Choosing The Age of Your Protagonist To Win An Oscar

Last week, the Oscar rules were changed by the Academy that awards them. Now 10 nominees for BEST PICTURE compete for the Oscar, the most since 1943. Maybe this is not a good thing?

Here's the link.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090625/media_nm/us_oscars_reaction_2

Quoting from that article:

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In fact, one studio executive compared the Academy bombshell to getting doused with a bucket of cold water. He confided that he has enough trouble every awards season figuring out whom they have to satisfy with an Oscar campaign and which talent they can safely neglect or do less for.
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Read that article for the attitude and values of the decision-makers who decide what will (and will not) be allowed to attract your attention. People who go to few movies, generally favor the award-winners because they've heard of them and know people who've seen them.

TV advertising budgets go to award contenders and winners, not to the others.

If you don't follow an industry (any industry) you may only choose from what "they" decide you may.

With the proliferation of E-books and small publishers to the point where Publisher's Weekly routinely covers the field, the roll of "gatekeeper" has disintegrated. But it is quickly being re-invented.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6666456.html?q=e%2Dbook

The Academy is expanding its finalists list from 5 to 10, and that may be because of the disintegration of the "gatekeeper" role.

The Academy has been, with the Oscars, a major gatekeeper. Now there are many other gatekeepers in the film industry with Festivals awarding winners and other Awards like the BET awards. There are many more films you've heard of so you get to choose whether to see them or not. So the Academy has responded to changes in the world by trying to compete for its top gatekeeper spot.

I did not find anything in this article on the Oscar rules the least bit surprising and I doubt most of you will either. The book business now works exactly the same way (though it didn't in the early 20th Century or before.)

In this new media-dominated world, we need to understand how (and why) our choices are deliberately limited by people who don't know us and couldn't care less about us.

This gatekeeper thinking is the thinking that rejects Romance, especially SF Romance, while at the same time panders to teens. That's a relatively new development.

Don't ever forget the 1951 film DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL Talk about hot Alien Romance!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043456/

Quoting on increasing the number of nominees to 10 from that article on the Oscar rules:
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The only problem with widening the net is that this is no longer the 1930s or '40s, when the Academy last fielded 10 or so best picture noms each year. Back then, it had an overabundance of what were grown-up yet popular titles -- ranging from "It Happened One Night" and "Mutiny on the Bounty" early on to "You Can't Take It with You" and "Casablanca," the last movie, in 1943, to wrest the Oscar from nine other contenders. Nowadays, most Hollywood movies aren't really made for grown-ups.
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My boldface on that very telling comment, tossed in off-handedly. "Nowadays, most Hollywood movies aren't really made for grown-ups."

On 6/16/09 I posted here a commentary on the award winning film Mr. And Mrs. Smith
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/writers-eye-finds-symmetry.html

Would you say that film was for grownups? No children characters and it's ostensibly about marriage counseling and professional assassination.

On 6/23/09 I posted here a commentary on the Disney film Snow Dogs:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/writers-eye-finds-symmetry.html

Children were not the featured characters in Snow Dogs, but the adults were working through issues having to do with their parents just as if they were still children, and the comedy venue made it accessible to children, so it's billed as a "family movie" -- which basically means it's not really for grownups but grownups wouldn't mind watching it. (I enjoyed it!)

Both Mr. & Mrs. Smith and Snow Dogs are stories focused on Relationships, with the Romance part in the B-story, hidden but thematic.

With the loss of so many middle-aged celebrities these last couple of weeks, ( David Caradine, Ed McMahon (who was 70's but too young to die), Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Gale Storm ( http://www.popeater.com/television/article/gale-storm-dies/547078?icid=main%7Chtmlws-main%7Cdl2%7Clink4%7Chttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.popeater.com%2Ftelevision%2Farticle%2Fgale-storm-dies%2F547078 ) and Billy Mays.

Here's a website that tries to keep an up to date listing of deceased celebrities:
http://www.hollywoodmemoir.com/forum/8?sort=desc&order=Created

We are clearly in a turning-of-the-generations cycle.

McMahon had risen to the level of decision maker, as has Leonard Nimoy (who's still with us, and did a splendid job in the new Star Trek movie). David Caradine did much more than acting, as did Farrah Fawcett. Michael Jackson was mostly known for being wild and irresponsible (ending up in half a billion in debt), but likewise he was an influence whose success made others want to copy or pick up one or another of his attributes.

Our deceased icons of American culture knew very well how the movers and shakers behind the Academy and the Oscars think. That's how they got to be icons.

Do we have to go back to the 1940's to find a ROMANCE ICON? If so, do you think maybe it's been long enough and it's time for a new Romance Icon to arise?

If so, who? And with what sort of public image profile? How are they going to impress the gatekeepers? The decision makers?

What sells? And why?

Demographics.

Hollywood studios (and even book publishers) have spent big bucks commissioning statistical studies and analyses of the demographics of movie ticket buyers. They know that what held true in novels holds true in the movies -- the age-group that will want to read or see a story will be close or related to the age of the protagonist.

The film Cocoon was a hit with older people, not so much with the youngest demographic.



If you're writing a children's book for 7 year olds, the protagonist has to be 7 or maybe 9 years old, not 15 or 25.

For pre-teens, your protagonist has to be a teen (because that's what pre-teens identify with and aspire to).

Middle Aged people don't really yearn to become OLD, so stories about older people who "can still shoot straight" abound.

But film producers discovered that today's audiences are composed mostly of teens and college age people, often dating. And on a date like that, even TODAY, the male's taste in entertainment prevails.

The 16 and 17 year old crowd wants stories about early 20's. The 20 somethings will go for stories about 30-somethings who "have it made" but still get into the same pickles 20 somethings get into. Only they handle it better.

We want to identify with a Hero we can feel proud to become.

So when choosing the age of the protagonist of your story, consider how big an audience you want it to attract. Look at the demographics, note which age group has the most disposable income.

The Golden Rule of protagonist age choice is simply, the protagonist has to be the age of your typical reader/viewer.

If the golden rule holds, the key to creating a blockbuster Alien Romance will be primarily the age of the protagonists.

In all genre fiction, it is the audience's identification with the main characters that determines the sales volume, thus the prominence, and whether they are chosen as contenders for major awards. Or as the article I was quoting above pointed out, which actors the production company can safely ignore.

As the article points out, it doesn't matter how good a film is. When it comes to the Oscars, it only matters "who" the stars are and what it will take to mollify them.

Go back to my analysis of why and how a writer can use Astrology to plot a story (5 post series in 2008)
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/12/astrology-just-for-writers-part-5-high.html
and see that "life" has a particular shape, an ebb and flow, a sequence in which we learn lessons.

Writers often learn or are born knowing that at certain ages, we reach certain plights, challenges, consequences, and choices all of which shape the plot of our real life, and our taste in fictional life.

Many of these most prominent and widely understood (without the aid of knowing astrology) life lessons are connected to Saturn's 29 year period.

Relationships are ruled by Venus which has a period of about a year, and "Romance" is induced by Neptune which has a period of about 164 years; more than a lifetime. Neptune is also famous for creating "strange" (i.e. alien) environments, coincidences, and miracles. Neptune is all about the exceptional moments in time when the rules blur.

You really do, literally, get a once-in-a-lifetime shot at real Romance.

But it comes at different ages in different lives. Sometimes it's in the teens, sometimes the 40's or even the 70's. So you can write a really hot Romance with some deeply significant lessons about the relationship between self-esteem and unconditional love, and use characters of almost any age.

Yes, sometimes the Romance transit of a lifetime comes before you're 10, but when that happens, you usually experience it through your parents (or parental figures), so it shapes your attitude toward life. And perhaps, those are the "marry the boy next door" stories.

So as far as creating that blockbuster Alien Romance that will change the way the entire field is regarded, as Star Trek changed the way Science Fiction was regarded, you can focus on any age demographic and still craft a plausible Alien Romance.

But certain ages will be preferred by certain producers or publishers.

A Silver Rule perhaps would be that the more expensive the fiction is to deliver to the consumer, the broader the target demographic must be.

A book costs less to produce than a movie, (though a book has a smaller potential profit margin) and so a book can appeal to a narrower audience and still make a profit. Authors know their book made a profit when the publisher sends them royalties beyond the advance.

A film on the other hand must appeal to a very diverse and broad and deep audience. The higher the budget for the film, the broader the apparent appeal must be. It's all about the numbers, and the Academy knows that -- and perhaps the Academy does not know much else!

This article on changes in the Academy of Motion Picture rules of the Oscars clearly informs us that the blockbuster film that becomes a TV show, with endless spinoffs, books, action figures etc, has to be "NOT FOR GROWNUPS."

The article also makes the point clearly that SEQUELS don't win awards because they are "warmed over popcorn." But it also indicates literary pedigree is acceptable. So we can pry open this field via novels.

The general rule though, in what producers are looking for is something "the same" but "different."

It occurs to me to wonder if the "different" part could be not the involvement of a human with an alien on a deep, intimate level (romance, but do we really need to tell them that up front?) but rather the revival of the 1940's "romance."

Just think, Casablanca - set on Epsilon Eridani in the midst of an interstellar war with invaders from another galaxy.

Or think The Boy Next Door and transform it to The Alien Next Door (it's been done, but not really well as a Romance.)

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://twitter.com/JLichtenberg
http://facebook.com/jacqueline.lichtenberg

What does an alien hero smell of?

An alien romance might be a thinly (or heavily) disguised Western, or Historical, or "billionaire sheikh with harem" story.

I don't see anything wrong with that.

Moreover, every Romance has to answer at least four important questions:

1. (a) Who is the hero?
(b) Who is the heroine?

2. (a) What does he want?
(b) What does she want?

3. (a) Why can't he have what he wants?
(b) Why can't she have what she wants?

4. (a) Why does he want... whatever he wants?
(b) Why does she want whatever she wants?

One of the things that interests me about alien romance (and Romances where either the hero or heroine is not human) is the cultural conflict and the differences between one of "them" and one of "us".

The hero has to be convincing for his sex, time, place, situation, social status. An he has to be different from human heroes. Yet, he has to be reasonably attractive, interesting and compelling, because the reader must understand viscerally why the heroine doesn't mind having sex with him.

As Jennifer Dunne said "Write a hero you can fall in love with, and your reader will, too."

The alien hero may look like us. This could be because of parallelism or because of convergence. His species could have evolved to look like us because they prey on us and are more successful if they blend in until they strike.

Vampires are a great example. (Especially Margaret L. Carter's).

When an aspiring author does the contest circuit, she is almost invariably advised to use every sense in her writing. Not just the looks of him, or the sound of him, or the feel of him, or the taste of him (oh, my!), but also his smell.

What would a vampire smell of? Breath-mints? Blood? Soil? Sex? As part of blending in, he'd probably use human perfumes... I wonder whether the over-used aftershave would react differently with his chemistry.

Moving on....

Gargoyle body odor would be fun, wouldn't it? Have you sniffed any rocks lately?

Were-wolves! If he has a dog-like sense of smell, he's likely to be highly interested in his personal odors, as well as those of the heroine. We cannot leave it up to the heroine's nose to take care of all the smelling. The same applies to my god-Princes of Tigron who have seven senses, all of which are much more acute than human senses.

As long as a human heroine is sniffing the hero and reporting her observations to the reader, I suppose it is reasonable for her to translate his scents into fragrances with which her reader is familiar.

Personally, I find this description (of an alien hunk on an alien planet) a bit of a cop-out. "He smelled of horses, leather, and himself."

Does all leather smell the same? How many leather things do you own? Crocodile handbag, perhaps? (I don't!) Snakeskin boots? Cowhide on your car seat? Should an alien planet's horses smell like ours? I think I'd want to make it clear that their horses smelled a bit like the way ours smell but with bottom notes of some other animal.

Musk is an eternal favorite. Countless heroes smell of musk and get away with it. Isn't musk a secretion of... well, never mind... as long as the heroine and your editor finds the fragrance pleasant and exciting.

Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry

Continuing series, when a story doesn't work.

When researching victorian England for my Steampunk proposal I came up with an interesting fact. The Buffalo Bill Wild West Show appeared in England in 1887. I try to remain as historically actuate as possible, even though this book has fantasy elements and thowing a cowboy who is very good with his guns into the mix set my heart all aflutter. I write cowboys well and it seemed much more interesting than writing your typical British Lord of that time. I needed someone who could be in the same social circle as my heroine but also be forbidden. So Dax became a cowboy with a past.

I wanted him to have a rough edge of danger but also be able to pass in the society of the day. So I created a history for him. Dax was raised my his grandmother, a grand society dame in Boston. His mother died in childbirth and his father, who was a Doctor was stricken with grief and took off for the west. When Dax reached his late teens he took off to find his father who was living with the Sioux. Dax fell in love with Rebekah who'd was raised in the tribe. She died from a plague along with his father and once more Dax took off to become a scout for the army. He was part of the hunt for Geronimo and at one time was captured and tortured by the Apache. AFter his rescue he decided he'd had enough of the west and wanted to travel. He hooked up with the Wild West show and became Kid Cochran, the fastest gun alive.

The following is the first chapter which contains the meet between the Hero and Heroine and hopefully draws the reader into the story.

Prism

April 14, 1887

“What ever is the hold up?” Thomas Chadwyke, Earl of Pemberton rapped the silver handle of his walking stick on the roof of the carriage to get the attention of his driver. They had come to a complete stop on Gloucester Street and the Earl’s impatience was as usual, quite evident.
“It seems to be some sort of parade Sir,” Harry, the driver called down from his perch. “Coming from the train station.”
“A parade?” The Earl stuck his head through the carriage window.
“Really, Thomas,” Evelyn, Countess Pemberton said. “Don’t be crass.”
The Earl ignored her as he hung out the window and exclaimed quite loudly. “It’s the Americans! And I believe those fellows wrapped up in blankets are Indians.” The Countess leaned forward and peered through the window on her side of the carriage as the Earl continued with his exclamations. “Good Lord, those must be buffalo.”
“Oh!” The Countess said as she sat back onto her seat. “The smell is quite dreadful.” She pulled an embroidered square of linen from her reticule and placed it over the lower half of her face. “Merritt,” she said to her daughter. “Quickly, cover your face before some horrid disease creeps in.”
Before Merritt could respond, or even protest, her nurse and constant companion, Rose, slapped a ready handkerchief over the lower half of Merritt’s face and held it there. Merritt knew from experience that it would do no good to protest, or even move as Rose, in direct contradiction to her name, was extremely strong for a woman.
It was one of the requirements Rose met when she was interviewed for the position after discreet inquires were made by her parents. They lived with the fear that Merritt would hurt herself when she was in the throes of one of her spells, therefore her nurse must have the physical strength to keep that from happening. Merritt always wondered what it was they expected to happen to her since her spells usually entailed her speaking of strange things while seeming to lose all touch with what was happening around her. She was glad to know that with Rose’s constant care she would not throw herself from a window or cut herself with a butter knife which were just a few of the ways her mother’s vivid imagination had conjured up for Merritt to injure herself.
Merritt placed her hand over Rose’s and smiled agreeably with her eyes, since that was all of her face that was showing. She practically sighed in relief when Rose released the linen into her care and went about the business of protecting her own mouth and nose from whatever dreaded disease her mother was going on about.
“I do wish they would hurry,” the Countess said. “We’re going to miss our appointment.” The countess peered out her window once more as if just looking at the delay would convince it to stop inconveniencing her. Merritt sat with her back to the front of her carriage so could not see what was creating the stir. She was tempted to look but knew it would result in more fussing from her mother and Rose so instead she stared complacently ahead and tried not to think about what the day held in store for her.
If only we would miss the appointment…That would not trouble Merritt in the least. It would be cause for much rejoicing on her part. She might even be tempted to join the parade of Americans herself if only to prolong it so that she could miss her appointment. Of course that would be enough to send her mother into one of her own spells. She did her best not to laugh aloud at the vision of her mother swooning into her father’s arms while their rebellious daughter chased down the street after buffalo and wild Indians. Luckily the handkerchief covered the quivering of her lips as she suppressed the urge.
“I do believe they are coming this way,” the Earl said. He resumed his seat. “There are policemen about directing the carriages to move over to the side.”
“Oh, if only we had known,” the Countess exclaimed. “We could have traveled another route.”
“It was my understanding that they were supposed to ride the train all the way to the exhibition grounds,” the Earl said. “I say, it will not do to have the streets of London run amok with these wild creatures.”
“Are you referring to the buffalo or the Indians?” The Countess asked.
“Both.” The carriage lurched as Harry urged the four in hand over. Merritt barely heard Harry’s faint apology over the drumming sound of hooves against the cobblestones that suddenly filled the streets. Shouts and whistles joined the cacophony of noise. Her curiosity finally got the best of her and she turned so that she could see out the window.
“Do be careful dear,” the Countess instructed.
“I just want to see,” Merritt said. A rider went by and she caught the bright stripes of a blanket trailing over the brown and white splotched coat of a horse. “Is that what they call a paint?” she asked her father.
“I believe so.” He leaned out the window once more and Merritt rose up to join him, conveniently leaving her handkerchief on her seat. Rose tried to grasp her arm to stop her. Merritt managed to gracefully avoid her nurse and looped her arm through her father’s so that she was pressed against his side. She knew they resembled a pair of children with their faces pressed against the glass of the sweet shop but she did not care. It was not often that her father’s natural exuberance took over and she wanted to relish the moment. Who knew how long it would last?
“Oh his hair is nearly as long as mine!” she exclaimed as another Indian rode by. This one had long black hair cascading down his back and a feather sticking up in the back. “I wonder if Buffalo Bill is among the riders.”
“From what I’ve read he should be easy to recognize. Perhaps he stayed with the train.”
“Could that be Annie Oakley?” Merritt saw a woman dressed in fringed buckskin and a gun belt around her waist go by on a beautiful palomino. The papers had been full of stories of the Wild West show and the people who were slated to appear with it. For the past few weeks Merritt read about Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, Red Shirt the Indian, and Kid Cochran who the papers claimed was the fastest gun alive, whatever that meant. She supposed it could have something to do with quick draw or rapid firing. Whatever it was, it all seemed very exciting and adventurous, especially when one’s life seemed to center around doctor visits and the constant hovering of her mother, her maid, and Rose the nurse.
“We are going, aren’t we Papa?” she asked as a dozen or so buffalo went by with their shaggy humped backs reeking from too much confinement.
“We shall see.” His usual reply to her requests for some sort of normalcy in her life.
“I do not see how it could possibly be safe,” the Countess interjected.
“Evelyn,” the Earl said dryly. “Or course it will be safe. The Prince is planning to attend and the Queen has requested a private showing.”
Merritt allowed herself a small smile. Her father’s retort was quick assurance that they would attend the Wild West Show and most likely at the nearest opportunity. The first scheduled public performance was for May the ninth but it was well known among the members of parliament, of which her father was included, that there would be private showings before then. It was a small victory she relished to make up for the dreaded appointment that was to occur later on.
“Watch out!” her father suddenly exclaimed. The carriage lurched as Merritt crashed into her father who steadied her with his arm. “Are you hurt my dear?”
“No,” she said. “I am quite all right.”
“Thomas,” the Countess said. “Would you please do something about removing us before we are trampled by these creatures?”
“I’ll see what I can do.” The Earl quickly exited the carriage on the side that was closest to the buildings without waiting for his man Jerry, to open the door. Merritt knew it was only because he wanted a closer look at the commotion without listening to her mother’s constant concerns. She turned back to the window and was amazed to see a buffalo staring at her. The head with its protruding horns was immense and the humped back seemed to her to be as high as the carriage windows. If she wanted to, she could stretch out a gloved hand and touch the shaggy coat.
A piercing whistle sounded followed by a shout.” Get outa there!” There was a popping sound and the buffalo jumped away and joined its fellows as they trotted on down the street.
“Sorry about that.” A horse and rider stopped by the carriage. The horse was extraordinary, nothing like Merritt had ever seen before. Its nose was a deep blue black then the color faded to bluish gray before becoming white on its hindquarters. There was a spattering of blue-gray spots across its back that ended in a silky tail that seemed to be a blend of all three colors.
“Oh my,” Merritt exclaimed. “What type of horse is that?”
The rider rubbed the arched neck of the animal with pride. “This here is Katie,” he said. “And she’s what we call an Appaloosa.”
“She’s extraordinary.” Merritt said as her eyes moved from the horse to the muscular thigh that held the animal in check. Her breath quickened at the sight of the raw wildness that was within her reach.
“Yes she is.” The voice had a lazy drawl and it captured her, drawing her gaze to his face. She saw a strong jaw and straight nose beneath the brim of a wide hat the types of which she’d seen pictures of in the newspapers. The jaw was covered with a stubble of beard and strong white teeth flashed a grin at her from full lips. He wore a short brown coat with the collar turned up against the crisp cold air. There was a blue paisley scarf tied about his neck and buckskin pants tucked into brown boots. Much to her surprise a gun belt rode low on his left hip and was tied off around his thigh to keep it from moving. He coiled a short whip around a knob that protruded from his saddle.
Her mother craned her neck to see who she was talking to and gasped at the blatant display of weaponry.
“They’re all a bit frisky after being cooped up for so long,” he said with a wave at the small contingent of buffalo that trotted on down the cobblestones with the riders doing their best to keep them contained. “We all are,” he added.
“I would imagine so,” Merritt said. She felt a flutter of excitement inside as she studied the cowboy. He seemed mysterious and forbidden, like one of the scandalous romance novels she kept hidden beneath her mattress or the champagne her mother would not let her drink at parties lest it bring on another spell. She heard her mother’s hiss and felt the sharp tug on her skirt. She ignored it as the cowboy pushed back his hat so she could see the rest of his face.
Deep blue eyes gazed at her from beneath a flop of golden brown hair that touched his incredibly long lashes. He pushed the recalcitrant locks aside and gave her a wide grin. “I hope you’re coming to the show.” He looked at her, boldly, brazenly and a lazy smile turned up the corners of his full lips.
Merritt felt the heat of his eyes and her cheeks burned with his look. He sees me… For the first time someone was looking at her, as a person, whole into herself. She was so used to the whispers about her spells and the sympathetic looks of the servants or the constant worry that lined her parent’s faces. No one ever truly saw Merritt. They only saw the circumstances that surrounded her.
“It is my intent.” She returned his smile with a shy one of her own.
“Merritt!” Her mother’s voice was loud enough for the cowboy to hear. She was not surprised. It was unusual for her to engage in conversation with the prim and proper gentlemen of the peerage. Of course it would shock her mother to see her hanging from a carriage window, talking to a complete stranger who seemed so rough around the edges. It might even be considered dangerous, enough so that a thrill went down her spine.
“That’s a pretty name,” he drawled. “Don’t think I’ve ever heard that one before.”
“Thank you,” Merritt replied. “My father gave it to me.”
As if on cue her father stepped round from behind the carriage with Jerry close behind him. “Taking in the scenery?” he said to the cowboy.
“Yes sir,” the cowboy said as he looked between Merritt and her father. The relationship had to be obvious to even a stranger on the street. She had the same blonde hair and the same piercing blue eyes although she was grateful to be blessed with her mother’s nose and chin. Her mother was still considered to be a great beauty. Merritt’s beauty was always an addendum to her condition.
“That’s an interesting piece you’re wearing there,” the Earl said, motioning towards the gun strapped to the cowboy’s hip.”
“It gets the job done,” the cowboy said. His eyes changed, along with his posture. He was no longer open and easy. Suddenly he was more reserved, as if there were secrets that he was trying to protect.
“The way seems to be clear, sir,” Harry said from his post.
“Oh,” the Earl said. His disappoint was evident. “Well then, I supposed we must be off. The cowboy backed his horse away as Jerry opened the carriage door and her father stepped in. He leaned out the window once more. “Will we see you in the show?” he asked as Harry set the team in motion.
“Yes, sir,” the cowboy replied. “Just keep a lookout for Kid Cochran!” he called out after them. He tugged on the reins and Katie, the beautiful appaloosa, rose up on her hind legs and pawed the air as her rider lifted his arm in the air and let out a farewell whoop.
Merritt and her father clapped their approval of the show as Katie took off in a clatter of hooves after the retreating buffalo. The crowd gathered in the melting snow let out a collective gasp and then a cheer at the cowboy’s bravado.
Kid Cochran…The fastest gun alive. And to think she had met him boldly on the street. Her friend Caro would never believe it.
It would make for much better conversation than the coming appointment.

