cause. One-one and the rest of his squad took up defensive positions around them.

“Dax!” She screamed it. As if she were the one dying.

If they hurt her I will tear each one of them apart bit by bit…
Swain looked up. The woman was on the ground, cradling the man against her chest. The man’s face was twisted in agony and Swain realized the man’s right leg was gone, blasted away by a Laster at mid-thigh. Still he was able to reach for his Laster and he held it steadily in his hands as the mechs approached.

“Merritt,” he said. “Go. I’ll hold them off.”

“No,” she cried out.

Swain approached the group.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Foster said from behind. “Her PNA is off the charts.

“Excellent,” Swain said.

“GO!” the man roared.

“If you move we will kill him,” Swain said calmly to the woman.

“I’m dead anyway,” the man spat out. How could he talk? His leg was gone, nothing but a bloody and charred stump remained. The front of the woman’s dress was covered with blood. It showed black against the pristine white of her long white dress. The LED’s from the thopter shone down upon them and she stared up at him with eyes that flashed with silver.

“What do you want with us?” the woman asked.

Swain looked at her and smiled. “Why Merritt,” he said. “Didn’t you know? I want you.”

She looked at him curiously and he saw the realization settle over her face. “If I go with you, will you let him go?” she said.

“Merritt,” the man ground out between clenched teeth. “You can’t trust him.”

“Will you get him help?” she continued. “Make sure he lives?”

“Of course I will,” Swain said. He held out his hand in what he hoped was encouragement.

She looked at the weapons leveled on them. The building was at her back. There was no place for her to go and no hope of help coming from any direction. She bent her head and gently kissed the man. “I love you Dax,” she said. “Never forget it.” She slid from beneath him and lowered his head to the ground.

“Merritt!” he yelled as she stood and straighten her dress. He struggled, bracing himself up with is arms. It was if he could stand up with determination and stubbornness. Neither was a sufficient replacement for a leg.

Swain shook his head in surprise as he looked at the woman. If he didn’t know better he would swear it was a wedding dress she wore. It resembled the ones that he’d seen in the vids from the past. She stepped away and was instantly flanked by two mechs. As they walked her to him a team of mechs yanked the Laster from the man, Dax, she’d called him and trained their weapons upon him.

“Merritt,” Swain said when she stood before him. “I am most happy to meet you.”
She punched him. Hard. His head snapped back and he felt a crack in his jaw along with the coppery taste of his own blood. He swiped a hand over his face as he tongued the inside of his cheek. Was that a tooth? He spit it into his hand. Anger swelled over him and he clenched his fist over the tooth as he felt his cock harden. It took every bit of his will not to strike her.

She had no fear in her eyes. Only anger. Her white blonde hair tumbled around her shoulders and her bosom heaved with emotion. Her pale blue eyes bore into him, daring him to strike her.

“Orders?” One-one asked him.

Swain looked beyond Merritt to the man who obviously wanted to kill him. If he could do it with a look then he would most certainly be a dead man. A smile moved over his face as he realized that he could strike out at her, without actually lowering himself to show violence in front of his men.

“He’s yours,” Swain said. “To replace the one you lost.”


“No!” Merritt said. “You bastard!” She lunged for him. She sunk her nails into his cheek and raked them down. Swain staggered back with his hand over his cheek. He realized that he lost his tooth.

“Do something about her,” Swain said as he stumbled toward the thopter that had settled behind him.

“Stun her,” Foster said. Swain heard the charge of the stunner. He heard her fall and he heard the man, Dax struggle and calling her name. A hand reached out to help him into the thopter but he slapped it away and settled into a seat. A medic was there, waiting. He sprayed steriskin on his cheek and the burning immediately went away.

One-one stepped inside with Merritt in his arms. He placed her in the chair beside him and turned away without a word. Foster climbed in after One-one stepped out. Swain arched an eyebrow at him in silent communication. Foster handed him the port key.

Swain pushed the key into the admanium simport that was buried in his temple. The LED on the end glowed green to show it was communicating with the computer on board. As the thopter took off, Swain saw the mechs freeze in place as they received their orders to forget everything they’d seen tonight. When questioned about their activities Dallas squadron would report that they had captured a thief and rehabilitated him. “Make sure there are no witnesses,” Swain said to Foster. Foster immediately tapped his earpiece and ordered another squadron out to sweep the area.

Swain looked at the woman that slumped in the chair next to him. She was young, he realized, younger than the fight she’d shown. She was also exquisitely beautiful and once again he felt his cock harden. He would have to make sure the pleaser he used tonight had the same silvery blonde hair and pale blue eyes.
Not that it would matter what she looked like when he was done with her.

Crossing Genre Lines

The new RWR (magazine of Romance Writers of America) contains an article on cross-genre fiction, or, as the author puts it, mixing subgenres. I was surprised, by the way, to see mystery and romance mentioned as a “mix.” Love story subplots are so common in detective novels that the further step of raising the romance to equal importance with the mystery hardly counts as genre-bending. In fact, back in the 1930s Dorothy Sayers wrote a fully developed romance-mystery crossover, GAUDY NIGHT, with the two plotlines sharing a common theme, integrity in one’s work. Anyway, “Mixed Marriages: Blending Subgenres,” by Christie Craig, is a useful article that makes several good points, such as the need for balance between the two elements of a novel so that readers don’t lose track of one subgenre thread or perceive it as unimportant compared to the other. Craig also mentions the importance of a consistent tone to ensure that the book doesn’t come across as two separate stories forcibly spliced together. She doesn’t say much if anything, however, about the question of whether there exist any pairs of genres that resist being blended because their conventions and expectations are just too different. Do you think there are any such completely incompatible pairs?

We know Regency romance can be effectively combined with vampire-slaying, because Colleen Gleason does it in her series about a Regency-era female vampire hunter. How about Regencies and zombies? If you haven’t read Seth Grahame-Smith’s PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES, check it out. Here’s my mini-review that will appear in my June newsletter. (The page to subscribe is: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/margaretlcartersnewsfromthecrypt.)

[Grahame-Smith takes the text of Austen's classic novel and, by altering some passages and inserting a few new ones, converts Elizabeth and her sisters into mistresses of the "deadly arts," trained by a Chinese master to slay the undead victims of the "strange plague" that has overrun the British Isles. The word "zombie" is seldom used; the euphemistically termed "stricken ones" are usually called "unmentionables" or "dreadfuls." The violence besieging civilized Regency society extends to social relationships as well. Ladies seem as likely as gentlemen to challenge each other to deadly duels. One of the most amusing scenes involves Elizabeth's rejection of Darcy's first proposal while using her martial arts skills to throw him around the room. His aunt, Lady Catherine, scorns Elizabeth not only for her low family connections but out of disdain for her Chinese fighting background as opposed to Lady Catherine's allegedly superior Japanese training. On the whole, I enjoyed it. I thought the author (co-author?) did an excellent job of smoothly integrating the zombie interpolations with the original text. My only reservation is that the tone seems to wobble a bit. There are passages of genuine horror and pathos, and then there are moments when the zombie element is clearly being played for sheer silliness. And I do dislike the frequent vomiting and the repeated emphasis on bedridden Wickham's "soiling," both of which seem to me incompatible with Regency style. (And if he's that disabled, how can he function as a working clergyman? That was before handicapped-accessible architecture and technology!) Otherwise, I think the tour de force is pulled off very well. The alternate-universe Regency England infested with zombies comes across as quite believable. To appreciate the story completely, of course, the reader needs familiarity (or at least acquaintance) with the original novel.]

Interestingly, a crossover of Jane Austen and Mary Shelley has also been published—a novella called “Pride and Prometheus” in a past issue of THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, in which Victor Frankenstein visits England and becomes involved with Mary Bennett, Elizabeth’s bookish sister.

Speaking of the undead, I’ve come across the claim that even if all other classic monsters become romantic heroes, zombies will never achieve that status. They’re shambling, mindless, cannibalistic animated corpses. Could a zombie star as the hero of a romance? Piers Anthony’s Xanth series features zombies falling in love. He’s altered the template to serve his narrative purpose, though. His zombies aren’t mindless; they retain their personalities. But, then, the wonderful thing about fantasy fiction is that we can shift the creatures and traditions of myth and legend in new directions limited only by our imaginations. One more question arises from that freedom: How far can a familiar monster be transmuted before it’s no longer recognizable and resembles the original template in name only?

Margaret L. Carter (www.margaretlcarter.com)

Marketing Fiction in a Changing World

The mantra that has leaped out at me from every corner of my little world is, "The Business Model must change." It comes in variations: The Business Model has failed. The Business Model is obsolete. The Business Model is outdated.

The way to make a profit marketing anything is to have the right business model.

I wish they'd taught me about marketing in grammar school instead of harping on penmanship and drawing maps -- even the hours spent mastering spelling turned out to be a waste since now spellcheck does it for you as you type. And arithmetic? Even my phone has a calculator!

A fiction writer is the sole proprietor of a BUSINESS and thus needs a business model, and that business model must be correct or the writer won't turn a profit.

What does a writer do with profits? Buy bread, milk, cheese, DVDs, books, and pay the utility bills, rent and lowest on the list is usually clothes.

So a writer needs to know not only how to craft a terrific idea into a story, but must craft that story to a business model. If the end product does not fit the correct business model, the end product (the novel) can't be well marketed, and there will be no profit.

The artist side of our creativity listens to the bean counters and screams SELLOUT! But it's not really. It's opportunism.

What good is great art that molders away in the artist's basement? To do its job, art must connect with an art consumer.

The artist or writer in this case (writing is a performing art, as I learned from Alma Hill) has three choices.

1)Write anything you want and let it molder away unread by anyone but yourself.

2) Write what you want and build a mechanism for delivering what you want to the people who want it. That is build a delivery chute for your art.

3) Or be an oppotuntist and write what you want, what fires your creative furies, but first shape it so you can PACKAGE IT to fit down existing delivery chutes.

If you try to build your own delivery chutes and conveyor belts, (which is what startup ebook publishers are doing using new tools) you incur an additional overhead and take time and energy away from writing.

If you use existing delivery chutes, you may squash your art with the shrinkwrap, but most of your art will reach consumers hungry for that product.

What's happening today that has publishing melting down (and reforming), that has the very definitions of genre changing faster than publishers can invent logos, that has profits dwindling and copyright becoming an archaic term nobody understands -- what's happening today is THE BUSINESS MODELS OF THE WORLD ARE MELTING DOWN.

That's right. It's not just publishing that has foundations crumbling, it's every kind of business there is from autos to construction, and even Old Time Religion revivals.

Politically, we're all blaming it on the financial industry and its business model that collapsed in 2008 (the whole idea of distributing risk via derivative securities; mortgages that were securitized and sold abroad -- that's a business model of how to make money off of selling to people who can't afford to buy what you're selling).

But we, as writers, have to look at a much bigger picture here. The reason the financial industry was able to grow the securitization business model so explosively lies way outside the financial industry. Their brilliant idea for a business model was possible because of the computerization of the whole world. They did it all by computer! (and didn't spend the extra money necessary to figure out how to de-construct those securities when parts of the mortgages failed or needed refinancing.)

The people in the finance industry who know they operate on a business model, and are artistically creative enough to create new business models created one -- and it didn't work well at its first big test.

But it was a brilliant piece of creative work, inventing a CHUTE to deliver their PRODUCT to a hungry MARKET. They built a new mechanism to deliver product, and they built it out of the newest high-tech computerized materials.

Take GM and Chrysler as an example of the opposite phenomenon. They didn't change their bussiness model to a computerized high tech model fast enough -- by the time they put any real effort into tech, they were so far behind the times that at the first titanic blow from outside their industry, they collapsed.

Publishing is in the same situation. The biggest publishers still insist on doing business on paper, and even demand printed manuscripts. Hollywood script submissions are also still somewhat skewed toward paper copies!

The EPIC list ( http://www.epicauthors.com/links.html ) is always abuzz with the issues of e-book reading devices and e-publishing, new publishing companies, specific genre requirements, and advice to authors on how to promote your latest book from a small, independent e-publisher.

As a reviewer, I can say that some (maybe a lot) of these e-books are easily as well crafted as anything Manhattan is publishing in Mass Market. But they're usually aimed at a much narrower, smaller market.

But this is changing too, and changing fast. Soon, the e-book will be the mass market "chute" to put your product down, and paper books will be for narrow, specialty markets.

Today, however, the Mass Market paperback sells more copies of any given title than e-books do.

If you want your art to reach a broad market, you have to understand what it means "Mass Market" -- and how that relates to "High Concept" in screenwriting.

Notice the word MARKET in the title of the pocket sized paperback printed on cheap paper that yellows and crumbles in a couple decades or less. (some do have quality paper; you can tell because they cost more and feel heavy in your hand. Those pages will out-last the glue.)

What does it mean, "mass" market? It means HUGE. The Mass Market paperback is designed to be delivered down a CHUTE that has a wide bore and is very long, with many branches.

When you think Market, think of a huge factory making many copies of a thing, trucks and boxcars waiting outside, loading up and chugging off to deliver some of those things to various destinations where they'll be sold.

Think of Henry Ford inventing the assembly line to create cars the mass-market people could afford. He wasn't the first to hit on this concept, but he was the first to apply it to a product people wanted and make it work, the Model T Ford.

The entire innovation of the industrial revolution is based on UNIFORMITY. It's based on ARBITRARY CONVENTIONS. It's based on STANDARDIZATION.

Prior to the industrial revolution, everything was made by hand -- embroidered seat cushions, shoes made by a cobbler to match your own feet, patchwork quilts, rugs on a loom. No two looms or weavers were alike, no two die lots matched even almost, and no two copies of the same item were ever the same!

The business model of the master mason who built buildings, the farrier who shoed horses, the blacksmith who made plough blades and rifles, was based on the individual, specialized, made-to-fit, customized, and truly excellent item. The mastercraftsman sold his items on his reputation for excellence, not uniformity.

There was no such thing as "quality control" and "planned obsolescence" (where the factory puts out a certain percentage of lemons set just below the complaint-tolerance level of the consumer, and designs the object to fail after a certain amount of usage so the customer will buy another one).

The business model was UNIQUENESS + EXCELLENCE.

It became UNIFORMITY + BARELY-GOOD-ENOUGH.

Alvin Toffler wrote a (HC + Mass Market Paperback) non-fiction book in the 1970's called FUTURE SHOCK which also had some sequels that rode on the success of the first one but added little to his message. His message was that the business model was about to shift again, a paradigm shift prompted by the computer age, that would change things nobody at that time was even thinking ever could change.

