Showing posts with label SFR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SFR. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 10, 2017

Recommended Reading for 14 Year Old Girl

Recommended Reading for 14 Year Old Girl
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

I was asked by an old friend to recommend science fiction books for a 14 year old girl -- the child of a friend of theirs I had never met.

I have no idea what her favorite reading, TV or movies are, just that she recently got into science fiction.  I've no clue what got her interested!

Talk about a scatter-shot list!  Whee, I don't know where to start!

One clue is that she was interested in borrowing from the library - but she lives nowhere near me, and I've no clue what sort of library she has access to.  Or even what her reading proficiency level might be.

I don't know what restrictions her parents would want, either!

I don't know if she has library access to ebooks -- here, my library lends ebooks.  Some libraries provide books via the app KOBO in all the app stores.

So I am basically stumped on this request -- and will just toss out some suggestions using Amazon.

Once you locate a book on Amazon, you can usually find it on iTunes or B&N, KOBO or wherever you prefer to do business.

So top of my list these days, for series currently being published and reprinted:

Gini Koch's ALIEN series.
https://www.amazon.com/Gini-Koch/e/B004HH6J6G/

C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner Series (all of C. J. Cherryh's books, actually).
https://www.amazon.com/Foreigner-Series-18-Book/dp/B01LYSTAUL/

For pure action, space adventure with emphasis on science and sociology (with and without Aliens, mostly no sex or romance):

All of Jack McDevitt's novels
https://www.amazon.com/Jack-McDevitt/e/B000APWBG6/

All of Taylor Anderson's DESTROYERMEN series.
https://www.amazon.com/Destroyermen-12-Book-Series/dp/B01N0OASDN/

All of Jack Campbell's LOST FLEET series, and the spinoff series.
 https://www.amazon.com/Jack-Campbell/e/B001H6W4PU/

All of Mike Shephard's Kris Longknife series (young woman changes the galaxy)
https://www.amazon.com/Kris-Longknife-Mutineer-Book-ebook/dp/B001JTPXW6/

To fill in Historical Understanding of the Science Fiction Field:

The best place to get these backlist gems of times gone by
http://wildsidepress.com/  where you can get any ebook format, but on Amazon you can handily get the Kindle editions and paper edition if you prefer.  This is my current publisher, now publishing my new titles.

But here are some Amazon page links -- buy anything on these pages and it is likely Amazon will lead you to the rest especially if you buy any of my novels because my fans read from this collection, so all the good books turn up in "Customers who bought this also bought .."

Wrinkle In Time
https://www.amazon.com/Wrinkle-Time-Quintet-Books-1-5-ebook/dp/B00E71907M/

All of Andre Norton's novels, but particularly Star Rangers
https://www.amazon.com/Andre-Norton-MEGAPACK-Classic-Stories-ebook/dp/B007NLCJBC/

All of E. E. Doc Smith's Lensman Series
https://www.amazon.com/E-Doc-Smith-MEGAPACK-Classic-ebook/dp/B014LH4ZR6/

You can download the MEGAPACK for various authors for about $0.99.

For more non-Romance, general science fiction, well thought out and presented, read David Brin's books, David Gerrold's books,  Alan Dean Foster's books, and all the Robert J. Sawyer books, especially WWW trilogy.

For women of galactic consequence, the Honor Harrington series (like the Kris Longknife series) has taken the science fiction world by storm.
https://www.amazon.com/Basilisk-Station-Honor-Harrington-Book-ebook/dp/B00ARPJBS0/

And of course, Robert A. Heinlein and Marion Zimmer Bradley, all titles.

That is a lifetime's worth of reading!

But wait!  There's more!

Here is my Amazon page with almost all my extant titled:

https://www.amazon.com/Jacqueline-Lichtenberg/e/B000APV900/

Scroll down to see various editions of all titles (several year's worth of reading).

For young women, I would recommend my first novel, House of Zeor.
https://www.amazon.com/House-Zeor-Sime-Gen-Book-Sime-Gen-ebook/dp/B004N3AZJG/

For a Doctor Novel approach to science fiction, my first Award Winner, Unto Zeor, Forever, praised by Robert A. Heinlein by asking if I were in fact a physician!  And this novel was credited with being the first Science Fiction Romance published in Hardcover by a mainstream publisher.
https://www.amazon.com/Unto-Zeor-Forever-Sime-Gen-Sime-Gen-ebook/dp/B004MPRYEY/

For young teenage protagonists on adventure that changes their world:
https://www.amazon.com/Mahogany-Trinrose-Sime-Gen-4-Sime-Gen-ebook/dp/B004PYDS9M/

But for Science Fiction Romance, my Romantic Times Award Winner, Dushau, would be the place to start. |But it is available (new) only in Kindle. The paperbacks have deteriorated, or are expensive collector's items.
https://www.amazon.com/Dushau-Trilogy-Book-1-ebook/dp/B002OSXNM8/

For Vampire-Science-Fiction Romance:
https://www.amazon.com/Those-My-Blood-Tales-Luren-ebook/dp/B00A7WQUIW/

For space-adventure-romance
https://www.amazon.com/Dreamspy-Tales-Luren-Book-Two-ebook/dp/B00BFGG1RO/

And this is hardly a complete list of top recommendations.

The field is broad, deep, and rich.  Unfortunately, most public libraries do not have these novels or provide access to them, though my books were notorious as the most stolen from libraries across the country.  I know this because my readers have said so, and because many of my fans are librarians who have noticed this phenomenon.

I know that, as soon as I post this, I will think of dozens more authors to recommend!