Post-Apocalyptic Novel: JULIAN COMSTOCK

I love S. M. Stirling's "Dies the Fire" series, about a world in which all advanced technology (anything dependent on electronics, explosions, internal combustion, etc.) instantaneously and inexplicably stopped working at one catastrophic moment in the 1990s. So I was intrigued when I picked up JULIAN COMSTOCK, by Robert Charles Wilson. It's set in the twenty-second century of an America where technology has recovered to a late Victorian level after the devastating End of Oil, False Tribulation, and Plague of Infertility in the twenty-first century. The United States, though nominally a republic, is governed by despotic presidents who rule for life. Julian's uncle, the current president, was responsible for Julian's father's death. The theocratic Dominion also wields vast power, including censorship of books and culture in general. Julian (whom the author modeled on the Roman emperor Julian the Apostate) has an avid interest in the forbidden works of the Secular Ancients (us) and heretical doctrines such as Evolution. The story is told by a naive young man, Adam, Julian's best friend. In this future, elections are only a ritual. The outward forms and verbal formulas of American culture and politics as we know them are mostly preserved, but with altered meanings. There's a biting scene in which a military officer solemnly tells Adam the Dutch are trying to drive the Americans out of Labrador because "they hate our freedoms"—while the guileless Adam accepts this claim at face value, the reader by this point is well aware that most of those "freedoms" survive in name only.

As the current crisis in Iran reminds us, the mere existence of an election process doesn't guarantee rights and freedoms, much less the peaceful transitions we're fortunate to enjoy here. In the America of JULIAN COMSTOCK, presidents often lose their lives, like many of the Roman emperors, to coups and assassinations. This novel offers cautionary and mildly satirical retrospective glimpses of our own world through the eyes of a future century with only distorted memories of the pre-collapse world.

How well would most of us cope if our technological civilization suddenly collapsed? I don't know about you, but I am not and never will be an omnicompetent Heinlein-style survivalist. I don't even like camping! I'm very attached to my conveniences and would hate to go back even to the 1970s. My favorite historical era is the 1890s, but I don't want to *live* there. Five days without electricity after Hurricane Isabel made that point clear (worse than the nineteenth century, actually, because without power our well pump doesn't work). And relatively few of us have the useful experience of belonging to the SCA or other historical re-creation groups, as the resourceful protagonists in Stirling's DIES THE FIRE do. I'm afraid I would be a victim of the collapse, not a survivor.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Snow Dogs And Happily Ever After

Before we discuss a possible format for an Alien Romance complete with HEA, here's my speaking schedule for Westercon ( http://www.westercon.org/ fiestacon this year in Tempe, AZ.)

LIT/MED-What Universe Are You In? Fri 10a-11a, Palm E room

w/ Jacqueline Lichtenberg (moderator), Dani Kollin, Etyan Kollin, Janice Tuerff

LIT-How Are Small Presses Fri 11a-noon, Palm E room

w/ Jacqueline Lichtenberg (moderator), Adam Niswander, Michael D’Ambrosio

MED-Star Trek Movie Review Fri 2p-3p, Palm F room

w/David A. Williams (moderator), Alan Dean Foster

LIT-It Was A Dark & Stormy Night Fri 4p-5p, Abbey South

w/ Jacqueline Lichtenberg (moderator), Kevin Andrew Murphy, Moira Greyland,
Shirley Runyon

AUTOGRAPHING Fri 5p-6p, Dealers Room

LIT-Writer’s Support Groups Sun 11a-noon, Boardroom

w/ Jacqueline Lichtenberg (moderator), Rick Novy, Dennis McKiernan

FAN-Effect of Web on Fanzines Sun noon-1p, Jokake room

w/John Hertz (moderator)

FAN-SF/F Websites Sun 2p-3p, Augustine

w/ Jacqueline Lichtenberg (moderator), Lee Gilliland, Lee Whiteside

-----------------
And on another note which is actually in the same key:

I picked up on Twitter and "Re-tweeted" (relayed to my followers)
LIKE SO: RT @victoriastrauss Should bookstores be publishers? http://tinyurl.com/mrdatl

Twitter makes these tiny-urls for you when you post a long url and there are several companies now that make condensed URLs.

So Victoria Strauss found an article by Literary Agent Richard Curtis on whether bookstores SHOULD be publishers. Here's a quote from the article she found.

QUOTE
As if all that were not enough, Amazon has now become a publisher, too. First, there's its Encore program "whereby Amazon will use information such as customer reviews on Amazon.com to identify exceptional, overlooked books and authors with more potential than their sales may indicate. Amazon will then partner with the authors to re-introduce their books to readers through marketing support and distribution into multiple channels and formats, such as the Amazon.com Books Store, Amazon Kindle Store, Audible.com, and national and independent bookstores via third-party wholesalers."
ENDQUOTE

http://www.ereads.com/2009/06/should-bookstores-be-publishers-too.html is the blog.

Victoria Strauss also found announcements of other closings in publishing, and coincidentally I'm on a panel at Westercon about small "presses" (which is today a misnomer; it's small publishers, and I suspect one day every blogger will be considered a small publisher.)

To keep up on interesting developments I come across this way, just "follow" me on twitter. http://twitter.com/JLichtenberg look at my profile to find all my tweets.

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

OK, so back to researching the future of Romance on page and screen by scrutinizing and analyzing old movies.

I saw a 2002 Disney movie titled SNOW DOGS and just couldn't resist transposing it into an Alien Romance as I watched it. It is soooo SF-Romance!

Snow Dogs with Comedy, Drama, a clean family style, Nichelle Nichols for a treat, and starring: Cuba Gooding Jr., James Coburn Director: Brian Levant. You can still get the DVD on Amazon.



If you've been following how I've been developing the Alien Romance potential for TV and film, and you happen to have seen this "family" movie, you'll know what's coming here. It's really irresistible.

Here's the IMDB link to all about this movie.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0281373/

Here's the Product Description from Amazon:

-----------quoted from Amazon---------------
Make no bones about it -- Disney's SNOW DOGS is a hilarious action-packed comedy your whole family will love. Eight adorable but mischievous dogs get the best of dog hater Ted Brooks (Cuba Gooding Jr.) when he leaves his successful Miami Beach dental practice for the wilds of Alaska to claim his inheritance -- seven Siberian huskies and a border collie -- and discover his roots. As Ted's life goes to the dogs, he rises to the occasion and vows to learn to mush with his inheritance. Totally out of his element, he faces challenges he's never dreamed of. There's a blizzard, thin ice, an intimidating crusty old mountain man named Thunder Jack (James Coburn), the Arctic Challenge Sled Dog Race that's only two weeks away, and a life-and-death rescue. This fish-out-of water, tail-wagging comedy is nothing but doggone good fun and a celebration of family -- both human and canine!
-------------end Amazon Quote---------------

Compare that description to SAVE THE CAT GOES TO THE MOVIES and find the category it belongs to. (more on that later -- think it out for yourself first.)

Now substitute "Earth" for Miami Beach and "Alien Planet" for Alaska.

Notice the description has left out the ROMANCE which is the B-story in this film as written.

That's a lesson for all writers -- THIS is how you generate and pitch a Concept. THIS is how you "outline" a story you're going to write. Watch the movie, then read that description again. It hits the exact plot-points you need to put in your outline before you write and be sure that you build up to each plot point. All the B-story is support for the A-story and does not belong in the initial outline or Concept, but is generated by that concept.

Novel writers don't learn to do the sequence in this direction, or haven't until recently. Read that blog post by Agent Richard Curtis, think about how marketing has changed.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html is a blog where I discussed modern marketing.

The novels that get the promotion, the novels that you as an author would find easiest TO PROMOTE, the novels that sell, the novels that attract busy reader's attention -- those novels today resemble games, films, and TV shows more and more.

Market structures have always been morphing, and every generation puts its own stamp on what's popular. But I suspect never in all human history have "markets" (for everything) changed and changed again, 100% replaced in shorter and shorter intervals. This was predicted by Alvin Toffler in Future Shock which I discussed in that blog entry on marketing fiction in a changing world.

This means that never before in human history has there been such an opportunity to overthrow the existing order because the walls between genres are melting and morphing.

Instability like that is a threat in the areas where we have actually got it right -- but in the area of Relationships, I doubt any expert would say that humanity has optimized our ability to establish and hold relationships.

Love is all about relationship -- and it's very hard to get to love without going through Romance (one day we should discuss the astrology behind that).

So let's see what we can do with the example of Snow Dogs to create a template for Alien Romance with broad appeal. A "template" would be a pattern that, if all of us on this blog used to create a screenplay or novel, would generate 7 or more totally original, completely different stories. They wouldn't compete, they would expand a genre.

It would be easy to make the Romance the A-story and transform this movie into an Alien Romance.

So here's a description of Snow Dogs based on the assumption that you know or remember this movie.

In Snow Dogs, the very successful and popular Miami Dentist Ted Brooks (whose mother is played by Nichelle Nichols, the woman who raised him, not his deceased biological mother) is served with a legal notice that he's inherited something in Alaska from his MOTHER and Nichelle Nichols confesses that he was adopted (oh, she's GOOD in this film!).

For more on Nichelle Nichols see my blog post on High Concept:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/medium-is-message_19.html

Thus stressed, Ted Brooks flies to Alaska to be present at the reading of the Will in a tiny out-back town, complete with Bush Pilot who turns out to be his real father.

That's the A-story. Ted, his Miami Beach mother Nichelle Nichols, his Alaskan father who is a white man, his dead biological mother's photo (she was black as Ted is) and her heritage of dogsled racing.

The B-story goes like this: as soon as Ted gets to Alaska, flown into the little town by the Bush Pilot he doesn't know is his father, he meets a WOMAN HIS AGE who takes him out to the house he inherited. He insists he go in alone, so she leaves him. He goes in and meets the friendly Border Collie, then gets attacked by the Alaskan Huskies his deceased mother owned.

Between the Bush Pilot (James Coburn was FANTASTIC in this role!) and the young woman, Ted learns to "mush" and learns the words to command the dogs from his father. She teaches him how to harness the dogs so they'll cooperate.

Then Ted discovers he loves dogsledding, and just as he's really enjoying it, he drives off a cliff and has a (very comic book) slide down a mountainside, gets rescued by the Bush Pilot who takes him to a refuge cave where he confesses Ted was conceived during a dog sled race, but that there was nothing at all between his real mother and the Bush Pilot, and tries to convince Ted that he doesn't care that Ted is his son. (Oh, Coburn is good, but what would you expect?)

Ted goes home to Miami. On TV in Miami, he sees the local annual dogsled race. Nichelle Nichols drops the photo he kept from his biological mother's things which is of Ted's biological mother with her dogsled trophy. The frame breaks revealing a photo tucked behind the trophy photo. This older photo shows his mother with the Bush pilot and newborn Ted. Ted realizes his real father, the Bush Pilot, lied, and he was indeed present at his birth and he did care for his mother, and he cares for Ted too. His real father lied.

So Ted goes back to Alaska and arrives during the race, as a storm is blowing in, just as it did during the dogsled race when he was conceived.

The young woman tells him that his father is lost out on the race course in the storm -- that just as he did that first time, his father has passed by the camp where the racers would wait out the storm, and driven on into the blizzard. After the storm, Ted's father has failed to show up at the finish line with the others.

That kicks off the Act 3 action where Ted takes his sled, his mother's dog team (sans the lead dog which his father took for his team), and finds and rescues his father who has taken refuge in that same cave where Ted was conceived. Bt this time his father has a broken leg. Ted's a Dentist, but he splints the leg nicely. Then it turns out that his mother's lead-dog Demon was in a bad temper because he had a rotten tooth, so Ted pulls the tooth, justifying the whole "Miami Dentist" part of his characterization.

Meanwhile, Ted's Miami mother, Nichelle Nichols, flies to Alaska and the young woman takes gentle care of her as they wait to see if Ted will make it back to town alive.

Of course (this being a Disney movie) Ted and his father make it back to town, Ted almost kisses the young woman in public (being Disney, only almost) and then there's a very quick but moving wrap-up sequence where Ted marries her, establishes his Dental practice in Alaska with his wife as receptionist (now very pregnant), and two of the dogs arrive with puppies following them, and Ted's Dental Assistant from Miami is helping him with patients. And there's a great scene with Coburn and Nichols -- the end-note is TOTAL HEA!!! But the bulk of the plot is comedy-action.

Frankly, the tag-ending providing the HEA (a real tear-jerker) would make a fine novel, all by itself. One part of this story is seen through a magnifying glass (Notice of his biological mother's death all the way through to rescuing his biological father), and the much larger and more complicated part is seen through the wrong end of a telescope. But it works.

Now, if instead of dogsledding there was some non-human skill-set that a human talent would be adaptable to and that talent was substituted for Dentistry, it would work perfectly as an Alien Romance.

Let's say the human is female, and the reason she is pulled off Earth is that tests show she has a gene for being SOMETHING (immune to alien diseases? learning languages? Telepathy?) that makes her valuable on Earth's first-contact team. But she's no astronaut and never dreamed of ever going "out there" just as Ted was happy and successful as a Miami dentist and had no intention of going dog sledding in Alaska.

So Our Heroine goes out there, and has to learn to (SOMETHING ALIEN), and does, and in the process establishes a Relationship with an alien male, just as Ted established a relationship with the Alaskan young woman.

Our Heroine and the Alien Male are the A-story here, and the B-story is her winning some sort of respect from the Earth-Team that has been ordered to take her out-there in spite of her ineptitude because of her talent.

The team returns her to Earth safe and sound but changed by the experience. Something happens on the alien planet, and she muscles her way back to the alien planet (possible only because the B-story characters help) to deal with unfinished business with the Alien Male.

She wins a permanent place on the Alien Planet (as Ted opened his Dentistry office in Alaska) doing what makes her happy with her talent, not necessarily what Earth-gov would prefer her to do.

I'm thinking that a really good setup would be that the Aliens are the "flying saucer" aliens who have been kidnapping kids, and now she has to go there to be the psychological counsellor to those kids and ease them back into Earth society, but proves that's impossible for the kids (they'd be miserable and a disruptive influence). Then she goes back and settles down to take care of the kids who can't be repatriated.

The Alien guy would be someone in charge of settling the matter of the kidnapped Earth kids, maybe someone from a new alien government that ousted the aliens that believed in "studying" humans by kidnapping kids. The new gov't thinks this deed was an attrocity.

That would make a feature film -- and the foundation for a TV series like maybe THE WALTONS IN SPACE? THE KING AND I IN SPACE?

If you get a chance, grab the DVD of Snow Dogs (it's also being rerun on TV) (maybe netflicks has it, or it can be viewed online?) and watch the whole film with the Alien Romance possibilities in mind.

In Blake Snyder's SAVE THE CAT GOES TO THE MOVIES, check out the category that SNOW DOGS belongs to on the free pdf file:
http://www.blakesnyder.com/downloads/STCGTTM_AtGlnceFnlRev2.pdf

Snow Dogs is not listed, but I would place it under FOOL TRIUMPHANT in the sub-category FOOL OUT OF WATER (a variant of Fish Out Of Water), which is the category headed by LEGALLY BLONDE. What do you think of that placement? And would that category and its formula lend itself to a platform for an Alien Romance that would have an appeal outside Romance fandom as Star Trek had an appeal outside of SF fandom (mainly to women who wouldn't crack an SF novel if their life depended on it -- those very women who INVENTED Alien Romance in ST 'zines!) ?

Blake Snyder's category depends on the MAIN CHARACTER being a CHARACTER (as in USA CHARACTERS WELCOME) who responds to a challenge with zest, joi de vivre, and the flexibility to learn, making "a fool of herself" in public in the process, and yet triumphing over the learning process in the end.

Note that Crocadile Dundee also belongs to this category. Scrumptious alien male, a fish out of water in Manhattan.

It seems to me that the category lends itself to Alien Romance so smoothly that I think we could see our breakthrough using this type of vehicle.

And as I pointed out, all of us could write the screenplay or novel structured like a screenplay from this template, and not compete with each other for shelf-space.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.slantedconcept.com/
http://facebook.com/jacqueline.lichtenberg
http://twitter.com/jlichtenberg

This is not the blog I want to write...

Tank trotted around the cabin after MommySass left, sniffing corners, putting his wet nose to the viewports, and then staring nowhere and everywhere. Be alert, Friend Reilly had warned him. Bad Thing watches us with its ugly smelly light.

Tank knew. He scented another drip of ugliness just now, a fetid ripple in the neverwhen. A small one, yes. But there.

Gone now. He looked again through the neverwhen. Perhaps he’d scared it away. He might be only a fidget, but he was growing stronger. He blinked his eyes, searching for something more pleasant.

Friend? Friend?

He felt Reilly’s answering purr.

Play now? Play time?

Play now, came the answer from down the corridor. Come here. Go Blink.

Fun! He swished his tail, remembering to do what Reilly taught him. Stretch. Reach. Sense. Go Blink.

He felt the neverwhen ruffle his fur. And then he was in Friend Reilly’s cabin sharing a wet-nosed greeting. Fun! he said again, and pounced on his friend’s back, wrestling the larger furzel to the floor....

The two furzels touched noses one more time before Reilly followed Tank into Sass’s small kitchen. Tank sat and looked up at the countertop. Reilly leaped gracefully, landing next to a shallow bowl of cream.

