Showing posts with label Jacqueline Lichtenberg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jacqueline Lichtenberg. Show all posts

Thursday, December 21, 2023

Dangerous Gifts

The solstice is upon us! There's hope that within a few weeks darkness will stop falling at 5 p.m. Happy winter holidays!

It might seem natural that if people with arcane psychic talents existed, they would dominate the ungifted majority, whether officially or not, overtly or subtly, gently or cruelly. They might constitute a ruling class like the laran-wielding aristocrats of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover, an order of official problem-solvers like the Heralds of Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar, or an autocratic clique like the sociopathic tyrants of the STAR TREK episode "Plato's Stepchildren." More often than not, however, far from holding exalted status, fictional possessors of such talents are regarded with ambiguity or hostility by their societies.

For example, the Slans in A. E. Van Vogt's classic 1946 novel face relentless persecution because of their powers. Fictional vampires surely inspire deeper horror than many other imaginary monsters because of the hypnotic mind control that renders their victims helpless and even unwilling to resist. Zenna Henderson's People, refugees from a distant planet living secretly on Earth, although benign, are often confronted with suspicion or fear when ordinary earthlings discover their powers. In the Sime-Gen series by Jacqueline Lichtenberg and Jean Lorrah, Gens regard the much less numerous Simes with terror not only because they drain life-energy but because they're suspected of occult abilities such as mind-reading.

Historical romance author Mary Jo Putney recently published the first novel in a new series called "Dangerous Gifts." In this book's slightly altered version of Regency England, psychic powers are known to exist but often viewed negatively. The hero lives happily among a circle of people who share similar gifts, and he works for the Home Office using his abilities for the good of his country. As a child, though, he was brutally rejected by his father because of his wild talents. At the beginning of the story, the gifted heroine is being held prisoner by villains who keep her mind clouded as they plot to use her powers for their nefarious goals. Putney has also written a YA series about an alternate-world Britain where magic is considered a lower-class pursuit, a shameful defect if it shows up in a noble family. The magically endowed heroine's upper-class parents send her to an exclusive but very strict academy that exists to train gifted young people to suppress their powers.

In fiction, miracle workers in general often inspire fear and revulsion rather than awe. Consider Mike, the "Martian" in Heinlein's STRANGER IN A STRANGE land. In real life, too, such people sometimes meet violent ends.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Tuesday, October 27, 2020

Interview with Larry Nemecek on STAR TREK LIVES!

Interview with Larry Nemecek
on 
STAR TREK LIVES! 

I was interviewed on this podcast episode by phone in June, 2020, and is about how my Bantam paperback original about Star Trek fans came to be.

https://www.facebook.com/TheTrekFiles/posts/1545927938914781


It is short, and there is another short episode coming.  You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, and I would suppose other phones, too.  It's called THE TREK FILES.

There is a text (by email) interview with Anthony Darnell also done in June, 2020, for StarTrek.com.  I will note them on this blog as information comes available.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Thursday, April 04, 2019

The Vampire as Alien

I'm thrilled that my nonfiction book DIFFERENT BLOOD: THE VAMPIRE AS ALIEN is back on the market at last. It's been re-released by a new publisher with some updating and a fantastic new cover:

Different Blood

This is a work of critical analysis that surveys the widely varied forms of the "vampire as alien" trope in fiction from the second half of the nineteenth century to the early twenty-first. By "alien," I mean a naturally evolved creature (regardless of whether earthly or extraterrestrial) rather than a supernatural undead entity. So DIFFERENT BLOOD examines one subset of the science-fiction vampire. Readers may be surprised to discover how many amazing stories and novels fall into that category.

In the Amazon "Look Inside" feature, you can read the introduction and part of Chapter One to get a sense of the flavor of the text. I've drawn upon Jacqueline Lichtenberg's essays such as "Vampire with Muddy Boots" and her article on Intimate Adventure to set the stage for my treatment of the topic. You'll find references to those essays in the introduction. To borrow Jacqueline's terms, I'm fascinated by the way most "vampire as alien" fiction deals with nonhuman characters in an SF framework instead of portraying them as "the Unknown that is a menace because it's a menace."

Naturally, Jacqueline's THOSE OF MY BLOOD is one of the books discussed, as well as HOUSE OF ZEOR and the philosophy underlying the Sime-Gen series. One delightful aspect of writing DIFFERENT BLOOD was having a chance to highlight lots of my favorite novels and stories that develop the figure of the vampire in original, provocative ways. I've always admired the way the vampire, as the most versatile of all the traditional monsters, can be used to explore gender, race, ecological responsibility, predator-prey dynamics, symbiosis, and many other themes; the concept of "alienness" is ideally suited for this exploration. I hope DIFFERENT BLOOD introduces readers to numerous works of exciting, innovative fiction they haven't encountered before.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Targeting A Readership Part 12 - What If Your Fans Strike Back by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Targeting A Readership
Part 12
What If Your Fans Strike Back
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts in this series on Targeting a Readership (writing specifically for certain markets) are indexed here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/index-to-targeting-readership-series-by.html

So today we look ahead in your writing career to the point where you have hooked a large number of fans, and then somehow disappointed them.

There is a very well written, tightly reasoned blog article that has made an online splash that you should read and think about.  I flatly disagree with the premise, yet can easily see how it might be considered plausible.  I adore the title, Fandom Is Broken.  And I must admit that if you target a readership, expect them to target you back.

So read this essay By  .
http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2016/05/30/fandom-is-broken

This article on Fandom Is Broken came to my attention when a fan of my novels and non-fiction posted a link to it on the Sime~Gen Group on Facebook, where I replied I had to write a whole blog about this topic because I flat out disagree with the premise that fandom has changed in any way at all.  The "national character" of fans is to be loudly, inconsolably acrimonious, utterly possessive, and completely proprietary where fictional characters are involved.  That's the way it is supposed to be.  It is the nature of who we are within the matrix of mundane society. Our ferocity knows no bounds.

My credentials for disagreeing with the premise that "fandom is broken" are rooted in being part of active fandom since 7th Grade, and continuing to be involved in the online fan community as well as fans of my own work (a hair raising experience as you can imagine having someone else write your characters or re-cast your themes.)

Just pause a moment and visualize what will happen after you've got your science fiction or paranormal Romance published.  People will read it.  People will react. What will they say to you or to each other behind your back?

Depending on the Readership you have been Targeting, your fans may react in a number of ways, very likely a few will gravitate toward each of these reactions, while most will come back at you with one or another of them.

A) Just find another writer to follow
B) Vociferously denounce you in Amazon reader comments etc.
C) Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Tumblr, etc etc tirades (example)
D) Personal threats and attacks to "force" you (and/or your publisher, producer, editor, etc - the whole commercial fiction delivery system which your work must please before it can reach that targeted readership) to re-plot the direction of the story (make one character gay, make another go from hero to villain, or villain to hero)
E) To H*** with you, and post fanfic demonstrating that you wrote it all wrong, and THIS is how the story must go!

Obviously, I am of the Part E) attitude.

Possibly the author of the essay FANDOM IS BROKEN thinks attitude E) is un-fannish, or a sign that fandom is broken. But the truth is, insisting the story go your way, even if that differs markedly from the author's way, is fannish.

He should have been a fly on the wall while I was talking to Andre Norton about her writing a sequel to STAR RANGERS (telling her the plot for her novel) and she told me that I should write it, whereupon I did and sold it as the Dushau Trilogy (and won the first Romantic Times Award for Science Fiction!)  It took a trilogy because I didn't use her universe, but recreated the salient parts in an original universe.

Or maybe he should have listened to me telling Gene Roddenberry why he was "doing it all wrong." Of course, being who I am, I didn't vilify or threaten either great writer, (just not my style), but extreme vehemence ladled on thick over an adamant attitude is my style.  As a double-dyed Fan, I will have it my way!  (with Romance!!!)

When "they" (NBC and Paramount) cancelled Star Trek, I and hundreds (actually thousands) of others just wrote more and published on paper, in fanzines, sold to each other at conventions at which Gene Roddenberry was often a Guest.
 A printed volume of Kraith


I engineered the Kraith Series
http://simegen.com/fandom/startrek/
to invite people to contribute to this alternate Star Trek Universe and over time, 50 other very creative people did that -- and several fanzines appeared carrying my alternate universe into yet another variant. Kraith was the subject of an article in the New York Times Book Review.

Kraith was designed to prove the theories I presented in the Bantam paperback STAR TREK LIVES! which blew the lid on fandom and fanzines -- garnering the attention of the New York Times and arousing vast public interest (both in deriding fandom and in becoming a creative, active fan).

In April 2016, France 4, a public station in France, aired a documentary on fan fiction partly based on a book I have an essay in, titled Fic: Why Fan Fiction Is Taking Over The World.  It shows the Professor who compiled this book teaching Kraith to a University class, then clips of an interview with me, and then some French fanfic fans.  Trust me, fandom is not now broken.  We've only barely begun!