The nice thing about Amazon is that once you buy or download for free any of the books by any of these writers, you will be led to others of comparable content.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Reviews 20 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg -- Jean Johnson's The First Salik War Book 1 The Terrans

Reviews 20 
by
 Jacqueline Lichtenberg
The First Salik War
Book 1
 The Terrans 
by
Jean Johnson

Previously, I reviewed Jean Johnson's ...
http://www.jeanjohnson.net
...mostly Military Science Fiction series, 5 books collectively called Theirs Not To Reason Why about a precognitive, half-human time-traveling woman.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/09/reviews-18-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

I told you to read those books, even though they are not specifically or ostensibly "Romance Genre" -- there is a love story in there, and it does affect the story but not the plot.

Now I'm going to tell you to read her new, prequel-series, THE FIRST SALIK WAR, (1st book THE TERRANS), set centuries prior to the events of THEIRS NOT TO REASON WHY, and I'm going to tell you why you should read The First Salik War saga (which is hot-Trekfic-Style-Romance).  When you get done, you'll see the ROMANCE inherent in Theirs Not To Reason Why.

 
She is working on a huge, gigantic, multiplex canvas to display an artform to the mass market that hasn't actually been created yet.  She's at a forefront of things to come.  

Last week,...

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/11/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

...we discussed the impact of online fanzine distribution, particularly Star Trek, via a Guest Post by Kirok of L'Stok, and as an introduction to what he had to say, I pointed to The Terrans and how Jean Johnson had blended the writing craft styles of Romance into Science Fiction, bringing one to the fore and then the other.

To see where this is coming from and how it is not only changing the online fanfic market, but also the mass market paperback market, we have to look deeply at The Terrans.

Jean Johnson has made a good reputation as a Romance writer.  I met her on Facebook, and did a #scifichat with her on Twitter.  She's a good conversationalist, as well as a good writer.

She says she was writing Harry Potter fanfic and got a request from an editor at a mass market publisher for a Romance.  She had a book already written (see? that's the key -- write and keep writing, develop a file of stuff you have written), and "dusted it off" and sent it in.

That's another key.  You have to have a file full of material you've written a while ago, and when requested for something designed to mass market to a specific market, you have to be able to "dust it off" -- to update the writing techniques, rephrase things, scrub typos, and generally conform the raw artistic sketch to a specific market as requested.

And you have to be able to do that lickity-split -- it has to be just a few days between request and produced manuscript. Markets flow fast, reshape, open and close.

Publishers work a conveyor belt operation with specific dates set years in advance, a wide variety of different departments all producing pieces of the work (cover art, cover copy, copy-editing, publicity reserving ad space, all sorts of things you've never heard of if you don't work in publishing).

And budget - budget is the biggest item.  The longer a thing takes to do, the more it costs.  Readers will buy at a certain price, and balk at a price just 25 cents higher, and publishers know where the break-point is.  And they know their warehousing costs, trucking costs, etc.

As a writer, you have to produce an item that fits their conveyor belt within the time-slot of when their empty slot moves by the editor's desk.

Timing is everything.

In fact, that is exactly how we sold the non-fiction book STAR TREK LIVES! that blew the lid on Star Trek fanfic.

Prior to publication of the Bantam mass market paperback, STAR TREK LIVES!, reviewers for the large magazines and reporters for newspapers had never, ever, heard of fan fiction and had no idea what it was!  Now there are lots of books, academic and mass market about fanfic, and it is casually referred to in news stories and by Characters on TV Shows.

We are Marketing Fiction in a totally Changed World, that is still changing fast.

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

We sold STAR TREK LIVES! to Bantam (Fred Pohl being the editor at the time, and he knew me because he'd bought my first story, set in the Sime~Gen Universe but he didn't know the connection between Sime~Gen and Star Trek).  At Bantam, they had a conveyor belt filled with pre-contracted books, contracts with reliable professional writers with selling track records.

As happens, but rarely, one of the writers failed to deliver on time, but as with professional writers, enough warning was given so the panic in the offices was muted to, "We can handle this."

In midst of "handling this," Fred Pohl met one of my co-authors, Joan Winston, at a Meet The Authors event at a Star Trek Con in Canada, mentioned his problem with a vacant conveyor belt slot, and asked if the book he had turned down previously was still available.  It was, and had been rewritten a couple times since -- and it didn't have a title.  Fred chose the title STAR TREK LIVES!

And the reviews fastened on the FANFIC element we presented.

Sondra Marshak went on to compile the VOYAGES series of fanfic professionally published.  That went best-seller, and little by little, changed science fiction as a field and the thinking behind publishing.  Of course, all during that time, online publishing was rising, and computer-data-feedback from stories grew, and Amazon launched obliterating brick-and-mortar Indie Stories, and the world changed.

Into the aftermath of this melee in the business side of things, around 2007, Jean Johnson started publishing in the Romance arena, capitalizing on all the change rooted in Star Trek, carried forward by B-7 (which also had telepaths), and then transmitted to a whole new generation via Harry Potter.

And of course, the Fantasy arena likewise morphed, and some serious contributions have been made there.

The confluence of all these influences is launching us into a new epoch in publishing, in science fiction, in romance, and in science fiction romance.

Jean Johnson may be one of the leaders in this new Epoch.

It may not be on purpose, but I can easily see that she is writing to change the world.  Or at the very least, my world.

With Theirs Not To Reason Why, she presented a blend of the Fantasy ESP premise of the precognitive ability originating in an energy-based (shades of ST:ToS) beings mating with humans (shades of Greek Mythology), all seamlessly integrated into an interstellar war.

She billed that war as The Second Salik War, with only hints of what dire events had transpired in The First Salik War.

In 5 large volumes, she painted a mural of future-history.