Tank scrunched his pudgy body against the floor and pushed with all his might, managing only to scramble against the cabinet doors before falling.

Shtift-a! he swore.

Reilly looked down at the pudgy fidget, then indicated with a lift of his nose the other side of the counter and two tall stools. Obediently, Tank trotted around and, paw over paw, grunting audibly, managed to pull himself up to counter level. Reilly graciously left a bit of cream for his friend.

Food!

Food!

Sweet. Cool.

Cool. Sweet.

A noise at the cabin door drew their attention.

Sass. Friend. Love, said Tank. Mommymommy!

Friend. Sass, agreed Reilly.

She pulled her hand away to examine the object, knowing by touch what it was before she even held it up in the dim light. Five diamond-studded stars riding a slash of gold lightning.

“Keep it this time. Please.” He secured it to her shirt, just over her captain’s bars.

She knew she would never let it go again. A part of him, a part of Branden Kel-Paten. And a promise of forever.

She threaded her hand back through his and let him lead her through his ship’s dark and dying corridors to the airlock’s hatchway. A fat long-furred black and white furzel sat patiently waiting for them in the bright glow of the only working overhead light. Guardian of their safety. A beacon to guide them home.

(all selections from GAMES OF COMMAND )



Daquiri aka Daq Cat aka Tank the Furzel

Nov 1996 - June 21, 2009


You will be in my heart forever.

~Linnea aka MommySass

The future of Health Care

The most ridiculous health care system I've seen in my reading of alien romances and futuristic romances is to put an injured or sick person into a smart box for a short time.

Like magic, they recover completely with no explanation. All the hero has to do is carry the heroine to the nearest box. Or vice versa!

Superheroes and new agers require crystals. What else have you seen in speculative fiction?

Could an MRI or the combination of radioactivity with a psychically attractive meditation object really stimulate the body to regenerate itself?

Or will doctors and nurses always be with us? And if they are, will they dress differently... because those white coats or scrubs that are worn all day long might be the modern equivalent of the unwashed hands that went from dissecting cadavers in the morgue to the childbed in the maternity ward.

It would be nice if Go To Meeting Dot Com technology could be adapted for sick patient consultations, wouldn't it?

Go-To-Doc dot com.

We could sit at our computers with the camera on, and the doctor would be at his computer. We could show him our tongues, throats, nostrils, spots and rashes, hemorroids (I never could spell that!), or anything else that bothered us.

I dare say it wouldn't be too hard to have a DIY stethoscope, ECG, and blood tester. Also a DIY urinalysis, and occult blood test. Pharmacies could sell kits.

My vision is that this would be like Triage. If the patient wasn't satisfied, or if the doctor was suspicious of his or her own diagnosis, a referral could be made. In many cases, we go to a walk in clinic, the doctor pays close attention, prescribes an antibiotic or an over-the-counter remedy, admonishes us to rest and drink lots of non-alcoholic liquids, and tells us to come back in ten days if the condition does not improve.

There's already Ask-A-Nurse by telephone and probably in chat forums. Why not have Doctor-Zoom (with apologies to Legal Zoom) ?

It seems to me that medicine is Socialized on the USS Enterprise, on Babylon 5, and on Rebel alliance starships. Did Luke have to pay for his bionic hand? Would Mr. Spock be required to pay privately if he elected to have a medically irrational ear job?

Being sick is bad enough, without it being financially ruinous. On the other hand, perhaps we don't all have the right to be as beautiful and sexy as modern medicine could make us... at least, not at taxpayers' cost.

What would happen to society in the future if the person who communicated a disease was financially responsible for the treatment of those he or she infected? Unworkable? Unenforcible?

Look at H1N1. Some cities closed the schools.

It's a fact of life. Some parents will send their children to school when they know that child has a fever and is infectious... even with H1N1. There is no economic disincentive to endangering the community, but there is a financial incentive. If the child is kept at home, the parent cannot go to work and may lose wages.

Some people have a cock-eyed view of social responsibility. We had a school camp. One parent allegedly (so others said) left the bedside of a husband who had a 104 degree fever and alleged swineflu to come to camp and take her turn serving food at the snack table.

If the health care system is in financial trouble, will the elders of the future seek to encourage and even reward "self-quarantine"? Or, in the future, would the spread of a deadly disease be seen by government as a cost-effective way to eradicate the most expensive and non-productive members of society?

(Playing Devils Advocate, here. That is not what I endorse.)


My Fictional Future Health Care Plan

1. Private Pay. Walk-In clinics. Doctor-Zoom.com

If anyone wants to see a doctor in the walk-in system for cuts, scrapes, colds, flu, bronchitis, drug testing, rashes, broken toes/fingers, flu shots, prescription refills, (the sort of things that the uninsured take to the Emergency Room, and everyone else "walks in" and claims on their insurance, which cannot possibly be efficient in terms of paperwork time in relation to face-time with the doctor)

Flat rate of $10 for up to 10 minutes face-to-face online, or $30 in a facility.
(Or whatever AMA deems reasonable... Perhaps tax CREDITS could be an answer to the discrepancy in what people can afford to pay, and what is fair compensation for long, expensive training.)

Cash payment before being seen (on the spot or online).
Medical PayPal model?
Sign medical waiver, so there is no insurance/malpractice issue.
No insurance forms to be filled out, or claims to file. No exceptions. Just like walk in flu shots.


This will save doctors a lot of paperwork.
This will put the onus on patients to turn up at the clinics or online with all their own records and a list of their symptoms.


2.
Health Care Spending Account. PayPal for Medical costs.

Everyone (even children) may set up a tax-free, personal, individual Health Care Spending account, on the same principal as a college account. Possibly, the state could match savings for the lowest income individuals. The dollars would "roll over" and never be lost (unless spent.)

Employers could "buy out" existing health care, by transferring cash into their employees' Health Care Spending Accounts.

This would be a private pay system. Those who keep themselves in good health would not be subsidizing those who have unhealthy lifestyles.


3.
Private Insurance. (Like the British BUPA)

Individuals could opt to buy private, annual, term insurance for operations and other expensive procedures, also for elective and cosmetic procedures. This would be for patients who did not wish to wait for hip replacements, and other elective procedures, or who wished to have annual physicals at "resort" hospitals such as the Mayo Clinic instead of in their local physicans' offices with "participating providers".

It could work like car insurance, with cash back for people who do not make claims, and reduced premiums for those with clean health records. Premiums (at the Health Care Account owner's sole discretion) could be paid out of the Health Care Savings Account.


4.
State System.

Everyone is covered for everything requiring a referral from the $30 walk-in or $10 online clinic and upwards. Everyone waits their turn. No penis or breast enlargement (or reversal of medically successful cosmetic surgery) etc.

Only prescriptions that are necessary for pain, life preservation, treatment of infections, functioning of tests, etc would be provided. (No self-esteem drugs, no birth control, no viagra, no fertility drugs.)

Catastrophic care would be covered.

What's on your future wish list?

Rowena Cherry

The future of books

My opinion is that bookstores will become more of a cross between an internet cafe and a library. If patrons could do all their browsing on free computers, books would not have to be displayed attractively, and books could be stored much more efficiently.

The idea of allowing any single-product merchant access to everything on my personal computer is ludicrous.


http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/email/book-futures#comment-508303

Happy Fathers' Day

When a story doesn't work, part five

For the past few weeks I've posted the synopsis and first three chapters of my post apocotlypic romance that I shopped around to some different houses the end of 2008. One editor called it a MadMax/Matrix mix. I liked that reference. Still no one bit. No one even came close. They just could not identify with the characters.

So what was I to do? I had a concept that I thought was a good one. The greatest power is the mind. My overall story arc was pretty much typical. Guy meets girl, guy falls for girl, bad guy wants girl, bad guy takes girl, guy rescues girl and they live happily ever after. My world, as I envisioned it was complex and would need at least three books to tell, maybe four. Most important, I had two characters and names that I loved. Dax and Merritt.

I think one thing that went against me was the time of year. I sent out a dark, desperate and depressing world at Christmas time. That really should not influence it but deep down I think it did. Christmas is a happy time as it should be. But mostly I think the market was to blame. sci/fi romance is a very narrow niche and its hard to take a risk on something that does not have the potential for making a lot of $$$.

Publishers had taken a hit along with everyone else in 2008. A major book distributor went under. Returns were up, book stores were not buying as many titles as before but buying more of sure things. It was a hard time to sell period.

I took a long hard look at the market. I needed to come up with something new and fresh. Something that did not have vampires since I feel the fur and fangs market is way over done. I also felt as if urban fantasy might be overdone as well. Something well written in a new market sells, it becomes popular and suddenly every publisher in the world wants the same thing. They buy it up in hopes that they can cash in on the sudden craze and the reader gets tired of it. I am a firm believer that the reader wants a well written book in any genre instead of mediocre books in their favorite genre.

So thinking, new and different. Something that I could do well. Something in my writers wheelhouse. Somthing with strong characters, and great world buildling. I'm known for writing historicals and scifi. What blends those two genre's together?

Steampunk.

It wasn't as if I had a lightbulb moment. I'd read a few articles, thought about it, watched some movies with some elements of it, then a friend called me up and said. "I think you should try writing Steampunk. Its' perfect for you."

But I still had this proposal with elements that I liked and characters that I adored. Could I turn it into a steampunk story?

Here's the synopsis. You tell me.

Prism by Cindy Holby
A Steampunk Romance

Cindy Holby, award-winning author of historical and scifi romance, blends both genres together with Prism, a steampunk romance featuring a cowboy, a psychic heroine and a diabolical plot to take over the world using imaginative technology in Victorian England. What’s a proper British lady to do when a mad scientist is after her brain and an American cowboy is after her heart?


London, England 1887

David Alexander Conrad, AKA Dax, is a cowboy. But he's not just any ordinary cowboy—he's one of the famed performers with the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show who, in the summer of 1887, travels to England in order to give those stuffy Victorians a jolt of good old American showmanship. He is a renowned sharp shooter and trick rider with skills honed when he worked as a scout for the US Cavalry in the American Southwest during the Apache Wars with Geronimo. At twenty-seven, he’s the youngest star of the show and something of a celebrity in a London unaccustomed to his type. It is while Dax is on the party circuit that he meets a woman unlike any he has ever known.

Merritt Elizabeth Chadwyke is the daughter of Member of Parliament, Lord Pemberton She lives in a society bubble because she is subject to spells and needs the constant monitoring of a nurse. During her “spells” Merritt has been known to make outlandish comments about things of which she should have no knowledge. There is also evidence that during these spells, objects appear to move on their own. Merritt’s parents are very protective of her since they have already lost a son to a tragic accident. What her parents do not know is that at ten years of age, Merritt had a vision of her brother’s death but was afraid to say anything because of her parents reactions to her visions. She did try to warn her brother, who was fourteen when he died, but he ignored her. He realized he should have paid attention to her and said so as he died in his father’s arms. At their wits’ end over her strange illness, her parents send her to the Paranormal Research Institute run by Baron Edmond Von Swaim, who has become a society darling himself by using his powers of hypnotism to charm the upper crust. As Von Swaim performs test upon test on Merritt, he comes to the conclusion that she is something so unique and rare, he wasn't even certain it existed. Merritt is a Prism. And more importantly, she is exactly what he needs to complete his plot to overthrow the British Monarchy and take what he feels is his claim to the throne.


Von Swaim does everything to encourage Merritt’s family to turn her over to his care to cure her “spells.” His research into the study of the human mind has led him to believe that it is the greatest power upon earth. Through the use of his brilliant inventions and the enhancement of crystal prisms he plans to harness Merritt’s mind. Merritt, true to the nature of her spells, has a bad feeling about Von Swaim and refuses to go with him, despite her parents’ belief that it is the perfect solution to her strange illness. It is also during this time that Dax and Merritt have met each other and find that they are unable to stop thinking about each other. He finds it’s a bit more difficult to track a young woman through Victorian London than it is to fight Indians in the American west. Still he manages to find her, at parties, at the park, even in an exclusive tea shop. The feelings they share grow stronger with each passing moment and they go to great lengths to spend time together when they realize there is something special between them. As they pursue their romance Dax finds Merritt’s strange sense of things more of a gift than an illness and Merritt knows that Dax truly loves her for who she is, not what society or her parents expect her to be.

Frustrated with the constraints her family and society have put upon her, and unable to escape from Von Swaim’s constant presence, Merritt sneaks out to see a final performance of the Wild West show. Dax is happy to see her in the crowd and pulls her out to do some trick shooting. Meanwhile, Von Swaim, who has had Merritt watched ever since he’s treated her, is told of her escape from her home. Von Swaim sees this as the perfect opportunity to take her and sends his men, who wear armor and carry weapons that shoot lasers and electrical currents after her. Dax and Merritt manage to escape and spend a romantic night together in hiding. The following morning Von Swaim’s army finds their hiding place and chase Dax and Merritt through the streets of London. Dax is well armed but his trick shooting has no effect upon the special armor Von Swaim’s soldiers wear. Dax and Merritt are finally captured when Von Swaim uses a zeppelin to run them down in Hyde Park. He takes both of them prisoner, Merritt to be his weapon, and Dax, who is wounded in the leg to be brain washed and become a soldier in his army. They are taken by zeppelin to Von Swaim’s hidden castle in the Swiss Alps.

Dax finds there is no torture or brainwashing powerful enough to erase Merritt and his feelings for her from his memory. He manages to befriend a doctor in Von Swaim’s employ who has repaired Dax’s wound using Von Swaim’s invention of brass fittings and joints. After some time in which his injury heals and with the doctor’s help Dax manages to escape, only to find himself alone in a country where he knows no one and does not speak the language. To makes matters worse, Merritt is now under Von Swaim’s control and he has taken her to away for “treatment” with her parents’ permission. Fortunately for Dax, the Wild West Show is now touring Europe and he is able to find his friends who welcome him back with open arms. Dax is desperate to find Merritt but has no idea where to look.

Merritt, who is under Von Swaim’s control, cannot forget Dax either. Even though her memories of him are supposedly erased by Von Swaim’s hypnotism, her Prism abilities guide her back to Dax at one of the performances of the Wild West Show. Dax knows that he may never have this chance with Merritt again. With the help of his friends from the Wild West Show he is ready to use Von Swaim’s weapons against him. Dax and Von Swaim enter into a battle for her mind, but Von Swaim does not realize that Dax is also fighting for Merritt’s heart and soul. Dax will stop at nothing to free her from Von Swaim so that Merritt may make her own choices for her own life. Dax can only hope that once he frees her from Von Swaim that Merritt will choose him because he loves her just the way she is. Neither technology nor mind control, no matter how powerful, are any match for the strength of their love.

More on Animal Intelligence

An article titled “Native Intelligence,” in a special Winter 2009 issue of DISCOVER magazine about the brain, showcases the smartest animals in all the major groups (mammals, birds, insects, etc.). One general principle mentioned is, "Group living promotes a quick mind," because social interaction with other members of one's species requires flexibility and responsiveness. Being a social species isn't an absolute requirement, of course; some solitary animals are also conspicuous for their intelligence. Dolphins, border collies, pigs, and chimpanzees won't surprise anybody. Crows, among birds, are well known for their cleverness. I've also seen parrots celebrated for their smartness, although not in this article; apparently they can actually learn context-appropriate application of words rather than just "parroting." Horses, though? It turns out they're smarter than their reputation suggests. They can "be trained to pick the bigger or smaller of two objects," and wild mustangs can remember the location of water and food sources in their desert environment. Maybe Jonathan Swift's civilized horses in GULLIVER'S TRAVELS aren't so far-fetched—or the centaur-like aliens in one of John Varley's novels.

Bees? The article cites their "sophisticated spatial memory" and dance communication as signs of intelligence. I was thinking more of the "hive mind" concept, with an anthill or beehive analogous to a brain and the individual insects filling the role of neurons. A sinister hive mind takes possession of Tiffany, the young witch in Terry Pratchett's HAT FULL OF SKY, and manages to exchange thoughts with her in a rudimentary way. An extraterrestrial hive mind would be fascinating to deal with, as far as communication is concerned, but SO alien it might be difficult to integrate into a romance plot. If you fell in love with a "cell" in a group mind, wouldn't the entire hive share your intimate experiences?

The cleaner wrasse, a fish that nibbles parasites off larger fish, has enough brain to be sneaky about eating small chunks of a host's body and yet not bite the wrong fish, one that might eat him. Lobsters are "master navigators." My favorite aquatic smart creature from this article, however, is the octopus. Octopuses learn from experience and have been observed apparently playing with objects, a sign of intelligence; only intelligent animals continue to play into adulthood. Because they can manipulate things with their tentacles, super-octopuses on an alien planet could develop some sort of material technology, making them the kind of ET we could comprehend and maybe communicate with.

The last example in the article doesn't even have a brain—the amoeba. In foraging for food, it follows a zigzag pattern displaying "search optimization." This example brings up the question of how far the definition of intelligence should be stretched. The first page defines it as "the capacity to learn from one's surroundings and use reason to apply that knowledge toward a goal." Okay, just about any animal, including the amoeba and the lowly paramecium, can learn from its surroundings in the sense of modifying its behavior accordingly. But in what sense can a creature without a brain be said to "use reason"? Which relates to the SF problem of whether we could recognize an alien as intelligent if it had a type of intelligence extremely different from ours. Or suppose we met a being whose difference of scale went in the opposite direction from the bee's or amoeba's—a creature the size of a planet or star. Maybe its thoughts would move with such ponderous deliberation that it would have trouble recognizing US as intelligent.

P. S.: What kinds of topics would you be interested in seeing us blog about? I think this has been asked before, but more input is always welcome.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt: http://www.margaretlcarter.com

Writer's Eye Finds Symmetry

We had an interesting discussion on Spoilers recently in which I held that any story worth reading or viewing couldn't be "spoiled" by knowing the ending, or any particular scene, plot development or bit of dialogue.

In other words, I held that there is no such thing as a "spoiler."
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/03/prologues-and-spoilers.html

If knowing what happens "spoils" it for you, then it wasn't well written enough to be worth your time and money anyway.

But in fact, there is such a thing as a spoiler!!!

What "spoils" fiction for readers and viewers is not knowing what happens, but knowing the trick behind the fictional facade.

The trick that's jerking your emotions around, that takes an event or line of dialogue and carries it straight through your conscious defenses into your subconscious and hits your deepest, most buried buttons, works just as well whether you've heard the plot in advance or not.

But once you know the trick being used against you, you don't react to it any more.

As stage magicians loathe letting anyone know their "secrets" (even other magicians), so also writers (who are prestidigitators of the emotions) should guard their proprietary secrets. Some writers go so far as to not-teach new writers because newbies are 'the competition.'

There is a process which trainee writers undergo as they pass from audience to stage-magician that is extremely wrenching. As you learn the secrets that writers have been using to jerk your emotions around, to make you laugh or cry over a scene, to deliver a GASP!, or a whoop of triumph, you find that your favorite fiction is "spoiled" -- you just don't enjoy it anymore, the way you used to as a mere reader.

You've found the keywords that trigger your emotional responses, even when used 200 pages before the impact hits you. You've found how you fall for the hero's kryptonite weakness, or root for heroes who have no such weakness. You've read a lot of these articles on how to write, and you've attended panels at conventions where writers reveal their secrets. Perhaps you've even done some writing yourself, and realize that these stories that always seemed so real, so important, so filled with higher truth, spiritual insights, or personal affirmation of your view of the world -- all this stuff you always adored suddenly seems as flimsy and false as the Western town main street consisting of plywood fronts for stores with catwalks on the back for cameras.

And it's all bland and pointless, except there's money to be made writing! So you set out to write, and that just makes the apathy for reading or viewing any fiction worse.

This state of apathy for fiction can persist for years once fiction has been "spoiled" for you by glimpsing behind the scenes. Or it might persist only for a few months, depending on how fast the stage of mastering the craft lasts. And the length of that interval depends on how hard you work at mastering the tricks yourself, and how much of yourself you put into it, and on how good you are at learning abstract things then applying them in the practical world.

Some people actually reach a version of this stage of apathy just while watching television, never thinking to become writers. They grasp the underlying formula for a TV series, find it predictable, and then find it boring because it's predictable.

Some will then segue into an "I can write better than that!" attitude and proceed to do so (with varied results), but still not find their enjoyment of commercial fiction returning.

So let's talk a little about how writing students bootstrap themselves up to the level of professional writers, and begin enjoying fiction for totally different reasons than they had ever been able to imagine before. This sheds light on why the same novel rarely wins both the Hugo (voted by fans) and the Nebula (voted only by professional writers.)

What does the writer's eye see that the reader's eye misses?

What do writers see in each others' work to send them into paroxysms of joy, of admiration, or even (*gasp*) into becoming a FAN of another writer's work?