My first novel in my own series, Sime~Gen, titled House of Zeor,
 Sime~Gen 13 Book Series on Amazon


was cited in STAR TREK LIVES! in a footnote, offering further proof that I understood why fans loved Star Trek (faults and all). I sold House of Zeor with a money-back guarantee to Star Trek fans who loved Spock.  60 hardcover copies went out on that guarantee, none were returned.

To show that Kraith was not an accident, just popular because it used a TV Series as a platform, I created more novels in the Sime~Gen Series to appeal to that same "Part E" segment of Star Trek fandom.  The proof appeared as paper fanzines (at one time there were 5 Sime~Gen fanzines), and later made the transition to the Web where printed stories are now posted for free reading alongside millions of words of never-printed-on-paper fan fiction.

Now, several contributors to Sime~Gen, some professional writers, have created a professionally published anthology of Sime~Gen stories, and one writer is expanding her posted fan fiction into a professionally published novel trilogy.

So, you can see I am well acquainted with how fandom started (having known those we call First Fandom, who started science fiction fandom in the 1930's), with how it morphed into TV/Media online fandom, and with many fan-feuds and bitter controversies lasting decades.

I know "fandom" from two sides -- having been a lifelong active fan, then grown up to be a professionally published writer whose fans have written in my universes, both with and without my permission or knowledge.

And I have been studying the dynamics driving the massive shift in the Fiction Delivery System under the impact of the Web, Print On Demand, Self Publishing (via smashwords.com and Amazon Kindle, etc).

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/05/index-to-marketing-fiction-in-changing.html

It is not just the business model being morphed by the new communications media, social and anti-social as they may be, but also the content, form and function of fiction in general -- genre fiction in particular.

We are looking at a feedback loop phenomenon -- where there is no chicken/egg problem, no actual origin (storytelling goes back to the beginning of language; bees dance their stories of where to find pollen!).  Fandom is part of a dynamic process.

It did not have the name "fandom" until the 1930's, but I am certain this feedback loop between story-consumer and story-producer has been revving up since shamans inspired audience around camp fires.

The term "fandom" has its origin in a word-creation process much used by science fiction fans.  It blends the word "fanatic" which is the derogatory for "enthusiast" with the word "domain" or "kingdom" which is the place you live and defend with your life.

Fandom created the first "cyberspace" using the old purple gel spirit duplicator invented for offices, restaurant menus, and school tests to make quick but perishable copies.

Fans wrote essays like blogs do today, discussing (lauding or excoriating) books, their authors, as well as editors and publishers. They mailed their essays to a "publisher" who mailed copies to other fans.  The price was money to cover paper and ink (or sometimes just free out of the editor's pocket) or a contribution to be printed for which the writer would get a copy.  In other words, the face-to-face "bookclub" experience was extended nation-wide via the U.S. Postal Service because nobody knew anyone in their neighborhood who read "that stuff," too.  

This bookclub discussion group type "fanzine" publishing grabbed onto each advance in publishing technology and expanded its reach -- via hand-cranked mimeograph, electric motor driven mimeograph, and then with the much larger readerships gathered by Star Trek Fandom, on into offset press, and today fanfic.net etc etc.

Today, even full live-actor productions of fan-written/acted/produced unauthorized episodes of Star Trek are thriving.

Huge amounts of current fanfic are uncritical of the original material, approving, or wallowing in a romantic sea of unmitigated adulation for the original.

But as extreme as approval has gone, there is likewise an extreme of disapproval, a critical attitude that rips the original to shreds and/or injects incompatible ideas into the basic theme of the original.

Fandom has spanned that whole spectrum of responses as far back as I can remember, and as far back as those who founded science fiction fandom have told me they can remember.

The article FANDOM IS BROKEN acknowledges the tension between creator and consumer, between writer and customer, but glosses over the innate rancor, and fiery temper which is the signature of the science fiction the fannish personality:

---------quote--------------
There's always been a push and a pull between creator and fan, and while it can sometimes be negative it was, historically, generally positive.
----------end quote----------

No, historically, the reason fans grow up to become professional writers is that the Relationship with the writers they first read was not generally positive.

The proto-writer personality reacts generally with, "No!  No! THAT IS ALL WRONG!" and then proceeds to do it their own way, which is "right" in their way of looking at things.

------------quote--------
Fans used to raise their voices to save canceled TV shows or to support niche comic books, but now that we live in a world where every canceled show comes to Netflix or gets a comic book tie-in or lives on as a series of novels the fans have stopped defending the stuff they love and gotten more and more involved in trying to shape it. And not through writing or creating but by yelling and brigading and, more and more, threatening death.
----------end quote--------------

Well, the writing and creating part does come later, true.  First comes the screaming in anguish, and today that is magnified in the Twitter echo chamber.

Yes, STAR TREK fandom is traced back to Bjo Trimble's famous write-in campaign (which failed to get the show revived and earned nothing but contempt from Paramount until the Conventions swelled into national news events).

Other groups have tried to recreate that, and in fact "Hollywood" now pays some attention to fans (if not out of respect for their taste in story material at least out of greed for their money.)

One thing Bjo Trimble's "how to write to Paramount" mailings emphasized was that calm, reasoned statements were more effective than threats and insults, and that 'defense' of what we love in Star Trek was not going to convince a network to pick up the show again.

The reason for that is simple.  Network TV does not select or shape TV Series around "content" -- fiction is just there to glue eyeballs to the screen during commercials.

Today, that's changing as the subscription-model replaces the advertising model -- Netflix, Hulu, even YouTube and Amazon are dabbling in the subscription model delivering fiction uninterrupted by commercials.

The subscription model can foster more emphasis on content - but only popular content because video production is still expensive (way more than purple spirit duplicator copies).  To make a profit, they need large numbers to subscribe, so the content of the fiction will conform to the "lowest common denominator" taste.

Read this quote from later in the "Fandom Is Broken" article siting other instances of current fan outrage:

---------quote------------
It's all about demanding what you want out of the story, believing that the story should be tailored to your individual needs, not the expression of the creators. These fans are treating stories like ordering at a restaurant - hold the pickles, please, and can I substitute kale for the lettuce? But that isn't how art works, and that shouldn't be how art lovers react to art. They shouldn't be bringing a bucket of paint to the museum to take out some of the blue from those Picassos, you know?

The AV Club's piece ran a day too early, it turns out. The same day the piece hit the internet exploded in another fan outrage, this time coming as a result of Steve Rogers: Captain America #1, a new Marvel comic that revealed - dun dun dunnnn! - that Captain America had actually been a Hydra double agent his whole life.
--------------end quote----------

The Fandom Is Broken article seems based on the assumption that "the internet exploded in another fan outrage" is a new, or "broken fandom", phenomenon.

The assumption seems to be that fan-outrage is somehow "non-fannish" or a new characteristic that has appeared because something changed, something broke.

The opposite is true.

The nature of those who become "fans" -- not FANATICS mind you, but FANS -- includes an ensemble of characteristics that pretty much define the difference between fans and "the lowest common denominator" central market film makers must aim for -- the market large enough to support a video production at broadcast quality, nevermind theater quality.

1) Sharp Intelligence
2) Vivid Imagination
3) Strong Sense of Personal Identity
4) Unswerving Determination
5) Clearly Reasoned Opinions
6) Independent Minded
7) Collector of trivial facts by the thousands

Any two or three of these traits can be found at peak values in vast numbers of mundane people.

Fans call non-fans, mundane.  Mundane is the previous jargon term for muggle.  There's nothing wrong with being a mundane -- they just don't understand you when you talk about what matters to you, especially if you're "exploding in outrage" over a story-development.

I derived that list of traits from people I know.  I know a lot of people, writers and readers, who have all 7 of those traits at the maximum strength any human can have.  They're fans -- not necessarily of science fiction per se.  Fans of Romance or Mystery genre have the same profile.  Even fans of God -- people who are into Religion or Mysticism -- max out all 7-traits in that profile.

So if you, as a writer of science fiction and/or paranormal Romance, or any mixed genre, have that 7-trait profile all to the maximum degree, chances are you will write for others who have that profile.

Here's the problem.

That profile is rare.

As I noted above, any 2 or 3 of those traits are maxed out in huge numbers of people.  People who have all 7 maxed out are very rare.

TV or even online Video fiction Series are expensive to produce.

Self-publishing a book is much less expensive today, but still a big capital investment: A) time to write, rewrite, polish, edit, lay out, book design, B) buying cover graphic, C) crafting promotional campaign that can involve buying ads, D) fixing mistakes.  If you only sell a few hundred copies, you won't make even $0.50/hour on that investment.  Even selling to a publisher who does most of the work, you still won't make more than $10/hour unless you sell hundreds of thousands of copies.