Now in The First Salik War, she is taking us through the details of how Earth made First Contact with that galactic civilization filled with a panoply of species, fought in the war, and survived.

The writing style of The Terrans is mostly all tell, very little show.  It is, as I said last week, one huge expository lump after another, painting an enormous picture of Earth's history, and "current" mode of governing.

That violation of all science fiction structural "rules" has a certain validity, and it has a target audience.

The payload for wading through all that exposition is enormous.

Just barely arriving at the story/plot beginning at the 3/4 point of the novel, the book turns into the quintessential reason why Star Trek fanfic exploded out of an audience that would never touch a "science fiction novel."

It's the Romance.  That's it, pure and simple.  Adding Romance, in all its facets, to a life-or-death war situation complicated by clashing governmental forms, by laws, rules, unconscious assumptions, and RELIGION.

The Science Fiction Romace field has two requirements that few writers can meet at the same time in the same work:

1) the Aliens have to BE ALIEN
2) the Human/Alien Romance requires the ALIEN to be HUMAN (but still alien).

In both Theirs Not To Reason Why and The First Salik War, Jean Johnson has managed to fit both criteria without straining the underlying worldbuilding.

I've just barely met her, so I don't know how deeply and consciously she has thought through her worldbuilding.  She did tell me that she had been mulling and imagining this universe for many years, and that shows in the overwhelming plethora of detail she presents about it.

So I want to look more closely at the Content of The Terrans, as separate from the structure and writing craft choices, or even the artistic choices leading into using enormous expository lumps disguised as conversation, and telepathic conversation.

There are so many other ways to style the crafting of such a tapestry against which to fling an interstellar war Romance, a Helen of Troy With A Twist Romance, that you can read these novels, mull over what Jean Johnson has extracted from the Potterverse fanfic, combined with her audience's everyday experience of the world, and morphed into an interstellar war, and then use that same technique to create something vastly different.

If you can pick up what Jean Johnson has done, why she's chosen the tools she has chosen, what she injected into the blended field of science fiction romance with fantasy elements, and re-cast it into your very own, original concept, I think you can carry this New Epoch of the world of publishing forward yet another step.

So don't miss any of these books.

Meanwhile, think about this quote from STAR TREK:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084726/quotes
STAR TREK II THE WRATH OF KHAN (1982)
----------QUOTE-----------
McCoy: [Kirk runs in to the engine room and sees Spock inside the reactor compartment. He rushes over but McCoy and Scotty hold him back] No! You'll flood the whole compartment!
Kirk: He'll die!
Scotty: Sir! He's dead already.
McCoy: It's too late.
[They let go and Kirk walks to the glass and pushes the intercom button]
Kirk: Spock!
[Spock slowly walks over to the glass and pushes the intercom]
Spock: The ship... out of danger?
Kirk: Yes.
Spock: Do not grieve, Admiral. It is logical. The needs of the many, outweigh...
Kirk: The needs of the few.
Spock: Or the one. I never took the Kobayashi Maru test until now. What do you think of my solution?
Kirk: Spock.
[Spock sits down]
Spock: I have been, and always shall be, your friend.
[he places a Vulcan salute on the glass]
Spock: Live long and prosper.
[Spock dies]
Kirk: No.
-----------END QUOTE-------------

Science Fiction and Fantasy-Action Romance stories require Heroism in the main character.

Many novels today, especially Fantasy, portray the main Character as a victim, not a Hero.  That's fine if the writer does it on purpose, having chosen deliberately for artistic reasons and telegraphed the reason for that choice to the reader.  But that fine-point is often overlooked.  It is a sophisticated technique many new writers haven't mastered when they first break into print.

I discussed "The Hero" a little in
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/02/tv-shows-leverage-and-psych.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/08/reviews-9-sex-politics-and-heroism.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/10/strong-characters-defined-part-1.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/07/index-to-theme-character-integration.html

Creating a "strong" character and casting that character into a Situation that is "beyond him/her" -- so that the Character is tested to destruction and rebuilt anew by the end -- requires a great deal of study of Human Nature -- psychology and all of its manifestations.

Jean Johnson says, on her Facebook bio, that she studied Religion in college.

In Theirs Not To Reason Why and now The First Salik War, Jean Johnson portrays some characters with a sense of the spiritual, but who eschew Religion, and some who are deeply steeped in their own (non-Terran) religious texts.

She deals with Prophecy -- one of the elements that make the Bible such essential reading for writers looking for hot-plots.

I discussed Prophecy and its plot-potential in the context of reviewing Jennifer Roberson's novels -- which I recommend across the board. Read anything by Jennifer Roberson you can lay hands on.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/reviews-1-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/05/doranna-durgin-on-changes-in-publishing.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/original-thinking-in-romance-part-1.html

Strong Characters meeting Prophecy often brings some element of Self Sacrifice into the plot.

Heroism is often defined in the popular culture as self-sacrifice.

Some people regard self-sacrifice as noble.  Others think it's a stupid way to behave.

Both kinds of people, religious and anti-religious, shed a tear or two or three at Spock's (first) death scene.

We didn't know he'd be resurrected, and neither did those in charge of making contracts to get Leonard Nimoy to portray Spock again-still-once-more-forever.

In few other genres can writers resurrect characters and make such a wide audience believe and accept.  The Genesis Planet used science.  Alternate Universe travel, time travel, all sorts of nonsense Fantasy premises are turning into science now.

While the audience was held in the limbo of having lost Spock to a graphic death, we were all left to ponder this philosophy.

As usual Roddenberry put his finger on the central theme of the philosophy -- graphically depicted in prevailing religions -- of Self-Sacrifice.

More than 30 years ago, Roddenberry stated the conundrum of the confluence point of Government and Religion without apology.