It's all in the writer's TRAINED EYE. The writer's inner eye "sees" patterns that escape the casual reader. Having attempted to capture such a pattern and display it in a fictional universe, a world they have built themselves, the writer is aware of how difficult it is to put such an abstract vision into a piece of fiction and have the fiction still work as a story comprehensible to other people.

Only the writer who has studied the craft, then attempted (and perhaps even sold) stories has full appreciation of what an achievement capturing a real-world pattern in a bit of fiction can be.

If the pattern is put into the foreground of the fiction, the fiction fails to reach the reader/viewer's subconscious. If it's in the background or too buried in symbology or assumptions, the fiction doesn't communicate the pattern to a commercial size audience. If it's too hidden in the THEME, the fiction fails. Too blatant or too hidden -- either one is easy to write. But getting the pattern to be visible, clear and well stated, but still open to personal interpretation, and thus able to engage the audience's subconscious, now that's hard.

A writer can have a blazing epiphany, become filled to the brim with the urgency of showing the world an important bit of wisdom, and write their heart into a story -- only to have it sneered at or rejected.

After such a failure, a writer is set up to break through the apathy barrier, to become a FAN of other writers, to appreciate writing as craft and art welded into a thing of beauty.

What does a writer learn in that moment of breaking through the apathy barrier? What breaks that barrier and restores enjoyment to fiction? Finding a pattern you recognize properly used in a bit of fiction, understanding the craft elements that construct and convey the pattern, and knowing "This is what I was trying to do!" Recognizing another writer's success at something difficult restores a writer's zest for reading/viewing other writer's fiction.

All that is very abstract. Here's a concrete example.

Let's take the film MR. AND MRS. SMITH, the 2005 movie version where a husband and wife are in marriage counselling, and discover that each one has been keeping a secret from the other.

They are both assassins working for secret agencies. And they've been assigned to kill each other, and in fact the situation which pits them against each other was rigged by their superiors simply because they were living together. (um, yeah, it's a romance, and has all the elements of an alien romance, since each is "the unknown" to the other)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0356910/



I've seen this film several times, and once again just recently.

But this last time was the ONLY time I saw what it was that speaks to me in this film.

Previously, it had been years since I'd written a screenplay. Recently I've done three (none yet to my own satisfaction!). Now I'm seeing movies differently, and really enjoying things I did not enjoy before. Apparently I stopped writing screenplays before I broke this barrier.

So in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, I found the PATTERN that (when I couldn't see it) was jerking me around. Now it is very likely you saw this pattern the first time you saw the movie, and you won't understand why I didn't see it.

And I like this movie even better now that I've seen clearly what was only hazy before.

I hope you've re-read my post
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/03/prologues-and-spoilers.html
because in that post I did mention that if you have a prologue, you also need an epilogue. That's a technique of structure often called "bookends." Mr. & Mrs. Smith has "bookends" in the structure, and I never missed that point.

The film starts with the husband and wife sitting in office visitor chairs before a desk you don't see. It's a marriage counselling session. They haven't had sex in a while (with each other, that is) and can't agree on how long that's been, nor on how long it's been since they met. We see how they met, pretending to be a couple even though they didn't know each other, evading a police search for an assassin who was an American traveling alone. Total strangers, they provided cover for each other.

We see each of them in their ordinary workday persona, in wild "James Bond" action, battling, killing, almost being killed, arriving home in very "James Bond" unruffled fashion, being the perfect suburban couple. They argue or go stone-silent over trivial household matters. Clearly something abnormal there.

Then they're pitted against each other (we don't know why at first) and each wrestles with whether to kill the other (almost does it), and finally they begin actually TALKING about the issues between them ("What did you think the first time you saw me?" asking frank and embarrassing questions and answering honestly.) As they clear the air, they decide they won't kill each other, and they team up as allies against the conspiracy of their superiors to make them kill each other because they're living together (and therefore the "other" is a spy.)

The battle scenes get wilder and wilder until they shoot up a store, blow things up, (even their own house gets turned into a pile of kindling) then there's a stunt-doubled car chase to make Indiana Jones pale.

And after one wild-WILD action fight sequence, they blow off the rest of their aggressions in sex, wild passionate sex like they haven't had in years.

They settle the problem with their superiors, and they're back at the marriage counsellor. Mr. Smith prompts the marriage counsellor to ask the sex question again. They admit they redecorated the house (one of the issues they were spatting over was the color of the curtains).

Of course, the way I've outlined the story here, the pattern is obvious because I see it now.

The VIOLENT ACTS we see as they do their day-job, the violence in joining in combat at a job (that was a setup) where one tries to steal the "package" from the other, all the way through forming an alliance and shooting up and destroying a SUBURBAN HOUSEWARES STORE (with all kinds of nasty hunting weapons) (and they turn out to be wearing kevlar vests! I tell you the SYMBOLISM is perfect for penetrating subconsciouses), even the explosion that destroys their house -- all that violence and destruction is the SHOW DON'T TELL illustration, an exact replica or reflection, of the usual ho-hum marital-spat screaming fights most couples have. When a marriage is in real trouble, those spats become symbolic of the real problems in exactly the way the violence and truth-in-marriage issues do in this film.

The violence in this film acts as a SYMBOL for the marital issues that are screamed over and around but never actually stated in ordinary marriages (such as viewers of the movie might be living through). As the violence escalates, their COMMUNICATION over the real issues escalates (as rarely happens in real life -- I said this is a romance.)

The marriage counsel session dialogue is easily recognizable as marital issues. Just read some self-help books and you can't miss it. Textbook stuff. The marriage counsellor doesn't know they're both assassins by trade. Would that trade make a difference?

The VIOLENCE appears to be just rollicking good fun needed to sell a movie. Neither is rattled by explosions, wounds, etc. The violence isn't about the violence. It's about conversation, about communicating.

This is a film in which VIOLENCE is CONVERSATION. DESTRUCTION is SEXUALITY.

The film doesn't go into great detail about the sex scenes, but the violence is detailed move for move and prolonged for fun, right down to gradually stripping off clothing as it gets ruined by the violence.

We've all discussed the psychological equivalence of sex and violence.

From the writer's point of view, the trick is to define a HIGH CONCEPT, and write that story, delivering on the fun in the concept.

The CONCEPT that husband and wife are (secretly from each other) professional assassins casts the marital "battle of the sexes" into HIGH CONCEPT, and provides the "violence" that producers require to pull in audiences.

But the violence in Mr. And Mrs. Smith (2005 version) is not gratuitous. It's not there to draw audiences. It's not there to display the grandiose physiques of the stars or the director's genius. It's there to FULFILL A PATTERN, to reticulate a pattern, and to discuss the nature of marriage.

Whee! This writer SQUEALS FOR JOY at seeing every bit of this script so clearly etched that every line traces right back to where the concept came from.

Now seeing into the wheels-and-gears behind the illusion does not spoil it for me. It is in fact the reason I imbibe fiction in all media. I take vast joy in well oiled wheels-and-gears.

Seeing into the mechanism is one part of the exercise of creating such a mechanism of your own. Seeing this particular mechanism fitting a typical alien-romance plot into commercial box office parameters makes me ever more hopeful that we can indeed create that blockbuster, runs-for-twenty-years PNR TV series.

Does anybody reading this remember TOPPER? It's not even currently available on DVD, and what's available used is only "highlights" -- it's time to rethink all this PNR stuff.



AMAZON SAYS: "A madcap comedy escapade, The Adventures of Topper is a collection of the funniest episodes from the ""Topper"" television series. The show, based on a novel by Thorne Smith and the book's subsequent spin-off motion pictures, features genteel banker Cosmo Topper who moves into a new house that comes complete with ghosts and all!"

Remember "The Ghost And Mrs. Muir" ???



Each of those two "Concepts" spoke to a particular generation in terms of what was bugging that generation most. Mr. & Mrs. Smith speaks to the issue of truth in marriage. Note how on SMALLVILLE, and even in BUFFY, the truth issue is make-or-break in the Relationships. (Clue: truth in marriage wasn't always iconic in USA society, [rememer I LOVE LUCY?] nor in Victorian or Renaissance English Romances. It's really a very new yardstick for measuring relationships.)

Book, film, TV Show -- there's a link, a trail to follow that connects these forms of entertainment with each other and with the social matrix they address. And today we have to add web-originals, and other graphic novel, TV, and other new distribution channels.

Now think CONCEPT and think SYMMETRY as only the writer's eye can see it.

Think about Mr. And Mrs. Smith and how the violence level of the script mirrored the exact textbook progress of a marriage encounter-group session. See the pattern whole and completely reticulated, in the subconscious and in the conscious. The pattern is not in the foreground, not in the background and not even in the THEME. It's in the ties between the violence and the psychology that exist ONLY IN THE VIEWER'S MIND, and never on screen.

Don't just admire the modern Mr. And Mrs. Smith -- follow the pattern lines back to the originating concept, reverse engineer the script, deconstruct that concept into its components, and delve into how that concept was created.

It's not just a flash of inspiration that creates concepts. It's long, hard days of perspiration -- sometimes watching or reading things you wouldn't ordinarily want to. When that flash of inspiration occurs, it's your subconscious reporting on its month's work.

Writers do most all their work while sleeping, but the IRS doesn't let you deduct the bedroom of your house. Talk about unfair tax practices.

So replicate what they did to create and recognize the High Concept, "A married couple where each is secretly an assassin."

You can't use their concept, but you can use their method of finding that concept.

What other conflicts besides the "battle of the sexes in marriage" do you know of that go on in millions of people's lives every day? That's the question to answer in order to get the effect Hollywood wants: THE SAME.

What kind of well known, familiar conflict is so pervasive people don't even notice it's there, nor consider it worth commenting on? And what are the best self-help books that address subsets of that vast conflict area?

Nail that SAME part, then search for the BUT DIFFERENT part of the formula.

With Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the "different" part is that they're BOTH professional assassins.

Then the grind-the-crank part of the plot leads directly to "assigned to kill each other" - you just have to figure out a reason. The elegant solution is "because they're living together which means each is a spy assigned to waggle our secrets out of our hired assassin."
The twist with Mr. and Mrs. Smith is that the box-office requirement of VIOLENCE is supplied by their day jobs, not by the domestic dispute over keeping secrets.

I'd bet all of you already know all this.

So what are you thinking. Two alien from outer space spies meet on Earth and marry to maintain their cover? But they've each been sent here to search for the other and a) kill him, or b) protect Earth from his faction Out There?

Here are some widespread "conflicts" to explore other than Battle of the Sexes:

1) People Vs. Medical System
2) People Vs. Insidious Advertising Practices (think 0% nothing down mortgages)
3) People Vs. The Boss From Hell
4) People Vs. College grading system
5) People Vs. Traffic congestion
6) People Vs. Post Office Screw Ups
7) Tech Support Slave Vs. Enraged Customers
8) Mom Vs. School System over allowing Bullying

What other pervasive, everybody knows what it is about, conflicts can you think of?

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

Eyes On The Future

Car Designers start with a respect for the past when they envisage the future. That is one reason why the G.M. Heritage Center is important.

If you know where you (or a brand) came from, and you can plot the evolution to the way things look today, you have a much better chance of projecting how things will look in the future.

Today --my today-- was taken up with preparing for, and then interviewing a man I have the honor of calling a friend: Dr Philip Hessburg, head of the Detroit Institute of Opthalmology

http://lsc.audioacrobat.com/download/bb99178b-f535-adcd-c798-346851331b0d.mp3

When you write science fiction, you try to imagine what our world will be like in the future. Reading Scientific American, and Discovery Magazine helps. So does listening to the great and visionary minds of our time, such as those of Dr Larry Burns of General Motors, and Dr Philip Hessburg of the Detroit Institute of Opthalmology.

Part Four. When a story doesn't work

This is where I ran into problems. Swaim wants to use Merritt as a weapon. So he's hooking her up to computers and keeping her in a dream state where she believes that he's her father. It makes it easier for him to control her and use her. Kind of useless place for a heroine. My intention was to replay Dax and Merritt's love story using her subconscious. Even though she's doped up and believes she's Swaim's daughter, subconciously she'll be remembering her life with Dax. So I would tell their story as Merritt remembered it. Meanwhile, Dax is also hooked into the super computer and somehow his subconscious connects with Merritt's, he realizes what's going on, he breaks free then goes back to free her. It turns out that I've over used that tool recently. Seperate H/H and have hero rescue heroine. So yes, it is hard to connect with a heroine who is doped and unconscious. I have to agree there. But they didn't see Merritt the way I did. Which was also my fault. I didn't write enough of the book. Its hard to do a indepth proposal when you've got a dead line looming.

Chapter Three
The Dome

There had to be something beyond the shadows. Or maybe it was just her vision that was blurry. There was always the possibility that she was dreaming. Could that be it? Merritt walked through the room with her fingers trailing over the clean lines of the plain but functional furniture. Everything was done in shades of gray, from the plush carpet that cushioned her feet to the heavy gray drapes that covered the walls. Were there windows behind the drapes? For some reason she could not recall the view. Everything around her was familiar, yet everything she saw was strange.

“There you are my dear,” a man’s voice said.

Merritt turned. A man stood before her. He was tall and slim with blond hair that held a touch of silver at the temples. His eyes shaded more towards gray than blue, but it could easily be that the room they were in made them look that way. He wore a perfectly tailored suit that was on the edge of a new trend in fashion, yet would not be considered ostentatious by his peers. How was it that knew that, or even cared?

“Father?” she asked. The word came unbidden to her lips and for some strange reason she was not sure if it was appropriate.

“Who else would it be?” He came to her and took her upper arms into his hands. He kissed her forehead. “Silly girl,” he said.

She scrunched her forehead up as he kissed it. As if she could ward off the touch of his lips. His eyes bore into her and she turned away from his intense scrutiny.

“Merritt,” he said his voice heavy with concern. “Are you all right?”

A pain shot through her temples and she pressed her hands against them.

“It hurts,” she cried out.
<>

“What’s wrong?” Swain asked.

“She’s fighting it,” Foster replied. “Her mind is sensing the reality shift. Her consciousness senses the dream so she’s trying to wake herself up.” Foster turned from his perusal of the monitor and added. “I told you she was strong. One of the strongest I’ve ever seen.”

Swain let his head drop back against the cushion. He reclined in an ergonomic chair while Foster worked the code for Merritt’s program. His Simkey pulsed while it accepted the code and aligned the program with the matching Simkey that glowed from the admanium port Foster had inserted in Merritt’s temple.

Strong and mine…

She really was quite lovely with her silvery blonde hair and clear blue eyes which were closed. It was a shame really that he could not look at them. They reminded him of the wildflowers that grew outside the dome. They were the dominant feature of her heart shaped face and quite an exquisite color of blue with black flecks around the edge of the irises. It was as if he possessed a valuable piece of art that he had to keep behind lock and key. He well remembered the sparks in those eyes as she attacked him in the real. It would be nice to see the life in them again. That, however, would not be conducive to achieving his goal.

She wore a silver rehab suit that stretched from her toes up to her neck. It would aid in the prevention of sores on her body from being in the same position for so long. It would also stimulate her muscles and enhance her circulation as she stayed suspended in the simlife. It clung to her like a second skin and showed the healthy vitality of her body which would soon fade away with enforced inactivity. Various tubes and wires were attached each one there to serve a purpose in keeping her alive for as long as he needed her.

To Swain, she looked like a princess from one of the ancient fairy tales as she lay reclined in a chair similar to his. Her brow seemed troubled and was drawn sternly down, marring the porcelain like complexion of her skin.

“Sleeping Beauty,” he said as he recalled the ancient fairytale she brought to mind.

“Sir?” Foster inquired.

“I noticed that you cut her hair.” No need to let Foster know where his musings led him. The man was bright enough as it was. Bright enough that he bore watching.

“Yes sir,” Foster did not turn away from his keypad.

No excuse or reason was given. When she arrived her hair hung to her waist. Now it was cropped close to her head and the ends of it curled up around her face.

Why did he care?

“It would have been a nuisance to care for,” Foster added after a moment.

Swain had to agree. Still it was a shame.

“I sold it,” Foster said as he swiveled his chair around to face him. “To the sonaspa.”

Swain resisted the urge to roll his eyes in disgust. The pursuit of eternal youth in their society was not unlike a cult. Someone would pay dearly for those hair enhancements. He wondered if he would recognize the color if he came across it in his social circle.

“I assume you deposited the credits in my account,” Swain said.

“Yes,” Foster said. “We can try again whenever you are ready. I added a head injury to her history which will help explain her confusion and I also gave her a pet for distraction.”

“A pet?”

“A fluffy white kitten,” Foster said with a smile that seemed insincere at best. “A gift from her father.”

Swain nodded his approval as he settled back into his chair and closed his eyes.
<>

“Have I told you how relieved I am?” He said.

Merritt touched her temple once again. “About what?”

“About your recovery of course.” The look he gave her was full of concern. “The Doctor said your periods of memory loss would eventually fade.”

She pushed her fingers against her temple as if there was a switch there that needed to be on. If only she could remember…anything…There was nothing that was familiar. The walls seemed distant yet suffocating. She wanted to see the sky and feel the breeze on her face.

“I was hurt?” she asked. That would explain much. It would explain everything. She looked at her father hopefully. Why couldn’t she remember him?

“Yes,” he said calmly. Patiently. As if she was a small child. “You fell. You hurt your head. You have only recently come home from the Medcen.”

“Is that why it hurts?” she asked as she rubbed her right hand over her forehead. She scrunched up her eyes and then opened them in hopes that things would appear clearer to her. Her left hand caught her attention and she looked at it, spreading the fingers wide as she turned it over to examine it.

“I lost it,” she said. “I lost my ring. Did I leave it at the Medcen?”

“What ring?” he asked.

Merritt held her hand out. “My ring.” She twisted the fingers of her right hand around the base of the ring finger on her left hand.

“What did it look like?”

She continued to rub her finger as she tried to remember. She could see it in her mind. Silver and gold twisted together in a never ending circle. She recalled the weight of it. How it slid down the length of her finger and settled at the base as if it were a part of her flesh. She could almost feel a hand close over hers as if holding it in place. A strong hand with blunt fingers that were heavily calloused at the tips. To whom did it belong? “It was silver…and gold…It was both?” she said in hope that he would offer her some confirmation.

“I’m sure it will turn up,” he said a trifle bit too indulgently. How could something that felt so real and now so lost be a figment of her imagination?

It was apparent that her father thought she was imaging it. She turned away. She could not stand to see the indulgence in his pale eyes. Her eyes darted back and forth looking for the way out. She felt claustrophobic, as if the walls were closing in around her. The only door was behind him. Even with her back turned she knew she would not make it past him.

As if he knew what she was thinking he came up behind her and placed his hands firmly on her shoulders. Perhaps he meant to offer comfort. Instead she felt as if he’d captured her and there was no escape.
If he was her father then why couldn’t she remember his name?

“I have a gift for you,” he said. “Something to help you with your recovery. The doctor’s said if you didn’t try to remember so much then it would be easier.”

“They did?” She had a vague recollection of some sort of medical procedure. Of bright lights over head, the sterile smell of recycled air and strange faces hovering over her. She also felt a strange sense of loss, as if with the accident and what followed she lost a part of herself.

It was all so strange yet she could not say what was different. Only that it was.
The man who was her father walked to the plush gray sofa that curved around two sides of the room. He returned with a white box tied with a bright pink bow. It was strange that she had not noticed it earlier when she first walked into the room. Certainly the brightness of the bow would have stood out against all the misty gray that surrounded her.

“Open it,” he said encouragingly as he held it out to her. She had no choice but to take it. She pulled on the ribbon and it fell away as if it were nothing. She opened the box and a black kitten with deep blue eyes poked its head up and stared at her inquisitively.

“Oh,” Merritt exclaimed. She scooped the kitten out and dropped the box to the floor. “He’s adorable.”

Her father seemed confused. He chucked a finger under the kitten’s chin and it turned its head into her neck as if trying to escape from his attention. “You shall have to give it a name,” he said.

Merritt held the kitten up before her face and looked into its deep blue eyes. They were such a strange color for a cat, but somewhere she had heard that kittens were born with blue eyes and then they turned green or gold. Perhaps his just hadn’t changed yet. He let out a tiny meow as she looked at him and she smiled in delight as she clutched him back to her breast.

“I shall name him Dax,” she said.

“Dax?” Her fathered seemed to disapprove. “Isn’t that a strange name for a cat? Where ever did you come up with that name?”

Merritt turned halfway away from him. She felt as if the kitten was in jeopardy. “I don’t know where it came from,” she said as she rubbed the silky fur. “I just know that I like it and it seems to fit him.”

“Are you even sure that it is a him?” he asked.

Merritt held up the kitten once more and looked beneath its tiny round belly. It was hard to say one way or another at this young age but for some reason, she just knew it was a he. “I’m sure,” she said.