If the Readership you are Targeting is rare, you will sell a few hundred copies, and that's all, over years.  So to be a professional writer, you must broaden your "reach" -- how many people will find your work satisfying.  That's what editors do to "almost" manuscripts:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-exactly-is-editing-part-vii-how-do.html

So there is a financial barrier to fan-made fiction Series for the online video audience, but as the cost of video equipment goes down, and the knowledge and skills to get the most out of the cheapest equipment (a cell phone for example) becomes more prevalent, online video fiction or fan-fiction will proliferate.

Even so, to break even or make a profit, the audience targeted has to be larger than the "rare" market of fandom.

And that is the view from the Traditional Publishers skyscraper offices, or from Hollywood.  Fan outrage simply does not register, not because the outrage is not real or well expressed or legitimately based, but because that "rare" personality is RARE -- it is just too small a market segment to MATTER.

Fandom is not broken.  Fandom has always operated this way -- taking personal possession of the fictional material doled out by Publishing (or now Production), taking proprietorship of that which has been created by others, and insisting that the fictional material conform to personal expectations.

In the 1930's and 1940's the "outrage" against professional science fiction writers was aroused by errors in scientific fact -- or a failure to imagine (imagination being one of those 7 traits) far enough out or failure to incorporate the very latest discovery.

Even through the 1950's and 1960's any professionally published science fiction or fantasy writer who displayed ignorance of the then-current scientific facts (or in the case of Fantasy, the pantheons of dead civilizations, or the "rules" of magick) would get heaps of letters complaining about the mistakes (on a par with making Captain America a Hydra double agent his whole life - an error of fact in the audience's reality on a par with not knowing the difference between the Solar System and the Galaxy.)

If a science fiction story with an error of science was published in the magazines, the editors would get heaps of letters and publish some of them, sparking long, arcane and heated arguments about how to extrapolate current scientific fact to account for the story's premise.

Note that one of those 7 traits is the propensity to collect trivia -- the geek who is a nerd with an eidetic memory at least for certain stories.  As a writer in any sub-genre of science fiction, you must understand that the target readership will notice every single mistake you make.  They collect trivia. Collectively, they know everything.

Many professional writers talk to each other about their fans who know their universes better than they do.  I have quite a few of those!

The FANDOM IS BROKEN essay makes the point that the modern, online fan has a new attitude developing: because they buy the story, pay money for it, they are therefore "entitled" to satisfaction, as the consumer of any product would be.

Think, for example, of a car owner with Takata Airbags -- after all the recalls and so forth, news broke this past Spring that brand new cars are still being built with the defective design airbags. Having paid so very much for a car, wouldn't you feel entitled to an air bag replacement that is NOT defective enough to kill you?

So, after paying such an unconscionable amount for a theater ticket or to a cable TV/internet provider, don't you feel entitled to fiction that satisfies?

As a writer, you must keep putting yourself into that mindset every time you drift out of it. You are writing to satisfy the reader - not yourself.  "The Reader" includes people like you, with all 7 fan traits maxed out, but most of them only have a few of those traits, and they pay the bills, so satisfy them, too.

What satisfies those who have all 7 of those traits maxed out would bore or distress the more ordinary folks. So learn to keep scenes very short - 700 words maximum.

Another thesis in the FANDOM IS BROKEN (really, you must read this long essay, including the quoted death threat) is the following:

---------quote-------------
I don't want to pretend that this is some sort of generational shift; if that death threat above is to be believed the guy who made it is either in his 40s or fast approaching his 40s. This underbelly has always been there in fandom, going back to Doyle and beyond. There are new wrinkles for younger fans, a group that seems uninterested in conflict or personal difficulty in their narratives (look at the popularity of fan fics set in coffee shops or bakeries, which posit the characters of a comic or TV show or movie they love as co-workers having sub-sitcom level interactions. I had an argument with a younger fan on Twitter recently and she told me that what she wants out of a Captain America story is to see Steve Rogers be happy and get whatever he wants - i.e, the exact opposite of what you want from good drama), but while the details change the general attitude is the same: this is what I want out of these stories, and if you don't give it to me you're anti-Semitic/ripping off the consumer/a dead man.
---------end quote---------

Do you realize what the writer of this essay is saying?

Read that quote above again.

"what she wants out of a Captain America story is to see Steve Rogers be happy and get whatever he wants - i.e, the exact opposite of what you want from good drama) "

THINK ABOUT THAT!!!

What she wants is ROMANCE and an HEA for an Action Character.

For me (and likely you, too) real drama is in becoming and in being happy - especially ever after!

Isn't that what we write?  Isn't that what we seek out to read?  What do you mean, Romance is not dramatic????

Romance is what life is all about, bonding, children, family!  I can think of any number of great TV Series and films that embody the Action Hero happy amidst FAMILY LIFE (after a hot-steamy strife-ridden romance, of course).

Think of a few of your own.  Here's the beginning of a list:

1) Little House On The Prairie
2) The Waltons
3) Daniel Boon
4) Ponderosa
5) Babylon-5
6) Star Trek -- especially DS-9 - any of the ensemble shows where the ensemble becomes family
7) Murder She Wrote (Perry Mason, or almost any Police Drama with ensemble cast).
8) Lois And Clark
9) Beauty And The Beast (TV Series)

Science Fiction, Action, Mystery, and Romance genres mix and match very well.  That was proven beyond a doubt by the way science fiction fandom gobbled up Star Trek and produced endless millions of words of "Get Spock" stories and then generated "Slash" which has since proliferated to almost every other TV show.  Keep in mind that before Star Trek fanfic, all science fiction 'fanzines' contained nothing but non-fiction about the books people were reader, cons they went to, other fans they knew.

If you don't think Action Genre goes with Romance Genre perfectly, go watch the very old movie, African Queen.

https://www.amazon.com/African-Queen-Humphrey-Bogart/dp/B003F3KKCW/

Fans love adventure, love the lone-wolf, the unattached hero (Kirk, Spock, McCoy), but the reason they love them is that these action-hero types are in the process of pursuing the Happily Ever After ending - the goal of adventure is to get home, and live a quiet and secure life raising children!  To get home, one must leave home.  The stranger who comes home makes home strange.  Or better yet, pioneering to make a new home.  Right now, N.A.S.A. is rumbling on about a Mars or Moon colony.

The author of Fandom is Broken apparently does not see Romance as Drama.  But as I've noted many times in these blog entries, every story needs a Love Story.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/07/why-every-novel-needs-love-story-part-2.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/10/depiction-part-12-depicting-rational.html

Take the Fan Profile of 7 traits and manifest that identity as a Romance Reader, the very strong personality (male or female) who understands that Home is the destination of every Adventure, that peace is the destination of Action, and then you can see why this one woman on Twitter was in a passionate fury to see Captain America finally get what he deserves -- His H.E.A. ending.  And we want the whole story of what happens during that ending.  Remember BEWITCHED?  Peace and happiness are not the opposite of good drama.

Remember how Superman "grew up" when they finally let him get together with Lois?  Lois & Clark is THE TV Series Superman for me.

The growing fury of media fans, fueled by the fast-cheap communications on social media, is going to produce a radical change in the Fiction Delivery System, and perhaps in all reality.

After all, it was college Gamer folks who pushed the networking of computers between campuses, and someone from the other side of the Atlantic created HTTP ( the markup language concept that lets your browser translate computer code into stories you can read.)

The fury and rage pointed out by FANDOM IS BROKEN is not a sign that fandom is broken, but rather fandom shows a gathering determination to change the world (again).

This is the way fandom always functions.  The energy gathers, becomes defined, gets targeted, and manifests as a sudden shift in the reality the mundanes live in (Star Trek in animated for kids, in films, on the air again (and now yet again!).  The first orbital flight. The International Space Station. Orbital telescopes. Maybe "hyper-loop" travel NY to CA in a couple hours.

Robert Heinlein opened a kid's novel with a guy riding a horse, and his phone rang, so he opened the pommel of the saddle and answered a call from Mars.  That was decades before cell phones.  Now iPhones! It took 70 years, but look at the change!  Fans of Robert Heinlein prevailed in changing the reality mundanes live in.  That's what fan fury accomplishes.

If the quote -- "what she wants out of a Captain America story is to see Steve Rogers be happy and get whatever he wants - i.e, the exact opposite of what you want from good drama) " -- is a good definition of the target this time, then Science Fiction Romance is the genre that will prevail.

Love and Romance and the extreme-drama-HEA will become the warp-and-woof of the fabric of mundane reality.  We might even have Peace in the Middle East!

So if you disappoint your fans and they try a hostile takeover of your Work, that is as it should be (as long as you get paid if only in publicity and homage -- I'm a big fan of copyright, but as a fan I know that homage is coin-of-the-realm) Just consider whether you want to disappoint your fans on purpose or by accident.  Then think carefully about which segment of your audience you are willing to disappoint -- the ones with all 7 traits maxed out, or some of the others?