Self-sacrifice is taken as a sign of heroism.

It is the eternal tension between the individual and the group, or in astrological terms, 1st House vs. 7th House which is discussed in these posts on Astrology Just For Writers where Character Development is also addressed.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

The struggle between the rights of the individual and the rights of the groups supporting that individual's right to individuality continues today.

It is being worked out on the world stage via ISIS or ISIL or whatever they're calling themselves these days, the attempt to reinstate the Caliphate -- a theocracy.

Their particular theocracy is based on the idea that the highest spiritual reward, the most exalted heroism, is achieved by dying to kill those who refuse to adopt their religion.  Dying while killing earns a higher reward than saving a life.

In that theocracy, the force of government is brought to bear on those who disagree with government, and the religion is the government you must agree with or die.

The U.S.A. was founded on the Legal Philosophy rooted in the idea that a Monarchy (England) could not use Government to enforce conforming to a Religion (the Church of England).

American Government is a limited government designed to protect the rights of the few or the one from the power of the many or the majority.  In this philosophy of law, government does not impose the will of the majority on the individual but protects the individual from being bullied by a majority.

In other words, Spock cited a principle in diametric opposition to everything America holds sacred.

The needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many.  That's the political philosophy behind the modern concept of Human Rights, and most of the Legal Philosophy behind our concept of Justice.

Spock's voluntary sacrifice re-defined and/or confirmed the Spock Character as a Strong Character, a Heroic Character.  His reason for it posed the kind of salient question Roddenberry was always famous for.

In America, the rights of the individual outweigh the rights of the many -- UNLESS that individual voluntarily and without coercion (sword at the neck, ISIL style), and with informed consent, offers to wave a right for a specified time (such as in joining the Armed Services or taking an Oath for an elected Office.)

Jean Johnson showed us an individual in Theirs Not To Reason Why who made the sort of voluntary contribution that Spock made by giving his life.  (really, I'm telling you, you must read those books even if they aren't Romance -- really!)

The Hero of those novels had to fight her government to achieve a position where she was able to make that self-sacrifice.

In The First Salik War, The Terrans, Jean Johnson shows us another kind of sacrifice - a circumstantial and inevitable one, very much like the dilemma that Spock faced in entering the radiation-hot chamber to twiggle a device to avoid the ship blowing up.

In The Terrans, we meet this Character who has been embedded in the Political scene, working as a representative in Earth's world government.

Go read that novel, and we'll discuss more about the content in another post on this blog.

It raises questions.  Gene Roddenberry taught that good fiction doesn't answer questions, but rather asks them.

Posing a question in a form that depicts a problem that can be worked is an artform.

The art of posing questions is not taught in the early schooling in America today.  Schooling has also become political, a matter for a central government not parents.

There are good arguments on both sides of that dilemma, rich fields for Romance novels to find conflict.  How easy is it for parents to agree about how their children should be educated?  How much discussion of the High School education of children goes on during a hot Romance?

Yet, how many good marriages founder on a point of this sort -- how to educate children, how to pay for it, how many children to have and whether to choose the number of children or let God decide?

Yes, Religion invades education as well as Romance.

Religion is a bedrock component of Romance.  As I've pointed out,  you aren't likely to bond with a Soul Mate if you don't have a Soul.

The are of question formulation leads one to the obvious problem: if you have a Soul, must you also adopt a Religion?

And what has having a Soul, and a Soul Mate, got to do with good governance?  With choosing a form of government that is "scalable" -- that is can be scaled up to govern a humanity flung to the stars and beyond?

How do you govern Earth in such a way that we can become part of an Interstellar ciivilization that's already "out there."  What if our political philosophy clashes with that which we find out there?

What if their idea of where religion and prophecy belongs in the scheme of the Philosophy of Law differs from ours?  What if the ideas are incompatible?

What if the two people who make First Contact will die (or worse) if they obey the law?

Is there any such thing as a sacrifice that is not a self-sacrifice?

What is a sacrifice?  What is it if I sacrifice your life to my benefit, turn around and walk away happy that I have gained so much for so little?  Is it possible to "sacrifice" someone else?  If it is, what is the person who sacrifices another for the greater good?  Is that a Hero?  Can a villain be a Strong Character?

Where do ethics and morals intersect the Philosophy of Law, and what has Law to do with good governance, with global governance, with interstellar government forms?

If you've read Jean Johnson's novels so far, you can ponder those questions and see why a degree in Religion equips you well for a career in fiction writing.

For contrast check out the book I reviewed here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/05/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/05/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding-part.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/05/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world_26.html

When I find one of these writers, I just go on and on about them!

This is important work.  This is writing to change the world.  This is the kind of writing that can change the world.

The Pen is Mightier than the Sword.

War is nothing in the face of fiction.  Fiction reveals the "truth" of politics, law, philosophy, religion and opinion by examining the various shadow governments we can imagine espousing various religions, with and without the bullying of the minority by the majority, with or without the informed consent of the bullied.

Study this image again.  Think hard about it.

 

How do you pose such ineffable questions to build a world around the story that you want to tell?

These are the sorts of questions Jean Johnson has chosen answers to in her First Salik War saga.

Read the books, consider other ways to answer those questions and write your own novels rooted in such profound questions which your Characters answer in their own Characteristic ways.

This is content, not structure. Structure aims a novel at a given audience.  Content can be carried to any audience if you choose the correct structure, the structure that audience prefers. The structure is your vehicle.  The content, or payload, you put into your vehicle is your theme, what you have to say.

First, question everything you think you know.  The more positive you are that what you think is true is actually The Truth, the more likely you are missing something important.