“I’m glad you are pleased,” her father said. “Now come, the Doctor’s said you must rest.” He took her arm and guided her to a door. “Go in and lie down. Snuggle up with your kitty,” he added as he opened the door.

Merritt looked around the space, hoping for something that was familiar, but all she saw was the same misty grayness around the walls and a gray cover upon the bed that was the only piece of furniture in the room. She heard the door close firmly behind her and knew without checking that it was locked. It didn’t matter one way or the other however as she found herself suddenly very tired. Her eyes closed the moment she lay down on the bed but before she drifted off to sleep her finger tips grazed the base of her ring finger.
H
er last thought as the darkness overcame her was of her ring. She must find it.
<>

“I thought you told me the kitten was white,” Swain exclaimed as he disconnected his Simkey and slid it into the pocket inside of his coat. He positioned his chair for easy rising and stalked to where Merritt lay in her dream like state. Her hands were clutched together with the fingers of her right hand holding onto the base of her left ring finger and her forehead was drawn down as if she were heavily troubled.

“I programmed it white,” Foster said. “What did you see?”

“A black cat with blue eyes,” Swain said. “She named it Dax.”

“Dax?” Foster asked.

“The man with her,” Swain exclaimed. “His name was Dax. At least that’s what she was screaming if I remember correctly.”

Foster raised his eyebrows. “How interesting,” he said. “Her subconscious is compensating for the absence of familiarity. It also appears that it is rewriting the program to adapt to her longings.”

“Fix it,” Swain said in disgust. “I need her to be fully operational as soon as possible.”

“I’ll get right on it,” Foster said. But instead of turning back to his desk, he studied Merritt intently. “Perhaps we should give her a mother,” he mused aloud.

“No,” Swain said. “The simpler the program, the better it will run. She has to trust me. Only me,” he added as he turned to go. He had a council meeting to attend. “Have it working by the time I return,” he snapped as he left.
He walked through his luxurious apartment that covered the entire top floor of one of the most prominent buildings inside the dome. Above him was a rooftop garden full of plants that at one time grew in the Caribbean islands which were now rumored to be nothing more than desolate peaks. No one knew for certain. No one who ventured out to travel what remained of the world ever returned.

The best part about his garden was that he could stand upon a chair and touch the skin that sheltered them from the outside. It felt fragile, as if it could be sliced with a knife, yet it withstood pounding rain and hail and the freezing rains that pelted it in the winter. When he was younger and full of idealism he imagined he was touching the sky. Now he knew better.

Swain entered the lift that only stopped on his floor and the main floor many stories below. It was open on three sides and from it he could survey the city. He saw the many storied buildings, the green areas, the elevated trains that encircled the dome and the moving sidewalks that created a spider web effect from the center of the city to the edge. Everywhere he looked he saw the vid screens. The screens that gave their society all their information, from the latest news to the latest in the celebrity gossip. Screens that were present on every corner, in every office, in every apartment, in every classroom.

Screens that controlled the populace with suggestions made by the Paranormal Research Instruments of Sublimal Messaging called Prisms by those on the council. There were nearly one hundred of them, all kept in simsleep, all heavily guarded and behind locked doors on a floor of the government building. Each Prism was connected to the main frame and each was given instructions which they, in turn, passed on to the populace. Buy this, eat here, avoid this, all suggested to keep the peace within.

Swain allowed himself the luxury of a smile as he quickly descended to the streets below. Now he had his own Prism. One who was programmed to do his bidding and spread his will.

Soon everything he beheld before him would be his.

“All mine,” he said with a smile.

Guest Blogger Rachel Caine

Rachel Caine ( http://www.rachelcaine.com ) is a New York Times bestselling author of action/adventure fantasy with a good dose of Relationship, Love and Romance in the plot. She joins us this week responding to questions asked by Jacqueline Lichtenberg and Rowena Cherry on the occasion of the publication of the 6th novel in her Morganville Vampires series, Carpe Corpus.

We told Rachel the following:

The aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com blog is by a group of PNR and SFR writers who often talk to the "audience" as we would if we were on a panel at a convention, bouncing a topic around and around from our various viewpoints. It's not a blog about promoting our books, but about nurturing new writers who want to enter the field, and giving our general readers a glimpse of everything that goes on behind the scenes. Thus, from time to time, we post excerpts, chapters, out-takes, and character analyses of current novels, but mostly we talk about the past, present and future of the entire field, including TV and film.

So please answer these questions (or make up questions of your own) as if you were sitting on a stage with all of us around you talking to an audience that came to find out all about what we write and why we write it. Feel free to skip any of these questions, or amalgamate them into a little essay of your own. Readers of this blog love Vampires, Werewolves, Star Trek, and Buffy all equally.

Then we asked these 10 questions. Here are Rachel's responses. I think you're going to want to check out her novels, so I've added some links to Amazon where you can read what other fans have said about her books.


ROWENA: 1. Which was the first Vampire story that you remember seeing or reading? Why do you think it made a powerful impression on you?

I believe it was probably Dracula, which I might have stumbled on in the Bookmobile (I lived far out in the country, and the only reliable access I had to books for my early teen years was the mobile library, which was very limited). I was intrigued, but not overwhelmed. The second book, which probably made a HUGE impression on me, was an illicit copy of of Stephen King's 'SALEMS LOT, which was a pretty shocking take on vampires at the age of ... 13? I believe? But I *loved* it. Then I began to look for vampire books, and my first encounter with a vampire who wasn't a terrifying monster was Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's wonderful St. Germain books. (I am also extremely flattered to be interviewed by you, because I eagerly followed your Sime/Gen books, Jacqueline! Hello! /Fangirl.)



ROWENA: 2. When you are writing a Vampire hero or heroine, what are the top five points you consider vital to characterization.

I'll give it a try! 1) Mystery. Especially in a vampire, I like to have some bit of mystery about their background, their true motivations. 2) Motivation (speaking of). I like to know, very clearly, what it is the vampire really wants -- whether it's redemption, dinner, romance, or just to get through the next day/night. All greatly affect how the character will respond to situations. 3) Friends/allies/enemies. I need to know how my vampire fits in with the other characters ... who he's crossed before, who he secretly loves or loathes, etc. 4) Redeeming qualities. These are, for me, quite important in a vampire character. You're working, after all, with the initial premise that this is a creature who survives on the blood of others, so what about him or her is admirable? How does the reader connect with/root for the vampire? There has to be some common ground. 5) Reliable mythology. Whether it's unique to your own universe or drawn directly from the folklore, it should be consistent or your vampire won't be believable.

Whew. That was harder than I thought!


ROWENA: 3. What is the Vampire lifestyle?

In Morganville, it's complicated. There are social levels, certainly -- the elites, who pretty much control the town and live in luxury (think Mafia dons). The working-class vampires, who are more like Mafia soldiers. And then there are outcasts and rebels, even among the vampires, who may or may not play by the rules, but probably are just as unhappy with the status quo as the various human factions in town.

Added to that, there's the undeniable fact that Morganville itself is a closed society ... the vampires may run the town like the Mafia, collecting blood and services from the human residents, but it's also a kind of protective enclave. An animal preserve, for a dying race. To me, that's what makes my vampires interesting; they're dangerous and unpredictable, but they're also the last of their kind.


ROWENA: 4. What are the rules for your Vampire world-building, and how did you formulate them?

I decided I wouldn't do this project unless I could make it interesting for myself, and different from the type of vampire stories that were already making new headway with teen readers, so I focused on the town itself -- how it worked, who ran it, and how it affected my human inhabitants (including poor Claire, who gets dropped into it). I needed to understand the fundamental secrets of the town before I could decide how it was constructed. It seemed logical to me to find Morganville in a bit of a decline -- fewer and fewer people living there, buildings decaying, unrest among the vampires. I believe I really did, in a literal sense, build the town from the ground up, because some of what happens in the books happens underground, where some of the true secret lay.


ROWENA: 5. What advice would you give to a writer who has not yet completed her first draft of the vampire story in her head?

There's no substitute for sitting down and writing. You can write in your head forever, but it's putting pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, that creates something real. But there's also a learning curve in this, as in anything that's really worth doing ... you're going to find yourself struggling sometimes to get your ideas on the page, or to make them different, or better. Keep going. It's a process, and if we're very lucky, the process never stops.



JACQUELINE: 6. What do you think your readers are looking for in a relationship between a paranormal such as a Vampire and an ordinary human?

My situation is a little bit unique, because although I do have vampires and humans interacting constantly, the only real vampire/human romantic relationship I have is between Eve and Michael, who became a vampire quite recently. I know that, based on the conversations and feedback from my readers, they really want Eve and Michael to work out ... and that's going to be interesting to me, because Michael's just really starting to discover who he is, and what it is he can do. So I think there's going to be a lot of bumps for that relationship along the way.

In terms of ordinary friendships, I think my readers are enjoying the growing ties between Claire and her somewhat-crazy vampire mentor Myrnin; she's becoming a bit of a caretaker for him, and he's in turn teaching her a lot about Morganville and the unique brand of science he's developed to run it.


JACQUELINE: 7. How do your novels manage to provide the Happily Ever After endings that both Romance and Action readers crave? (we have discussed the Happily Ever After requirement at length on this blog).

I think that as long as the main core relationship of the book -- Claire and Shane -- stays strong and deepens, readers will support all the other twists and turns. And I am determined to have happy endings for all of the Glass House residents, which helps. (Can't guarantee anything beyond that, though ...)


JACQUELINE: 8. How much real romance do you put into your novels? Or do you ever put just a love story into the plot? Or is the relationship always a sub-plot to the action?

I'd have to say that I categorize my stories as action/adventure first, romance second, so it's very much a sub-plot. BUT ... it's also central to why Claire is in Morganville, and why the readers care what happens, so it's extremely important as well. In my Weather Warden novels,



I believe the romantic relationship between Joanne and David is actually the "A" plot, and everything else comes second, no matter how world-destroying. In Morganville, I think it's slightly more of an even balance.



(Carpe Corpus is Rachel's 6th book in the Morganville series)

JACQUELINE: 9. How would you characterize your novels -- are they dark like the TV show SUPERNATURAL? Or mixed like FOREVER KNIGHT or BUFFY? Is there any message of optimism for humankind in your work?

I would say mixed, more like BUFFY than FK (although I love all of those, and SUPERNATURAL too). Dark things definitely happen, but one of the keys to my enjoyment of writing the books is how resilient the characters are, and how funny they can be, even in the darkest of times. (Huge Geek TV fan, here. HUGE. I own one of those "Joss Whedon is my master now" T-shirts.)


JACQUELINE: 10. Give new writers a tip on how to follow in your footsteps.

First of all, don't follow my footsteps, they lead down all kinds of blind alleys, into swamps, sand traps, snake pits ... I've made just about every mistake that can be made. And I'm a bit glad, actually. I've really enjoyed my career, even in the worst times ... but then again, I never quit my day job (for long, anyway). I'd say this: practice, practice, practice. Learn patience and humility, and learn the BUSINESS, which is a strange and wonderful thing.

Many writers think their job ends with turning in a manuscript; I believe that there's a lot before, during, and after that we really should be involved in, including marketing. Learn a variety of skills -- I trained in graphic design, video editing, and public relations, which is all extremely helpful in promotion work for the books.

But most of all: write what you love, not what others tell you is hot. Sooner or later, if you're doing your best work, you will catch a wave. How well you ride it is always the question, but be ready for the opportunity when it comes. Be professional -- treat people well, and respect what they do at every level.

And pay it forward. Mentor others when you can. I was the incredibly lucky recipient of mentoring from a huge variety of great authors, including P.N. Elrod, Patricia Anthony, Nina Romberg/Jane Archer, Joe Lansdale, and so many others. Some of them just offered me handy advice at a time when I needed it. Some shared agents. Some critiqued my work. Some introduced me to editors who later bought my work. There are many, many ways that you can help people, and the simplest thing can sometimes be the most helpful.


Thank you so much for letting me participate today! I truly appreciate it, and once again: I AM A HUGE FANGIRL, LADIES.

Thank you
Rachel Caine
http://www.rachelcaine.com

Brains and Beauty

Has anybody here heard the country song "Carlene" by Phil Vassar? If not, click on the link and peruse the lyrics. Wouldn't you think by now the weary stereotype of smart girls being plain and dull would have faded away? The song's narrator was the quarterback, therefore one of the popular kids, although not much of a student in high school (another stereotype, the dumb jock, but that point isn't mentioned after the first line). He remembers Carlene, the valedictorian, only as "little miss four-point-oh" and the "whiz kid in horned rim glasses." He doesn't recognize her at first sight, as a gorgeous redhead in a sports car, until she takes the initiative to speak to him. Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with her using her intelligence and money to get herself a makeover into society's image of beauty. What exasperates me is that the narrator says she "surpassed everybody's expectations" because she's now a model on the cover of VOGUE. In other words, they expected her to excel academically (which she did, by earning a Ph.D.), so that's no big deal. Her great success consists of capitalizing on her physical appeal. Carlene the valedictorian isn't vindicated but simply replaced by Carlene the supermodel. The former quarterback, by the way, has succeeded by means of talent rather than physical attributes; he’s a singer on “country radio.”

When I tried to explain to my husband why this song bothers me, he didn't get it. He pointed out, quite rightly, that if her Ph.D. were in English lit and she had a career in teaching rather than modeling, she'd be driving a VW bug instead of a blue sports car. But couldn't she have a degree in a more lucrative field? Why couldn't the former quarterback be impressed that she's used her doctorate (for example) to become the multimillionaire CEO of a cutting-edge research and development company?

I don't have a personal axe to grind here. In addition to being "miss four-point-oh" in high school, although I was socially awkward, I was also pretty, and I had sufficient dates even though I wasn't part of the inner ring of popularity. (I didn't know I was pretty, of course; at five feet four and 113 pounds, thanks to the distorted body image taught to girls by American culture, I thought I was fat. But that's a whole nother topic.) Nevertheless, this song's wholesale endorsement of the cliche infuriates me.

I have a fantasy of an alien culture in which all young women from puberty until their wedding day wear the burqa, not as an instrument of oppression but as a feminist statement. Young men, unable to see any part of a girl's body except eyes and glimpses of hands (sure, those parts can be artificially adorned, but the scope for variation is much narrower than with face, hair, and figure), would have to pick their mates on the basis of such factors as intelligence, conversational wit, practical skills, and compassion. Etiquette would allow married women and unmarried mature ones—past the age of thirty, perhaps—to be free of the cover-up garments as a symbol of their freedom from having to worry about their appearance overshadowing their character (presumably because they'll be dealing with mature men, who should have developed better sense by then). Yep, fantasy.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Bits and Pieces of Catchup

I think one of my greatest ambitions is to write SHORT blog posts.

Didn't make it today. I did try. Really, I did!

I'm way behind on getting packed for Westercon which will be held in Tempe, AZ, right up the road from me over the July 4th weekend. I've just filled out the speaker questionnaire but don't have my schedule yet. Anyone reading this blog who's planning on Westercon? I didn't see any Alien Romance panels, but signed up for everything that might lead into such a discussion. Come help me open (warp?) some minds.

http://www.westercon.org/

I hope you have had time to read my previous post and all the stuff linked to it. Could take you a week to wade through all that.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/crumbling-business-model-of-writers.html

Waiting for everyone to catch up, here's some bits and pieces of followup on other open topics woven into a writing challenge.


I know there's a novelization of the Trek movie, and I haven't read it yet. (yet being the operative word -- I sooo want the DVD and book; I'll pass on the action figures.)

There's a wild and thriving ongoing set of posts on twitter about people seeing the new ST movie 4 and 5 times and more. Some posts saying "what's so great about ST?" and others in goshwow shock. Other long time fans of Trek are still seeing it FOR THE FIRST TIME.

Twitter is carrying some criticism of the actors, some snearing at the entire concept.

I saw one review that really lowered my opinion of both the reviewer and the publication, calling the ST movie melodramatic.

It isn't.

But I can see how someone assigned to review a movie set in a universe they think of as kiddie stuff or teen-action-stuff (SF has borne that perjorative all along) would find this script "melodramatic." That's a point of view that always happens when someone is not engaged in the fictional universe. If you're wholly engaged, the emotional tension does not seem overblown or out of proportion to the issue. But that works only if you really understand the issue.

If everyone is running for the exit in screaming panic, and you're just standing there, you should ask yourself, "What do they know that I don't know?"

Reviewers who slap the label "melodramatic" on a piece of fiction generally haven't asked themselves that question about the audience that does not see the story as melodramatic. In fact, the rest of the audience may be seeing the story as understated while "sophisticated" reviewers trash it as melodramatic. This is in general, not just about this particular Star Trek movie.

It's not the writer's fault usually. "Melodrama" is not a property of the text or script. It exists only in the reader/viewer's mind. (You won't likely find anyone else who holds such an opinion).

There is one flaw a writer might introduce that could give some viewers the impression of melodrama, and that's failing to display in show-don't-tell the character motivations, sensitivities, hot-button issues, loyalties, friendships, and relationships, all clearly derived from the theme.

The JJ Abram's Star Trek movie is written to give you as much of these character and situation traits as possible in the time alotted (and fit in all the commercially requisite action). Anyone have an opinion on what the envelope theme of this film is? Perhaps it's "The Challenges Temper The Character Strengths?" I.e. what character strengths are there already get made stronger by challenges.

When a reviewer sees a movie as "melodramatic" it may not be the reviewer's fault for being unobservant, disinterested, or prejudiced. It might be the "fault" of the review publication for assigning the wrong person to do the review. If someone has a strong emotional reaction to a piece of fiction, a reaction which embarrasses them deep inside, they might slap a distancing label on the fiction -- as if the fiction is at fault for their own refusal to confront their own emotions. You can't tell if that's the case just be reading a review of a film you have seen.

Or the negative reaction might possibly be the fault of the professional reviewer for choosing to review a product because it's popular so that the review will get read rather than reviewing something else that's less popular.

When I read that accusation of "melodrama" against Star Trek (in the context of "it's not a good enough movie for this much hype and people who are enchanted with it have something wrong with them") it brought up questions about how people interact with fiction, fictional universes, and with their own expectations and anticipations.

There's a lot of hype for the Trek movie, and as usual fans are divided into various camps regarding how well or poorly this or that favorite aspect was handled. In general, and overall, there's a consensus of approval and wait-and-see from the old fans, and some astonished interest from new or younger people. To them, it's just a good action movie without a lot of subtext. To veteran fans, it's ALL subtext.

So public discussion makes non-fans (or even non-viewers of Star Trek) curious, and they go see the movie, and express their reactions in public (on twitter maybe).

That's how you sell a lot of movie tickets, you see. Word of mouth (or tweets) motivates people better than any amount of paid commercial time on TV.

All these thoughts are related to some very abstract thinking I've been doing lately, about how fiction strikes a person at different stages of maturity. (I've been reading a number of children's books for my review column.)

And there are subjects flickering in the back of my mind about how the USA used to have so much of a common language and experience, and how that's all been destroyed.

The base cohesiveness of our society has been shattered. That lack of imagery and trivia in common is taking a huge toll, and most people don't realize why these horrific things are happening. New stuff will arise to take its place, because humans need stuff in common with each other, but meanwhile we've got a generation without a cultural connection to anyone other than those with interests in common. The wireless web is changing THAT, too, but it hasn't taken hold yet.

Not everyone paid attention to the Presidential Election! Those that did formed cliques, as usual in politics. But we can't even say "everyone" heard Obama's speeches other than snippets on news shows. You can read his words on the web, but it's not the same as watching his delivery.

Recently, I met someone who had worshipful, shining, beatific eyes every time she mentioned (often) how much she TRUSTS Obama to do the "right thing." She was absolutely pro-Israel, and seemed totally unaware of Hillary Clinton's declaration that none of the USA's verbal agreements with Israel will be kept, period.

I was thinking, as I watched her speaking to other pro-Israel and not-so-pro-Israel people, that if I put her conversation into a story as dialogue, the editor would X it all out because it's implausible the way she ignored everything everyone else said and insisted on how much she TRUSTS Obama, and that trust solves all problems. (talk about melodrama -- her conversation dripped melodrama -- I could hardly believe I was watching a real person not a character).

Other people listened to her politely, but didn't CHALLENGE her thinking (remember the idea the Star Trek movie is about character tempered by challenge). People just expressed their own opinions, without pointing out the fallacies in hers -- they could see she would explode emotionally if challenged, and that would be disruptive to the group. So she left without having her certainties questioned, as one would expect in DIALOGUE. Her "story" and "plot" did not progress because of this group conversation.

Which of course leads into a point I've made on this blog before, that:

A) DIALOGUE is not CONVERSATION.

B) CHARACTERS are not PEOPLE

Somone who prefers to read non-fiction, but has to watch the Star Trek movie ( because maybe their wife dragged them?) might take the film's dialogue as "melodramatic" because it tries, in a very short time, to lay out for you a set of comprehensible motives.