He was right! He predicted what he called a return to the cottage industry of the customized item -- as opposed to the factory produced uniform item. He predicted that commuting to work in a centralized office would be replaced by telecommuting. He didn't predict the internet, but because of the internet, his predictions have come true.

The E-book publisher is essentially a cottage industry. They employ editors, writers, POD printers, website builders, and billing system such as Paypal, scattered all over the world. And they deliver a customized product, a Niche Product, rather than the Mass Market product.

The film industry has seen the rise of the Indie company producing niche films with craftsmanship worthy of awards. And you all know YouTube! Everyone with a cell phone can make a video to post on YouTube -- though they all don't grab as big an audience.

Toffler's theory was that technology would free us from having to conform ourselves to the median, to accept what the average person wants because the mass market product is cheaper. He predicted that the customized product would be cheaper than the mass market product.

So far, that prediction hasn't happened.

The e-book is not reaching the huge, MASS of the mass market yet.

The BUSSINESS MODEL of "mass" is being chisled away, but it hasn't collapsed yet.

Still, look at the Neilsen numbers on cable news shows --
http://www.nielsenmedia.com/nc/portal/site/Public/menuitem.43afce2fac27e890311ba0a347a062a0/?vgnextoid=9e4df9669fa14010VgnVCM100000880a260aRCRD

Keep in mind that there are about 310 MILLION people in the USA and the typical TV show only draws 23 million or so. Maybe 30-40 million for a big news event.

30 Million out of 300 million is not a MASS MARKET.

We seem to be a fragmented and fragmenting nation, but maybe not. See the article on Facebook and Twitter I've sited near the end of this blog entry.

Toffler's vision is coming true -- technology (900 TV channels, thousands more online sources of entertainment, thousands more e-books per day published than paper books) has shattered the Mass part of the Mass Market. Mass Market paperbacks don't sell nearly what they once did to a much smaller nation (60 Million -- and a product had to reach a third of those to be successful.)

We have more choices and less knowledge of how to make wise choices.

Another of Toffler's predictions is coming to pass. His book was called FUTURE SHOCK because it predicted that the rate of change in the fundamental rules of living, working productively, and making wise choices among products would change faster than the basic human brain can adjust.

Toffler predicted that humans would go into a state of "shock" (being unable to think) because of the pace of change. He based this on the ability to adapt with age. In Medieval times, the methods and wisdom you learned from your father would last you all your life, and still be true when you died of old age.

A cobbler, for example, who knew the best method of dying shoe leather would end his career using that same method and it would still be state-of-the-art, though his grandson might encounter an improvement, but it would only be a slight improvement and it wouldn't shatter the cobbler business model.

Human beings need that kind of stability over their lifetimes. But technology has lengthened lifetimes and it looks like it will lengthen career-lifetimes. Meanwhile, whole industries have come and gone, and our methods of doing everything have been shifted on their foundations by (as Toffler predicted) the computerization of the world.

(and computerization has hardly BEGUN to penetrate all the way through this world)

Those who lived through the industrial revolution "came in off the farm" -- you can't keep 'em down on the farm was the song and slogan. Young people abandoned life on the land for the cities, and went to work in factories where they could make a fortune doing the same thing all day over and over.

And those factories turned out masses of identical objects.

That business model now co-exists (think Neanderthal and Homo sapiens) with the computer driven E-business model.

The E-business model is dissolving the foundation of the Mass Production business model faster than humans can adapt, so some older people still cling to the older model (and that's what collapsed GM) while some younger people grab for any crazy thing that's possible to do with the new tools (which caused the collapse of the financial system).

OK, now what's this image of the world got to teach writers about marketing?

One of the foundation cornerstones of the Mass Market Paperback business model is that authors are never EVER allowed to do their own marketing. In the 1970's, that began to fall away, and today, it's shifted entirely to the other end -- most authors, especially in e-books -- are required to do their own marketing (finance or make YouTube videos, online banner ads, virtual blog tours, and anything they can think of).

Meanwhile, authors aren't paid more to cover the expense of self-marketing.

The mass market business model is tilting dangerously askew because of this. The Mass Market model only works with a market that's massive in size. And with those markets, the publicists hired by the publisher (usually working in-house) do manage to reach reviewers and get buzz started about a book.

Note what Colby Hodge said in her blog entry here
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/when-story-doesnt-work.html

Colby has swerved into a LARGER mass market because it's open to her, Historicals. Mysteries are still big. Westerns are gone. Romance is big, but (Toffler again) Romance is fragmenting. Mysteries are fragmenting too. Customization is slowly replacing Standardization which replaced customization even more slowly!

Since the cost per item is lowered by mass production, more people can afford to buy the item, and thus the item reaches more people in total. 10% hard-core fans made is 10,000 from a book that sells 100,000 copies, and 40,000 from a book that sells 400,000 copies.

How can an artist do this and keep their integrity?

By understanding the concept MARKETING from the inside and then applying that understanding to art.

The writer is essentially a creative person. The solution to every problem in life is to create something new that has never existed before and can't be copied because it is unique.

That is what storytelling is all about -- being unique. Being the only one telling this story. Being the single source for this customized product.

Your story, your characters, your plot, your theme are fresh, new, different, and therefore exciting. You know your story will ignite ravenous hunger for more in your fans, if only they knew you exist and could find your novel.

Writers entering the marketplace today have a unique problem.

"The Marketplace" is standing on a crumbling foundation, tilting worse that the Leaning Tower of Pizza.

New writers today have a career decision to make that no writer has ever had to make before.

You can write for the market that will, I'm sure, replace this one as the high-profit-margin business model, the e-book that is tailored and customized.

You can write for the old, traditional Mass Market that's still reaching a much wider (but diminishing) audience than the e-book and work at a fair but diminishing profit.

In other words, you can try to use the delivery chutes that e-book publishers are beginning to learn to build, or you can try to use the delivery chutes that Mass Market publishers are using.

In either case, before you "have an idea" for a story, you need to study the size and shape of the chute that will deliver it to your market, and you need to study that market, and train your subconscious to "have" ideas that fit the delivery chute you have chosen.

Business people create chutes. Writers fill them.

Some writers have both skill sets, and I've found lately that the currently most successful writers come out of the business community, with a background in commercial art, advertising art, advertising writing, and every aspect of managing a business.

But to be able to do your own, personalized, individualized creative art with its unique aspects intact, your integrity unblemished, and still reach a Mass Market customer base, you must create an idea that is already formulated to fit a commercial market.

Over the last 5 years, I've seen e-book publishers reinventing that uniformity of product. Profit lies in creating large numbers of identical things, so the unit price comes down.

That principle has been eroded but not replaced.

So writers need to learn how to apply wild, unbridled creativity to one part of the product they produce, and uniformity, conformity, and standardization to the other part.

The part of the story that has to "fit down the chute" -- has to be uniform. It has to be exactly like every other story that the chute was designed to deliver to a particular audience.

Imagine, if you swung through the Mall shopping 'till you dropped, and hit up the vending machine for a coke. You feed your bill into the slot and poke the button. Down comes the red can. Pop! Take a swig. IT'S 7-UP!!! Some people would spew it out on passers-by in shock, and scream for their money back. You might be more restrained, but still irked.

Our whole society and all our expectations are configured by standardization, uniformity, conformity.

We buy a coke; we want coke in the can.

It's the same way with novels. Buy a Romance, you want an HEA ending. Buy an Alien Romance, or a Paranormal, you want plenty of complications but satisfaction in the end, anyway.

Buy a Horror Novel, you want to be creeped out big time, right?

Romance, and Horror are two "chutes" that conduct a product from your mind to your reader's mind.

These chutes have been built by businesses with business models, and they depend on the standardization aspect of the product to make it fit down the chute and arrive at the correct audience. The genre formulas are the packaging, the standard aspect of the art. Plots, characterization, story, theme all are standardized so that marketers know what to market your art "as."

If they guess wrong, and package and market 7-Up as Coke, the market will evaporate.

Meanwhile, another part of the fiction market has been thriving on the return to customization. Board games such as Dungeons & Dragons which became all the rage in create-it-yourself fiction rely on a standardization of story and elements, put together in a creative way by a "dungeon master" who marshalls the playing group. The fun is in the group activity, and the push-pull among the players for command of the customization of their stories.

Board games still exist and are enjoyed, but the BUSINESS MODEL now still growing despite the recession is VIDEO-GAMES. The battle of the game-console technology is heating up, and online gaming is huge and growing (World of Warcraft; Second Life etc etc.)

The video and online gaming is an example of the new business model Toffler predicted, which discards standardization. But even in these games, uniform "rules" and standard ways of deploying resources (rolling dice for "powers" for your character) are what make the game go.

If you market a game that doesn't generate its rules via the standard formula, players won't flock to it. They don't want to learn everything from scratch in order to create their own fiction with your game no more than readers want to learn to read all over again just to read your book.
Today more young people play video games than read books.

What's going on there?

Maybe it's not what everyone thinks it is. Maybe it's not that young people don't want to READ. Or can't read.

Maybe it's what Toffler predicted. Customization replacing Standardization. Younger people growing up in the electronic age are embracing the new world their elders can't stretch to accomodate. They are willing to work to customize their tools (phones) and entertainment. They don't want to let someone else do it for them and make it like everyone else wants it to be. They want to make it their own way -- just like us creative artists want to write our own stories our own ways, not to fit the delivery chutes the marketers have built to suit their business model.

The basic human being can accept only so many paradigm shifts in one lifetime, and there have been several huge, basic "throw every skill you have out the window and start from scratch" paradigm shifts in the last 30 years. Everyone today who is over 50 is suffering some kind of FUTURE SHOCK.

Several times in a lifetime is just way too fast for humans.

Those who reject customization (some people have trouble programming their ring tones!) say things like "I prefer the feel of real books" despite the fact that a good e-book reader can customize the font to be more readable to old eyes. But of course, the "quality" (i.e. standardization) of the fiction available in the format can be an issue, too. Amazon's Kindle program is trying to break down that barrier by presenting the same Mass Market fiction as Kindle downloads.

The biggest innovation with Kindle that may reshape our landscape is that they deliver newspapers and magazines via Kindle download that is supposed to be hassle free for the computer-averse. That may save the business model of newspapers and magazines.

One day, the kids born in the 1990's will cling to their video consoles, e-book readers or handheld device despite the availability of something new that their children feel is "better."

How do you market fiction into this changing world?

Do you customize or standardize? Where, in the structure of fiction, does the creative writer get to create?

If you decide you'll have to build your own delivery chute between yourself and your consumer, here is a story about a person Jean Lorrah ran into at MediaWest Convention.

---------FROM JEAN LORRAH via email -------------------------

One of the reasons we do conventions: I just did a podcast with Mark Eller, who became a podcaster to publicize his own books. Here is the information for finding the interview online, though he doesn't know exactly when he will post it:

Bookmark http://www.podfeed.net/podcast/Chronicles+with+Mark+Eller/17298 . Then watch for an episode featuring me. In five minutes I managed to plug simegen.com, lochness-monster.com , tipsonwriting, jeanlorrah.com , the Sime~Gen books, the Nessie books, and the Savage Empire books.

Mark, at age 50, has suddenly fallen into a bunch of connections that have brought about the sale of seven of his books to small presses and his being chosen as a judge for a "reality" TV show on the CW network called The Write Stuff. http://www.thewritestufftv.com/ . The CW is a small network, but it is on most cable systems.

The premise of the show is that writers today have to do a heck of a lot more than writing for their books to succeed, and on the show they will have to demonstrate their abilities to do everything. What they win is a small press single-book contract and a marketing campaign, but who knows? If they get the 30 million viewers that they hope for, and one-thirtieth of them buy the book, it will be a huge best-seller.

It is VERY clear that the winner will not be the best writer, but the cleverest marketer among the contestants. But unfortunately that's what book publishing is today.

---------------END FROM JEAN LORRAH via email -----------------

Now that's an example of a man who is building a new fiction-delivery-chute.

And it's going in the right direction -- MEDIA. Via the podcast which is internet radio, usually voice only but sometimes with video now, niche audiences are being configured for each of thousands of special interests.

The total population of the world is growing fast, and the cost-per-unit of customized product is dropping fast. Where the two trends meet, niche marketing will explode.

Thus we have the call-in talk show done with online radio! And online radio advertising customized for novelists to promote their own work.

---------------FROM A PROMOTIONAL EMAIL ---------------

PIVTR has another new program in its line-up. It's called "Crazy Tuesday" (c) 07.

What's that? What is "Crazy Tuesday?" I'm delighted you asked.

"Crazy Tuesday" (c) 07 takes place on the first Tuesday of each month. Between the hours of 10 to 2 p.m. eastern standard time for $100, an author, playwright, screenwriter, actor/actress, free-lance, independent, publishing company, publicist, agent, the world can promote, market, brand, sell, advertise (whatever is clean and wholesome. PIVTR is a family station!) to get the word out about you and your product.

Contact Lillian for all of the details.

Don't delay. The first Tuesday of July and September are already booked!!

LCauldwell @ internetvoicesradio.com

Let the WORLD know about you!

Check out the website and look around: http://internetvoicesradio.com

----------------END PROMOTIONAL EMAIL---------------------

Web radio is another whole new business-model-busting tech application fragmenting the mass market and the underlying concept of standardization. It's a result of a huge paradigm shift, and many people are just shrugging off web radio as unimportant. It is, however, a harbinger of what is yet to come. (we've barely started on computerizing the world)

The production cost is way down because there's no broadcast antenna, huge airwave license fee, and electric bill. Some simple equipment that's easily available, some software specializing in recordings that can be webcast, a short but steep learning curve, and the talented and determined are in business, building a niche audience for a customized product.

The audiences on web radio are large and growing. Like e-books, the audience size doesn't rival Mass Market media like Cable and Broadcast TV, but like e-books this entertainment delivery system is chiselling away at the foundations of the mass market business model.

That foundation is Standardization. Standardization was developed to reduce unit costs to where the vast majority of people could afford the product if they wanted it.

Cost reduction via technology is making standardization obsolete in certain aspects of product design -- the aspects that the consumer can customize themselves.

Microsoft rose to dominance on standardizing the platform (Windows) and letting developers create applications all of which run on the same command sets and design look.

Their success changed the business model of the computing world that Toffler was familiar with. And yet his predictions are coming true, one by one.

The lesson writers can take away from all this is that success in this churning market depends on standardizing the invisible and the user interface -- letting the consumer customize everything else.

See my post on Web 2.0. The Web concept failed, and it's being patched with customizing tools like RSS feeds, news and social networking aggregators, twitter aggregators, etc.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/11/i-love-web-20.html

For a writer, that means standardize your plot structure then use your creative art to induce the reader to IMAGINE THEIR OWN STORY using your story as a springboard into their own story.