Aliens may have that something important, and be missing something we think is obvious.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Theme-Character Integration Part 2 - Fire Up That Love Life

Theme-Character Integration Part 2 - Fire Up That Love Life
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg


Part 1 of this skill integration sequence is here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/06/theme-character-integration-part-1-what.html

Previously we discussed What Does She See In Him (an essential ingredient in firing up a love life)

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-does-she-see-in-him.html

So today we'll discuss the TV Series VAMPIRE DIARIES and the Science Fiction/Fantasy pulp classic image of the Warrior Woman in a Brass Bras which stirred public controversy (again) in June 2013 when used as the cover of a SFWA Bulletin issue (#200).

And all of this relates to choosing and targeting an audience for your Science Fiction Romance, an essential part of raising the profile and respect granted to SFR by the general public (that probably doesn't read any SFR). 

Note the underlying assumption here that the general public is convinced that it is appropriate to hold fast to an opinion on a topic without researching the facts personally.

Note the title of this piece includes the word THEME -- and we've discussed theme individually and at length in combination with plotting.  Theme is the underlying, barely revealed, almost never stated in so many words, philosophical ARGUMENT which generates the plot, characters, story, conflict, and most importantly the resolution of that conflict.

Any number of "endings" are possible for most Romance stories, as long as it seems the new couple will live Happily Ever After -- HEA.

The choice of which ending your story will have is not arbitrary once the beginning, the opening scene, is crafted.  And new writers, beginning writers, often don't know where to start in telling the story that's popped into being with, "I've got an idea!"

As discussed at length in previous posts here on Plot, the Beginning, Middle, and End are a set, a collection, and they must match. 

One way new writers become aware of stories they want to tell is by having the ENDING pop into mind all rounded and fully colored in with emotions resolved.  And many failures to sell a novel happen because the writer opened the story at the ending.  (the opposite is often true, too, the story may be opened way before the beginning of the story).  And some failures to sell happen because the writer just kept on writing long, long after the story ends.

Choosing any one of these three points or what are termed,  in SAVE THE CAT! by Blake Snyder, "beats" of your story determines the content of the other two.

We've discussed crafting openings, and crafting middles that don't "sag" -- now let's look at starting a novel by choosing the ENDING. 

The resolution of the conflict may be the first thing about your characters that you become aware of.  Recognizing that it is an ENDING involves an entire orchestrated set of skills being brought to bear on your problem.

Here let's look very deeply (themes are deep, abstract philosophical ideas) at bringing together theme and character in an explosive love life (life is character).

What's in an ending? Define Ending.

Your choice of ending bespeaks the thematic statement of your novel.

In a Romance, that statement has to allow for or include -- or at least imply -- that Happily Ever After is possible in real life, even though it's rare and difficult, a heroic achievement.

We've noted previously that there is a huge audience for Romance that simply can not accept the HEA as part of their real, everyday reality.  Happily For Now is the very most they see as real, and even that is ephemeral.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/01/gene-doucette-discusses-his-novel.html

The very existence of the HEA is a philosophical statement of huge proportions, and it is a topic which is heated and controversial in the general readership of all novels -- especially self-published novels!

Definition of Ending

The ENDING situation of your characters is the point where the main Point of View Character, the Hero that the reader has been rooting for -- i.e. protagonist, -- understands the theme of his/her life.

This understanding can be:
a) Aha, I never knew that!
b) Aha, JUST AS I ALWAYS THOUGHT!
c) Aha, she was right all along and I was wrong.
d) Aha, I was right but it would be wrong to rub it in.

The key ingredient is the AHA part -- something has changed, and here at the ending it is perfectly clear to the protagonist what changed and what it means.  The change that constitutes an ending is the dispelling of confusion, the lifting of a fog, the purifying of a philosophy, the clarity of understanding in the light of experience. 

ENDING is defined as the point where the protagonist understands the theme, and so does the reader.

Targeting an audience.

The EMOTIONAL impact of that understanding of the theme that the reader gains by riding inside the protagonist's head defines the audience targeted.

For the HEA to work, the audience must experience the emotion of PLEASURE that the Starring Couple in the novel has achieved an HEA.

Readers who are living in a world they see as streaks of darkness marbling grayness have their "suspension of disbelief" broken at the HEA and they do not experience that as a pleasure.

Readers who have glimpsed flashes of light in their real life experience pleasure at the HEA.

Two different readerships, each to be targeted with different themes.

No matter how good your craft skills at characterization may be, no matter how well you lure your anti-HEA reader into living in your character's skin, if your THEME violates their beliefs, they will not experience pleasure at the character's AHA! 

New writers tend to focus on arcane writerly skills such as characterization.  New beta readers, and even professional editors, tend to give feedback in terms of "the character is not likeable" or not believable.  And that sends the new writer on a quest to master 'characterization' when in fact the failure was in THEME.

So what do you do?  Change your philosophy so you can sell novels?  No, I don't think so.

What you can do is tell exactly the same story that has occurred to you (in that flash vision of The End Scene), tell it with the same protagonist and same point of view character, but move the time-frame backward or forward in that character's life to a point where a THE END situation occurs that drives the lesson into the character in a way that the targeted readership would enjoy.

In other words, you can still write about that character, but at a different point in their life.

Or you can choose a different target audience.

This blog series focuses on the audience that can accept the HEA, however leery they might be of such a radical departure from reality.

This blog is about writing Alien Romance, exotic Romance, Paranormal Romance, Futuristic Romance -- writing about things that don't actually exist.

The writer's task is to convince the reader, if only for the few hours, that these things which don't exist, which can't exist, actually do exist for these characters.

That is, to suspend disbelief long enough to make a point -- a particular type of point native to the science fiction genre.