Also consider this is a feature film. The series was designed to be an ensemble show, and each of the characters got a 50 minute (back when there were fewer commercial minutes per hour - maybe 49 minutes) show in which to be introduced. But JJ Abrams was starting from scratch to introduce these (NEW) characters to a new audience, all in one movie.

The script actually does that introduction fairly well within the time alotted. The characters of course come off shallow if all you know is what you see in this new movie, shallow and perhaps overly impressed with themselves.

One of the requirements for good feature film script writing is that there is ONE star character, and maybe a co-star, and all the rest are SUPPORTING characters. Kirk is of course nominally assigned the "starring role" -- but the truth from the POV of many viewers is that Spock is the star. (yep, I'm one of those). Because this show was (will be again?) a TV show (already another movie is in the works), the ENSEMBLE CAST requires fudging the "star-co-star-supporting" paradigm.

If, in your mind, you're superimposing these characters on the old TV characters, you see disparities and are so busy thinking what the old characters would do that you don't totally engage in and thus BELIEVE the current characters.

The result is that you see melodrama instead of drama because you think the characters are OVER reacting.

Well, is this woman who "trusts" Obama "overreacting?" She doesn't think so, and most of you don't either. She thinks she has good reason to trust him, but can't say what those reasons are. She's just bewildered that anyone might squint sideways at Obama and wonder if WYSIWYG.

It all has to do with how we "judge" people and how we "judge" characters -- how we evaluate the values of another person.

And that brings us to the question of whether politicians (and say, actors?) whose "images" have been professionally built by spin-doctors are "characters" or "people."

And what has this all to do with creating that blockbuster TV show with Alien Romance that will change the world?

That woman was in love with Obama, even though she'd never met him. She couldn't separate the image from the man - the character from the person (as often happens with fans of a TV character who can't separate the actor from the character.)

The adoration I saw in her eyes was soooo totally "romance" -- it was Neptune at it's best, worshipful adoration. I'd seen fans of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Chekov, Uhura, and Scotty with that same beatific expression when discussing the lives of the characters as if they were the lives of the actors, or vice-versa.

I saw in her eyes the experience of JOY in being UNDERSTOOD and being SAFE AT LAST. (I'm not kidding; I saw that, but it may not actually have been there. I am always researching this Alien Romance problem even when wandering around the social fabric of my mundane existence!)

She was not an SF fan. She was ever so mundane. She was an older woman, well and securely married. Her husband was there and totally agreed with her assessment of Obama and apparently had no inkling that there could be a jealousy issue going on there.

Here was a woman so infatuated with a public image that is a "character" more than a "person" that she totally believes she's assessed him correctly.

That's what falling in love does. It cuts the critical faculties out of the circuit and allows you to believe the image you are projecting onto someone is the actual, real person and not a reflection of your own aspirations.

And that's exactly the state of mind you must have in order to "fall in love with" a real Alien From Outer Space.

Here's the thing about Neptune, though. What you see in another person through Neptune's veil is sometimes more TRUE than what you see through your critical faculties.

Sometimes, your critical faculties have been honed by training in very logical, practical ways. And because of that, sometimes your critical faculties will reject information that is actually pertinent simply because the information seems implausible.

That's how a professional reviewer could conclude that the JJ Abram's ST movie is "melodramatic." A reviewer often is trained as a critic (they aren't supposed to be the same function), and an art critic has to view art through his/her critical faculties.

But art, by its very nature, speaks to the subconscious, subverting all critical analysis. Even the art of the spin-doctor creating a politician's image for the media speaks to the subconscious. Spin-doctors work with the fabric of symbolism to get you to believe what they tell you in ways that mere words could never achieve.

The subconscious does not view the world through the conscious mind's critical faculties.

When the subconscious becomes convinced, it over-rules the conscious mind and asserts its opinion as the TRUTH. And subconscious can't be swayed by facts.

So, if we're going to create a TV show, an Alien Romance, that will argue our case the way Star Trek argues the case for SF, we have to include one character like the woman I met with the starry-eyes for Obama. This character has to speak for the human capacity to see past the obvious surface and into the true heart -- as McCoy does in Star Trek, and as this woman believes she has with Obama (which she may have; we'll see).

------and one more bit-------or maybe a piece?------

I've been talking a lot about social networking, the cure for the shattering of our culture as mentioned above.

Found this link on twitter
http://social-media-optimization.com/2009/02/top-twenty-five-social-networking-sites-feb-2009/

and on that page it says:

Interesting information from Compete.com that shows Facebook surging past MySpace in Monthly Unique Visitors and that Twitter has moved from #22 to #3 in the rankings of the top 25 social networking sites by monthly visits.
-------------

And another link on that social-media-optimization page is to an article on the "graying of facebook"

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

http://social-media-optimization.com/2009/02/the-graying-of-facebook/

WHICH STARTS:

Last week I was at a meeting at Facebook and as Facebook was talking about their demographics, one of the statistics that struck me was facebook’s demographics is starting to mirror those of the U.S. of A.

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

Nevermind reading these whole articles (hey, I'm not the only long-winded person on the web!), just those two facts juxtaposed with the snatches on ST from Twitter and various reviews is telling us so much about where to find a lever long enough and where to stand to move the world toward respecting Alien Romance.

Here's another bit of the puzzle.

http://www.thegalaxyexpress.net/2009/06/8-ways-science-fiction-romance-could.html

quotes my blog entry at
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

and reasons to the conclusion:

---------- THEGALAXYEXPRESS.NET ---------------
These days, authors aren’t just writers—they’re entrepreneurs.
----------END THEGALAXYEXPRESS.NET ----------

And that is what Jean Lorrah and I have been discussing with an ever increasing intensity.

Jean Lorrah is researching (she's a professor, you know? Research is her bag.) how to employ the techniques used by web based entrepreneurs to the needs of writers. Basically, it's not really a compatible set of techniques. A writer can't just take what these (big buck$ maker$) do and use it to sell books. Readers would run away in droves. But, as you can learn a lot by watching Mission: Impossible or McGiver or Burn Notice or Royal Pains, you can stoke your creative fires by subscribing to free things around the web.

Jean has found a Free Offer from one of the best teachers in the web-entrepreneur business which will open June 15, 2009 and run for a very short while.

See? That's one of their techniques -- short, quick opportunities that ignite your greed to get something others can't get! But to put our culture back together, everyone has to be able to get some specific thing that that everyone else has. We need things in common, not divisiveness.

Here's a link where you will be able to get the free offer (as of June 15th which is next Monday and I don't know how long it'll run). Jean says this is a good place to learn web marketing from Jim Daniels, who has been doing and teaching since 1996.

http://fc403pw6f3th2ke9upz2l1cngo.hop.clickbank.net/

Now to the writing lesson.

If you want to write a BURN NOTICE type TV program to pitch to TV producers, but using (say) a web entrepreneur ( tall, blond, built, and HOT!) as the male lead, and perhaps the actress who stars in (and probably writes and produces and creates the music for) his YouTube videos, getting this free subscription would be a good start in scoping out the character of these people and finding some of the web-entrepreneur tricks that are like the spy-tricks used on BURN NOTICE.

The web entrepreneur tricks can be used as plot devices as High School Chemistry often served McGiver (and now Royal Pains).

Remember how I discussed the use of SETTING in telling a story when a Producer, J. Neil Schulman, mentioned how a Psychic Cruise could be the setting for a Monk or Murder She Wrote episode?

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/medium-is-message_19.html

Here's a chance to do an exercise like that "USA Characters Welcome" pitch.

"Wagon Train To The Stars" became Star Trek because Wagon Train was the most popular, longest running, iconic TV show at the time (maybe other than Gunsmoke, but Gunsmoke took place mostly in one town).

What is the most popular TV show today? Or web-show? What is iconic in the USA? What is topping the ratings? What is the longest running or has the widest demographic? How do you pitch an Alien Romance to the general audience? What do kids and parents watch together?

Iconic Current Show into A New Setting.

We have to transpose that woman I met into the setting we need, and build a springboard into a CHEAP TO MAKE TV series. (Star Trek was cheap for its day, considering the state-of-the-art FX; and it looks it!)

A Web Entrepreneur's life would be a great SETTING, (mostly shot on a standing set of an office with lots of electronics; plus some location shots of hotel ballrooms for speeches; stock shots of airports; standing set hotel rooms -- pretty cheap) and I'm sure a worshipful woman would "fall for" his spin-doctored character in each episode, pissing off his Soul Mate.

Are there any Web Entrepreneur TV series yet? Have I come up with something new here? THE APPRENTICE MEETS MY FAVORITE MARTIAN?

Now consider what an Alien stranded on Earth would do for a living? In BURN NOTICE, we have a guy with no visible means of support using his spy skills to help people and make a few bucks in fees. Why wouldn't an ALIEN gravitate to electronic salesmanship to make a living?

Yes, of course there would be obstacles -- which points to conflict.

Today's audiences are filled with people who have been ousted from salaried jobs and are applying their talents to becoming "consultants" or self-employed entrepreneurs.

Tell me the story as an Alien Romance. I do hope you've read Linnea Sinclair's DOWNHOME ZOMBIE BLUES!!!

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

Mirror, Mirror

(this blog was originally a column in FUTURES magazine, @ 1999. FYI)

If a tree falls in the great forest, and no one’s there, does it make a sound? If a writer creates a character, and it’s drawn solely from his or her own mind, isn’t the character really the writer? If the basic task of literature is to explore the human heart and mind, whose heart and mind are we really exploring?

I don't know what the answer is to the first ‘if’ posited. But the second and third ‘ifs’ are things that have wandered around in my brain from time to time. You see, as an investigator, I spend a lot of my working moments wondering about people. Why do they do the things they do? What motivates them? What makes them follow their dreams or succumb to their fears?

It’s almost a requisite in investigative work to have the ability to get inside your subject’s head. Think his thoughts, walk in his shoes. I know of no other way to approach a locate on missing person than to understand what forced him to run in the first place.

When I read fiction -- or try to write fiction -- I see the same processes at work. A big part of characterization is making sure the character acts, well, in character. A bizarre action must be proceeded by a sufficiently bizarre catalyst in the plot.

But this bizarre action (or not so bizarre action) really isn’t the character’s. It’s the writer’s. It’s yours. And mine.

Everything you read, and everything you write, is a very personal internal journey. It’s an exposition of exposing deep desires and fears. It’s preferences, opinions, possibilities. It’s total vulnerability, couched in fiction, offered for entertainment.

Sue Grafton recently stated in an interview that her well-known character, Kinsey Milhone, is her younger (and thinner) other-self. And more than one mystery novelist has posed on the back cover with the ubiquitous fedora skewed over one eye. I’ll willingly admit, as science fiction romance is my genre and poison of choice, that one of my most treasured possessions is a video tape of me in full Star Fleet captain’s uniform on the bridge of the Enterprise. No, I wasn’t an extra on the set of the shows or the movies. Universal Studios in Orlando, for a fee, offers theme park patrons a chance to ‘star’ in their own five minute “Star Trek” scene. For me, a personal Nirvana.

I think our desire to find these personal nirvanas blossoms most frequently in the arts: literature, music, visual arts. The instrument, the book cover, the ornate frame provides us just enough distance to be able to comfortably bare our souls. It permits us to be able to fall back on the excuse of, “I was only pretending”. It’s just a poem. A story. A painting.

The human heart and mind, the “human condition”, to me, is not that personal. The human condition is an aggregate. A pollster’s result. The view from afar.

When I as an investigator work a missing person case, or a deep background, the far view does me very little good. We are not motivated by our similarities but by our eccentricities. Our secret desire to be a starship captain, an invincible heroine, an ageless wonder with thinner thighs. A tried and true saying in investigative work is that there are only two elements to any crime: motive and opportunity.

Notice that motive comes first.

And motives are very, very personal.

Cases are solved not through generalities but through attention to specifics.

And literature, in my humble opinion, pool side here at the Center for the Slightly Skewed, is compelling not for its broad strokes but for its fine lines and shadings. Its infinite and sharp definition of detail. It’s a one on one, hand in hand, personal encounter. Just you and me in the midst of the great forest, sitting on that tree that fell when no one was around to hear it.

Baring our unique and very individual souls.


~Linnea
Linnea Sinclair
// Interstellar Adventure Infused with Romance//
Available Now from Bantam: Hope's Folly
http://www.linneasinclair.com/

The Hyper-tasking gene

While recording my "Space Pirates" internet radio show last Tuesday (which will go out over the air live this coming Tuesday June 9th, and which can also be heard free in the archives of http://internetvoicesradio.com David Lee Summers mentioned his "hyper-tasking" gene.

I thought it was a pretty cool idea.

David Lee Summers suggests that some humans may have such a gene which would enable them to perform at comparable levels with aliens, even if they lacked the life experience and training of the aliens.

On Saturday, I happened to be watching the interviews with the racing drivers who did best in qualifying for the Grand Prix today. They all had eyes like Target logos, with dark circles round the outer rim of the iris.

I'm using that as a marker....

When a story doesn't work part three

This is chapter two of my proposal. I was fascinated with the thought of a mech hero so here was my chance to have one. Dax as a human was something of an artist, he played the guitar, he was just a genuinely nice guy, trying to get by, who had the good fortune to have an exceptional woman fall in love with him. If you watch American Idol imagine him as Kris Allen. So then this horrible thing happens to him. On his wedding day he's captured, blown apart, tortured and forced into this life that he does not what. I feel like I really put the screws to this guy in this chapter. The response I got from two editors was we just could not empathize with the characters. What? I write strong characters that people love. So maybe it was just my delivery. I was trying to suck the reader into the story. I'll explain more on that process later on. So here's Dax and chapter two.

The Real

Dax slumped between the two mechs that held him by the arms. They seemed frozen in place but there was nothing he could do about it and it didn’t last long enough for him to react, even if it could. They were still one moment and moving the next. A med-tech that emerged from the waiting transport attached an ion ring to his thigh. His leg was gone. He didn’t care about the leg other than the fact that it kept him from running after the thopter that held Merritt captive inside.

Merritt…

Why? Why did they take her? Where were they taking her? What would they do to her? He watched the thopter disappear into the darkness then saw it again when it rose over the treetops and headed towards the dome. How would he ever find her in there?

Merritt…He knew why they took her. There was something about her. Something that could not be defined but he had always known it was there. Every since she came to them in the real there was something about her that made her different from the rest of them.

Dax closed the fist of his left hand to secure the ring she had slipped on his finger not more than an hour before. It was their wedding day. A day that he had longed for since he first met her. Now she was gone. He jumped as he felt a sting in his neck. The med-tech stepped away.

The pain in his thigh stopped as the ion ring took hold. He was still helpless. Still at the mercy of the mechs. Dax looked up at the mech who stood before him. “Where is he taking her?” he asked. He felt weak. Exhausted. Beaten.

The mech looked over his shoulder at the thopter that with the distance looked no larger than a bat before the full moon. He turned back and cocked his head to the side. Dax heard a strange chirp and then the mech spoke. “There is no her,” he said. “Accepted.”

“No her?” Dax exploded but it was an empty rage. His arms were stretched out and firmly held, he was propped on one knee and the numbness from the prick to his neck spread into his arms from his spine. “You saw her,” he gasped as the numb feeling seemed to press against his lunges. “You….saw…her…”

“Accepted,” he heard as the world went black.
<>

The Dome

The light from above burned through his eyes. He wanted to close them but found that simple task impossible. Dax felt strange and disconnected from his body. He was aware of everything but could feel nothing physical. Yet there was pain. Pain in his heart and soul. Pain that throbbed and burned with an unyielding agony.

Merritt…

He remembered what happened. He remembered waking up this morning, was it this morning? He remembered thinking it was the happiest day of his life. He remembered talking to his father. He remembered his sister’s gentle teasing. He remembered how beautiful Merritt looked as she walked to him in the dress that had been his mother’s and her mother’s before and so on through more generations that he could count. He remembered exchanging vows with her. He remembered the terror when they realized that the mech’s from the dome were attacking and how they scattered in several directions. He remembered that he never let go of Merritt’s hand as they ran and tried to hide because there were no weapons. Who brought weapons to a wedding? He remembered that they took her away. The memory of it tore at his insides with a pain so intense that he wanted to scream in frustration, yet he could not move, he could not make a sound; he could not even close his eyes.

Dax knew that he was strapped down on a steel table and he was naked. He felt the straps over his chest, his upper arms, his hips, his thighs, his one ankle and his wrists. He felt the cold metal against his shoulders and buttocks. He felt cold air blow over his skin and goosebumps popped up. He needed to shiver, yet his body was not responding to even the most basic and simple commands. Shivering should just happen, or it would have before his world had been turned upside down.
If only he could turn his head away from the light that felt as if it would burn into his brain.

Merritt…

He heard voices, chatting and laughing, as if nothing was wrong. Everything was wrong. He had to get away, yet how could he? His leg was gone. And he’d give the other one to get Merritt back.

If only he knew where she was. If she was unharmed. If she was frightened. If only he could go back to the hours before and stop it. If only he had done a better job of protecting her.

“Oh, he’s a nice one,” a feminine voice said. “The ones from outside are always so much bigger.”

“They’re nothing more than savages,” a male voice said. “And don’t get distracted. You’re here to learn, not play.”

The light suddenly was gone and Dax realized that it was a body blocking it. He couldn’t blink to refocus but he thought it was the woman. A musky scent drifted over him. She wore perfume, something meant to entice the opposite sex. It seemed strangely out of place among the sterile smells of the room.

“Should his eyes be open?” The woman asked. “I feel like he’s looking at me.”
She looked down at him. “I wish I had lashes like that.” Her face was inches from his. Dax was able to make out a sharp nose on an ordinary face. But all faces were ordinary compared to Merritt’s.

“He’s not looking at you,” the man’s voice said. Dax felt a sharp prick on the bottom of his foot. “He’s unresponsive.”

I can feel everything…The realization hit him….He was paralyzed but not numbed. And he was strapped down to a table. A table with a bright light over it. What were they planning to do to him? He looked in earnest at the woman, trying to make her see, to realize, that he was conscious of everything that was happening around him.
Her hand trailed down his chest. Her nails scraped his skin.

Oh God…

He was so vulnerable. Exposed.

Her fingertips grazed his groin and then moved between his legs and grasped his sac. She enclosed it in her hand and gave a slight squeeze. “Looks like he’s responsive to me,” she said.

“Hmmm,” the man said. “Must be purely reactive.”

“Did you ever consider that maybe I’m that good?”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” the man said. “Even I could do that.”

“You want too don’t you?” the woman teased. “I’ve heard that about you.”

“Are you here to learn or are you here to play?” the man asked impatiently.

“They also said you were no fun at all,” the woman said in a pouting tone. She removed her hand from between his legs. If he could have sighed in relief he would have. He felt strangely tense even though he knew his body, except for one significant part, was only lying there. If he could will his muscles to do anything he would.

“He’s wearing a ring,” the woman said as she picked up his left hand.

“Really?” the man replied. “They should have stripped him.”

“Well obviously they missed it,” she said. “Can I?”

“I don’t see why not,” the man said. “It’s not as if he’s going to need it.”

NO! He willed his hand to close, his fist to clench, anything to keep the ring on. Instead it slipped off his finger easily.

“Ohhh,” she said. “It’s very pretty. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Its mine…I made it…them…for us…He could see the pattern, silver and gold twisted together in an unending circle. No beginning, no end, just together, forever, the way he and Merritt were meant to be. One for him, one for her…not for this woman’s thieving hand.

“Lucky you,” the man said. “Consider it a bonus.”

“Oh look, it fits,” she said. “On my thumb,” she added.

I will cut all your fingers off to get it back…

“Quit playing around,” the man said. “We have to take off the other leg.”

“Why?” the woman asked.

Why?

“He’ll be unbalanced,” the man replied. Dax heard the sounds. The clink of instruments. The movement of a table. The hum of sonics. “The admanium enhancements will be stronger than his normal leg.”
“
So if we just gave him one he’d constantly walk in circles?” the woman joked.

The man let out a barking laugh. “Something like that,” he said.
God…they’re making jokes…

“We best have him prepped before the Doc shows up or he’ll be taking off our legs,” the man said. “Put an ion ring on his thigh,” he instructed.

He felt her hands on his thigh, felt the ring go around, felt the pads of her fingers as she fumbled with the catch.

“Here?” she asked.

“Yes, like the other,” the man said. “The Ionizer will keep everything fluid so the admanium can meld.”

“The legs are ready made?” she asked.

“Yes, although it takes a while for the connections to format. Usually a week or so. We use that time for the reprogramming.” The man rattled the table and Dax heard the hum of a sonic saw.

Reprogramming? What did that mean?

The mechs…The mechs raided the Real. They took the men they captured. They were never heard from again after they disappeared into the Dome. Were they reprogrammed? Would reprogramming mean he would not be himself anymore? The mech’s certainly acted like machines, even though they were men. Or were they?
What were they doing?