Your product is no longer your own story. In this changing world, your product is fuel for your readers' imagination in ways it never could be before.

And it's all about marketing, not writing talent. The best marketer will win.

Check out this recent news story on Yahoo Tech news

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/nm/20090522/tc_nm/us_summit_social_2
----------quote-----------
And analysts and investors, in search of the next Google-like hit, are paying close attention to the breakneck speed at which Facebook and Twitter are adding new users.

While the popularity of the two social media firms has yet to translate into the kind of revenue-generating machine that Google Inc developed with its search advertising business, some say Facebook and Twitter have become so central to the Internet experience that they are inherently valuable.
...
Facebook grew to 200 million active users in April, less than a year after hitting 100 million users.

----------end-quote--------

Note that 200 million. Check the sizes of the average TV shows in viewers. Small wonder advertisers are abandoning TV -- which can be seen as each hour carries more and more minutes of ads instead of show. They're desperately trying to get enough advertising bucks to keep the shows on the air.

Read that exerpt. Listen to how they think and how they talk. "monetize" "adding new users" "inherently valuable" -- and "internet experience" !!! --

Amusement and Entertainment (which is what novels are) has become an "experience."
Interactive, and most of all customized, experience.

The whole social networking phenomenon is an example of customized entertainment. And it's being made into a mass market product. But the current business model can't figure how to monetize it, and that figuring is indeed being done by people so young they probably never read Alvin Toffler's brilliant bit of futurology, Future Shock.



Toffler was right about so much, chances are the answers are in there.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

Heroes, Finalists and Deadlines...

Daq-Cat, Miss Doozy Kitty and your truly want to extend our deepest appreciation to all heroes, past and present, today as here in the USA, it's Memorial Day: military personnel, law enforcement personnel, emergency medical personnel, emergency veterinary personnel. All those who put their lives on the line for unknown and other unseen others. We salute you, we honor you, we wish you and yours many blessings. We'd not have the life, the freedoms we do today but for your diligence and sacrifices. Thank you.

Shameless BSP: The Prism Award Finalists Are Announced!

Posted with permission:

"Jennette Heikes & Theresa Kovian are pleased to announce and congratulate our finalists in the Prism Contest in alphabetic order:

Dark Paranormal
Immortals: The Redeeming by Jennifer Ashley
Hotter After Midnight by Cynthia Eden
Mona Lisa Craving by Sunny

Erotica
A Mermaid's Kiss by Joey W. Hill
Carnal Desires by Crystal Jordan
Siren Singing by Isabo Kelly

Fantasy
The Dragon Master by Jennifer Ashley w/a Allyson James
Dragonborn by Jade Lee
King of Sword & Sky by C.L. Wilson

Futuristic
Fallen by Claire Delacroix
Moonstruck by Susan Grant
Shades of Dark by Linnea Sinclair

Light Paranormal
La Vida Vampire by Nancy Haddock
The Trouble with Moonlight by Donna MacMeans
Wicked Game by Jeri Smith-Ready

Novella
"The Spacetime Pool" by Catherine Asaro
"Dark Nest" by Leanna Renee Hieber
"Kung Fu Shoes!" in These Boots were Made for Stomping by Jade Lee

Time Travel
Twist by Colby Hodge
Madman's Dance by Jana G. Oliver
A Sexy Time of It by Cara Summers

Young Adult
Cave of Terror by Amber Dawn Bell
CHOSEN: A House of Night Novel by P.C. Cast
Sleepless by Terri Clark

Category winners and rankings, as well as the coveted Prism Statue Award, will be announced on July 16, 2009 in Washington D.C. at RWAR National and Fantasy, Futuristic & Paranormal Chapter at The Gathering.

Jennette Heikes, Co-coordinator for Dark Paranormal, Erotica, Novella & Time Travel

Theresa Kovian. Co-coordinator for Fantasy, Futuristic, Light Paranormal & Young Adult"

What I find so cool on a personal note is that I blurbed (ie: read the manuscript before publication for a quote/opinion) both MOONSTRUCK and FALLEN and totally loved both books!

I'm also jazzed to see Colby Hodge, Jade Lee, Donna MacMeans, Isabo Kelly, Catherine Asaro, C.L. Wilson and Leanne Renee Hieber on the list. Except for Donna, they were all part of either my Intergalactic Bar & Grille party or the SF/F panel at RT this year. Woot!

Now, back to work for me... (that's the deadlines part). ~Linnea

SHADES OF DARK, the sequel to Gabriel’s Ghost, July 2008 from RITA award-winning author, Linnea Sinclair, and Bantam Books: http://www.linneasinclair.com/

Something cascaded lightly through me—a gentling, a suffused glow. If love could be morphed into a physical element, this would be it. It was strength and yet it was vulnerability. It was all-encompassing and yet it was freedom. It was a wall of protection. It was wings of trust and faith.

It was Gabriel Ross Sullivan, answering the questions I couldn’t ask. Not that everything would be okay, but that everything in his power would be done, and we’d face whatever outcomes there were together.

Mixed Metaphors and other inspiration

I meant to take questions... but forgot. My apologies. I've been deeply wrapped up in writing articles for a new authors' marketing and promotion advice website 1stTurningPoint.com

My first three topics were LinkedIn.com, Tips for Creating Buzz, and Online Piracy.

In the course of my peregrinations around the social networks, I saw a mixed metaphor that had originally been used in a business context, and which was being mocked as horrible writing.

"We're skating on thin ice. If we're not careful, we'll end up in hot water."

Being the contrarian and underdog lover that I am, I immediately started to imagine an alien world where the metaphors could work together. It's the moon Europa that is an ice planet with water underneath. Right?

It would only take a submarine volcano...

Actually, we wouldn't have to go to Europa. Imagine a volcano under the Arctic. Poor polar bears. Alas for the Russians if they started to drill for oil in the wrong spot, just to stake a claim.

The other bit of text that going me going was a url that I enjoyed so very much that I had to make a joke on LinkedIn.com .

http://whorepresents.com

Yesterday, I noticed that the punctuation on the url has been changed to http://WhoRepresents.com thereby thwarting a storyline I was considering where my Prince Thor-quentin might visit the offices hoping to acquire a gift to take home to his brother. Actually, it doesn't thwart it, as long as the old url was in use in 1995.


Best wishes for everyone's safety this Memorial Day weekend!

Rowena Cherry
alien romances, futuristic romances

When a story doesn't work

Yes its me, the missing blogger. There are a lot of reasons for my lack of posts, the foremost being that I've been working on historicals lately and its hard for me to think "alien" when I'm back in another century. The other is that my Colby Hodge career has taken a beating lately. I got so far behind in my writing with my dad's illness last year that Colby kind of fell by the wayside. Then she ran out of contract right when the economy tanked. So while I have fans asking for the next books in the Star series, the publisher doesn't want to publish them. Its all about the sales. (But please Zander fans, keep asking. Let the publisher know you want his book.)

So I finished a historical, started the next one and took a look at what was going on in my career and the market. Since my publisher did not want to go with more Star books I wrote up a proposal on another series. A sci/fi heavy post apocolyptic world that would cover three books. It had mech heroes, paranormal heroines, and three different societies all struggling for control. I shopped it around to several different publishers and it got rejected at each one. There was no empathy for the characters. Quite a blow to me, who writes strong character driven stories. Also this market is just not strong enough at the moment. The fan base just is not there. The fans are hard core but the numbers don't support it. While I love the genre, my sales in historicals are four times what I sell in sci-fi.

So what does my failure to sell this series have to do with writing? Stick around for the next several weeks and you'll find out. I'm going to post the proposal, then show you what I did to revamp it for a new and rising trend in today's market.

Jericho by Cindy Holby writing as Colby Hodge

Things are not always what they seem.

Setting: A dark future

There are times in history when progress takes a great leap forward. The twentieth century was such a time. In that century, innumerable discoveries were made that changed the face of the world.

Late in the twenty-first century a synthetic was created called admanium. It was touted that this synthetic could bond with any living tissue. People with missing limbs could have new ones bonded into their skeleton and with the advent of synthetic skin no one would know the difference between the original and the replacement. Further experiments were done to see if the admanium could be used to replace failing organs such as kidneys, the liver, or even the heart but while the substance could bond, it could not replicate the purposes of those organs.

During these experiments another discovery was made… a discovery that changed everything. Admanium displayed the ability to bond with brain cells. Alzheimers and Dementia were no longer a dreaded result of the aging process. Through outside stimulus those that suffered from these diseases were able to live out their lives in a normal way and recall their loved ones.

This led to another discovery. A discovery made by a group heavily involved in researching connectomics which is the wiring of the brain. Researchers could trace the estimated 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses and the human mind became an instrument of great power. It also proved beyond any doubt that the human mind held paranormal capabilities. An International Institute for Paranormal Research was formed with scientists from around the world. They discovered that Admanium administered to subjects with paranormal tendencies could achieve mind control over those who did not possess such talents. When the discovery was made public, the general outcry was one of fear and paranoia instead of joy.

Everyone wanted the power. Nations worried that others may use it against them. Mass hysteria broke out around the world. Paranoia became the norm. War broke out and biological weapons were used. The great cities of the world were decimated and the nations of the world became isolated from each other by circumstance and by choice. The biologics also affected the weather into extremes. The far north became an artic wasteland, earthquakes destroyed everything west of the Rockies and the East coast began at the Appalachian Mountains. Islands in the Caribbean and South Pacific disappeared beneath giant waves, along with Southeast Asia and Japan.

Some people survived because of immunity to the biologics. Others were forever genetically altered. Some sought refuge in the mountains and forests. Others stayed closed to what were once the cities and did what they could to build a new society. In times such as these the strongest take control. The IPR (Institute for Paranormal Research) formed a new society in the Midwestern United States and with new technology developed from the admanium enclosed the surviving generations in a dome. All of the Dome citizens were encouraged to lead peaceful lives through subliminal messaging enhanced by the admanium.

Not everyone went inside the dome. Some of the survivors did not want to be controlled by the IIPR who felt they knew what was best for everyone. There were in the IIPR who thought they should have all the power. Then there were some who just wanted to be left alone.

The dome is run by a ruling council which oversees the administration of the PRISMs. (Paranormal Research Instruments of Subliminal Messaging or PRISMs) The PRISMs are culled from the general population by the IPR to be instruments of the government. In reality they are nothing more than tools, used for their paranormal abilities and attached to the computers that regulate every aspect of life inside the dome. The PRISMs are controlled by the governing body which then make “suggestions” to the PRISMs who in turn use subliminal messaging to keep the population under control. Everyone is happy and everyone is at peace and order is kept in society. The PRISMs have no idea of what they are doing in reality. Due to the mind control that the council holds over them, they live in a dream like state called symlife where they think they are functioning normally. In reality they are kept plugged into the computers where they eventually wither up and die. There are some who hold value and the use of muscle stimulants and intravenous feeding keeps them alive for a while and easy prey for the whims of the council.

Those who do rebel against the council suffer a worse fate. Some are executed. Some, who are deemed to have potential, are reintroduced into society with some alterations made by the admanium. They become servants and are used to work the baser tasks that keep the society running. Others are incorporated into the army after being outfitted with the admanium so that they may better serve the society that they harmed with their criminal acts. All of these have their memories and consciousness erased so that all they know is obeying the orders given to them without thought.

Edmond Swain is part of the ruling council. That is not enough for him. He thinks there should be one person in charge instead of a council. But in order to achieve that goal he needs an edge. He needs a PRISM that is stronger than the others. He begins a quiet search for someone who he can use to accomplish his goal.

Outside the dome people are just trying to survive. They have their own independent society. They till the earth and scrounge for whatever they can find to make life more livable. They have to put up with disease, the elements and the wild beasts that roam the deep forests that have reclaimed the earth. They also have to deal with the lawlessness of the Scrabbers who inhabit the mountains and only attack at night. The so called Scrabbers are descended from those who suffered genetic mutation due to the Great Biologic War.

Those who live ouside believe freedom is worth their struggle to survive. They are free of the whims of the IPR ruling council, except when the council decides their lawlessness needs to be controlled and send their mechanized army to attack and acquire workers for the dome.

Merritt and Dax live outside the dome in the place called The Real. Dax’s father is the leader of the group and hopes that Dax will take over some day. Dax doesn’t think about that now as he is in love with Merritt. He knows there is something special about her and trusts her instincts as she seems to know when trouble is coming their way.

On the day of their wedding the mechs from the dome attack. Everyone scatters from the celebration but the mechs follow only Dax and Merritt. It is as if they are being tracked as they run through the ruins of the former city. Finally they are cornered and Dax is severely injured when he tries to fight them. Merritt is taken and Dax is given over to the mechs to replace the soldier that he killed.

Swain takes Merritt as his PRISM. He alters her memory so that she thinks she is his daughter and the symlife that she lives as she is connected to the master computer is very real. Except for the dreams she has. The dreams of her past life with Dax.

Dax is enhanced with the admanium and incorporated into the mechs. They are all interconnected to each other and to the master computer. It is there that he sees flashes of his past life. His sees images from his life with Merritt and he realizes what has happened to him. His consciousness returns and he rebels and escapes with one thought.

Find Merritt.

He finds help in a Doctor who thinks Swain and the council are committing crimes against humanity. At one time he had been involved with genetic research using admanium. He realized what he was doing was wrong and went into hiding where he helps those who try to escape their fate. Meanwhile the council is after Dax because if it is known that a mech has escaped and the life chosen for him it will bring chaos down upon their society.

Dax finally finds Merritt and takes her away. But Merritt does not know if Dax is real or just a product of her dreams. She does not know which life is truly hers. The one Swain created for her or the one she lived in the Real. Only Dax’s love can bring her back to discover her true self. Then she can help him defeat Swain and the council and show the inhabitants of the Dome that really living life makes it all worth while.

Next week chapter one.

Coming Attractions

Jacqueline Lichtenberg and I are lining up a few very special guests for days that the regulars aren't able to fill.

Look forward to:
David Lee Summers (on Space Pirates)
Cathy Clamp
Rachel Caine on June 12th (on Vampires)


Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry

All Romance Is Alien Romance

At our latest Marriage Encounter meeting, the presenting couple read us an abridged version of THE VELVETEEN RABBIT, the classic story about a stuffed bunny who is made real by a little boy's love. The discussion question focused on moments in our married life when our spouse's love makes us feel "real." Coincidentally, the homily at my niece's wedding this past weekend touched on the same subject, with the message that when love takes us outside of ourselves, we become most truly ourselves. That strikes me as an excellent capsule description of the value of romance novels.