Science Fiction is defined by 3 story parameters:

a) "What if ....?"
b) "If only ...."
c) "If This Goes On ..."

Fill in the blanks, and for this Romance Genre dealing with the imaginary future, what you fill in those dots with is HEA. 

a) "What If I could live Happily Ever After?"
b) "If Only I COULD live Happily Ever After, I would ...?" (do what? believe what?)
c) "If This Goes On, we will create a world where everyone lives Happily Ever After."

Those story parameters filled in that way take ROMANCE GENRE and meld it seamlessly with SCIENCE FICTION GENRE.

The Best SFR is built out of all three statements, just as the best SF is built from all three simultaneously. 

SFR is built on the premise that our emotional lives can be studied scientifically, and what we discover from that study can be used to deal with Life just as we use science to deal with our environment.

The "science" in Romance becomes the science of EMOTION.  The study of emotion.

What?  That's idiotic, you say?

Well, yeah, but so was the vision of a galactic civilization back in the 1930's and 1940's.  Back then we had no idea if there were other planets around other stars.  Then a few decades passed when accepted science told us (with mathematical clarity) that it was idiotic to think there were earth-like planets around other stars.  This last few years, a single telescope has been studying a very tiny slice of ONE little galaxy, and found so many planets (large and small and earth-like too; now termed exoplanets) I can't keep track. 

Look at the second image in this article:
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2013/05/saving-kepler-the-mission-that-changed-our-view-of-the-probability-of-life-in-the-universe.html

That image shows how little we've explored and how much we've discovered. 

Neuroscience has likewise been studying brains of various animals, including human cognition.

During this time-span, mostly before your primary readership was born, two major philosophies (thematic source material for stories) have been waging Armageddon over the heads of your readers, and even inside their minds all the way down to the subconscious level.

There is an old saying, "There's No Accounting For Taste" -- but I maintain that there actually is a way to account for taste if you understand not only the science of what a human being is and what world a human inhabits, but also understand that humans consist of two major parts each living in a different environment, Soul and Body.

That's the theory behind the HEA -- which depends entirely on the assumption that humans have Souls. The HEA happens when Soul Mates meet and unite in this life. 

Here are index posts (updated) to my set of posts on Astrology and Tarot exploring methods of thinking about these abstractions in a way that can generate concrete story ideas.

Astrology Just For Writers:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

Tarot Just For Writers:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_23.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me.html

These are not topics to "believe in" -- but to study looking for philosophies that explain how and why people develop a "taste" for this or that in art or friends.

These are the topics that answer the questions "What Does She See In Him" and vice-versa.

You can read up on all this, and learn these topics, and come up with wholly different conclusions than anyone else who has ever studied them.

That is what science fiction authors do for a living: study up on a science and come to a different conclusion than the professional scientists working in that field.

Which brings us to the SFWA controversy of June 2013.

Science Fiction Writers of America, the organization of professional science fiction writers (fair disclosure, I'm a life member), publishes a magazine called The SFWA Bulletin.  Issue 200 ignited a controversy that exploded with issue 202 which was discussed in a blog post that posted several SFR novel covers and then talked disparagingly about SFR.

The cover image of the Bulletin was simply yet another Science Fiction/Fantasy cliche, the Warrior Woman complete with brass-bras style fighting gear. 

The thesis that triggered eruptions on many confused topics of tangled philosophies was that Science Fiction Romance is not legitimate Science Fiction because it violates the tropes and the writers seem to ignore (or be ignorant of) classic Science Fiction ideas.

Usually, SFR is excoriated for violating science as it is now known.  This time we got excoriated for not knowing imaginary science.  Isn't that delightful?  It must be progress. 

Read here for the blog post that re-ignited (according to the writer of this blog, Stuart Sharp by accident) this old argument:
http://www.thestoryhub.ca/talking-sci-fi-romance/

And here for opinions about that post:
http://evacaye.blogspot.com/2013/06/my-take-on-sfwa-controversy.html

And here for one of my favorite writers, Ann Aguirre, whom I've reviewed here whose book was included in that first post.
http://www.annaguirre.com/archives/2013/06/02/this-week-in-sf/

Do check out the lightening that struck Ann Aguirre -- she posted at the end of her original post, some email responses she got (hate mail) as an immediate response to her post. 

Squint your eyes almost closed before looking at that hate-mail section of that post, and STUDY IT.

Here is a discussion by another author, Gini Koch one of my favorites whose ALIEN series I keep talking about here -- and who had a book cover highlighted on talking-sci-fi-romance
http://www.sliceofscifi.com/2013/06/06/its-time/

And here is a later post (one of several) where the author of talking-sci-fi-romance answers
http://www.starlahuchton.com/this-is-not-the-post-you-were-looking-for/   --

Stuart Sharp comments there that at the time he posted his accidentally inflammatory post, he hadn't heard of the SFWA Bulletin cover controversy.

Here is a response from the President of SFWA (in 2013 that was still John Scalzi) (who almost gets it right, and that reveals something important you need to understand in order to craft your novel-endings where a character absorbs a theme with an AHA!)

http://www.sfwa.org/2013/06/presidential-statement-on-the-sfwa-bulletin/

-------quote -----------
We could spend a long time here discussing whether the offense was intentional or accidental, or whether it is due to a generational, ideological or perceptual schism. It doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, too many of our members have felt their contributions and their place in the industry and within the organization belittled; too many of our members see other members being treated so. If we believe that we represent and serve all our members and not just some of them, then we need to listen and address those member concerns.

That begins with recognizing the problem. And here is the problem: SFWA, through the last few issues of the Bulletin, has offended many of our own members.

As president of the organization, I apologize to those members.
---------end quote-------------

Note he didn't say "If we've offended you, we apologize." 