Fandom is not broken. Fandom is functioning perfectly. Fandom is revving up to change muggle-dom. Again. I want to see the change be toward increased respect for Romance Fandom.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Friday, January 22, 2016

A Quick Announcement

New Audiobook Release

On Amazon, you can find the audiobook on the main page for this novel, with Kindle, Trade Paperback, and links to an assortment of previous editions. Audible is offering this book free with a new subscription.

Here is the Audible page:
http://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/Mahogany-Trinrose-Audiobook/B01AC78R5K/

Mahogany Trinrose Audiobook

Mahogany Trinrose: Sime~Gen, Book 4

Written by: Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Narrated by: Christine Rogerson
Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins

Series: Sime-Gen, Book 4
Unabridged Audiobook

Mahogany Trinrose: Sime~Gen, Book 4

Written by: Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Narrated by: Christine Rogerson

Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins

Series: Sime-Gen, Book 4

Unabridged Audiobook

The ancient and dangerous secret of the Sime~Gen Mutation threatens to topple the ruling dynasty of the House of Zeor. How much torment can one teen girl take before the fate of the world doesn't matter to her anymore? How much psychic power can one young woman handle? What options can she create when she has no options left? And - can love truly conquer all? As the great SF writer Andre Norton said of this book: "Imaginative and outstanding. It captures the reader and won't let go."

Read more

Publisher's Summary

The ancient and dangerous secret of the Sime~Gen Mutation threatens to topple the ruling dynasty of the House of Zeor. How much torment can one teen girl take before the fate of the world doesn't matter to her anymore? How much psychic power can one young woman handle? What options can she create when she has no options left? And - can love truly conquer all? As the great SF writer Andre Norton said of this book: "Imaginative and outstanding. It captures the reader and won't let go."


©1981, 2011 Sime~Gen, Inc. (P)2016 Wildside Press, LLC

Sunday, June 28, 2015

5 Pentacles - Bad Reviews


As noted previously, this is a chapter in a book about the Tarot aimed at
Intermediate students of Tarot, not beginners or advanced students. It is
particularly aimed at writers looking to learn World Building and Alien
Character building.


Updated and expanded compilation of all these Tarot Just For Writers entries is now available on Kindle:

The Wands and Cups Volumes and  the Swords and Pentacles Volumes, are now all available separately on Kindle.  The 5 Volumes combined are also available on Kindle as one book, cheaper than buying them individually.

The Not So Minor Arcana: Never Cross A Palm With Silver Aug 30, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0108MC26O

The Not So Minor Arcana: Wands Sept. 1, 2015  99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106RVPKU

The Not So Minor Arcana: Cups Sept. 11, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106SATX8

The Not So Minor Arcana: Swords  Sept. 17, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0100RSPM2

The Not So Minor Arcana: Pentacles  Sept. 21, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106RVKF0

The Not So Minor Arcana: Books 1-5 combined Sept. 24, 2015 $3.25
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010E4WAOU

This series is designed not for the beginner or the advanced student, but for the intermediate student and specifically for writers doing worldbuilding..


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


And Remember: The meaning of a Tarot Minor Arcana resides in the placement on the Tree of Life (i.e. the number on the card) integrated with the "World" or Suit of the card.


For the Tree of Life and the Jacob's Ladder diagrams see:




I don't really go with the way this page explains the Tree, but it is worth
thinking about. There are many other ways. For now, ponder the diagrams on
this page or Google up some others.


I have been posting here since August 14th, every Tuesday, the 10 minor
Arcana of the suit of Swords. The Ace of Pentacles was posted Oct 23, 2007.
The 3 of Pentacles was accidentally posted dated Monday November 5th.


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


5 Pentacles


We are now discussing the 2nd circle up from the bottom of the left hand
column (your left, as you face the diagram) of Jacob's Ladder.


In 4 Pentacles we spent a long time building something.


The writer we've been following is building her career in 4 Pentacles,
submitting outlines, getting contracts, delivering novels, doing galleys,
juggling all this against family, health crises, and obligations. She is
trying to resist all distractions. It rarely works.


In the 4 Pentacles processes, she's writing characters layer by layer,
building one layer on top of another to create deep characters she can write
long series of books about. She's creating intricate worlds, one layer at a
time, one revelation at a time. All that is 4 Pentacles, the long
apparently non-productive pause in the materialization of a project.


Now, in 5 Pentacles we come to a situation similar to what we found in 5 Swords.


Check Jacob's ladder again and note how both 4 and 5 Pentacles dangle out in space, without another layer of circles behind them. This section of the Ladder is fundamentally different from the top section of Wands, which also dangles out in space, and at the same time it is much more accessible to living people than the top. This is familiar territory.


So in 5 Swords, our writer presented her (overly long) novel to her critique
group and felt their criticism as an attack. She fought back, defending her
baby, and eventually felt their love and learned something (6 Swords). But
the 5 Swords process was brutal.


So what happens to our writer now she's got it made, has a career,
contracts, and can say proudly, "My editor told me . . .."


Her books start being published (Pentacles -- materialized) and her career
hits the 5 process in Pentacles. What could be worse than a hostile critique
group?


Now that she's self-confident and happy -- she gets a bad review, a
scathing, scornful review that reveals loudly that the reviewer didn't even
read the book!


Devastated, she can't write. She's lost self-confidence. She misses a
deadline. Her editor is on her tail. Her family erupts in rebellion (You
have to go to my recital! You can't miss my graduation! Some mother you
are, nose in the computer while your kid has a fever!) She emails pdf files
to reviewers herself, but nobody has time to read her book. She asks for
help on the book she can't finish, and nobody has time. Her editor won't
return her calls.


On a fan listserv she has always relied on for support, she gets blasted by
a newbie because, "That's easy for you to say. You're a professional
writer!" And for the first time, nobody defends her. Her friends are gone.

She's in the 5 of Pentacles process.


This is actually a process we write so many novels about. This is the
Initiation where you get sent into the desert alone, or dropped into a
forest, or marooned on a desert island, all alone with nobody to depend on
but yourself. It's a Teen Rite of Passage we repeat throughout life.


The lesson to be learned through this process is the one we harp on in so
many Romance novels -- no man is an island. (yep, another Cliche)
It's not about islands. Or men. It's about self-reliance. Not independence,
but real self-reliance. 5 Pentacles is where you learn not to need help but
to give help -- not to be dependent but to support others.


The 5's are associated with Mars, ruler of Aries, the natural first house.


It's all about ego, and ego strength. There's a difference between being
strong and being a bully. There's a difference between being self-reliant
or independent, and being isolated like a sociopath who can't make emotional
contact with others.


Aries is the loner, the first-in scout, the explorer -- Daniel Boon or
Captain Kirk. But a leader needs people to lead. And in 5 Pentacles,
there's nobody following -- except others who are (cliche warning) "on the
outside looking in."


Mars is the root of the meaning Martial Arts -- the arts of war. It is both
defense and offense. It is the way of using force, power, position, tactics
and strategy.


But Mars is also about sex. There is nothing more sexy to a woman than a
powerful man in full possession and control of his manhood.


But what good is all that without the recipient?


And so love comes into the picture, and we see the lesson of 5 Pentacles is
about the meeting and blending of two strong egos battered by isolation.


Think of all the fanfic about Star Trek's Spock! His time on the Enterprise
was a 5 Pentacles period of isolation from his peers and estrangement from
family. That loneliness made him seem intensely sexy to many women writers.


The first real "Alien Romance" novels may have been Star Trek fanfic about
Spock.


In 4 Pentacles, our writer wrote and wrote, creating substance from her
heart of hearts, sure her second novel would be accepted.


In 5 Pentacles she offers it to the world (Mars is the aggressive tendency
that gets you out of procrastination and on the move. Taking the initiative
and contacting an agent or editor is a Mars function). But her new novel
is ignored. Or maybe outright rejected. Or perhaps rewrite demands would
distort it all out of shape. Or the ARC may get bad reviews. All of these
events would be 5 Pentacles experiences.


She doesn't get the feedback she expected that indicates her heart is
beating in tune with that of others.


So the loneliness of 5 of Pentacles is a lesson in Love -- the importance of
it in our lives, the function of it even in the business world, the place of
physical possessions or other material resources (such as time and heart) in
Love. It is also about what lengths we would go to for social sanction.


Often we learn such lessons only by contrast, and 5 Pentacles is where the
contrast is most stark.


As we learned in 9 of Swords, the whole physical world is a projection of
our Ideas (9 Wands), Emotions (9 Cups) and Actions (9 Swords). All our
material possessions, including our very life, are shaped on the Astral
plane (the 9's) and are still rooted in that level of reality.


In a mystical sense, we are our possessions and our possessions are us. This
is true not just of physical things (your grandmother's antique vanity
mirror; your mother's sterling; your grandfather's Tefillin) but of all the
things you've created. Your marriage, your children; your characters; your
novels; your house decor; the critique group you founded.