“The Ionizer will also help cut down on the blood loss,” the man said.

Dax knew what was coming. If only they knew he could still feel. How could they not know? Or maybe they just didn’t care. He wanted to scream, kick, yell, anything to get their attention. He couldn’t even grit his teeth against the coming pain. Nausea rolled through his stomach and it occurred to him that he would probably puke and then choke on it.
T
hat would be better. Better to be dead than reprogrammed.

But dead meant leaving Merritt…He must find Merritt.

Pain more agonizing than he could imagine tore through his leg. The sonic blade connected with the tissue and it cut through, slowly, severing blood vessels, muscle, and bone. The hum grew louder as it descended into the bone.
God…I’m dying… There was nothing he could do. His body screamed with every molecule yet he was silent and unmoving. Dax felt his eyes well and then tears tracked down his face. Merritt…

How could they not know?

The noise from the sonic blade died away but the pain remained.

“Turn on the ion ring,” the man said. The woman must have complied because the pain suddenly faded away.

He could not even swallow back the bile that threatened to rise in his throat.

“What will you do with his leg?” the woman asked.

“Throw it in the incinerator,” the man replied. “It’s of no use to anyone now.”

He was nothing to them. A project. A learning experience. Dax wanted to see their faces. He wanted to remember them, before he was “reprogrammed”. He wanted to know his torturers because knowledge would fuel his hatred, hatred that gathered in the pit of his stomach and fed off the acid of his pain.

He heard the woosh of a door opening, heard a thump, and realized that it was his leg, gone to vapor, just like the other one. Another door opened.

“Has the subject been prepped?” another man’s voice said.

“Yes sir,” the first man replied. “His legs are ready. I left the rest for you.”

“Who is this?” the man asked.

“I’m Coral sir,” the woman said.

“Nice to meet you Coral,” the second man replied is a voice that implied something more than work.

If he could have rolled his eyes he would have. He was nothing to them. Nothing but a slab on a table to be talked over while whoever was in charge tried to connect with the woman who was probably more than willing. And the other guy watched.
He heard a table move and shadows moved between the light and his eyes. Dax tried to focus. He wanted to remember them.

“Now let’s try not to get these one backwards,” the second man said and the other two laughed. Dax felt heat on his thighs as the second man talked. “This softens the structure,” the man explained,” and enables the bonding. A tingling moved up his nerve endings into his spine. “Complete melding of the tissue, vessels, and nerves,” the man went on. “Amazing. It still astounds me, every time I see it. Of course it takes a while for it to sustain the density of the bone. It even takes on the genetic code so he’ll be the same height as before.”

“Can that be changed Doctor Everts?” the woman asked. So he was a Doctor. Did that justify what he was doing?

“There was some testing done with that some years back,” Everts replied. “But it was all destroyed in the great fire. All lost.”

“I remember that,” the first man said. “It was a great tragedy. Didn’t the head scientist die in that fire?”

“Yes,” Everts said. “Simskin please.”
Dax heard a sound like paper being torn.

“He didn’t back up his work. He was paranoid that way,” Everts continued as Dax felt a pinching around his thigh. “So not only was he lost, but all his work. No one has been able to replicate it.”

“What a shame,” the woman said. “That’s amazing. It looks so real.”

“Unfortunately it’s unable to grow hair,” Everts said.

“It’s not as if he needs it,” the first man said.

“True,” Everts said. “But it makes it unpractical for youth enhancement as if it’s almost too perfect. There’s no color change or glow that would be natural on a face.”

“As in no one wants anyone to know they had work done,” the woman said.

“Exactly,” Everts agreed. Dax felt the pinching again on his other thigh. “The sim skin will meld over the admanium and in a weeks time he’ll be good as new.” Dax heard the clatter of instruments. “Now for the reprogramming.”
The light disappeared again as the Doctor’s head came between Dax and the light. “What the hell?”

“What’s wrong?” the woman asked.

“Where you two idiots not aware that he is conscious?” A face hovered over his, close enough that they were almost nose to nose.

Remember this…Remember…

“I did a reaction test,” the first man said.

“There’s a difference you moron,” Everts exclaimed. “Look at his eyes.”
Another face appeared before Dax. He gathered in the details as best he could, square jaw, light brown hair cut extremely short. Small brown eyes, thin lips and an upturned nose.

Remember him…

“Unconscious men don’t cry,” Everts said. “Those are tears. The med techs paralyzed him for transport. It was up to you to put him out.”

“Do you mean he felt everything?” the woman asked.

“He felt everything and he heard everything,” Everts said angrily. “Poor bastard,” he added.

Thank you so much, Dax said silently. I’ll remember that when I kill all of you.
Dax heard the noise of a drill.

“Will somebody put this guy out of his misery?” Everts said impatiently. Dax felt a sting in his arm and the light began to fade.

It still was not black when he felt the drill go into his temple.

<>

“*blip* 14:29/09/09/2202 Dallas Five-five on line. Acknowledge. *blip*” The symbols trailed across the plastigrid that covered his eyes. Pain shot through his temples and he gave his head a quick shake as he tried to focus on the words.
“*blip* Acknowledge. *blip*” the voice repeated.

“Accepted,” he replied.

“Five-five respond to my command,” the man before him said.

He turned his head to look at the voice. It belonged to a man in uniform who stood before a table containing a holi-vid and keyboard. A simkey was inserted in the man’s temple and it glowed with a green light. His scanner moved and the identity moved across his screen. Baker. Techno. Dallas Squadron. “Acknowledge,” he said.

“Stand,” Baker said.

“Accepted,” he said and stood.

“Walk to me,” Baker said.

He looked down at his legs. He was conscious of the fact that he was nude except for the visor that went across his eyes and was somehow connected to his head at the temples. He wanted to reach up and touch his head. He felt a strange pressure around his skull He moved his hands and stared down at them. He turned them over, palms up.

There was something missing.

“*blip* Acknowledge walk to me. *blip*

His head snapped up. “Accepted,” he said and walked to Baker.

“I’m guessing your momma thought you were stubborn Five-five,” Baker said. “We’ll have to make a few adjustments to your programming.”

Five-five stared at Baker. He needed a definition of the word “momma” but none was forthcoming so he waited.

A pain shot through his temple but he made no move in response to it. He was incapable of it.

“That should do it,” Baker said. “Get dressed Five-five.”

“Accepted,” he said and walked to the clothing that lay on a table.


Just a side note. I loved the *blips* Will have to find a way to use them someday.

Wicked Words

Working on edits for an erotic ghost romance forces me to think (again) about the language of erotic fiction. The publisher of this story specializes in “graphic” love scenes. To me, “graphic” means lots of detail in both actions and sensations. The publisher, however, mandates that “graphic” also has to include a copious helping of the words formerly labeled “unprintable.” My ideas of explicit sex in literature were formed by FANNY HILL, which produces a lavishly erotic effect with extensive, concrete descriptions of every detail of Fanny’s dalliances but without a single “four-letter” word.

C. S. Lewis wrote an essay about the difference between drawing a nude human figure and describing it verbally. The verbal treatment presents a problem the visual art doesn’t. We have to choose among medical language (e.g., “vulva”), archaism (e.g., “quim”), baby talk (e.g., “pee-pee”), or slang and obscenity (fill in the blank). Lewis doesn’t mention the other alternative, euphemisms (“private parts,” “down there”) and flowery metaphors. Any choice requires us, as Lewis puts it, to adopt an “attitude” toward the subject. We have no neutral term like “nose” or “hand” for the genitals.

One problem I see in peppering love scenes with the words formerly considered unprintable is that reactions to them are so individually variable. One reader’s titillatingly naughty term may be the next reader’s disgusting obscenity. Or certain words may strike some people as silly rather than sexy. I’ve sometimes discovered that “four-letter” words I actually do find sassy and sexy are on the publisher’s banned list. I’ve tried figures of speech that the editor has overruled as ridiculous. Any author who doesn’t keep the bedroom door altogether shut has to face these choices. My compromise, so far, is to allow my characters—if it’s in character for them—to include in their dialogue words I would never speak in real life but which the publisher says our readers like.

Margaret L. Carter (www.margaretlcarter.com)

The Crumbling Business Model of Writers

This is a lesson on the business of writing in our everyday world (very much the topic , but contributes much to Colby Hodge's discourse on When A Story Doesn't Work, and how the craft of writing blends into the Business of Writing
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/when-story-doesnt-work-part-two.html
as well as the issue of "worldbuilding" of a fictional world, and also references the Expository Lump problem writers face. Oh, this is a long post covering a lot of territory.

And the point of all this rambling and muttering over many, many posts here focusing on the real world (on a blog about Alien Romance) is to gather the necessary data to figure out why Romance in general and Alien Romance in particular is not regarded with the respect we feel it should garner and what we can do about that.

We all love our fiction, but few readers, game players, movie goers, video-watchers -- i.e. fiction consumers -- still think in terms of how the creators of their entertainment can make a living good enough to keep on producing top notch entertainment.

As I discussed last week
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

(where I beg you to go read the comments that correct a mis-statement on my part!)

the business model of most industrial revolution businesses is busted, and some new thing is coalescing out of the shards of our civilization's economy.

Those who properly divine what that new thing is, how it works, why it works, will be making the new founding fortunes of this century and probably the next. Very few have yet figured out just how profound the shattering of the foundations of our economy is at this moment.

But one SF writer may have a grip on explaining it. C. J. Cherryh.

C. J. Cherryh's marvelous SF novels (with a good dash of alien romance) showcase her talents at their best in her FOREIGNER series. The latest is CONSPIRATOR, and it's book #10 which will likely be the first of another trilogy in the series. Series composed of trilogies seem to be all the rage again.

Read those 10 novels (preferably in order) just for the sheer pleasure of a good story -- a refreshing joy to read such a well written, good story about what I like to read about (smart people caught in impossible predicaments, plights, and stymied by cognitive dissonance).

Put in perspective, those 10 novels give you a vision of our own society from the point of view of the anthropologist. It works better than studying anthroplogy in college courses though - because it is the application of the basic principles of the interface between science, technology, and culture to a Situation (Cherryh is the best in the biz at Situation).

The world C. J. Cherryh is working with is a human colony isolated on the world of the Atevi. Atevi are so similar to us, sex is possible, but "love" is a word that applies to a salad not a person. Atevi are driven by emotions about 45 degrees off the direction of human emotions. Not opposite, not at right angles, but skewed in a dizzying way.

Atevi are more herd creatures than humans are. But not really. They're just Alien.



It takes many novels to let Cherryh draw us into the mindset of these alien creatures. Cherryh is an expert at avoiding the expository lump, yet the narrative goes on and on about the multi-axis Atevi political situation. There's a little repetition, but it provides emphasis, points you might miss if you were skimming. While you're reading about what seems to be completely comprehensible politics, in fact boring politics, you're actually learning to look at reality from an alien point of view.

These long political analyses seem to be expository lumps, but they aren't. They move the story along quite briskly, setting up the action even in future novels. If you are following the anthropology and commentary on humanity, you see things beyond the politics.

Yes, it's an intellectual exercise, but that's what SF delivers as part of the pleasure.

In the FOREIGNER series, Cherryh has also recently introduced other aliens "out there" among the stars, and they're very likely to make their first visit to the Atevi homeworld too soon, so all the Atevi politics has to do with preparing for that eventuality. Meanwhile, the main character is a human whose job is to see to it that human technology does not destroy Atevi culture with potential world war as a result (the Atevi don't do "war" -- but they fight and assassinate a lot).

And here I go inserting exposition into this discourse on the Business Model of Writing.

See my blog post on expository lumps at:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/08/source-of-expository-lump.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/sexy-information-feed.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/02/dissing-formula-novel.html

Reading this 10th Foreigner novel right after writing last week's post about the massive shift in the "business model" that isn't confined to publishing, gave me a different take on just how dire this culture-quake we're in may become.

This week's news is once again about North Korea rattling atomic bombs at us, and all about the cooperation between North Korea and Iran and the arms race that's being unleashed into a ferment of cultural-warfare (which is what this whole Terrorist thing is about; the culture generated by certain religious outlooks). Meanwhile, the USA is facing the legalization of gay marriage which seems a dire and horrifyingly revolting change to some and pure justice to others. It's cultural change.

Cherryh starts CONSPIRATOR with the basic problem being a speech that Bren Cameron, our human POV character who is translator between human and atevi, has to write trying to stop the atevi from adopting cell phones.

The rest of the novel illustrates why the Atevi must adopt cell phones, and why they must not! It ends with the speech unwritten and undelivered. I expect that speech to be a roaring occasion for violence in the halls of the Atevi legislature.

Today's multi-function cell phones are web-access instruments, wireless windows on everywhere. The newest features give you direct access to facebook, twitter, and other social networking tools.

So when you talk cell phone, you talk Web 2.0 -- which means you're talking about the force that is pulverizing the industrial revolution business model, bureaucracy and even democracy itself -- certainly pulverizing capitalism! Perhaps destroying our cultures even more traumatically than the human technology leaks are destroying Atevi culture.

Pulverizing our culture just as a sound wave pulverizes kidney stones.

Most Americans don't even know what culture is. Can you point to your culture? Which pocket do you carry it in? What ringtones have you downloaded into your culture?

We have the TV Show REAPER where parents sold their son's soul to the Devil -- and this season ends with the boy's girlfriend selling her soul to the Devil on the chance of getting her boyfriend's soul free.

A whole, very successful TV show about the SOUL - but can you point to your soul?

It's like "air" was say, a thousand years ago. You don't know it's there because you live in it. It took science a long time (and a lot of computers and satelites) to get a model of weather that's almost working! It's hard to study something you're inside of.

The book I best like for conveying a concept of "what" your culture is, so you can look inside yourself and find it (trust me; it's there somewhere) is



But like souls and air, you miss your culture only when it's GONE.

So we all know the term culture-shock but most Americans who have never lived isolated abroad (with no American community and no one who even speaks British English around) simply don't know what "a" culture is, nevermind their own.

And that's why alarm has not been more pervasive in the USA as our culture crumbles. We don't know it's there, can find no use for it or value to it, and we just don't care.

But we should. Global Warming is nothing compared to this.

You can barely see the cracks in the foundations of our culture yet, but one of those cracks is the downfall of our huge 19th and 20th century corporations. General Motors going bankrupt practically on the 100th anniversary is just one example of failed business model, a surface crack caused by a movement in the foundation underneath our CULTURE.

And C. J. Cherryh has explained what's happening today in an SF novel ostensibly about alien politics, the 10th in a series. Yes, you can read it as the first novel you read in the Foreigner universe, but I've been reading them in order as published, and I see bits and pieces of information I'm using that I picked up in each of the previous novels.

The whole set of 10 Foreigner novels makes this image of our culture under attack by our technology so clear.

Start with the first in the series here:


Now let's skip all the way back into "reality" -- and refer to the series of posts I've done here on Web 2.0 (read them in the following order if you haven't already)

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/11/i-love-web-20.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/02/blogging-and-reading-and-blogging-oh-my.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/beauty-and-beast-constructing-hea.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/new-cb-radio-come-on-back.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/writing-tips-tweets.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/urban-fantasy-job-hunting.html

You see? All this is adding up to something, and giving you a view of the gears-and-chips inside the writer's mind.

This is how a writer thinks, and what a writer has to think with, the reasoning laid out like a beginning Algebra student has to write out each step of the solution to a problem with liberal application of imagination.

So far as I know, only a few SF writers have twigged to what is going on beneath our feet, in the vast unconscious of the human species, because of technology.

In past posts and in my review column
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/
I've surveyed the trend toward depicing "reality" as a thin film over a seething cauldron of EVIL. That portrayal of the world is so popular now, you can barely sell anything that doesn't express that philosophy.

Here, in an article in Wired magazine, you may find the reason WHY you can't sell any other kind of fiction lately -- or when you do, it plays to a very narrow audience that leaps for joy over it because it's such a wonderful breath of fresh air.

http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-06/nep_newsocialism

My previous post on Wired can be found here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/04/wired-magazine-for-romance.html

The social networking and Web 2.0 developments I have been talking about in the above linked posts are barely the tip of the iceburg.

The banner headline for this article in Wired says:
----------------
THE NEW SOCIALISM: Wikipedia, Flickr, and Twitter aren't just revolutions in online social media. They're the vanguard of a cultural movement. Forget about state ownership and five-year-plans. A global collectivist society is coming -- and this time you're going to like it.
----------------

Frankly, I'm not so sure about the "like it" part which may just be the "slant" of this particular magazine. But this article fingers something very important about what's happening, and C. J. Cherryh's latest novel, CONSPIRATOR, describes that very thing from an alien perspective which makes it more comprehensible (as Spock added the alien POV to Star Trek and let us see ourselves from the outside).

But if the panicing Chinese (and other country's) attempts to "block the internet" -- to dictate what Google links will or will not work if you're inside their blackout curtain -- definitely bespeaks a deeply spooked humanity.

This Web 2.0 development may be even worse for humanity than Cherryh depicts it is likely to be for the Atevi. (oh, I do wish everyone had read the whole Foreigner series to date! This is all part of the STAR TREK discussion I haven't gotten to yet.)

The A-bomb proliferation race breaking out may just be part of this sense of panic set off by the forces described in this article in Wired (you can read it free online).

The totalitarian governments have the knee-jerk response of trying to "control" these new technologies, keeping them away from the poor peasants who would use them to overthrow centralized government control. Control is of course absolutely necessary. Humans can't exist without our betters controlling us. We all know that.

Why just look at the mess in society because we gave up the arranged marriage. Control is necessary, you see, and everything is getting out of control!

I don't know where to start telling you about this article "The New Socialism" in Wired Magazine. Every three or four paragraphs I put a post-it note onto the text to remind me to quote it at you, but this little essay is already too long.

The article quotes a book, HERE COMES EVERYBODY by Clay Shirky, from which the article takes a 4-part division to help sort through the effects of social media.

It targets work, how you get paid for what you contribute, and how people get access to what you've created with your work.

It doesn't harp nearly enough on the cultural aspects of the changes in these economic foundations of society. (A culture and a Society are not the same thing. Different societies can share a culture and do just fine relating to each other. What's happening because of Web 2.0 is that the cultures themselves are being pulverized.)

The culture generates the economy (think about Moslem law being the foundation of their banking system -- it seems to be working for them). The economy generates a zillion societies. Take a "society" to be just a group of people who agree on a certain set of laws -- like driving on the right, not having a King but a President, protecting property rights of the individual from the government, rule of the majority strictly limited to protect the individual)

We're currently trying to extend our "social contract" to include healthcare for everyone. Corporations discovered it's economically advantageous to provide healthcare for workers -- they work more consistently and productively. So now "society" wants to model itself on corporations and declare a social profit to having everyone healthy. Do you see any holes in that, other than trying to pay for it?

Our culture says "be kind to the less fortunate" -- our society says, "health is a right not a privelege," and our economy says, "I'm dying!"

Where do writers fit in all this?

COPYRIGHT!!!!

That's right, copyright is dead. Really. It's been uninvented, and the law hasn't caught up with the CULTURAL VALUE CHANGE that has left the old industrial revolution values pulverized.

Quick, GOOGLE creative commons, and see what turns up. The Wired article sites Creative Commons and GNU licenses as the newly invented concept, (ethical platform) replacing copyright.

http://creativecommons.org/ is only the beginning of what you'll find. Check the Wiki entry, since this Wired article sites WIKI as an example of the new economy.

A whole new set of ethics underlies this new culture. I mean really pulverizing all the unconscious assumptions implanted in our cultures since the 1600's and the invention of the printing press and the business model of publishing (which didn't start as a for-profit business, you know. You have read Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's St. Germain series, particularly Borne in Blood - where St. Germain owns a printing business in Amsterdam, I think it is.)

In fact, the internet and the web are forces unleashed into our world that are as huge or maybe more huge than the printing press was in its time.

I've been on a number of panels at conventions about how evil the copyright laws are.

This article in Wired takes that to a whole new level.

The writer's business model is based on COPYRIGHT. Or it has been.

That business model is still functioning, but about as well as General Motors was functioning in say, 1990. Lehman Brothers did pretty well in the 1990's. They seized what appeared to be the new business model (securitizing home mortgages). It killed them.

These behemouths are corporations. Each individual writer is a corporation -- whether you incorporate or not (writers are legally allowed to incorporate and make their corporation the owner of their books. Several revisions of the law ago, this was the best deal you could get on your income taxes as a writer. That's why you see some books copyrighted by some corporation that almost sounds like the author's name.)

Alongside the writer's business model of the 1600's, we now see the business model described in this article in Wired as an application of a principle in the book "Here Comes Everybody" -- 1. Sharing, 2. Cooperation, 3. Collaboration, 4. Collectivism -- and this blog post is an example of the new business model. I'm writing. You're not paying me unless you link to this blog entry in a post of your own, mention it on some popular blog comment space, twitter it, digg it, I don't know what all.