But the apology is FOR OFFENDING -- not for what was done wrong.  If he admitted what was done wrong (sexism advocated as a high standard of art and behavior, but advocated "off the nose" and by assumption, by force of cultural custom) - then he would offend the other half of the members!

He's a good president, and a good politician -- and generally, a good guy.  This world doesn't produce people who are very much better than this guy at being a good guy. 

So we need to look at the WORLD more than at these particular individuals, and analyze why these swirling currents of philosophical disagreement are forming into a tornado right here in the Science Fiction Community.

*my opinion* Resnick and Malzberg are also good guys, great writers, very representative of the SF world in general. 

So our problem solving attention has to be devoted to the context, not the individuals.  This process, raising your focus from the trees to observe the forest, is an essential exercise in training your inner eye to be the eye of an artist.  We need to observe the patterns, then reveal them to our readers.

That's hard, and takes a lot of exercise to make our inner-eye-muscles strong. 

So one more quote from out-going SFWA President Scalzi:

---------quote----------
5. I am aware that my apologies here will be taken any number of ways, depending on who is reading them and their opinion of events. That is the nature of an apology. Be that as it may, I believe that apologies matter, if they are sincere and they are followed up by right action. It’s what we are trying to do.
---------end quote--------

Let's focus on apology and the nature of apology just for a moment, where it comes from and why we do it, what it means, and how the definition has morphed in our culture over the last few decades. 

The modern apology has appeared out of thin air in just a few decades, and the change has never been remarked on that I know of.

Read some historical novels -- novels written say, in the 1930's or 1940's, and study apologies.

Today we apologize for hurting other people's feelings, for making them feel bad, for embarrassing them, or for OFFENDING.

We express SORROW (an emotion) for triggering someone else's emotion, and that ends the matter.

"If I offended you, I'm sorry."  That's not an apology.  Why? (thankfully the SFWA President didn't say that!)

It's not an apology because it does not in any way indicate that the apologist has any idea what they did wrong or why it is wrong to do that.  It's not a story-ending where the apologist has had an AHA moment where the theme has been driven all the way into the subconscious so the person would experience unbearable self-loathing if they should even consider doing that again.  It does not indicate that the person knows why the deed was wrong. 

The only thing that's wrong is the way someone else reacted, and that was an accident!

In other words, there is no reason for the apologist to change their behavior, except to avoid offending the other person again.  There's no internally driven reason to change. 

It's become "wrong" to offend others, but the offending behavior itself is not inherently wrong.  Therefore, if you do a right thing, and it offends someone, you have to apologize for doing right! 

This is a subtle point and difficult to follow but it is just one symptom of a major change in our culture (better or worse, you judge that!).

In apologizing, we are taking responsibility for the emotional reaction of others, but not for the error in our (subconsciously held) philosophy that generated the action.  There has been no AHA ending.

Actions no longer have inherent, absolute, objective and measurable "rightness" or "wrongness."  As a result, other people's emotional reactions to actions don't have to make sense, and do not indicate to us that we have an error in our own internal value system that must be corrected so it will not generate another action which is wrong.  As far as the apologist is concerned, there is no rhyme or reason to other people's emotional reaction -- it's random, and therefore irrelevant. 

Apology used to be an admission of an error in whatever it is inside us that generates our actions.  Apology indicates we have corrected our error in our Value. 

Without external, objective Values against which to measure ourselves, we can not possibly apologize, because you can't ever be in the wrong in your own eyes.

It's more important to avoid offending others than it is to do the right thing -- because there is no thing to do that is more "right" than any other thing to do -- because all Value Systems are equal.

But people still have emotions, and emotional lives inside themselves, as do story characters.

Think again about the SFWA Controversy.  What exactly is the problem people have with Science Fiction Romance?  What's "wrong" with Romance that it is so OFFENSIVE?

Perhaps it's a Story/Plot thing?

Science Fiction has been traditionally all plot, almost no story.  If characters learn anything in SF, it's a scientific principle, or that some trusted principle isn't true.

But Romance is all about Story, usually with very little plot (Gini Koch's ALIEN series is an exception which could be why it got nailed in that blog post
http://www.thestoryhub.ca/talking-sci-fi-romance/ 

Now we are into the THEME part of theme-character integration. 

So firmly fix this frame into your mind as you read on:

Novels have both PLOT and STORY.  As I've defined these terms in my previous posts on each of these skills independently, plot is the sequence of external events started at the beginning, generated by the conflict, and ending in a resolution. 

Plot = External Events on a BECAUSE LINE.

Story is the sequence of emotions, issues, concerns, thoughts, and INTERNAL EVENTS that define what the external events MEAN to the POV character.  (i.e. the plot events have to happen to someone for them to have meaning to the reader, so the story is what the plot is "about")

Story = Internal Events on a philosophical development line (or an emotional line).

Theme-Character Integration is about Story

That's right, we're talking story here, not plot or the usual structural elements we discuss here.  We discuss plot and its structure at such tedious length because plot is the most prominent feature of Science Fiction (though not of Romance). 

To drive a lesson, a moral of the story, an Ineffable Truth, into a Character's Soul at the climax of the Story, your story needs a structure as disciplined and precise as the plot's structure.  Astrology provides that structure with all the precision you could ever want.  (you just don't let the reader know you're using astrology). 

The thesis presented in the links to Astrology and Tarot I offered above boils down to the idea that Emotion is generated by Philosophy, and Philosophy resides in the subconscious.  You can't change your emotions or actions without changing your philosophy -- apology means you've changed your philosophy because you understood you were wrong. 