At our best, we make our beloved feel "real" by making him or her the center of our universe. I imagine one of the sharpest losses involved in widowhood must come from no longer being the most important person in the world to one other person. Fortunate widows and widowers continue to enjoy the love of children, friends, or siblings, but those people all have their own lives. It couldn't be the same as having a life partner who creates that feeling of "realness" in a unique way. Romance fiction of all subgenres captures this wonderful experience and allows the reader to relive it in all its freshness with each new story.

To achieve this feeling of being "real," we have to bridge the gulf between our self and another person who is also locked inside his or her own skull. If we are all mysteries to each other, and especially if men are from Mars and women are from Venus, in a sense all romance is "alien romance." By writing about unions between human characters and supernatural entities, mythical creatures, or extraterrestrials, authors make concrete the metaphor of reaching out to the Other that underlies all erotic love no matter how "mundane."

Margaret L. Carter (www.margaretlcarter.com)

The Medium Is The Message

This is a writing lesson in the effect of SETTING on story, plot and character -- i.e. the place of SETTING in storytelling. And this lesson is from a Hollywood producer.

J. Neil Schulman, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Neil_Schulman
the SF writer and producer of the (incredible!!) movie (starring Nichelle Nichols) LADY MAGDELENE'S, sent me an email advertisement with an itinerary for a Cruise titled PSYCHICS AT SEA.

Yes, this is a real ad from a real company, Carnival Cruise.

Schulman's comment on this ad was: Does this sound like a perfect setting for an episode of Monk, Murder She Wrote, Matlock, or what? (for our non-USA residents, these TV shows are cultural icons here. I wish I could give the equivalent in your own culture).

Thus primed, almost salivating, I scrolled down to read the advertisement (I mean, I KNOW Neil and he's really sharp about this stuff) and as I read, INSTANTLY stories began scrolling behind my eyeballs.

This is the effect Blake Snyder (and other screenwriters) label "High Concept." One sentence and you're seeing whole stories. But no two people necessarily see the same stories! It's all ideosyncratic and internal. Novelists must (these days) hit for the highest possible concept for a novel because it's only the high concept novels that get advertising push from publishers! So this is a lesson for all writers.

If you don't have a complete grasp of High Concept, see http://www.blakesnyder.com/2006/02/the-death-of-high-concept/
and read the comment on Blake's post by Sarah Beach which she posted on Feb 9th (not the earlier comment).

Keep the concept of High Concept firmly in mind while you read about this SETTING and note what stories scroll behind your eyeballs.

Your stories might not be Romance, per se. Neil suggested a number of detective mystery characters who would explode into a plot set here. Your character could be from international intrigue, or the Dirty Dozen, a politician, a Pathologist. The setting could include Grand Opera or retired Western actors or any other group with a common interest thematically related to your main character.

Before you open your imagination and read on to see what I thought of, jot down what you think of as you read about this setting. This is a writing exercise, and it's not "just for fun." You could find yourself with a real, genuine, sellable HIGH CONCEPT. Relax and read this.

Here's the advertisement sans graphics:

----------------------

PSYCHICS AT SEA
Cruise on the Carnival Triumph to Canada
Sept 3-7 Labor Day weekend
Presented by Susan Duval Seminars and Utopia Travel

Thursday, Sept 3: Departure mid-morning by private bus from the Doylestown area to the port in NYC. Refreshments will be provided, compliments of Utopia Travel. Upon boarding, get settled in your cabin (complimentary chocolates and wine for everyone!) and have fun exploring the ship. A Meet and Greet Reception with the Psychics will be held in the early evening. Our group will be seated together for dinner, and our wonderful Guest Psychics will join different tables each night, so that you can get to know them personally.

Friday, Sept 4: Fun Day at Sea. Get a private reading and attend a seminar given by one of our outstanding psychics, and enjoy the camaraderie of new friends with similar interests from our area. In addition, you'll be able to get luxurious spa services, sit outside on the deck, go to an art auction, visit the duty-free shops, see a first class stage show, try your luck at the casino, sing karaoke at the piano bar, play mini-golf, take a yoga class, work out at the gym, soak in the whirlpool, get pampered at the hair salon, dine on fabulous gourmet meals in beautiful settings, and dance the night away. There are tons of activities for children and teenagers as well. Bring the family!

Saturday, Sept 5: Stay on-board and relax, or choose one or more shore excursions in charming St John, New Brunswick. Some of the options are: lobster cookout, kayaking on the St. John River, harbor cruise, Bay of Fundy coastal photography class, golfing at Rockwood Country Club, discover the picturesque fishing village of St Martins, St John River cruise, visit a rural farm, or explore Hopewell Rocks (a designated UNESCO biosphere reserve). You may register for your excursion when full payment is made or while you're on board. Another psychic seminar or gallery will be offered in the evening.

Sunday, Sept 6: Another Fun Day at Sea to relax, enjoy the amenities of the cruise ship, receive private readings, and get to know your new friends. A seminar or gallery will be held during the day.

Monday, Sept 7: disembark at 9:30am and take the bus back to the Doylestown area. You'll be back in time for your neighborhood Labor Day picnics in the afternoon!! Brag about your cruise!!
-----------------------------

Schulman is a FILM PRODUCER (and an SF writer). He saw this advertisement and his mind produced stories in PICTURES.

Jot down what pictures you see.

Here's what came to my mind, just instantly off the top of my head, that I wrote back to Schulman.

---------------
Oh, yeahhhh. Among the showman psychics is of course a REAL one.

A showman psychic wants to murder the real one for being too good, but the real one strikes first and throws the showman psychic-murderer overboard into the icy water, or better if it's a Monk ep then the real psychic innoculates the showman psychic with whatever virus is killing people aboard ship, but they're stuck at sea because of a storm that tosses the ship around and makes everyone vomit.

I can just see Jessica Fletcher making friends with a real psychic. Jessica would be very protective, but then find she's protecting the murderer -- but then find it was self-defense.

Monk would catch whatever virus is killing people and solve the crime anyway.

Or better yet, let Monk be onboard under cover posing as a psychic. He's good enough to make the showmen think he's the real thing. But the really REAL psychic catches him and thinks Monk is the murderer because he isn't who he says he is.

Oh, the SETTING can become THE STORY. Nice.

---------------

And Schulman wrote back:

Practically writes itself, doesn't it? :-)

-----------------

And yes, stories that arise from a High Concept do indeed "write themselves."

When you find a story you are writing dies in your hands, it's very possible the real problem lies in the Concept itself.

Or possibly in the Setting.

If you change the setting of your story, you might find everything about the story morphing before your eyes into something that could attract serious advertising money.

You can also refresh a story you're writing by changing the SETTING of only one scene. See Blake Snyder's technique he calls POPE IN THE POOL in SAVE THE CAT! (http://www.blakesnyder.com/ )

"Pope in the Pool" is the technique of setting an expository lump in a place fraught with suspense and cognitive dissonance due to the setting is a very old trick. In writing for the stage, they teach you to sit your main character in a chair centerstage, a chair with a BOMB planted under it.

Blake Snyder names the technique after a scene where two people in an office in the Vatican dialogue at each other about the exposition while the viewer sees through the window that the Pope is swimming in his private pool. And you can't take your eyes off the Pope because you're wondering what he's wearing, or not wearing and whether someone else will notice. Meanwhile, you learn all this important stuff about the story. A "Pope In The Pool" technique can be worked into almost any story, including narrative.

The bomb and fuse gimmick is the suspense image and it can work if done literally, but stands for any EVENT the viewer will anticipate while watching a clock (fuse) tick off the seconds until the event HITS the characters who will be surprised and have to react.

Notice both the bomb and the pool are SUSPENSE techniques, but they are VISUAL. Even in narrative, go for the VISUAL. Use the reader's imagination to evoke the image by reference to the SETTING. (Pope = Vatican)

What the bomb is and what the fuse is can be derived from the SETTING, either the setting for this whole story, or the setting for this particular scene.

The artistically appropriate suspense mechanism will leap out at you once you've selected the correct SETTING for your story.

Note how Schulman was thinking (not what he thought, but HOW he arrived at the thought).

Here's a setting, PSYCHIC CRUISE. What interesting character do we know who would have an adventure on a Cruise? And he thought of a couple of well known TV "characters" who have done shows on cruise boats (BUT THIS IS A PSYCHIC CRUISE).

But you should think of the characters who've been floating around in your own mind for a while. Characters you know well. Then think of a theme for the Cruise (or Dude Ranch expedition, safari, whatever) that would be the last place on earth you'd ever be able to drag that character (conflict is the essence of story!) Go for high contrast here.

Neither Monk nor Fletcher would normally choose to go on a psychic cruise. So immediately, I thought of what would bring each of these characters to this cruise and added my usual SF twist (the unthinkable is in fact true - lump it - that's SF's prime mechanism).

You know the "formula" of the Monk Episode, and the Murder She Wrote Episode. If you've seen 5 or so episodes of either show, you KNOW that formula. Some of those episodes may be available online.

So given the SETTING, and a CHARACTER, and given a plot-structure, the whole story unreels before your eyes. That's what Concept does.

Now, take that SETTING of the Psychic Cruise, pick a character you've got bouncing around in your head or about whom you've been writing and choose a plot-structure you've mastered.

Put them all together and write an OUTLINE of a story (or 3 stories).

Can anyone provide the URL of the posts where I've discussed outlining?

Now do the exercise again with another specialized group on a Theme Cruise (there was once a Star Trek Cruise with the stars of the show -- pick a theme of your own.) Note you can also do this in space, cruising across the galaxy with various species in confined quarters.

Some scriptwriting books call this a BOTTLE -- you bottle-up the characters, confining them. That creates CONFLICT that must RESOLVE within the bottle, a conflict that wouldn't exist were it not for the bottle.

Then do it again, trying to inject all the potential for VISUALS that Schulman saw in this advertisement for a Psychic Cruise.

Perhaps you want to start by writing the galactic advertisement.

That's the exercise, but it could produce something that's actually sellable. In that case, don't post it anywhere. Develope it yourself. But if you spin off useless material as I did, show us what you produced on editingcircle.blogspot.com in the comments section.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.slantedconcept.com/
http://www.simegen.com/jl/
http://twitter.com/JLichtenberg

So what's Dock Five really like?

One of the most fun, writerly things is inventing and describing alien (as in, not where you're sitting right now) settings and places in SF/SFR books. One of the toughtest writerly things is inventing and describing alien settings and places in SF/SFR books.

Mugwump much, Linnea?

One of the things I've wondered about since I was a wee kidling (and yeah, I really did think about this stuff) is whether the color I deem to be "red" is the color you see. That is, I know we have an agreed upon experience called "this is the color red" but do my eyes and brain process and interpret that color the same way you do? We've been told that cats and dogs only see in shades of gray. So if I asked Daq-cat to point out something "red" (ie: the cover of SHADES OF DARK), though we both would agree the cover was red, what he sees is different than what I see. His "red" would be, we're told, a shade of gray. Mine is, well, what I call "red." (And who's to say I'm right and he's wrong?)

Lost yet?

Have another cup of coffee.

I think about things like that when I write my settings, my worlds, my ships. Which is why I get into arguments with myself as to how much to describe in some level of detail, and how much to describe in concept and let you all come to your own interpretations. Especially when I'm describing or dealing with something that has no exact counterpart in our current experience.

So what is Dock Five--that seedy, disreputable conglomeration of mining rafts in deep space somwhere near the Aldan-Baris border--really like? What is the Boru Karn, Sully's personal ship, really like? Is Admiral Mack's Cirrus One Station the same as Chaz Bergren's Moabar Station? Well, no. Cirrus One has parrots. But other than that, does Linnea have a stock space station she drops into each story?

In my mind, no, oddly enough. My mind's eye sees Moabar Station and Dock Five and Cirrus One in completely different colors and styles. To a great extent, it's as if I drop myself into my character's skin and see his world exactly as he sees it. (Which adds another layer of personal interpretation...oy!). But all--since I'm still me--have to have a constant basis of information and experience.

For me it's cruise ships. As many of you know, that's been an addiction of mine for several decades. The feeling of being isolated, dependent and yet with pretty much everything you need (including a full hospital) is something I've drawn from being on cruise ships. But what if my reader has never been on a cruise ship, or never served on a naval vessel? What if my reader is a land-locked Kansas farm-dwelling reader from a long line of land-locked Kansas farmers?

How do I make them understand what Dock Five or the Boru Karn is really like?

I think this is one of the problems non-SF readers have with coming in to SF or SFR: this flow into and acceptance of the never-experienced. Reading SFF trains the mind to reach for analogies and find a workable interpretation--even if perhaps that interpretation isn't what the author had in mind. SFF readers don't mind not fully getting everything at first. They're willing to go along for the ride and figure it out as it happens.

But if a reader's experience on the pages has been predominantly the known and familiar: a supermarket, a television, a Chevrolet pick-up, it can require a little more work, a little more "suspension of disbelief" to envision the bridge of a starship. I see this happening most often when my books are reviewed by a romance site and a reviewer who admits s/he's never read SF before or much SF. The reviewer may note: loved the book but wish Sinclair added more description of the starship bridge. The same book reviewed by an SF or paranormal romance site will state: loved the book and her descriptions were so spot-on I felt as if I were there!

One of the keys, obviously, is that everything is experienced through the characters. But keep in mind that to my characters--other than Theo Petrakos in The Down Home Zombie Blues--their "normal" is our "unreal." Starship bridges, faster-than-light travel, Stolorths, telepathic furzels and bio-cybes are their norm.

So what is Dock Five really like? It's seedy, run-down, cramped and smelly. Yet it functions; for the most part, its inhabitants aren't in fear of their lives from the facility (the denizens are another matter). Is it the same as a back-alley in some derelict New York City neighborhood? If you want it to be, sure. But it's different that that. For one thing, there's no sky. And you can't eventually run away from the area--there's really no escape (unless you can breathe vacuum). Dock Five--to me--has something of the feel and smell of subways tunnels. A factory or warehouse basement. But without the brick/stone moldy smell. It's all metallic. It's small enough to be familiar to its inhabitants (something that makes them feel secure) but large enough and, moreover, convoluted enough in design to make getting lost a very real possibility. (corridor image from DAZ3D)

A maze? Kinda sorta. But not quite.

It goes back to whether or not the red I see is the red you see.

So how much do you bring your own experiences into what you read, and how much are you willing to let the author take you on an unfamiliar journey?

~Linnea

SHADES OF DARK, the sequel to Gabriel’s Ghost, July 2008 from RITA award-winning author, Linnea Sinclair, and Bantam Books: http://www.linneasinclair.com/

The Karn jerked hard, alarms screaming in triplicate, overload warnings flashing. The grating sound of metal wrenching echoed off the bulkheads. Snapped power lines whipped past the front viewport as something thumped, hard, and something else thudded, once, twice. The ship lurched then we were thrown sideways, my armrest catching me in the ribs in spite of my safety straps.