Yes, there are things that pass through our hands without touching our
hearts. But there are things we cherish in a very special way. Those
things are imbued with our essence.


You know that romance has ripened to love when the things your lover
cherishes become things you cherish -- even if you don't particularly like
them. Because they have meaning for your relative, your S.O., your role
model, your friend, they have a new, unique meaning for you.


Love cherishes the significant and defining creations and possessions of the
Other, not for their intrinsic value, but because they are loved by the
beloved.


Thus, when you offer something of yourself that is so significant to you,
and it is spurned by those you expect it will delight, you experience a
crushing blow akin to ramming into a brick wall (Pentacles; physical
reality).


The spiritual lesson of 5 Pentacles comes after that crushing blow, when you
are all alone, wounded and unable to get anyone to listen.


You throw a party and nobody comes.


You distribute a hundred review copies and get no reviews.


You win a contest and call everyone you know to tell them -- but nobody's home.


Here, in the total void, with all relationships absent, in the wake of your
friends betraying you, your spouse leaving you, your children screaming out
their hatred of you, you learn what a relationship really is.


What you have created with all your heart collides full force with what
others have created with their heart. And there's no room in their hearts
for yours.


Relationships belong to Pentacles. They are investments of a non-renewable
resource. (Applicable cliche: "You only live once.")


In the 5 of Pentacles process you have to sort out what's important to you
from what you can throw away (the baby from the bathwater) in order to make
room inside you for what is important to others.


If you don't clear resources for what's important to others, nobody will
have patience with what's important to you. But even if you do clear
resources here, there is no guarantee others will treasure what is important
to you.


Having space inside yourself for what others cherish is a necessary
condition for building a Relationship, but it's not a sufficient condition.
Life is complicated in its sheer simplicity.


Martian energies often come on way too strong, so oddly enough the 5 of
Pentacles Reversed (where there is less energy pouring into the 5 process)
actually tends to work better.


In the 5 Pentacles Reversed, you get a few new chances or second chances to
jump-start a new relationship. Maybe your editor didn't read and accept
your manuscript because she was leaving the company rather than ignoring
you. Now a new editor writes how she loved your book, but wants changes.
She says they're minor, but to you they're major.


Maybe instead of a new editor you only find a new hairdresser -- but that
leads to meeting someone who knows someone, and you start to be included in
a new network of relationships. Somebody will have time to read your newest
book.


These little 5 Pentacles Reversed openings are caused by your discarding
some irrelevant bits accumulated in 4 Pentacles to make room for something
created by another person.


Once the vacant spot inside you is open and clear, very likely something
will be attracted and fall into that hole. (not always a positive
something, though, so be wary)


If you like being included, you may clear away more space inside yourself,
and find you are able to attract more attention by paying attention to
others. And this is a process that may take years -- 7 years or so is normal, as that is the interval Saturn spends in the "obscure" part of your chart where nobody notices you.


Again, as with the 9's, this is NOT a conscious process. Most of the work
is done while you are asleep, out of body, visiting the astral plane,
reshaping your life by re-imagining it.


Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

A Very Cool Development: Kraith in New York Magazine

A Very Cool Development:
Kraith in New York Magazine
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

 Kraith Collected was mentioned in New York Magazine in March 2015.

This below is from:
http://abrahamriesman.com/post/113178799303/i-have-a-two-page-spread-in-this-weeks-nymag/embed

http://abrahamriesman.com/post/113178799303/i-have-a-two-page-spread-in-this-weeks-nymag


Kraith is the alternate universe I created for my Star Trek fan fiction.  Each of the main Kraith stories that I wrote illustrates one or another writing lesson -- many of which I try to pass on in this blog series.

Kraith is about Spock -- and it has been said that Vulcan itself is the hero of the story. 

A while back, Professor Anne Jamison asked me for an essay for her compendium, FIC: WHY FAN FICTION IS TAKING OVER THE WORLD, and I sent her a long essay which she had to condense (did a great job of that).  Now she's teaching a course on Fan Fiction using that book and New York Magazine did an article about FIC. 


Kraith, which I mentioned and explained in my article in FIC, is used in Prof. Jamison's syllabus for the Princeton University course Prof. Jamison is teaching.  I explained some of the connection between Sime~Gen and Kraith, the sources of inspiration and what was added to create something new.


You can find the syllabus here.
www.fanfiction.princeton.edu People can also log on as guests at www.blackboard.princeton.edu and search for "fanfiction" to access the complete syllabus and follow along with the course

Or you can read Kraith for free here:
http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/kraith/

Like Star Trek, the Sime~Gen universe has spawned more words of fan fiction than ever were professionally published.

The Sime~Gen publisher is releasing a compendium of Sime~Gen fiction soon, but you can read other stories for free online:
http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/

Keep in mind that, although you will find it said all over the internet, I did not 'come out of' Star Trek fan fiction -- I was selling professionally way before I placed my first non-fiction article with a Star Trek fanzine which was before I started writing Kraith stories as homework for a writing course.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Videogame As Fan Fiction by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Videogame As Fan Fiction
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg


As most of you know by now, there is a KICKSTARTER running to fund a videogame RPG which takes my Sime~Gen Universe novels into the Sime~Gen Space Age.

The AMBROV X Kickstarter added a reward level called an ALL DIGITAL TIER - and everyone who donates at or above that level gets a BUNDLE of all the Sime~Gen Novels extant in e-book (lots of formats). 
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aharon/ambrov-x-a-sime-gen-roleplaying-game

We haven't talked in depth yet about videogames, or gaming in general, as a fiction form.

But when the Videogame gets into the RPG (Role Playing Game) space, where the consumer gets to BECOME one of the characters in the fictional construct (e.g. Dungeons and Dragons ) you are getting into the world that I envisioned living in when I could barely read the three words under the picture.

As I've said many times on this blog, fiction is a necessity of human life.  We need our dreams and our daydreams to function rationally in our world.  But more than that, dreaming and daydreaming are magical acts, acts which form our world, that really change things (for better or worse). 

That's why Science Fiction (what science could do for us "if only...") and Romance (what life could be with the right person) are so vitally important to World Peace and other worthy causes.

I've been working on bringing together the various streams of fiction distribution for a long time.  I've talked often and at excruciating length on this blog about what I call The Fiction Distribution System, what it lacked (feedback from readers/viewers), and how the internet is curing that lack.

Here are some of my blog entries from 2006 and 2007:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2006/07/whats-missing-on-television.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2006/07/intimate-adventure-with-dragons.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2006/12/dungeons-dragons-wrath-of-dragon.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2006/12/world-is-changing-again.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/01/how-to-play-fiction-delivery-system.html

And here is a book on Fan Fiction that I did not contribute to, but which mentions me a number of times.  Use the LOOK INSIDE feature and search for Lichtenberg to see those quotes.  (the list of quotes comes up on the left). 



They even mention my coinage of the term Intimate Adventure. 

If you haven't seen me talk about that on this blog, here is the original source on it:

http://www.simegen.com/jl/intimateadventure.html

As you can see, I've been entering this general topic of FICTION as a necessity in life, from every angle I can think of.

From the mentions in that book on Fan Fiction, I'm beginning to think I've actually made the point to some people.

Note the books that Amazon brings up in other suggestions when you go to the Fan Fiction book's page. 

I'm not saying I invented fanfic!!  It was old when I got into Science Fiction fandom when I was in 7th grade!  That's why it was already my native language when I first encountered STAR TREK (before any fanzine published fanfic in the Star Trek unvierse). 

I wrote Kraith as Star Trek fanfic, but I wrote Sime~Gen to allow others to write fanfic in it (and they have!  see
http://simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/

In 7th grade, it began to dawn on me what PUBLISHING lacked, and when I was in High School, I made a firm commitment to becoming a fiction writer because I knew I could make the field of fiction better if I could convince the right people that direct interaction between writers and readers, and between "readers/audience" and the direction and substance of the story was the missing ingredient in the industry.

That was long before computers brought GAMING to hand!

It was also long before Gene Roddenberry brought the Holodeck into existence.  That's where this is all headed, you know! 

Videogamers pioneered (with the shoot-em-all-dead approach to fun) the technology to make images REAL to you, and some were inspired by the Holodeck. 

Now they are pioneering the convergence of the characters who live inside your mind, your imaginary self that you strive to become, with the external conflicts of life, the problems set before you, using that interactive visual medium.

Here's another thing that's emerged to convince me that the world is accepting my point:

http://www.fullsail.edu/

That's a for-profit university that trains people to create videogames.

Most of the people on the Loreful team creating the Sime~Gen Videogame (now in Kickstarter - go donate a few bucks and they'll send you more information) have come out of that university. 

The Sime~Gen game, though, isn't of the "win by killing everything that moves" variety, except insofar as BANG-BANG is necessary to sell into the marketplace. 