Think about what I said about Alvin Toffler's book Future Shock in this post:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

The human brain can make only so much change in a lifetime, make only so many decisions in a day, -- we have a hard-wired physical limit.

Think about historically what happened to the American Slaves abducted from their slow-changing culture in Africa and then systematically stripped of their culture here, to break their Will so they'd make good workers. They borrowed, desperately preserved, and just plain invented a new culture. A few decades ago, the novel and TV miniseries ROOTS explained to a vast majority just what they'd lost and where to go to find it again. The result has been a black President of the United States (who couldn't be proud of that accomplishment!)

That black President though had a father whose parents and grandparents had not had their culture stripped from them.

Humans need that multi-generational cultural grounding. It is our strength.

The internet and the Web have riven our generations apart, like a hot knife through butter.

The young people today are starting to live in exactly the world "The New Socialism" by Christoph Neimann describes.

The older folk, and even not-so-older folk, RESIST. E-book readers, high-tech phones, twitter, (follow me on twitter http://twitter.com/JLichtenberg ) myspace, flickr.

The Google email spam sorting mechanism is a perfect example of the exact kind of "socialism" the article talks about. We, the people, decide what is and is not spam by our votes.

Now, why is it that I am so at home in this new world, while others my age don't even have a computer, nevermind social network memberships, RSS feed reader (I use Feed Demon), friendfeed and other aggregators. I'm using 2 different aggregators for Twitter and haven't found the one I really want, yet. I don't text much, but I would gladly if I were dragged away from my desk more. I text people's phones from my desktop instead.

Why? How is it that I DO ALL THIS? And blog too. There are so many people so much younger than I am who just don't.

Why am I undaunted by Web 2.0? Why do I feel that the advent of all this culture pulverizing tech is not at all disturbing? Why don't I resist it? What's different about me?

Three guesses, and the first two don't count!

I grew up in FANDOM!!!! I was in 7th grade when I wrote my first letter to the editor of an SF magazine, and they published it (with my snailmail address -- something that could never happen today; it was a much safer world back then).

My parents' mailbox became stuffed with dozens, then hundreds of letters from fans all over the USA. I had just learned to type, and I learned that in "fandom" typing was more intimate than handwriting, and if you didn't type a letter you had to explain for at least 3 paragraphs why your typer was broken.

That's a CULTURE. Fandom had it's own language (fanspeak) just as texting today has developed a condensed spelling shorthand.

In fandom, it was rude to address anyone, but especially someone older than you, by their last name. In fandom, culture demanded not only first names but NICKNAMES - fan names.

"fandom" is a kingdom, (fan = fanatic dom = domain as in Kingdom) floating amongst the real world, above it, interspersed with it, but having no fixed geographic location. The fannish calendar is divided into before and after Worldcon (which used to be Labor Day weekend, but now it too floats dates). Worldcon = World Science Fiction Convention. Most conventions (not CONFERENCES!!) have the infix "con" in them somewhere, if only by allusion.

I'm on a mailing List (an email List; an entire concept made obsolete by Web 2.0 but still existing and growing) for the Las Vegas SF fandom organizations. Recently a new member joined and a veteran Fan, Arnie Katz, sent the new member the following welcome message which may give you some idea of "what" fandom is (other than what you think it is if you joined after fandom moved online).

-----------FROM ARNIE KATZ on VegasSFAssociation@yahoogroups.com ----------------

I saw your premiere post on the VSFA listserv and thought I would drop you a note of welcome and introduction.

I'm not big on writing autobiographies, but let me attempt one so you at least know who is talking to you. I'm a 62-year-old professional writer and editor, married to Joyce Worley, also a professional writer and editor. I'm from New York, she comes from Missouri and we moved here in 1989. I've worked in a number of fields, including science fiction/fantasy, popular culture, collecting and collectibles, video and computer gaming, sports, adult and professional wrestling.

Joyce and I met in Fandom in the mid 1960's. She was a leading fan in St. Louis (she chaired a worldcon and got a Hugo nomination for her fanzine) and I was similarly well-known in New York. Hyndreds of pages of correspondence led to Joyce moving to New York and we got together pretty much upon her arrival.

Fandom is kind of a busman's holiday for us, as it is for many creative people. We're known for our writing and publishing for Fandom. I was chosen as the number one fan in the world in 2009 as well as the hobby's best writer.

Enough about me... Let me tell you a little about the entity that you have just encountered, Fandom.

Fandom arose in the late 1920's, born in the letter columns of the professional science fiction magazines. The people who filled those letter columns began writing to each other directly, easily done in an era in which such letters carried full addresses.

The first fanzines appeared around 1930 and the field quickly grew and evolved. The earliest fanzines were little more than blurbs for upcoming prozines. The hobby slowly progressed from a fixation on the stories and authors to an interest in discussing the idea contained in the stories. During the 1940's, that stretched to include ideas not derived from specific stories, but which seemed "scientifictional." By the early 1950's, though, Fandom embraced talking about anything under the sun, including personal experiences and Fandom itself. That's pretty much where the hobby is today.

The current incarnation of Las Vegas Fandom dates from 1989 and the formation of SNAFFU (Southern Nevada Area Fantasy Fiction Union), the city's formal, open SF club. SNAFFU (and Las Vegas Fandom) broke out of its isolation when they met Joyce and I. We introduced them to the like-minded folks around the world and Vegas Fandom has prospers ever since.

There are two other clubs in town, VSFA is by far the smallest, little more than a video-watching group. They're nice enough, but very mundane and pretty much uninterested in the creative side of Fandom. VSFA, through a cooperative arrangement among the three clubs, puts on the annual Halloween Party.

Las Vegrants is the largest fan group in town with two to three times as many members as the other two groups combined. It's an informal, invitation group that includes the city's top fans, many of whom are professional writers and editors.

I'm pretty much the answer man around here, so please feel free to ask any, and as many, questions as you may have about all this strangeness. To get you rolling, I'm including a copy of the second edition of THE TRUFAN'S ADVISOR, a little guide that I turned out a year or so ago. It should be fairly helpful.

Don't hesitate to contact me if there is anything I can do.

Faanishly,

Arnie Katz
----------------------------------

Over the years, I've welcomed many mundanes into fandom and I've had to teach them the inherent values of fandom which I learned in 7th grade and have lived ever since. If you read a fanzine, even if you paid for a hardcopy, you only paid for ink, printing and postage, and you owe a LoC (Letter of Comment). That's true of blog posts too -- you PAY for any post you find valuable by dropping a comment.

Barter is coin of the realm in fandom. You get something good - you give something. Your words, your coolie labor collating a fanzine (minding a website), your thoughts, your arguments, your publicizing a convention by mentioning it on big blogs, or as Arnie here above has offered, his ANSWERS for a neofan. Perhaps the best thing you can do for a blog you love is to "follow" it by RSS or subscribe because there are aggregators out there that position a blog in their search results according to how many subscribers it has.

So the coin of the realm has a new design, but the principle hasn't changed. As ever, coin of the realm today is your words, and your LoCs are more valued than you know until you've gotten one on something you wrote.

The LoC comment can be critical, lambasting the author for any number of errors or omissions, even typos -- but the praise garnered in LoCs is important too. Fanspeak has a name for that praise; egoboo -- a boost to the ego. It's food for the ego, and for the culture of fandom as a whole. Praise for one person's accomplishments feeds the ambition of others to contribute accomplishments. It's not boot-licking or toadying to praise a blog post or web page. It's contributing to the new Culture 2.0.

Perhaps the most important thing to understand about fandom is that it has no government, needs no government, but is not "ungoverned" -- it isn't an anarchy, but it can't tolerate "organization" as a top-down-management style except in small endeavors like, perhaps an ad hoc committee putting on a convention.

Now that Arnie has introduced you to fandom, go read that article in WIRED.
http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-06/nep_newsocialism

If you understand fandom, and read this article -- you will see that this "new socialism" is actually not so new. It's not an 'ism. It's a 'dom. Webdom maybe.

If you understand C. J. Cherryh's FOREIGNER universe, the Atevi culture, and why human technology is such a threat, you will understand that the magnitude of the threat to our current world from this growing "The New Socialism" collectivist society is so pulverizing, and especially pulverizing to the business model writers have used since the 1600's.

NOW TO STAR TREK.

And no, I'm still not going to talk about the new movie or the script or acting or directing etc.

It's the IMPACT of Trek on our CULTURE.

Remember THE PRIME DIRECTIVE -- and then think about the Atevi.

Now look back on history and see how fandom, and our world has changed under the impact of Trek.

OK, Trek hit in the late 1960's, and the 1970's are famous for Women's Lib and of course the rise of Black Culture after Roots in 1977. In 1975 my non-fiction book STAR TREK LIVES! was published and blew the lid on Star Trek Fandom -- and fandom in general.

The Star Trek conventions were about getting together to meet the people you'd only snailmailed before -- to brainstorm ST fanzine stories, to tell stories, to buy and sell and exchange paper fanzines, and little by little, a track of programming was added (well attended but not the heart of the matter) where the stars of the TV show stood on stage and later signed autographs.

The ST cons were modeled after (and run by BNF's Big Name Fans) SF cons, but that proved to be non-scalable, so the structure gradually evolved to be big enough for the crowds.

So LITTLE ST Cons popped up, just for 'zines, costumes, how-to-run-a-con practice and so on.

Star Trek took the CULTURE of SF fandom and scaled it up, filling fanzines with more than just articles and as Arnie says "life and life in fandom." SF fandom used 'zines the way most people today use blogs, for the meta-conversation. But Star Trek fandom injected FICTION into the fanzines, and sold those zines for paper and postage only, no labor charge.

That's the model Christoph Neimann is describing in his article, calling it a "new socialism" -- but it's neither new nor socialism. It's FANDOM!!! Star Trek style.

Now back to the envelope subject of this whole series of blog posts that's probably bored away the entire readership of this co-blog.

HOW DO WE DO IT FOR SCIENCE FICTION ROMANCE????

We must study how culture evolved, (or as C. J. Cherryh said in CONSPIRATOR -- adjusted) to accomodate the new forms of communication.

Fandom evolved from the SF magazine readerships, readers meeting in micro-cons in New York. Star Trek fandom likewise started in and around New York.

What is going on now that has allowed SFR and PNRomance to get a toe-hold is e-books and e-media and Web 2.0 devices like http://www.goodreads.com .

What is happening in the world today, this whole pulverizing impact of social media on our culture could (it's not that big a stretch) be attributed to the success of STAR TREK, or perhaps more importantly of STAR TREK LIVES! a little Bantam paperback that went 8 printings in the 1970's.

The conventions and fanac (fan activity) surrounding Star Trek became public knowledge as the New York Times and other big papers picked up the hints in STAR TREK LIVES! about K/S and other exotic fiction experiments.

Star Trek itself went only 3 seasons then grew in syndication. The media execs wanted to repeat this "fandom" phenomenon, and thought they had it with SPACE 1999, which Trek fans sneered at and stayed away from though it was advertised as Star Trek fans will love it.

Likewise the original BATTLESTAR GALACTICA -- (not the remake which is Intimate Adventure
http://www.simegen.com/jl/intimateadventure.html and Ronald D. Moore has even said so
http://www.simegen.com/jl/intimateadventurecomments.html )

They tried and tried, and they just could not duplicate the appeal of Star Trek. But Trek fans took the K/S premise and "slashed" combos of characters in other shows and made fascinating reading in fanzines for shows that have absolutely no SF appeal.

We eventually got Star Trek films, new series, a few new series, and a hiatus, now a new Star Trek movie, with the one thing no fan would have gone for in 1990 - NEW SPOCK AND KIRK ACTORS.

That's the test of a classic role - when a succession of generations of actors play the role successfully, the role becomes bigger than any actor.

That's important to understand. It's vital. It means Hollywood has stopped excluding SF from the concept "classic." And that's happened gradually as SF and Fantasy movies have won Oscars (which was unthinkable before Trek).

Star Trek and Trek fandom broke down a wall in our world, and now Trek has spread to all levels of the ambient society and culture.

Don't forget, it was Trek fans in a university environment that basically invented the internet to play a video game from campus to campus. A Trek type video game.

Christoph Niemann goes on and on about the social networking and the internet changing our very economy, our entire concept of personal property is being changed.

Gene Roddenberry's concept of the Trek universe was that it had no MONEY - money wasn't used anymore, nor were pockets needed to carry money. People weren't hired to crew the Enterprise; they were volunteers. Honest, that was his concept and few have ever understood that.

So Star Trek spawned the Internet, and the older SF fandom which spawned ST fandom has now spawned what Niemann dubs "the new socialism" in Web 2.0 and social networking.

Any number of us on this blog have mentioned how disregarded readers of SF were in the 1950's and 1960's. Disparaged. Held in open contempt wouldn't be too strong a wording for the attitude we endured for liking science fiction. Fantasy was even worse.

Then came Star Trek. It got cancelled because it was science fiction. (really, the network execs who made the decision didn't care about the tons of fan mail -- they just didn't like the show. That's it.)

So "we" fans organized in just the way Niemann describes what he thinks is a new cultural form, and we beat Hollywood to its knees and produced this new Star Trek film which has been given rave reviews and a HUGE amount of space in Variety, the NYTimes, Wired Magazine, Time, Newsweek, Business Week -- you name it. Talk about prestige.

WE WON! We fought for decades. We used the oldest tool in the fannish arsenal, FANDOM ITSELF, its strange organization, its unique way of using words, its intrinsic value system and economy of sharing -- most especially fueled by the LoC.

And we won.

Science Fiction and Fantasy are now mainstream.

How did that happen?

Star Trek -- Wagon Train To The Stars. (based on the incredibly long running TV show that everyone watched Wagon Train).

Star Trek, OK nobody else will ever notice this is true, because it took 40 years and everyone's forgotten everything about that long-ago time -- none of the salient facts of how this happened have ever been recorded for posterity because Star Trek and SF in general was not important.

Star Trek provided the pivot point in history, the inflection point, the "place to stand" and eventually with the films, books, and fanzines, provided the "lever long enough" and we changed the world into the vision Niemann is talking about in Wired.

These people who are inventing Web 2.0 devices, un-inventing copyright and all the industrial complex business models, in fact uninventing currency itself, these people are the descendents barely 2 generations removed from those who envisioned the future world of Star Trek.

The impact of Star Trek is just beginning to be felt (will never be identified officially, I'm sure) in the pulverization of our culture and our society and our business models. But we can take a lesson from all this.

The world was inimical to the SF fan. SF fans flocked to the first real SF on TV. We changed the world to be friendly to SF and SF fans.

The world is inimical to Romance. Romance fans need a vehicle to flock to. Then we will change the world.

The vehicle SF fans flocked to was a TV show, because at that time about a third of all the adults in the USA watched TV. There were 3 networks. What else was there to do in the evening but listen to the radio which didn't have any good shows anymore.

The vehicle Romance fans need has got to be Web 2.0 based.

Look at the numbers and websites with numbers that I talked about last week

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

Nobody watched TV anymore. And the TV watching public is graying fast. Any TV watching younger people do is on the web.

The web as a fiction delivery system is burgeoning, and copyright and other business model elements from the 1600's to the 1900's only strangle that burgeoning growth.

We're having our economy shattered by the new business models, uninventing money and labor for a wage, etc.

Do we, as Romance readers, writers and fans, do we seriously want to add a shattering effect from Romance, which is our fundamental life's relationship to this deadly mixture?

Or do we, as Romance readers, writers and fans, bear an obligation to produce that Romance vehicle that will draw us together to become a Web 2.0 force, (and Web 3.0 is already in launch mode!) to provide the SOLUTION to the pulverizing, culture shattering, social fabric ripping effects of the loss of copyright?

Which is it? Tell me by commenting on this post that's longer than a chapter in a long book!

If you got all the way to the end of this post and have any idea what I'm talking about, you owe me a LoC according to Christoph Niemann.

Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

One Man's Trash

(due to deadlines I'll be recycling old columns, "The Full Sass," that I wrote for FUTURES magazine, 1999-2001. I hope you find them fun.)

ONE MAN’S TRASH


Dumpster diving is a lucrative occupation. For those of you who don’t keep a deerstalker hanging in your closet, I’ll explain that dumpster diving is P.I. lingo for trash recovery. Which is regular person lingo for stealing except that a few years ago the Supreme Court in its wisdom decided that anything you put out on the curb is fair game for scroungers and investigators alike. Which means finding out when the municipal sanitation engineers make their rounds and getting there at least an hour or two before them. And being paid $150 or more for each of your early morning acquisitions.

From an investigator’s perspective, a lot can be learned from someone’s trash: eating habits, reading habits, drinking habits. I worked one custody case where the sole proof we had of a custodial father’s out-of-control alcoholism was the liters -- and yes, the LITERS-- of supermarket rum we found on our twice weekly ‘dives’. It took two large shopping bags to bring all the empties to the judge’s chambers, and at that point even the argument of compulsive rum-cake baking didn’t hold water. Or even cola. Those bottles were much less in evidence. Our friend liked his poison neat.

He also liked a number of other interesting things, like canned yams and paper towels decorated with fruit and spearmint chewing gum. Only the gum made sense in relation to the alcohol consumption, but all of it, everything we found over a three month investigation created a picture of an individual more thorough than anything his ex had been able to tell us.

We are not only what we eat and drink, but what we collect, consume, acquire and dispose of.

From a writer’s perspective, a lot can be learned from some fictional dumpster diving into your characters. What would we be likely to find in Scarlett O’Hara’s trash -- used draperies? And how about Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s recyclables on board the starship “Enterprise”: old Earl Grey tea bags is my guess. Detective Columbo of t.v. fame would throw out his cigar stubs. And the used cat litter generated by Koko and Yum-Yum in “The Cat Who...” mystery series would be considerable.

A peek at what has yet to be tossed is also instructive. As a licensed private investigator, I am governed by the same laws as average citizens when it comes to accessing private property. That is, I can’t, unless invitited. But over the years I’ve discovered -- out of necessity -- a myriad number of ways to get myself legally ‘invited’ into a subject’s home or office. I routinely carry a photograph of one of my cats, Friday, who it seems is forever getting lost in just that neighborhood where the subject lives. Knocking on doors with mascara stains under my eyes, clutching a photograph of dear old Friday kitty almost always gets me invited into the living room in order to access the back yard, where my cat may be hiding (along with the stolen motorboat, as in one case), or into the garage, where my cat may be hiding (along with the dented automobile as in a hit and run case).

Garage Sale signs and For Sale signs are other legitimate means I’ve used to gain lawful entry. Especially in investigations of financial misconduct, it’s not uncommon to find the subject selling his house and/or possessions as a means to raise quick cash. And I, as a P.I., was fortunate to locate a real estate broker who was a former Pinkerton security agent. We got along famously.
Once inside, souvenirs and memorabilia on display will tell not only where a person has visited but where they are often likely to flee to, if pressure is applied. Family photos can also confirm the existence of Mom in Duluth or a best friend in Dallas or even time in the armed services complete with the requisite ‘Fort Patriotic’ sign in the background.

‘Rosebud’ was a childhood sled one famous fictional character never let go of. Possession of other items -- like a statue of the Maltese Falcon -- trigger a whole other series of events. And a pair of ruby slippers were more important to Dorothy then any frequent flyer miles she could have accumulated.

So what do your characters have on their shelves, on their pianos? What do they cling to for comfort in the darkness of night? Keying on an object or a talisman as part of your character is not only a way to give your character personality or depth, but can be used to signal their presence or absence without specifically saying so. Romance novel verbiage notwithstanding, I’m less likely to perceive the recent departure of a person (or a character) from the “lingering scent of her perfume” than I am from a favorite CD left playing on the stereo. Or a pair of ruby slippers tucked neatly under the bed.

We all have our treasured possessions. We all have our habits reflected in our routine discards. Since our real essence, who we are in our hearts and souls, can never truly be seen, we are all often judged by the things with which we surround ourselves. Our trash and our treasures tell the story of whom we believe ourselves to be.

And again, from an investigator’s perspective, it’s from a subject’s trash and treasures that we begin to understand such things as motives and uncover a subject’s habits and secrets. And from a writer’s point of view, it’s from these props that the reader can delve more deeply, more intimately into our story and our characters.

Leave Pandora’s Box to the mythical gods of old. You can learn everything you really want to know inside a sturdy Dempsey Dumpster.

Just another tidbit from the Center for the Slightly Skewed.....

~Linnea

HOPE’S FOLLY, Book 3 in the Gabriel’s Ghost universe, Feb. 24, 2009 from RITA award-winning author, Linnea Sinclair, and Bantam Books: http://www.linneasinclair.com/

It's an impossible mission on a derelict ship called HOPE'S FOLLY. A man who feels he can't love. A woman who believes she's unlovable. And an enemy who will stop at nothing to crush them both.