“Full shields!” I said hoarsely. God damn, that hurt. “Verno, don’t let her spin. Marsh, crank those sublights higher.”

We dove away from station—a hideously ugly departure. Narfial controllers cursed the Fair Jeffa, assuring us the freighter was back on course and was never a threat to us at dock.

“Bite my ass,” Sully intoned.

Star Trek 2009

Yes I am a total Trekkie. I admit it. I was so enraptured with Star Trek that my posse and I pretended to be the cast. And yes I was Captain Kirk. We were also talking Trek. We were so outrageous about it that the "cool" members of our girl scout troop used us as an example of how geeky can you get. I have to laugh at that now. After all Star Trek is still around and I did get published in the genre. And I wouldn't change my geekdom for anything. It made me who I am today and fed my imagination. I even wrote fan fic before fan fic was cool.

So imagine my excitement at another Trek movie. With a young hot cast who did not fail to give tribute to the original players. The movie was everything I could want and more. Chris Pine was appropriately rebellious yet managed to laugh at himself. Zachary Quinto gave Spock a sexiness that was too die for. I won't give that secret away, lets just say he "smoldered" And the rest of the cast was just perfect. Sulu's tribute to George Takei's fencing scene, Karl Urban channeling Bones (Was anyone else skeptical at that casting decision? I now bow down to whoever made that decision and say awesome!) Uhura's mysteriousness and Chekov's accent were spot on. and Scotty. I couldn't wait to hear him say..."I'm giving her all she's got!"

Please powers that be, tell me there will be more. As for me, I'm seeing it again this week and can't wait for the DVD release. Santa, please put it in my stocking so I can once more sink into Trek bliss.

Can you tell I loved it?

Sequel Trouble

If you have a question or topic you'd like addressed, please post it in a comment, and we'll try to help.

Lisa writes:

I might want to get going on Book 2. But knowing how much to repeat from Book 1 is becoming a bit of a struggle.

Getting going on Book 2 is a fabulous strategy. When I was doing the Unpubbed contest circuit, I noticed that the authors who were entering two titles at the same time seemed to do much better... in that they retired much sooner from the lists, and I infer that they made sales.


How much to repeat... is an important balance when you've built an alien world, and yet every book in the series has to be a stand-alone.

When I was writing Insufficient Mating Material (sequel to Forced Mate), my editor Alicia Condon suggested that I ought to take J K Rowling as my role model as regards backstory telling.

If course, I was not going get the page count or the ink. So, I spent a delightful summer acquainting myself with Harry Potter, and trying to extrapolate proportions for "potted" versions of my own backstory. (Bad pun. Couldn't resist. Sorry!)


Here's my take: (Somewhat repetitive)

1. Break any rule of thumb rather than bore your reader.

2. Avoid info dumps at all costs. (Six lines of explanation is more than enough.)

3. On any given page, tell the reader only what she absolutely must know in order to understand the current action, or rules of your alien world.

4. Delay telling as much as you can of the back story.

5. Reunions of beloved characters from the previous book are fun for your established readers, but not so much for someone coming cold to Book 2, not having read Book 1, so any cameo appearances must be meaningful and advance the new story.

6. Use family trees, charts, maps with annotations as creative and visually different techniques for communicating backstory, who's who info etc.

7. Do not rely on being able to use footnotes. Some editors will be nervous about the possibility of the printer being unable to line them up.

8. "Dear Reader" letters in the Front Matter are a possibility, but frequently are skipped by the very reader you wanted to bring up to speed.

9. Prologues ought to be short, but can be very useful and entertaining. A great example would be the J K Rowling scene where the Minister of Magic is obliged to brief the British Prime Minister.

10. Consider putting a fresh spin on the backstory by having someone else relate it... I like to remember that "Summer Lovin'" duet from Grease where the Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta characters gave different accounts of a sweet summer romance.

11. My personal favorite backstory comunicator is my own Grievous. A "Greek Chorus" character is extremely useful. Or an employee who habitually covers his backside by making absolutely sure he understands his orders.


What have I missed?

Rowena Cherry

Twenty Five Free Ways To Buzz A Book

My grandmother on the distaff side used to say, "If you've nothing nice to say, don't say anything..." Switch "nice" for "helpful" and you have my current philosophy.

I've recently been invited to become a contributing member of the teaching blog "1st Turning Point", which got me thinking about what I have to offer (or pay forward), and I took a look at a "25 Ways to Promo" list which I assembled a while back. I'm astonished how important Amazon seemed three years ago. Now... I think my old list is out of date. So here's my new 25 point "To Do" list.

All authors for the purpose of this article will be considered female. (No sexism intended).

#1. Help the search engines find her. Why? Even if you know where to find your alien romance writing friend, her blog, and her books, “hits” help. The more visitors the search engine spiders find, the more priority the author's website gets. So: Google her. Ask Jeeves about her. Dogpile her. A9 search her. Use Alexa. Try a Yahoo search. Blog search. Search on Technorati. Even better, set up a Google Alert for her name, also common misspellings of her name, and for her book titles.

#2. Having “Searched” or been "Alerted", Visit… her website; blogs; author pages. If you may comment, do so. Everyone who takes the time to blog or post content is grateful when visitors comment. Human nature leads more people to read a post that has received a lot of comments.

#3 Follow. Favorite. Share. Google's Blogger, Twitter, Facebook "Pages", Squidoo lenses, You Tube videos and more allow you to become a follower or a fan. Do so. Connect wherever you can. It's good for both of you, because follower/fan photos show up.

#4 Click to read (and rate) any reviews she has written, or Lists she has set up. These days, anyone can make an EssentiaList on Barnes and Noble.com, a Listmania on Amazon.com, a Top Ten list on Chapters.Indigo.ca, also Listopia on GoodReads.com/ If you like her reviews or lists, click Helpful.

#5. If you see a good review of a book you've enjoyed —on any bookselling site that allows customers and visitors to comment on reviews-- click Helpful if it truly is a helpful review. Votes help both the reviewer and the author.

#6. Tag her books wherever you can. Amazon isn't the only place (Amazon isn't even one site… there's Amazon.ca, Amazon.uk, Amazon.de etc etc) Many book selling sites encourage readers to tag.

What is a tag? It's a search term that a reader might be using to find a type of book she likes, when she is looking for a new author. Some tags might be "Romance", "Fantasy", "Mystery", "Shapeshifter", "Georgian Romance", "Humor" or "Space Opera".

#7. When you are on an admired author's Amazon book page, click on links to:
Put it on your wish list, it’s extra, free advertising for the book. Tell a friend. Scroll down the book page to Tag this product. Or make a search suggestion).

#8. Join in the Customer/Reader discussions on her book page, or on the forums. Ask a question. Start a discussion. Hundreds of eyeballs scan the discussions on Barnes and Noble bookclubs. The search engines pick up on the discussions. The longer a discussion keeps going, the better the PR buzz for your friend. This does not just apply to Amazon and B&N. Discussion anywhere is "buzz".

#9. Review her book… Most people know that a customer can write a review on Amazon.com. There's a purchase requirement with Amazon (and I think with Barnes and Noble, too). However, many sites don't require a reader to have bought a book from them in order to post a review: GoodReads.com, Shelfari.com, LibraryThing.com, E-Bay, Powells, FlipKart, We-Read (on Facebook), NexTag etc etc.

#10. Smak her. Have you ever noticed the "Add This" or "Share" or "Recommend" widgets on online pages and on You Tube? If you think your author friend's blog, or news about her is interesting, syndicate the news to Digg It, Reddit, Technorati, Stumble Upon, Furl and as many of the other 40 or so sites as you have time and energy for. It's self promo when she does it. It's news when someone else does it.

Smak is SmakNews.com. News for women, posted by women.

#11. If the author has a reminder on a public calendar (Amazon has one, other sites have the function, too) for a booksigning near you, click on Remind Me Too. Booksignings are nerve-racking. Support is always appreciated, even if you don’t buy a book.

#12. If she lists an "Event", which one can on Facebook, GoodReads, and too many other places to mention, be sure to RSVP with a kind comment about the book.

#13. Make her a top friend on MySpace, Bebo etc, Give her book cover image as a "gift" on Facebook, with her permission, make her cover into a widget or tile it as a background, or keep it on the top page of your Shelfari/GoodReads/MyB&N display of what you are reading.

#14. If you have a MySpace page or Bebo.com, or Twitters, or Clasmates.com, or facebook.com, or theyack.com (and if you don’t, but really want to help, get one… it’s free) invite your author friends to be your friends there. Write a bulletin about your friend or her book. Add a comment on their profile page’s comments section. Your comment is their opportunity to say something about their book without the appearance of soliciting. Review their book on your MySpace blog. Or on You Tube!

#15. If her publisher has a forum, join it and ask her questions. For instance, Dorchester Publishing (home of Leisure and LoveSpell authors) has http://forums.dorchesterpub.com/

Again, your comment will be seen by hundreds, if not thousands, and it will give your friend a reason to post something interesting and quotable about her book without seeming to be self-promoting.

#16. If you have a blog or website, (and you should always secure your own domain name before you become famous yourself) publicize your friend’s upcoming signings/author talks/workshops on your blog. Mention her website URL. Link to your author friend’s website or blog on yours. Put her book as a 'must read' on your own site, or in your own newsletter. Have a list of links to authors you like, and blogs you enjoy.

#17. If you belong to readers’ group sites, or book chat sites, or special interest sites, post what you are reading. Plugs never hurt. These are also picked up on RSS feeds and the search engines.

#18. Join your favorite author’s yahoo group, let her know where you’ve seen her book in stores, or where you’ve seen discussions of her book, or reviews of her book.

#19. Drop in on her online chats to say how you enjoyed her book. Supportive friends at chats are cool because chats can be chaotic, and typing answers takes time.

#20. Tweet on Twitter about how much you are enjoying the book. Retweet or reply to any comments you see that promote the book, or the author.

#21. Offer to take a bunch of her bookmarks to conventions, or conferences, and make sure they are put in goodie bags, or on promo tables. Or simply visit her table at a convention, and sign up for her newsletter, or pick up her bookmark and tell someone else how good the book is. Offer to slip her bookmarks into your own correspondence when you pay bills, taxes, etc.

#22. Instead of quoting Goethe in your sig file, try quoting a line from your friend’s blurb in the week of her launch.

#23. Ask for her book in your local library. If they don't have it, maybe they will order a copy. If the library won't do that, ask if they would enter the book in their system if the author were to donate a copy to them. Once a book is in one library's system, it gets into the database for other libraries.

#24. If you see your favorite author’s books in a supermarket or bookstore: face her books (if there is room), turn one so the cover shows. Tell store personnel how much you like that book, or that the author is local. If you don’t see her books, especially when they ought to be there, ask about them.

#25. If you are connected on LinkedIn.com and your author friend is listed as "Author" or "Freelance Writer" or similar, consider "recommending her" on the strength of her writing. Recommendations on LinkedIn are intended to be for professional purposes.


Bonus Tip:
If you are an author buy colleagues' autographed books from them at booksignings to use in your own giveaways instead of always giving away your own books.


copyright: Rowena Cherry
http://www.rowenacherry.com



Appearing today on Keta's Keep

Worst Rejections

Not long ago I read a lively blog thread on “worst rejections,” a topic productive of endless reminiscence and speculation. Have you received rejections that baffled you with their ambiguity and cluelessness? Or, worse yet, an implicit rejection in the form of a requested submission being completely ignored?

Very early in my attempt at a writing career, I mailed a follow-up query about a story I’d sent to a small magazine and got a reply to the effect of, “all unsolicited manuscripts have been returned.” What the heck did that mean? All the submissions were so inferior they were rejected in disgust? The magazine was overstocked and therefore automatically returned all manuscripts? They were currently closed?

My two most baffling rejections came from agents. When first trying to sell my werewolf novel SHADOW OF THE BEAST, I sent the prologue and synopsis to an agent who then requested the full manuscript. She eventually rejected the novel on the grounds that a book should begin with something “important” happening. I thought, “Good grief, it starts with both of the heroine’s siblings being killed by a feral animal!” I later realized I’d made a newbie mistake in not including the prologue because the agent already had it. By the time she got the rest of the book, she must have forgotten all about the prologue and thought the story started with the heroine catching a bus to work.

My other most peculiar (and exasperating) agent rejection followed an appointment at the 2000 RWA con. I’d pitched a vampire romance and made it perfectly clear that paranormal romance was the only kind I wanted to write. The agent asked to see the partial. A few months later, she rejected the novel because—it was “too paranormal” for her!

Do you have any provocative or puzzling tales from the rejection trenches?

Margaret L. Carter (www.margaretlcarter.com)

Urban Fantasy Job Hunting

The May 2009 issue of LOCUS, the newspaper of science fiction and fantasy, now (since it was sold to a professional publisher,) billed as "The Magazine of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Field," is devoted to Urban Fantasy.

http://www.locusmag.com/ is their online site.

I've written here before about the shift in popularity away from SF and toward Fantasy, which is allowing the development of the Paranormal Romance and SF Romance field. So, in the context of the release of the new Star Trek movie, let's talk a little about what Romance readers can expect and what writers can provide for them.

This is an exercise in worldbuilding by using a "connect the dots" technique on what we often term "the real world."

So here are some dots.

I've started to get the copies of Business Week that I was forced to spend airline miles on. The first issue is the May 11, 2009 issue. Putting Locus together with Business Week (and later with a NEWSWEEK article on Star Trek we'll get to later) started my mind percolating.

So let's think about choosing your background for your story in such a way that it excites readers, gets their minds percolating in a pleasurable way. That's what SF does -- makes you think, shows you how to think but not what to think.

You want to create a background that makes your reader anticipate a good read, an experience "just like" the latest book they loved, but different, unique and especially yours. You want your readers to memorize your byline and search the world for MORE of your stuff.

To do that, you have to pull thousands of little details together, details lurking in the background, or just off the edge of your potential reader's peripheral vision.

How do you do that? You read eclectically, often in a way that appears to your family, randomly! You collect a mental store of trivia others have never heard of.

If wide reading on many subjects repells you, you probably aren't going to be a fiction writer (maybe non-fiction in one field?) If trivia doesn't grip you, then you probably should look for another line of work. But assuming you think you have a few novels in you, think about two nearly mutually exclusive sources such as Business Week and Locus in one breath, then think BACKGROUND, and even "backstory."

Or if you're into film writing, think SET PIECE. And SETTING.

How does a writer cradle a ho-hum-yawn-not-again plotted Romance in a background that makes that old story new again?

You must do that because there really aren't that many stories, or or plots, or that many Romances either.