These folks have the ambition to create an RPG where you win more points (and perqs) by establishing a non-lethal relationship with the other characters, and making friends not foes even of those trying to destroy you and yours.  This game is envisioned with roles and options that allow Intimate Adventure!  (yes, the creators read that material I pointed you to). 

So far, the Sime~Gen Game is not ROMANCE per se, but if it's successful, that is a definite possibility for some of the future plot-threads or episodes.  You want to see a Romance based videogame?  Support this kickstarter, if not with money then by distributing the information on it.  It runs only to the beginning of October, 2013.

Remember Sime~Gen is the universe I created specifically to have a novel from every genre written in it -- (and it has TO KISS OR TO KILL by Jean Lorrah as a Romance) -- to prove that Science Fiction is not a genre at all, but Literature.

So, while I was digging into Amazon looking for the book on FAN FICTION that I do have a contribution in (due out Dec. 2013), I ran across the very academic one linked above, Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet, which only mentions me and Intimate Adventure (and Star Trek Lives! but they could only find the Corgi edition; the original edition is Bantam, 1975. 

Here's the book I wrote for (now available for pre-order, paper or ebook):



I didn't say this in my article in FIC -- it would have taken the whole book, and I'm certain I'll be returning to this topic on this blog when I find a better way to convey this notion:

Videogaming is in its infancy (still!).  It is the precursor of the HOLODECK, the fully interactive novel you walk into and become a character, and can do things that the author of the novel never thought of, never included -- you can live in a novel or a fictional universe and create your reality, just as you create your own real-life reality.

Somewhere along that line of development, you will begin to see exploration of seriously deep Relationship Driven Games.

And that has to include Romance (as the paramount relationship among all human relationships).

Since we are now working at the very beginning of that line of development, our smallest action will have huge effects decades from now.

We might discover that this videogame company that has contracted Sime~Gen is run by the "Steve Jobs" of the videogame industry.

And he took onboard a writer who remembered (with favor) reading Sime~Gen as she was growing up, then reread it all with the new books, too, and took notes.  She's a Star Trek/ Star Wars fan, too. 

If you're serious about solving the problem pointed up recently by Ann Aguirre's post on the blowback she's gotten for being a Science Fiction Romance writer:

http://www.annaguirre.com/archives/2013/06/02/this-week-in-sf/

You may find the best way to fix this problem that she and so many of those commenting on that blog post have encountered, using the least effort on your part, is to support Loreful's Kickstarter for Sime~Gen.  Just go post the URL around your contacts. 

Remember, the Sime~Gen novel Unto Zeor, Forever



has been called (in various blogs on the Internet) one of the first, if not the first, Science Fiction Romance novel (1978, my first Award Winner, before I won the Romantic Times Award for Dushau).  There were a lot of daring Science Fiction novels with this kind of sidewise edging into dangerous waters, and eventually it all gave rise to what we have today.

It takes a lot of people to move the world.  Give this Kickstarter a nudge or two. 

As Sime~Gen moves into the galaxy, humans encounter aliens, and you KNOW what happens when humans encounter aliens.  After all, you read this blog regularly, don't you? 

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Sunday, September 08, 2013

Jacqueline Lichtenberg will be Rowena's guest on Crazy Tuesday internet radio


     The Sime~Gen novels by Jacqueline Lichtenberg and Jean Lorrah are being turned into a video role-playing game, taking the series off Earth and into space. In this episode of EPIC award winner (Friend of E-Publishing) Rowena Cherry's radio show, Rowena  interviews Jacqueline about this fascinating process, as well as worldbuilding science fiction. Tune in for more about Sime~Gen and the new story-driven game, Ambrov X.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/pwrnetwork/2013/09/10/crazy-tuesday

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

How Do You Know If You've Written A Classic

Last November, while I was sending out the contracts for the stories in my upcoming Vampire anthology (Vampire's Dilemma edited by Jacqueline Lichtenberg and Jean Lorrah, but none of the 10 stories are by us), an email dropped into my box from a Sime~Gen fan and it blew my mind.  It's from a fellow who is a writer, as well as a reader.  That gives it much more significance in my mind. 

This Sime~Gen reader found the new 2011 Sime~Gen novels at the Darkover Grand Council meeting in Maryland where Karen MacLeod had brought a box of the books to sell. 

Karen posted the following in the SIMEGEN Group on Facebook:
---------------
Interesting comments about the new Sime~Gen books I was selling for Jacqueline and Jean at Darkover Grand Council.
(1) There ARE NO NEW Sime~Gen Books. The series stopped years ago.
(2) After showing people the books: "Those are NOT Sime~Gen books."
(3) I'm SO GLAD to see new Sime~Gen books at last. I hope there will be more of them.
ALL of the books Jean and Wildside provided me were SOLD very quickly. I should have had more of them.
-------------

The Darkover Grand Council meeting (a science fiction con) was started by Darkover fans to focus on the Darkover novels of Marion Zimmer Bradley who was Guest of Honor at the first one.  I was fan Guest of Honor and had won the contest to name the convention.  At that time I headed a Darkover fan group called Keeper's Tower.

That convention moved, changed dates, and has had various chairpersons, but mostly is run by the same people who started it and still has the name I gave it.  Even today, years after Marion's passing, the convention groups a bundle of related interests together and draws Darkover fans from around the country to Maryland on Thanksgiving weekend.  I was at most of them until I moved to Arizona.

So this fellow who bought new Sime~Gen paper editions at Darkover emailed Jean Lorrah and I to say how enjoyable they were and  give us a URL with further commentary.

http://www.dhr2believe.net/ive-waited-twenty-years-to-read-the-next-book-in-a-series-now-the-series-is-back


That link should lead you to the fiction written by this reader. 

Here's a quote from that entry:

-----Quote from Highmage -----------
What made the Sime-Gen Series brilliant was Jacqueline’s vision of the future and the life and death nature of that future…  Humanity mutates, dividing humanity into two species – one of which seems to be parasitic. Yet there are those who realize that the mutation is meant to be symbiotic and seek to end all the killing that threatens the extinction of both branches of humanity. With the mutation the world as we know if comes to an end and the two species establish territories – which don’t recognize the other as human beings. The Gens look just like us, but that’s not the truth – they produce a substance called selyn, which the Simes need to survive.

These stories span centuries of history taking readers into questions of what it means to be human and feel so poignant they are timeless.

There isn’t a Sime-Gen book that I haven’t read at least five times, so I’m thrilled to be reading the first new stories in years. There are two new volumes Personal Recognizance/The Story Untold (a double edition) and To Kiss of To Kill, and, a third, I understand, is coming out in 2012.

------End Quote-------------

The third he mentions is The Farris Channel, Sime~Gen #12, (Personal Recognizance is numbered separately from The Sory Untold ) and is now available in paper and ebook.


The comments on how "re-readable" the Sime~Gen novels are tell me that I did achieve my objective of writing novels that would be worth their cover price because they weren't (as publishers insisted anything labeled SF be) read-and-toss novels.

Romance novels likewise are considered read-and-toss, not worth keeping for your grandchildren, not worth re-reading 10 years later.

But I wrote for the future reader as well as about an imaginary future.  I set the stories in a time after the collapse of this civilization, so everything was "the same but different."  As a result, the novels don't suffer from out-dated technology in the stories.

The most "contemporary" settings in the series were in Unto Zeor, Forever and Mahogany Trinrose as well as RenSime.  They are now "historical" for us.

The new novel, Personal Recognizance, is set at a time when universities are just getting used to mainframe computers on campus.

One nice advantage of e-books is that they don't get dog-eared, dirty, coffee-stained and the binding doesn't fall apart when you re-read them 10 times or more.  Publishers doing science fiction or romance as original paperbacks package the books to be read once and discarded.  The paper yellows and crumbles, the binding fails, the beautiful art on the cover gets creased and ripped.  They don't expect the stories to be durable, so the package is not either.

The ebook and downloadable audio (i.e. with no physical disk to lose or wear out)  is really taking off now that there are good "readers" such as Kindle, Nook, and various handhelds, phones and tablets (most of which read your audiobooks as well as ebooks).  Here are current 2011 statistics from Publisher's Weekly:

 http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/financial-reporting/article/50805-aap-estimates-e-book-sales-rose-117-in-2011-as-print-fell.html

-----QUOTE-----

...while downloadable audio rose 25.5% for the year.
In December, e-book sales rose 72% and the AAP noted that based a seasonal buying patterns it expects e-book sales to show strong gains in January and possible February as well as new digital device owners buy more titles.  In the month, sales of children’s hardcover books rose, but sales fell in the other trade categories.
-----END QUOTE------

So these statistics make me joyful that the audiobook of Sime~Gen #1 House of Zeor will be out in a few weeks.