What hooks readers is how these particular, very individualistic characters adjust themselves to the harsh world they must live in, and still manage to nurture deep, rich and intimate Relationships.

Writers seem to be born with characters yelling in their heads, "TELL MY STORY NEXT!" I've seen 4 year olds do it with blunt crayons! Characters are often innate traits of writers. (there are exceptions; Hal Clement was one such. The hero of his novels was always the World and the Science. The characters just investigated and learned how the science works.)

But backgrounds, now there is where writers can get wildly creative if they have a big enough store of trivia.

Note how the 4 year old with blunt crayons always chooses a background they know.

As an adult, you need to tell your story against a background you know, too, but it does not (and perhaps even should not) have to be some place you have been, or are familiar with, such as the Trek Universe worked over so well by fan writers (like me and my Kraith Universe ( http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/kraith/ )).

Or it can be someplace you just make up or imagine as the creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, imagined his Galaxy.

Or that place you imagine can be right here on earth, a place a lot of people (even your potential readers) have been or seen on TV ( 90210 for example).

In my August 2009 review column (which will likely be posted to the web for free reading in September 2009) I reviewed an international intrigue thriller that's likely to be a movie soon titled THE INCREMENT.

http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2009/ (scroll down to August and you'll see the book cover -- that's where the review links will be).

THE INCREMENT

Or see my review here:
http://www.amazon.com/Increment-Novel-David-Ignatius/product-reviews/0393065049/ref=cm_cr_pr_link_3?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&pageNumber=3

The author of THE INCREMENT, David Ignatius, says in his comments that though the book is partly set in Iran, and though he's actually been there, THIS IRAN is totally imaginary. He didn't say it was an alternate-reality fantasy world, likely because the marketing department would scream "LIMITING THE AUDIENCE" -- but that's actually what this book is and does.

Yet the new Star Trek movie is billed as "alternate universe" to the one we originally saw on TV and its successors, just as Kraith is an "alternate universe" to ST:TOS.

So that means THE INCREMENT is an URBAN FANTASY marketed as a contemporary international intrigue thriller and it even has some intricate relationships, though I wouldn't call it a Romance. A little re-writing and it could easily have been a Romance!

But it's being marketed at the top of the marketing pyramid with lots of publicity money behind it -- likely because it's not being marketed as what it really is, an Urban Fantasy!

OK, so how would a Paranormal Romance Writer follow in David Ignatius's illustrious footsteps? Of course if I really knew for sure, I'd have done that by now! But let's think about how it might be done.

START WITH TWO STEPS AND CONNECT THE DOTS:

1. Note via Locus that "Urban Fantasy" has begun to surface in a big way. I've been talking about BUFFY and other TV shows like REAPER and SUPERNATURAL (see my blog post here http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/04/puzzle-of-romance.html ) and the DRESDEN FILES (which I reviewed another novel from in the forthcoming October Issue -- you can see all my 2009 picks at http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2009/ ) and Locus is surveying a whole lot more. It's a trend.

2. NOTE via Business Week that the general media is now admitting but dancing around something SF writers have talked about since at least the 1950's -- probably much earlier but I haven't time to research it. I'll tell you about it below.

THEN REMEMBER my column here last week
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/writing-tips-tweets.html

where I talked about an emerging trend of using Tech to solve problems created by Tech.

Now, #2 above -- the BUSINESS WEEK headline on the cover, lower left corner, said THE U.S. HAS 3 MILLION JOB OPENINGS; "Why that may NOT be good news for the economy."

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_19/b4130040117561.htm

QUOTES FROM BUSINESS WEEK
-------------------

"...with 13 million people unemployed, there are approximately 3 million jobs that employers are actively recruiting for but so far have been unable to fill. ... People thrown out of shrinking sectors such as construction, finance, and retail lack the skills and training for openings in growing fields including education, accounting, health care, and government."
...
"The U. S. economy has changed dramatically over the past couple of years-- faster, it seems than the workforce can adapt. The evidence is clear in an underappreciated report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics known as JOLTS, for Job Openings & Labor Turnover Survey, which has been issued monthly since December 2000."

--------------------------

Now doesn't that depict a "harsh" world for characters to find meaningful relationships in?

All right, so let's hunt up some more dots to connect into this picture.

I often hear Bernanke's testimony before congress as I'm cooking because I have a TV I can see from the kitchen. I've heard him and Greenspan talking about retraining people for the new jobs of the 21st century -- and that all America has to do is pour money into community colleges to retrain our workforce.

I think it's a good thing that Obama's "stimulus" allocates money for community college retraining of adults project. Obama made a speech on retraining the workforce on Friday May 8, 2009. That WILL work for a lot of people and save families and lives and children's futures, not to mention the whole USA economy. It's a good thing, and something we need to do at any cost.

BUT.

And it's a great big but.

Read the article titled HELP WANTED in the May 11, 2009 issue of Business Week http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_19/b4130040117561.htm

Now think real hard. What is actually going on in this turbulent and bewildering shift in employment. Remember how I talked about the wireless connection for digital picture frames last week
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/writing-tips-tweets.html

Another trend, solving tech problems by ladling on more tech. But the picture frames solve the problem of the anti-tech grandma you want to show your children to.

The "smart" gadget, smart machine trend tells you something. Replacing computers, you have a smart-phone with a camera and web access. They put chips in cars now -- you almost hardly have to drive them anymore! Corner too fast, it levels out. Get too close to a bumper, the chip stops the car (OK, I can't afford such a high end car, but my first response is I don't want that! I want to be in control of my vehicle! So maybe I'm becoming anti-tech.)

But it's a trend. Smart machines, not monstrous computers you have to be a genius to keep running!

What is going on here?

Our society has hit some kind of limit that Congress and the Fed and others "in charge" either don't recognize or can't admit exists for political reasons.

Dig back into your pile of trivia stored in your mind. Do you remember why 100 is the AVERAGE IQ?

OK, IQ tests are rigged to reward people of a certain cultural background, but all that aside, the IQ test is supposed to measure not what you know but how fast you can learn. They've been tweaking the test to eliminate racial bias and so on; it's probably still not very good, but it's good for statistics.

Always remember statistics can tell you very accurately how large populations behave, but DO NOT WORK IN REVERSE. They can't tell you a thing about any given individual in that population! The math isn't designed to work in reverse!

But IQ tests when aggregated can tell you about the characteristics of millions of people, and predict the behavior of that population with high accuracy.

100 is the average because about half the people in the world score below 100 while half score above.

Scroll back and read what I said above about WRITERS. We're eclectic readers and collectors of vast piles of trivia. Why? Not because we're a whole lot smarter (IQ wise) than others, but because we get a pleasure hit out of "dabbling" in anything and everything. We're attracted to what we don't know.

It's more an attitude or character trait than a measure of learning ability, but as a group we tend to maximize whatever natural learning ability we might have. We perform at possibly over 90% of our personal potential for learning, while MOST people are lucky to use half what they were born with.

Marion Zimmer Bradley often said anyone who can write a literate sentence can learn to write fiction. So I'm not saying writers, per se, are extra-high intelligence (thought some, like Isaac Asimov, are/were). But writers are good at finding patterns in trivia! (I can't now recall if I talked about pattern recognition in this aliendjinnromance blog or in my review column, but some of you will remember that discussion.)

So here's a pattern from the dots.

Long ago, SF writers started depicting a future civilization when half or more of the people lived on the public dole (welfare).

Why?

In some novels it was because it really didn't take so many people to run the world, produce food, clothing, shelter, entertainment and luxuries for everyone. Machines (maybe robots) did most of the work, and the rest of us loafed. ( PBS NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT has done a week's worth of segments on household robots being developed in Japan that do laundry, dishes, & cleaning! By 2020 they'll be on the market.)

In other novels, the world was depicted pretty close to what I'm seeing in this Business Week article -- and possibly also in the Locus issue.

Business Week is saying essentially that though we have massive excess "workers" employers simply CAN'T fill jobs.

Greenspan and Bernanke (and now Obama) are always talking about solving that problem by simply retraining the work force. But employers have found that's getting to be less and less possible.

According to Business Week, retraining older workers has worked pretty well in Germany where the government provides a part of a new worker's salary for the first year so the employer can "retrain" them to what they need. But employers in Germany are quoted as pointing out that they need that government assistance because "you never know what'll happen" when you hire "someone."

That might be a way of saying without saying the extremely politically incorrect observation I'm making. (controversial or "edgy" premises sell large numbers of books!)

As tech progresses, it takes a higher and higher IQ to be able to learn the jobs needed to produce the dumbed-down tech like wireless picture frames.

The jobs that are being produced that really pay well are jobs that require an IQ above 100 to learn even if not to do on a day to day basis. Maybe in 10 years, that'll be 110 to learn and 105 to do daily.

Our workforce lacks the intelligence to be able to do the jobs we need done.

That's not a property of our culture or civilization or society. It's a property of the human brain -- but as I've pointed out in a previous blog post here, the human brain is mutable. As long as you keep requiring it to adapt, it will keep adapting. In older people, that adaptability wanes, but pushed hard you can get some adaptation. But not enough to make an IQ 98 person at age 12 into an IQ 105 person at age 55.

The jobs we need done require higher IQ than average to learn, and by definition you can't have more than half the people above average! (In SF though, you might be able to raise that average, which was done so many times in SF novels in the 1950's it became an unpublishable cliche.)

SF has been predicting, graphically, for decades, that our jobs outstrip out IQ, and our civilization could crash because of it.

But note, Grandma who needs a wireless digital picture frame isn't dumb, stupid, or low-I.Q.

She may have been a Bank VP or a factory manager, or even a science reporter (though these days that's not likely as women of that generation were barred from such professional success). But she may have been VERY smart. Only now she just can't learn to maintain a PC and plug a picture frame into its USB port and download her own photos.

Grandma may flinch visibly when someone says USB PORT. Thirty years ago she'd have had no trouble learning it.

There's your big problem. As you age, your original IQ trends downward. The older you are, the harder it becomes to learn, especially if you haven't been learning steadily in between. Routine jobs erode the ability to learn new things.

These wireless frames are hot sellers because they're EASY and both the younger people who are busy and older people who prefer to avoid learning -- and those who really can't learn -- love the whole concept. Hence they are best sellers, must have household tech.

Tech is making the world easier to live in but harder to create.

And so the threshold IQ level for being able to hold a job that's worth a living wage is going up and up. Soon, anyone with an IQ below 115 won't be worth anything in the labor market. Robots will do yard work, repave roads, build skyscrapers, all run from nice cool offices by Suits wearing diamond watches -- or diamond studded Bluetooth ear piece.

Now look at Urban Fantasy. Contrast that with old fashioned SF.

Actually, my September to December review columns are basically about just this subject -- SF and Urban Fantasy.

The way you tell if a story is Science Fiction or not is: "If you can leave out the Science and still have a story, it's not SF to begin with."

SF is waning in sales volumes of titles, really falling off the charts while Fantasy is booming.

What's the difference? They both tell the same STORY. Like I said above, same old ho-hum romance, different setting, goshwow story!

The difference between urban fantasy and sf is the science.

Today's science is much HARDER (required IQ to decipher concepts) than the science of the 1930's and 1940's. It didn't take as high an IQ to comprehend a scientific explanation then as it does now.

Science itself has become unpopular. What's "popular"? More than half the population likes it and wants it.

Now our science -- the exciting, cutting edge, speculative, goshwow science -- is comprehensible only to people with an IQ well above 100, which means to less than half the population.

We may have passed that halfway point sometime in the 1990's as the tech bubble inflated -- some day someone will make a graph and we'll see an inflection point.

Urban Fantasy heroes have to be brave, perhaps have integrity or grit or a streak of pure evil -- but they don't have to be smart. Even the geeks who run computer searches don't have to be smart. Hacking is not a trade for the high I.Q. people either -- you buy or steal your "hacking tools" which are programs someone with a high IQ makes and sells to hackers.

Urban Fantasy is about the potential achievements of ORDINARY PEOPLE -- people with an IQ of about 100 -- the average reader, maybe 105. These stories show how average-joe can achieve GREAT THINGS, (power, popularity, save the world, defend mankind from evil -- easy things to understand).

Science Fiction -- to have any modern science in it at all -- has to be about really REALLY smart people. The kind of people the average reader can't identify with. It's no fun to be out-classed, or to be shown a destiny you want but can't have because you're not smart enough even to understand the dumbed-down exposition in an SF novel.

In the old days, SF didn't have to be about such geniuses.

Here's another dot for our pattern. NEWSWEEK May 4, 2009, published a Star Trek article titled WE'RE ALL TREKKIES NOW. I commented on it online, and posted a link to my comment and got a whole bunch of new twitter followers! Here's the NEWSWEEK LINKS:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/195082 -- We're All Trekkies Now

My comment is labeled as posted
Posted By: JacquelineLichtenberg @ 05/08/2009 2:08:06 PM

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/popvox/archive/2009/05/07/round-up-of-newsweek-s-trek-coverage.aspx -- list of Star Trek coverage in NEWSWEEK, lots of stories.

The thesis of this Newsweek article (ignore the politics; that's just NEWSWEEK) is one that I totally agree with, and that's an important dot to this pattern. STAR TREK depicted humanity as capable of taking on the universe and prevailing. STAR TREK showed humanity as having outgrown war and embracing new contact with the unknown -- going where no one has gone before.

In the decades since ST:TOS, SF has been eclipsed by fantasy universes (on TV, in film, and in books) where humanity is depicted as threatened (in serious danger of being destroyed) by the Unknown -- and possibly unknowable. What I've called in this blog a picture of reality as a thin film over a seething cauldron of evil.

The self-perception (at least in America) has become one of being overwhelmed by a universe inimical to our existence.

So the problem employers are having filling jobs today reflects the general public's taste in entertainment. People are overwhelmed. By tech. By war. By government conspiracy or at least secrecy and incompetence. And now by the housing bubble bursting. Overwhelmed by evil is the same as overwhelmed by something that can kill you, destroy what you've accomplished in life (take away your pension).

Now do you see the technique? Deconstruct or reverse-engineer our everyday world into dots, then reconnect the dots into a DIFFERENT pattern. That will, if you use the genre structures we've discussed, give you that effect Hollywood is always looking for (and Manhattan lusts after), "The Same But Different."

To summarize, here are the dots for today's exercise:

1) URBAN FANTASY in Locus and Alternate Universe such as THE INCREMENT and STAR TREK

2) BUSINESS WEEK - 3 million jobs open with 13 million unemployed and Obama's solution is to "retrain" the workforce. (your characters are in retraining or teaching re-trainees).

3) NEWSWEEK - We're All Trekkies Now. Geeks have inherited the Earth and the White House. The Star Trek spirit of seeing an upbeat future awakens again -- or does it?

4) The popular theme of being overwhelmed (or almost overwhelmed) or needing protection from Evil that seethes beneath the surface of everyday life. Will that theme give way to Star Trek's HOPE theme, and if it does, what turbulence will disrupt romance?

5) Not mentioned here, but there's a trend of 30 and 40+ year old women FINALLY beginning to have children that might be relevant to building your SF Romance world.

So now re-connect the dots and do a little original worldbuilding.

Take your readers' awareness of the general IQ frustration (just think of the last time your computer made you feel helpless and you've got the emotion) as the background you're cradling your romance (or whatever genre; this process works for all genres) in, and tell a whopping good story about how IQ itself is a major stumbling block in intimacy in relationships.

You may generate more obstacles for your plot by creating characters to represent the various sides of the philosophical argument on the true nature of Humanity, and therein will lie your THEME.

Are humans like lemmings, carrying the seeds of their destruction within them (i.e. creating tech so "high" that we can't produce workers to maintain it but we become dependent on it for lack of basic grunt-work skills (spinning, weaving, farming, shepherding, metal working)? Or are humans infinitely adaptable, with brains that will re-circuit so that each generation's IQ 100 is actually HIGHER THAN the IQ 100 mark of the previous generation?

Is that what's happening already? It used to be parents had to get their kids to program the VCR. Now kids live online and text with their thumbs in coded words. Grown kids have to send pictures of their kids to their parents via dumbed-down-wireless-pictureframes. The parents won't twitter and the keener parents will just barely facebook but not myspace.

Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing are beyond today's 60 year olds.

The Web is the territory of the young (OK. I'm a misfit. So what else is new?)

How does the May/September Romance work out in a world with a generation gap like this? Will the Star Trek movie change anything?

You may, if you wish, post exercises on editingcircle.blogspot.com as comments for and get some input on how you do the exercise.

And remember, you don't have to AGREE with my analysis here - in fact it's better if you don't - in order to reconnect these dots into a new pattern and profit from the exercise. These dots could be a springboard into a hot Romance full of impossible things before breakfast.

Do you, as a writer, follow the trend -- or do you forge it?

And also remember, our objective in my last few posts here is to work the puzzle of how to get an SF Romance onto TV or into the movies to do for the genre what we have done (according to NEWSWEEK, anyway) for SF.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

How Much is Too Much (World Buliding & Balance)?

Since I'm essentially brain dead after completing a twenty-five+ page "author questionnaire" for Random House (and it could have gone more than twenty-five pages...I just gave up out of exhaustion)... I'm going to piggyback a post that's going on today at The Galaxy Express about world building, or as Heather delightfully puts it: The 7 Unnecessary Science Fiction Worldbuilding Details.

Jacqueline's done some great posts on info dumping before:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/08/source-of-expository-lump.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/verisimilitude-vs-reality.html

But Heather neatly broke down those things that irk her and to a great extent, rightly so. There are certain 'givens' in genre fiction. The trouble to me come when you're dealing with cross-genre fiction. How much does an author do to bring a new reader "up to speed?" What kind of assumptions can we make about our readers coming from two different camps?

Just to torture myself, I have a Google-search on my name that brings to my inbox daily a list of blogs that mention me. I've found some pretty neat reviews that way and met lots of new fans. But I've also read a number of "back fence" conversations by both SF and Romance readers who find huge fault with SFR--and usually for the opposite reason (or the other side of the same coin...bear with me, I'm really tired.)

The SF readers for the most part don't get the 'required HEA' in SFR and express distaste to displeasure on the amount of time spent on the romantic relationship. To them, going into the hero's or heroine's thoughts about the other is rather like noting that chairs are decklocked. That's something they simply don't want to know. Yet if it's left out, the romance readers riot.

The SF readers don't particularly care that much about things romance readers look for: descriptions of anything from clothing to the hero's apartment/cabin/house. Where to romance readers, setting can "set the mood" to SF readers, setting is...setting.

On the other hand (are four fingers and a thumb...oh, wait, I'm blogging) I recently read an interesting post on Goodreads where a romance reader decried SFR for it's use of "futuristic names" (what's wrong with Jack, she asked?). I knew what she was getting at but I wondered if it wasn't more a stereotype than actual occurrence. My characters aren't named Jack but they are named Philip, Mack, Branden, Sully and Theo. For starters. I think the day of the main characters in SFR or futuristics being T'Kwee'gre'sha and Perr'k'ray-roo are long gone, if they ever were. But because "alien sounding names" are often used for worlds or items, I think there's a general belief that SFR is chock full of T'Kwee'gre'shas. (And by the way, as a Yank originally from New Jersey, names like Padraig, Siohban, Ceallach and Sinéad confuse the heck out of me and they're all names from right here on this planet.)

So the question becomes, how much is too much--to which part of your readership? What assumptions can you make about SFR readers? How do you keep one half entertained without insulting the other? Can we assume everyone knows what an airlock looks like and does? That's like assuming I know how to pronounce reticule, a word often found in historical romances. It's part of my history, I should know that, eh?

I don't. Even when I'm not totally tired. ~Linnea

HOPE’S FOLLY, Book 3 in the Gabriel’s Ghost universe, Feb. 2009 from RITA award-winning author, Linnea Sinclair, and Bantam Books: http://www.linneasinclair.com/

But, yeah, get shot by a Surger, and it still hurt like a bitch and could put you flat out dead if someone’s aim was good. Not center mass, as they were taught. That only worked on the good guys, but it wasn’t the good guys who needed shooting. It was the bad guys, and they were smart enough to wear body armor. Good luck getting a standard Surger to penetrate that.

Okay, maybe at point-blank.

But at point blank, the bad guys had already shot you dead with their nice powerful Carver-12s.

Desperately Seeking A Stopper

A few weeks ago Linnea Sinclair shared a fabulous post about mentoring. Well, I don't claim to mentor, but I will pinch hit on occasion.

This last week, Lillian Cauldwell and I have been fighting a dragonish problem… but we are not well matched as temporary critique partners.

I fly under false colours, writing scatological social and political satire disguised as futuristic romance aka alien romance (which is not set in the future). Lillian writes well researched psychic mystery stories for young adults, and her heroes and heroines are African-American and Hispanic teens who see ghosts and are transported back into history through time and space.

Lillian's work reminds me of Indiana Jones in junior high.

Our dragon's name is "The Stopper" and we can't crack it.

For those not familiar with "The Stopper" it's an escalated version of a hook or grabber, intended to stop an agent or editor from answering the phone while your pages are in their hands. Ideally, one would like to come up with a "stopper" that not only leads to a contract, but that goes viral when the book is released.

Emily Bryan achieved something of the sort for "Distracting The Duchess" (a historical romance) with "I'm going to have to shorten his willy." People who had no intention of buying the book were happy to tweet about the line.

From a GoodReads.com discussion of first lines, come some more examples of great stoppers:

“I don’t know how other guys feel about their wives leaving them but I helped mine pack.”

“I’ve been sleeping with your husband for the last two years."

“When the phone rang, Parker was in the garage, killing a man.” That's from Firebreak, by Donald Westlake.

If those examples represent the gold standard for stoppers, dross might be this year's Bulwer Lytton winners:
http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/scott.rice/blfc2008.htm

For those who have never heard of it, the Bulwer-Lytton is an international literary parody contest, which honors the memory of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873).

Entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. … Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words …."It was a dark and stormy night."

Winner
Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J."

Garrison Spik
Washington, D.C.

Dishonorable Mention (Children's Literature)
Joanne watched her fellow passengers - a wizened man reading about alchemy; an oversized bearded man-child; a haunted, bespectacled young man with a scar; and a gaggle of private school children who chatted ceaselessly about Latin and flying around the hockey pitch and the two-faced teacher who they thought was a witch - there was a story here, she decided.

Tim Ellis
Haslemere, U.K.

Runner Up (Children's Literature)
Dorothy had reasons to be nervous: a young girl alone in a strange land, traveling with three weird, insecure males badly in need of psychiatric help; she tucked her feet under her skirt to keep the night's chill (and lewd stares) away and made sure one more time that the gun was secured in her yet-to-develop bosom.

Domingo Pestano
Alto Prado, Caracas, Venezuela

Find more here: http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/scott.rice/blfc2008.htm


Lillian Cauldwell is trying to find a stopper for her second novel in the Anna Mae mystery series, which is targeted at young readers from eight to eighteen. Anna Mae is a youngster with psychic powers which she has inherited from her grandmother, and ghosts from the past guide her to find ancient, buried treasures.

She would very much appreciate any reader's opinions on which of her drafted first lines comes closest to grabbing their interest. (I've deliberately not presented the five examples in any kind of order.)

1.
Make love, not war Anna Mae Botts remembered from her dream-vision, but the AK 47 automatic rifle slung over Jonathan Selassie's shoulders said something entirely different. She awoke with a start.


2.
Carried by six teenagers, three girls dressed in white shorts, yellow tee shirts and flip flops; three boys dressed in the Atlanta Braves tee shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots, the Holy Relic gleamed in the mid day sun. Ahead of the procession a sixteen-year-old boy dressed in combat fatigues and slung over his left shoulder an AK47 rifle led the way. Behind them, a dust storm whirled and wiped out all traces of their prints.

3.
Twelve year old Anna Mae Botts awoke with a jerk. She tried grasping the sides of her mattress only to find herself bound with rope and her mouth stuffed with a cotton rag, Anna Mae wailed inside her mind. “Granma!”

4.
Twelve-year-old Anna Mae Botts struggled awake. Heaviness trapped at her limbs.
She willed her mind to break free of the oppressive smell of cinnamon and frankincense. The obnoxious odor blocked her mind and sent her spirit spinning into an opened black pit where a wooden rod became a snake rope and seven metal circular keys opened a rectangular gold box with angel wings outstretched on top and meeting in the middle.


5.
“I’m cold.”
We’d just stepped out from the Lowry Dollar Cinema. The sun bathed me with its heat. My tee shirt clung to my back. Yet, I shivered in the hot sun. Raul looked at me. A slight grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. “It’s hottah than blazes out here. Yar always cold. Here!” He gave me a quick tight hug. “Bettah?”

6.
Missing: Black teenager, last seen asleep in bed, Anna Mae Botts is five foot three inches, weighs one hundred pounds, brown eyes, and a butterfly birthmark on back of left calf. If you have any information, please call the Lowry sheriff’s department at 604-983-8867.

7.
Anna Mae Botts struggled. Her heart thumped. She gripped the sheets. A boy opened a golden box and dissolved into ashes.


If something works, Lillian would like to know why. If readers can put their fingers on why one or more drafts veer off course, that, too, would be instructive.

Thank you, and Happy Mothers' Day.

Rowena Cherry

Guest Blog. Magical Beings

MAGICAL BEINGS

Courting the Craft of Paranormal Romance

We’re a multi-cultural society, a global community of varying histories and legends. And yet, somehow, we all share a fascination with the supernatural … with the idea that the things unseen are not inactive. The concept of myths and legends shared through storytelling is as old as the spoken word. Among the cultures of the world, there is no shortage of fantastic tales and captivating creatures that haunt the psyches and dreams of a village’s or nation’s inhabitants. A further binding feature in every culture is the pursuit of romance and love. Combine the two, and you have a formula for a riveting story. It is not unexpected, therefore, that tales of magical beings in paranormal romance continue to explode as a popular fiction genre.

The area of romance fiction generated $1.375 billion in U.S. sales in 2007, a five percent increase over 2006, making it the biggest fiction publishing category for that year, according to Business of Consumer Book Publishing. The next largest market is sci-fi & fantasy, generating $495 million in revenue for the same year. A recent article in The New York Times reported that Harlequin Enterprises had fourth-quarter earnings in 2008 that were up 32 percent over the same period a year ago.

The paranormal romance formula seems simple: magical being meets normal, or latently magical, potential mate →withholding of secrets or self →conflict → third party interference → challenge of skills →new awareness → resolution. Or something along those lines. However, there are certain standards of storytelling that must be in place for the concept to work. The most successful paranormal authors have figured out certain aspects of the storytelling that ring most true with readers.

Following are some general guidelines as to why some supernatural romances work so well:

• The magical skills and idiosyncracies of the hero or heroine are established early on and closely followed. This is sometimes called world building, but it’s also personality building. A reader wants to get the sense that the character could be a real person, someone they can understand. The only way for that to happen would be if the author knows their character as well as or better than she knows herself. So if, for instance, our hero Shazam has a fiery temper that can erupt without warning, the reader needs to be given glimpses of that before the actual eruption. It builds tension, as well as an affinity for what Shazam is thinking and feeling.

• Supernatural skills have to be super. A reader doesn’t want a hero who can read really fast or jog backward. Exceptional abilities make for exceptional characters. One single ability that is carried out with unusual panache and an understanding that very few can do what he or she can do makes for riveting reading. As an example, Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Series focused on a family of vampires, unusual in itself. Yet, additionally, each vampire had a unique gift that gave him increased value to his family, and to the story: e.g. the ability to read minds; the ability to influence thought; the ability to heal; the gift of foresight.

• Despite characters being in possession of such tremendous skills, the reader wants to be able to identify in some way with those characters. These are the all-too-human traits. Does she love dogs? Does he notice the way she never wants to be alone? Does an abiding anger or vengeance keep him from recognizing the feelings another has for him? Does she want to break free from her tribe or pack or past to forge a new life, but doesn’t know how? These very human dilemmas will make even a superstrong, shapeshifting vampire sympathetic in some way. Without it, the reader won’t care and won’t read on.

• Finally, the atmosphere of the story sets the tone for the story itself. Yes, this is world building; it is also world decorating. Whether it’s regency time travel or urban fantasy, the reader wants to be submerged in the very air that surrounds the characters. What are the smells and temperature of the wind that blows in from the past, or the breeze that shuffles over the ripe fruits of the souk? The successful paranormal author structures an environment that, though supernatural, is believable because it is consistently on display through the use of vivid description. This is where research on the author’s part is most apparent. A story told among the sidhe (shee) of Ireland must convey the essence of Ireland like a well-written travel article would. Travels among the djinn of the Middle East must evoke the exotic scents and textures of locales that most Western readers will never have visited. Research, imagination, and lush narrative combine for the successful setting.

Once these building blocks are in place, it’s up to the author to carry the story through. An unpredictable plot is a sure way to hold the attention of the reader, and that really does depend upon the skill of the author. In today’s rapidly evolving storytelling industry, one thing that is predictable, however, is that romance fiction is here to stay.