Over the last few years in this blog, we've been exploring why Romance and Science Fiction (worse yet, the combination) are regarded as read-and-toss -- as if something inherent in the genre itself prevented the existence of classics that would out-last the author, or of classics you would save to give to your children who would give them to your grandchildren. 

As you've seen with the passing of Anne McCaffrey last November, her novels are still enchanting new young readers -- and may well soon be a film or series of films, possibly going on to television.

This field, SF, Fantasy, Romance, and every criss-crossing combination, has already produced lasting classics recommended by older readers for younger ones.  When I began selling my fiction, that was a laughable idea.  Star Trek changed a lot, but not the attitude that nothing called "science fiction" could ever be a classic.

Today, Star Trek itself is such a classic, spanning generations and a new film-based universe is starting to appear.

I began selling my science fiction before I wrote the Bantam paperback Star Trek Lives! but I learned a lot about creating "classic" science fiction by studying Star Trek.  I used what I learned, and refined my technique, and believed Sime~Gen would last.  It's only now old enough that testimony of the kind produced by this reader counts (who is using the web to hone his writing craft -- see last week's post ...

 http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/02/amateur-goes-professional.html

...for more on how to use the web to hone writing craftsmanship.)

It's possible that I really have created a classic.  A few more decades and we may know. 

My Tuesday entries on this blog have been focused on leading you through what I learned from studying Star Trek, Darkover, and many classics (such as Thubway Tham that I talked about last week), so that you can write with confidence and look forward to getting reader responses like this.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Why Do "They" Despise Romance?

I've been blogging here about how we can change the public perception into a respect for Romance in general, and the cross-genre Romance forms in particular.

In exploring that issue, we've examined the whole publishing field and much of the screenwriting world, the writer's business model, and even the esoteric roots of human emotion.  But we still haven't solved the problem.

On a #scriptchat focused on the difference between plot and story and how you as a writer can use that difference in screenwriting, there was a quick side-exchange among writers regarding why they are not enchanted with the "romcom" or Romantic Comedy in film.

Today, you can get Romance onto the Big Screen, but usually only in comedy form.  Once upon a time, the Adventure-Romance was popular (AFRICAN QUEEN and various WWII flicks, even ROMANCING THE STONE).

Once upon a time, you could get SF onto TV only in comedy form (MY FAVORITE MARTIAN, LOST IN SPACE).  Then came STAR TREK and changed all that, and then changed what kind of SF you could get onto the Big Screen and even get Oscar attention.

We're looking for the key to how to achieve that kind of shift in audience size for a serious Romance, dramatic, and preferably mixed-genre Romance.

As I pointed out many times,TV and Big Screen are big budget and therefore involve the whole business model of the fiction delivery system -- how much it costs to make vs. how much you can reap from the audience which depends entirely on audience size.

Today Romance is stuck in a very thick-walled ghetto of small-audience-size.  It's a very big audience in the printed-book market, and huge in the e-book market, but those markets are tiny compared to TV or Film markets.

To grab those larger markets we have to look closely at what elements in Romance are turning off folks we know would love this stuff if only they didn't bounce out of it because of some surface detail that annoys or repels a wide variety of people.

Love is universal.  Romance is the state of mind in which love first becomes possible -- First Love is a kind of loss of virginity, a baptism of fire. Romance is fun - love is infinitely rewarding, the very purpose of life. How could any living being refuse exposure to that?

The truth is, I don't know.  I've been writing SF-Romance since the beginning.  Recently, a woman who had read my first award winner, UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER when it came out and just recently read it again discovered that it is (and always has been) Science Fiction Romance -- but at that time, there was no such genre. Now she's looking for more books like that. 

Here's her blog post about it.
http://lovecatsdownunder.blogspot.com/2010/05/rachel-needs-book-advice.html 

See what you can recommend to her.

So I've been thinking about this genre for a long time.  I discussed why we love romance here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/11/why-we-love-romance.html

That short post is about how the differences between mundane Romance genre and SFR or PNR mixed genre actually open the genre to vast possibilities and a truly vast audience. 

But the marketing hasn't developed the reach the material merits.

So I continue to puzzle over it.  That's why this side-exchange about romcom on #scriptchat on twitter caught my attention.

SO WHAT IS #SCRIPTCHAT?

Here in the words of one of those who devised this weekly meeting on twitter, is a description of it #scriptchat.

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Scriptchat was created for the purpose of bringing new and seasoned screenwriters together to learn and grow. We have two chats every Sunday. Mina Zaher (@DreamsGrafter) leads the European chat at 8pm GMT, and Jeanne Veillette Bowerman (@jeannevb) moderates the USA chat at 8pm EST. The same topic is discussed at each chat, which provides an invaluable global network of ideas and philosophies on writing. Just since last October, we have gathered close to 400 screenwriters in our little circle of world domination.

The scriptchat "treefort" consists of Jeanne, Mina, Zac Sanford (@zacsanford), Jamie Livingston (@yeah_write) and Kim Garland (@KageyNYC). The behind-the-scenes details are almost as fun as the chat itself. The team relies greatly on each other to keep topics fresh and the ideas flowing as fast as the tequila. Speaking of, there's only one scriptchat rule: Leave your ego behind and bring your tequila.

Our blog is full of incredible resources for all levels of screenwriters: www.scriptchat.com

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You can read this whole #scriptchat posted as a web page here (along with links to all kinds of writer's resources.)

http://scriptchat.blogspot.com/2010/05/story-vs-plot-may-23-2010.html

As you may remember, I have done a long post on "plot vs. story" on this blog.  You can find my take on the subject here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/plot-vs-story.html

That post is about what part of a composition is plot and what part is story -- and how theme interacts with those parts -- and how to tell the difference.  

So while I was watching these excellent writers (about I think 400 people follow #scriptchat ) explain plot and story in 140 characters or less, I saw the following exchange flow by me.

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Here's how to read this layout.

The top line is the twitter handle of the person posting, then it gives the time, date and the software used to post the comment.  The items with # in front are called hashtags - you use them in a search command to sort all the comments on the thread out of the general stream of tweets.  You can then see comments by people you do not follow, and they can see your comments in the hashtagged sort. Where @ precedes a word, that word is the twitter handle of someone who is being answered.  A comment without an @ in it is an original comment others may answer.  

jeannevb
12:55pm, May 23 from TweetChat the whole story vs plot concept I think is why I'm not a huge rom com fan. They're all so predictable #scriptchat

Bang2write
12:57pm, May 23 from web @jeannevb that's what I used to think... But the MANY variations of the same thing in the Rom Com - that's what's masterful. #scriptchat

DreamsGrafter
12:57pm, May 23 from web @jeannevb re rom com, that's a genre issue hon. Rom coms is one of the most prescriptive genres. #scriptchat

ambigfoot
12:59pm, May 23 from mobile web The whole mushy sentimentalized sick inducing slushiness is why I ain't a fan of the romcom @jeannevb oh and fucking hugh grant #scriptchat

jeannevb
1:01pm, May 23 from TweetDeck @ambigfoot mushy predictability makes me barf ;) #scriptchat

DREAMSGRAFTER clarified thusly in a series of tweets to me (@jlichtenberg) the following day:

@JLichtenberg my point was tht rom coms are most prescriptive of genres. room for variations in other genres but >>> (@jeannevb @ambigfoot)

@JLichtenberg w/ rom coms conventions r restricted boy meets girl etc. So it's difficult to find brand new storylines (@jeannevb @ambigfoot)

@JLichtenberg In a way the genre defines the storylines unlike horror/thriller for example. (@jeannevb @ambigfoot)

@JLichtenberg That's just my perception & looking @ history of rom com, there seems to be trends to reflect society (@jeannevb @ambigfoot).

@JLichtenberg There are exceptions such as Sleepless In Seattle and You've Got Mail but >>> (@jeannevb @ambigfoot)

@JLichtenberg How many other ways can you keep boy and girl apart? (@jeannevb @ambigfoot)

@JLichtenberg Whereas thriller/horror are about emotions: thrill/fear. More scope for storylines there. (@jeannevb @ambigfoot)

@JLichtenberg Hope that helps. We shld definitely discuss genres in #scriptchat. So important re selling script. (@jeannevb @ambigfoot)

DreamsGrafter
10:15am, May 24 from Web@Jonathan_Peace  @JLichtenberg Will work out w/ #scriptchat #treefort when we can do genre. (@jeannevb @zacsanford @KageyNYC @yeah_write)

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So eventually we'll probably have a #scriptchat where the subject is genres.  That should be interesting.

Go back to Bang2Write's comment above - and note that a mind was changed by studying the romcom genre.

Now remember my two posts on THE HURT LOCKER, about how the Indie Film industry unleashed by tech advances in recording devices and audience building services like YouTube is changing the face of film making.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/05/hurt-locker-indie-films-financing-tv.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/05/hurt-locker-indie-films-financing-tv_18.html

The Indies, with smaller audiences and lower budgets, are able to explore and invent genres, gather and build audiences - and today, even win major awards.  THE HURT LOCKER is very tightly focused war-drama, the story of the effect of war on one man's psyche.