 K. F. Zuzulo
Author of A Genie in the House of Saud: Zubis Rises, from Mystical Publishing
and The Third Wish, from Sapphire Blue Publishing
www.zubisrises.com

Build-a-Bear Babies

The May 2009 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN has a one-page essay on the ethics of designer genes, quoting from a NEW YORK DAILY NEWS ARTICLE that referred to reproductive technology producing “Build-a-Bear babies” to order. It’s only a matter of time before clinics offering in vitro fertilization will enable parents to select not only the sex of a baby but such superficial traits as eye and hair color. As SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN puts it, the very idea evokes the specters of “Brave New World and, of course, the Nazis’ quest for a blond, blue-eyed race of Aryans.”

One concern mentioned in this essay—“will selection of traits perceived to be desirable end up diminishing variability within the gene pool, the raw material of natural selection”—strikes me as too far-fetched to worry about. Too few families will be able to afford these services to leave a trace on the DNA of the planet’s total population. A more plausible social problem would be, as many SF authors have speculated, that a genetically enhanced elite minority might exercise privileges and status over the masses who can’t afford designer children.

Personally, I have no moral qualms about gene manipulation in principle. I don’t believe all reproductive technology is “against nature” or blasphemous, any more than pacemakers, dialysis, or bionic limbs are. Nor do I believe an embryo before the implantation stage of development is an individual with personal rights (although of course it should still be handled with respect). Lines, however, must be drawn, and where should we draw them?

Granted that such technology may ethically and lawfully be practiced at all, its use to prevent genetically based illness and deformity seems obviously right. The more severe the affliction, the more acceptable intervention would be. On the related topic of sex selection, if a particular sex is chosen to avoid a sex-linked inherited disorder, that choice seems a perfectly legitimate goal. How about conceiving a baby specifically designed as a tissue donor for a gravely ill sibling (which has already been done)? Here the lines get fuzzier. Using a human being for an instrumental purpose, in principle, violates human dignity, yet if the parents are planning to have another baby anyway, why not include that benefit?

More vexed questions arise on points such as genetic engineering to conceive a boy or girl simply because of a preference for that sex. Many people also have reservations about designing an embryo for high intelligence (if that choice could be made—at present, we don’t know enough about the nature and origins of “intelligence”). I admit I’d find that prospect appealing. Others would, if possible, want to endow a child with musical, artistic, or athletic talent. In my opinion, a lot depends on whether these decisions would be made for the child’s happiness or the parents’ pride. Which leads to the slippery slope of ordering physical appearance from a menu of traits to produce a child who matches a cultural model of “beauty.” Moreover, I see a significant difference between an attempt to infuse an embryo with certain traits and a prior determination to destroy any embryo (or abort any fetus) that doesn’t measure up to the ideal.

According to SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, the U.S. currently has “no binding rules” for the application of fertility technology. The U.K. has the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority to license and regulate clinics. Aside from obviously recklessly unsafe practices such as the notorious “octomom” case, I’d be dubious of any attempt to restrict most of these choices by law. Again, few couples could afford to seek genetic manipulation for frivolous purposes, fewer still would want to bother, and anyway clinics would establish their own ethical codes and might often refuse such requests. My main concern about “Build-a-Bear babies” is that a child designed to embody the parents’ ideal of their “perfect” offspring might not live up to expectations. In the world as we know it, no children (or parents!) are perfect. What would it do to familial relationships if perfection were expected as an entitlement?

Margaret L. Carter (www.margaretlcarter.com)

Writing Tips Tweets

Personally, I feel twitter is a fad -- somewhat like CB Radio was/is. Its popularity may be peaking now. It may disappear, replaced by something else, or it may be left only to those who've found a real use for it.

But at this time, I think most people who spend any time phone texting or online will find twitter useful, provided they are selective about the people they link to.

Me, I'm all about writing, reading and screenwriting -- the place of the entertainment media in nourishing the soul (can you think of any better soul-nourishment than a good Romance?)

So projects like this new one below catch my interest.

Jean Lorrah, my sometime collaborator and co-owner of Sime~Gen Inc., ( www.jeanlorrah.com ) has started a twitter.com account to post short tips on writing for writers.

http://twitter.com/tipsonwriting is the page that will show you the list of tips.

You can get these sent to your phone as text messages if you join twitter, or have them sent to your own twitter account by "following" tipsonwriting . Or log into the http://twitter.com/tipsonwriting/ page to see them. And Jean has the feed from the tips account posted on various websites. It's currently on the top page of simegen.com too.

Subscribing to Jean's Writing Tips Tweets could be the quickest way to break writer's block. Just try each day to do what the Tip suggests, in the simplest way you can, not for publication but just a practice swatch for yourself.

You might want to post the results on
http://editingcircle.blogspot.com/2009/05/post-tips-on-writing-exercises-here.html
as a comment and get feedback on your exercise. But that might be intimidating so it could be better to just keep it in your own file to be mined for publishable ideas later.

But if you're practicing, just do a practice swatch of words for yourself and presto you'll be writing and then the words will come roaring out.

Jean might take contributions or retweet other writers' tips later. DM her on twitter.

Twitter isn't ONLY for those who have unlimited text messaging on their phones. There are a number of websites around that help you use twitter or publicize your activity on twitter. And there's a browser toolbar you can install on your browser to help you follow your incoming tweets, or send tweets. More brands of browsers will no doubt be getting this toolbar enabled for all kinds of social networking sites.

friendbar is an add-on for the firefox browser. Browse some add-ons here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3794

People are blogging like mad about the tools that make twitter easier to live with.

Here's an article:
http://www.randygage.com/blog/tweet-this-a-twitter-manifesto

Jean Lorrah found http://www.tweetlater.com which helps you manage multiple twitter accounts. Imagine that - MULTIPLE twitter accounts!

These Web 2.0 tools are being invented faster than I can keep track, but their purpose is to relieve the frantic and overwhelmed feeling we all get from multitasking beyond our capacity and to dodge spam floods such as the current worm infection is causing.

A lot of these tools will fail quickly. Much of it is advertising supported with a "free" level and a professional or paid subscription level.

As I said, Twitter is designed to help you avoid dealing with tons of spam in your email box. Dodging spam is a trend among younger people today both because parents want to insulate them from the trash in spam, and because life is too short to scan spam for hours a day. So they connect to a limited number of people they really know, and communicate in depth with that small number. That makes texting and tweeting a very efficient and cost-effective method of establishing and maintaining deep relationships.

But the social networks can waste a lot of time, too.

Twitter has a higher velocity message flow because each message is so short, so it feels like it's less of a burden. The shortness of the messages are like the half-sentence utterances in a real life conversation.

I can hardly wait for a teen romance novel that consists of nothing but tweets, like the Historical novels that consisted of nothing but letters (or like Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's St. Germain novels, though the letters are less plot-movers than they were in her earlier books.) I loved that format and can see a huge potential for it in twitter.

Can you imagine, for example, a time-travel romance with the two lovers separated by centuries but communicating through a portal that would allow only tweet-sized text messages?

Perhaps I'm intrigued by "short" because it's something I can't do. I don't suppose readers of this blog have noticed that trait of mine ...

The problem with twitter is that it is indeed "faster moving" -- which makes you pant to keep up if you follow more than four or five very taciturn people. Hence these other online tools for "managing" your twitter account(s!)

It's a trend, though, to use one more technological application to cure a problem caused by another technological add-on to an otherwise frantic life, and it's happening in all walks of life. Maybe we should term it Tech-Defense, or Tai Kwon Tech?

For example, some techie noticed how the older generation resists techie gadgets (like digital picture frames) and came up with a digital picture frame application that simplifies shouting over the chasm between generations.

They put a digital picture frame on the household wireless network.

There are quite a few manufacturers of those wireless frames, and already a factory-installed mall ware virus was distributed by Best Buy last year via one of the USB plug picture frames. But the viruses haven't yet invaded your computer over the wireless connection. Maybe next year.

But the deal is this.

Young people can take phone or digital pix and EMAIL THEM directly to grandma's picture frame. The frame logs onto grandma's house wireless (you may have to go install a router), and downloads 40 or 50 pictures at say 3AM. It download the pix you uploaded via email attachment (or other means) to the hosting website.

The next day, a whole new slide-show turns up for Grandma to see and she did nothing to make it happen. She doesn't even have to understand how it works! She'll just grin delightedly at her grandchildren.

I love this concept. It is a subscription product though, and the kids have to take the pictures, upload them to the site which the frame logs onto, and pay for renting the bandwidth on the picture hosting site. Here's an example: http://www.ceiva.com/ is a hosting website that sells its own picture frame. You can also find it by searching ceiva on amazon. They gotta be making a fortune on this! I can handle tech, and I want it!

The Digital picture frame has become one of the hottest products on the market, and there are a number of sites that are set up to share pictures with a frame.

I think it'll be the biggest seller this coming gift season -- because I WANT ONE VERY BADLY! The wireless feature really has me hooked.

But consider both Jean's twitter writing tips and this picture frame all in one breath.

We're looking at a TREND here - tech that cures tech problems. Writers of futuristic or paranormal romance can exploit this concept. Find a problem, any problem that keeps lovers apart, and cure the problem with an application of the very thing that caused the problem to begin with. "Hair of the dog."

Think of this scene. A guy wants a girl to pay attention to him. He swaps the picture frame on her work desk for a wireless frame of his own. Then sends her pictures to sell himself to her? Or maybe he hacks into her frame's download site and intersperses his own pix with those of her cousin's new baby?

Practical joke: swap your frame for someone else's and send them baby pictures of someone you want to embarrass.

Paranormal: Suppose a techie ghost finds a way to impose pix on a wireless frame?

Oh, the story potential is totally endless! Welcome to the 21st Century.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/
http://www.slantedconcept.com

PS: if you get anything published based on anything like twitter or digital frames, do please be sure I get a review copy and a note referencing this blog! Whee!!! The story potential of those wireless frames is totally endless!!!

What Authors Do Besides Write

Yes, I've been absent the past two Mondays. I can't even blame it on my deadline (which still looms menacingly). I was at RT which is author shorthand for the most fun you can have with your clothes on. RT is the annual Romantic Times BOOKlovers Convention, this year in Orlando, FL. About 250 authors and 1000 readers, editors, agents, librarians and booksellers get together to make merry and swap stories for a week.

Male cover models also make an appearance. Cover art is a large part of the book industry so it's no surprise that guys compete for these coveted modeling jobs. Some, like Fabio or John D'Salvo make careers of it. Most use it as a springboard for acting jobs in soaps, ads or movies.

However at this RT, decidely one of the most popular of the boys was a real boy: nine month old Jack Browne, courtesy of his mommy, author Isabo Kelly. Jack participated in last year's RT in Pittsburg, via, um, the womb. Isabo was the "pregnant Ninja lady" at the Intergalactic Bar & Grille Party. But this year Jack was a shining star all his own.

So here's to a future Mr. Romance and starship captain!

And of course, the rest of the convention went something like this:

(below): Me, authors Bonnie Vanak and Stacey Kade:

(L to R above) Starships and Sorcery Panel: Leanna Renee Heiber, Linnea Sinclair, Stacey Kade, Isabo Kelly

(Below) Authors Cindy Holby (Colby Hodge) and Stacey Kade

Above: Shades of Dark wins the RT Reviewers' Choice Award!

~Linnea

Linnea Sinclair
// Interstellar Adventure Infused with Romance//

Available Now from Bantam: Hope's Folly
http://www.linneasinclair.com/

Shield Magic! Is That Why Darth Maul's Face Was Red?

It was Beltane two days ago. I've done enough research to carry off an intelligent interview with a Wiccan, but not enough to write about Beltane with any degree of originality.

Here are two fabulous links for anyone interested:

Beltane -- Holiday Details and History

Author: Christina Aubin [a WitchVox Sponsor]
http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=usma&c=holidays&id=2765


Pagan Celebrations of Beltane and May Day
http://blog.beliefnet.com/apagansblog/2009/04/pagan-celebrations-of-beltane-and-may-day-1.html

There's another very cool link I followed from one of these sites: "In Praise Of Pagan Men" with a discussion of The Green Man.

In Praise Of Pagan Men

However, The Red-Faced Man interests me a great deal more!

(Pun, by the way, very much intended.)

I watch television, often alone in the kitchen, while I am cooking, and some meal or other was just about at critical mass when I glimpsed The History Channel, which was discussing a great native American warrior named Roman Nose, also his warpaint, also his vision quest, and the fatal mishap that befell him because a squaw (not knowing of one component of his shield magic) used a metal kitchen implement in preparing his final meal before battle.

I'd seen warpaint in Westerns, and I've seen it used by modern warriors... did Donald Sutherland use it, or just frighteningly loud music, from his hippie tank in Kelly's Heroes?

However, I'd never thought much about the designs. Roman Nose's vision quest (I think it was Roman Nose, but I was multi-tasking) was inspired by red jagged lightning, and white blobs of large hail.

War paint seems to have something in common with the Viking Berserkers bearskin shirts: frighteningly recognizable to the enemy, fearsome brand character, part of getting a warrior "into the zone" and motivated.

Having --reluctantly-- missed the rest of the show, I came back later to my computer and looked up a word that the narrator had used to describe the warriors' beliefs in the power of his rituals and in the application of his war paint.

Shield Magic.

"Shield Magic. Shield makes you turn red and halves the damage you take (I think) until you leave the room. I always use it whenever I see a hard enemy..."

The top Shield Magic searches lead me to a popular game or six. Dragonquest. Warhammer. Nero.... Also, I found a few literary references, and mentions of the Uruk-hai who wore the white hand of Saruman as warpaint.

Giving the impression of being blood-soaked, maybe with bits of white bone showing through cut skin, and still fighting ferociously... well, that would be daunting to the enemy.

Hence, Darth Maul would have two powerful reasons for his red complexion, although I assume it was natural, along with his horns, and was --presumably-- deliberately supplemented by his rune-like tattoos.

My own Viz-Igerd from "Knight's Fork" turned red on occasion, and his enemy, The Saurian Dragon, mockingly compared the effect to the Red Uakari (unfortunately, my copy editor made it "red uakari").

Did you perceive Darth Maul as a potential love interest? How about a sex interest? If so, why?

What about a Native American warrior in his war bonnet and war paint?

What about a Knight of old, mounted on his huge destrier (the computer tells me I've misspelled that), with a jupon over his chainmail, and his face completely hidden by his helmet?

What about Darth Vader?


Footnote:
On Tuesday May 5th 2009, my CRAZY TUESDAY radio show will be about "MAGICAL BEINGS" and I will be taking a two-hour long whirlwind tour of the Magical World, discussing World-building and magical characterization with Kellyann Zuzulo, and Joy Nash, with a flyby appearance from L.S. Cauldwell.