Remember Blake Snyder's identification of classic film "genres" he defined in SAVE THE CAT GOES TO THE MOVIES - none of them identical to publishing genres.

http://www.blakesnyder.com/tools/ -- to find the list of genres and films that are examples of those genres get the pdf file at the top of the /tools/ page.  A glance through it will tell you all you need to know for the moment, but you really need Snyder's books if you want to learn to write blockbuster film scripts.

One thing you learn from scrutinizing that list of films divided into genres -- genre is not LIMITING, but LIBERATING

The beatsheet formula the genre formula does not limit a writer's ability to tell a story.

When you have a story in your mind that you want to tell, you want others to have as much fun with it as you are having.

Like a delicious buffet dazzles the eye with food-art and makes the mouth water, the genre formula art dazzles the emotions and raises the appetite for a repeat of a prior enjoyment, but all made new again.

Hollywood wants "the same but different" for that reason.

No two buffet displays with ice scuptures are alike, but if you've enjoyed previous buffets, the mere sight will set your stomach rumbling.

So the writer looks at the story inside the writer's mind and looks at the genres being enjoyed currently, and figures out which genre her story actually belongs to.

You don't change the story to fit the genre, you figure out what genre it is in.

They say, "write what you know" -- and this is how to apply that maxim.  Write the genre you read.

Of course, the problems then arise when the story in your head does not fit an extant genre - and you have to be one of the inventors or popularizers of that genre.

The Romance genre (along with many others) has reached a point in development where it is spinning off new sub-genres.

The cinematic RomCom, however, appears to the writers in #scriptchat to have stagnated.

The cinematic RomCom needs SFR and PNR to liberate the underlying message.

Now look at the tweet from @ambigfoot

ambigfoot
12:59pm, May 23 from mobile web The whole mushy sentimentalized sick inducing slushiness is why I ain't a fan of the romcom @jeannevb oh and fucking hugh grant #scriptchat

That reaction is very widespread.

So we have two objections to the cinematic romcom "formula"

1. "sick slushiness"
2. Limited # of ways to keep boy and girl apart

Both of those could apply equally well to most general Romance genre print fiction today.

Indie producers with budgets under one million dollars are still looking for RomCom scripts.  A HURT LOCKER success is possible with a Romance.

But to achieve that, the two major objections "slushiness" and "cliche plot" have to be solved in a very low budget way.

One innovative line of thinking may lead one of you to solve this problem and sell such a screenplay.

The basic theme of "Romance" produces both the slushiness and plot-cliche problem.

That theme is Love Conquers All

You can't change that theme and still have a Romance genre Work.

But the theme is the source of the problem.

"Slushiness" comes from Love not having a very hard time conquering All -- the two get together, and they just fall all over each other despite themselves, and then talk about their feelings as if nothing else in the world matters, their inattentiveness generating no consequences of note.

"Plot Cliche" comes from the genre requirement that the PLOT is the sequence of events leading Boy to Girl, and thus the only possible main conflict in a Romance is "Love vs. X" where X is whatever is keeping them apart.

So the THEME is what the major portion of the potential audience objects to, but you can't change it and still have a Romance.

So what do you do?  How can you possibly popularize Romance to Big Screen proportion audiences?

Marion Zimmer Bradley taught me the solution.

The solution is to challenge the theme, doubt the thematic statement.

Most themes that work for fiction are, for most reader/viewers, unconscious assumptions about life.  They are unexamined, taken for granted, "truths" about normal reality.

GREAT FICTION EXAMINES THE UNCONSCIOUS ASSUMPTIONS OF THE AUDIENCE

The Comedy forms have always been the thin edge of the wedge into commercialization of one of those challenges to the unconscious assumptions of a culture. The romcom, stradling the line between romance and comedy has powerful dramatic potential.

Marion Zimmer Bradley taught me (most especially while I was writing UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER) to use the plot, the characters, the story, and the worldbuilding (most especially the worldbuilding) to DISPROVE THE THEME and thus examine those unconscious assumptions of my readership -- the adolescent male SF reader the publishers market my adult-female fiction to.

Illustrate, she taught me - show don't tell - the opposite of what you are trying to say. 

In this case, "LOVE CONQUERS ALL" becomes "LOVE CAN NOT CONQUER ALL." That would knock it out of the genre, so keep working.

Gene Roddenberry taught me a technique that can work for TV and film too.

Most novels state the theme as a statement, as illustrated above. But stated themes lead to cliche plots and slushy characters, and they alienate the audience segment that holds the opposite unconscious assumption, as well as the segment that disagrees consciously.

So instead of merely stating the theme, Gene Roddenberry taught that you must formulate the theme as a QUESTION, and DO NOT ANSWER THAT QUESTION.  Force the viewer to wrestle with that question, but don't tell the answer. Show the question, don't tell the answer.

All audience segments - those that agree, those that disagree, those that hold unconscious assumptions, and the undecided, will feel that their viewpoint is represented fairly.

All segments will be engaged by the question.

And here we come to what @DreamsGrafter said:

@JLichtenberg Whereas thriller/horror are about emotions: thrill/fear. More scope for storylines there. (@jeannevb @ambigfoot)

Think about that.

The signature of the horror/thriller is the hairraising QUESTION raised and never totally answered about the nature of reality and the nature of Evil, all expressed in the worldbuilding.

@DreamsGrafter was simply saying that RomCom films DO NOT ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT THE THEME.

And that's true.  In Romance genre, the theme is sacrosanct.

And that's dramatically unsatisfying, and very limiting to the writer.

Interesting drama is generated by slaying the sacred cows.

Classic Literature always bears the hallmark of being "disturbing" on some level.  A good book, a memorable book, a quotable film, will always hang on or turn on a very disturbing image, motif, character, fate.

The antidote to "slushy" is poetic-justice, very disturbing poetic justice.

The antidote to "cliche plot" is the Thematic Question.

The key to all that is worldbuilding, which I've noted in many posts is the weakest skill in the Romance Writer's toolchest.

That weakness shows up in Romance writers only when they venture into SFR or PNR where they must build a world from scratch rather than research a historical period.

"Reality" comes pre-formulated with all the pieces already illustrating (fairly screaming) LOVE CONQUERS ALL -- because it does.  Gather enough historical datapoints and you can't help but see how Intimate Relationships (and hatreds) drive historical events.

Love causes the most collosal failures as well as the most spectacular successes.  That's reality.

But when you must build a world from scratch, it's much harder to get the bits and pieces you create in your imagination to fall together into a pattern that readers/viewers will recognize as "real" while it obviously isn't.

So the temptation is to borrow this bit from here and that bit from somewhere else, and the result is that the pattern does not come clear to the reader/viewer.

Interesting and dramatically useful background bits don't always go together to make a pattern, or an artistic whole, just because they're interesting.

We must find, or train, a Romance writing circle who can worldbuild with a proficiency that allows them to pose the LOVE CONQUERS ALL theme as the greatest challenging question, the most disturbing question, a question which is not articulated anywhere in the characters, story or plot but glares at the reader/viewer from the background.

That's essentially what I did in UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER - many conflicting loves, and a price to pay for the choice, but the question is entirely within the worldbuilding.  

"After you've lost so much, are you really so very sure that love has any value in life?"

Ask some of those questions yourself, the unthinkable questions, the insufferable questions, the not-quite-sane questions.

Find the right question to disturb the quiet certainty of that majority audience out there, and you may be on the way to formulating a High Concept film that is actually a Romance.

@DreamsGrafter read a draft of this post and elaborated on how the cinematic romcom has developed over decades in terms of asking those hard questions and provided this:

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- Re rom coms, this was a genre that pose thematic questions and also questioned the society around us. Looking back in history the rom coms of the 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's were defined by their decade and women's role in society. You just have to look at the difference between Katherine Hepburn and Doris Day ... very different on the surface but they both aggressively satisfied their sexual roles.

Actually, even in the 80's questions were being asked. But since the 90's and especially in this millenium, we don't have any questions. That might be more to do with women's role in society. On the surface, we don't have to fight as hard as women from previous decades. And that's why the slacker rom coms such as Knocked Up come in. Fact is we have stopped asking questions but so has music and art: apparently, the students coming out of art colleges don't aren't driven to ask questions such as Hirst or Emin.

- On a creative level, I've tried writing rom coms but they always turn out into horror. I think that's because I like to explore the darker side of human nature. But I think that's just a personal thing.

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THE HURT LOCKER move over, here comes something bigger and more powerful than war and bomb-squads. 

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Maybe you'll find your Thematic Question here.

Harlequinn has a new website devoted to Paranormal Romance - Once Bitten, Twice as Hungry

http://www.twiceashungry.com/paranormal/
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Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com -- current
http://www.simegen.com/jl/ full bio-biblio