Religion and ideas about Souls and Life After Death (such as is dealt with in ghosts and Paranormal Romance) likewise is rooted in the subconscious, entwined with our Culture.  Culture resides in the subconscious -- that's why you don't know you have a culture until you run into someone from a different culture who discombobulates you.

Over the last several decades we've seen the fruits of the Women's Lib movement shifting our culture faster than a human being can adjust at that subconscious level.  At the same time, the internet has changed communications, and the family has disintegrated.  That shifted culture defines your potential readership, a culturally confused readership.

So we see older people who have not adjusted to these shifts, and we see older people who are actually ahead of that curve, still living in a future we haven't imagined yet.  Some older people offer wisdom, others offer complaints. 

Develop both types of older characters in your novel and bespeak both points of view eloquently - you'll have a best seller.

Now we reach back into pre-history to find the roots of this culture that has suddenly changed so that apology doesn't mean apology any more.

Egypt created a towering civilization, trading far and wide, dominating the Middle East and at least half of Africa, all the way to Morocco and almost to China.  The Jews weren't the only population they enslaved.  Conquering armies brought home slaves as booty, as wealth.  The Jews already lived in Egypt, so that was a no-brainer for Egypt's politicians. 

After the Jews left, Egyptian civilization fell, but passed the torch of light and learning to Persia (modern Iran mostly), thence to Babylon (Iraq, Syria parts of Turkey), whence that torch of light and learning passed to Ancient Greece (much of the geometry and math we attribute to Aristotle is actually rooted in the previous civilizations), and now we're approaching recorded history as the torch of light and learning passes to Rome.

The Rise And Fall of the Roman Empire is well documented, leaving Latin a language ingredient in every language-stew of Europe. 

Burning of the Library at Alexandria, Peloponnesian Wars etc. very significant events during Rome's reign.  If you haven't learned this history, go read up on it.  Lots of good ebooks real cheap!  Writers, especially of Romance, need to know more than is ever taught in school!  None of the really important stuff is taught in school now.  Most of what you learn in school isn't true anyway -- so go educate yourself. 

Of course, China likewise had rises and falls, and India, too, (Indus Valley or modern Pakistan is a big player in trade and learning), so don't forget them. 

But visualize for the moment, the way that science, learning, trade and innovation, pulsed over time, rising and falling alongside governments of slightly different, ever evolving governmental forms. 

The people who lived in those times were just like you, except for one significant point: Culture Shock.

Culture Shock is a documented form of mental derailment that occurs when someone is isolated in a culture that is foreign to them.  Read up on it if you don't know about it.  Classic example is the kid sent off to boarding school who cries all night every night for months but that is a phenomenon of the modern world.

Culture didn't CHANGE within the life-span of a person, and people passed on their craft and trade skills to their children unchanged from when they got them from their parents and grandparents.  Maybe they acquired one or two minor innovations, but the fundamentals of life and livelihood didn't change.

There was continuity.  A parent knew what a child had to master to be successful in life. 

That was true up until maybe 1920 or so. 

Cars, telegraph, radio -- the printing press took about 2-300 years to sink in and generate what we think of as industry and technology, the information explosion.

Now, assuming you know a couple thousand years of human history at least by trends and major turns, think about it as seen from high above, from an elevated perspective, as if you're looking down on Time the way we look at a map of the world.

Onto those swirling forces and tides of human events, we're going to project or superimpose another pattern.

Grasp this one point, and you will understand the SFWA controversy (and the concept of the Modern Apology) in a whole new light, and it won't disturb you.  It will excite you and trigger an explosion of creativity, and put real fire into your Love Story.  (Fire is Wands/ Love is Cups)

See the last 2,000 (or 5,000) years of human history as a War of Philosophies.

Let's call them Phil-1 and Phil-2. 

The Founding of the USA can be seen as a crescendo Battle of Philosophies to put the sinking of the Spanish Armada to shame -- eclipsing The Trojan War, making the two World Wars seem like peace. 

As I view the matter, I see the USA (and many other countries) as having two Natal Charts, one governing one population with one philosophy, and the other natal chart governing the other population with the other philosophy. 

Phil-2 won that epic Battle at the Founding of the USA over Phil-1.

Defeated, Phil-1 retreated, regrouped and infiltrated and undermined Phil-2's brave new world.  And now it's on top (again; has been on top a number of times). 

Phil-1 has been the world's dominant philosophy since the time of Noah.  Remember the story of Noah (and the Rainbow - don't forget Rainbow).  Noah was the most righteous man of his generation, but he wasn't much we'd admire.  He did have the guts to go against society (that mocked him) and build the Arc.  Vindicated, he landed the Arc, and planted a vineyard, made wine and got so blotto his sons had to walk backward to cover his nakedness. 

Noah's philosophy, expressed by that priority of getting drunk as soon as possible, might be stated as Phil-1, Emotion Rules Life. 

As we know now from modern science, most all emotion can be accounted for by neurons firing, by life's tendency to flee pain and seek pleasure.  Emotion is a thing of the physical body.  

Remember, STORY = EMOTION

Phil-2 comes into the picture of Western Civilization with Abraham being called by God to Walk In His Ways.  Abraham's priority (the story goes) was to Walk In His Ways.  The story that's been preserved about Abraham is that after offering the Covenant to all the other Nations of Earth, God came to Abraham and said "Come Walk In My Ways and .." and before God finished the sentence, Abraham was out the door WALKING, asking only which way?

All the other Nations, so the story goes, listened to the "...and I'll make of you a great nation." part and asked what they'd have to DO to get the REWARD -- they worked the risk/reward equation like shrewd businessmen, but God wouldn't bargain.  Abraham was not interested in any of that -- he just wanted to DO God's Will. (Plot = Do)

After some 80 years of life, having inherited his father's idol making shop in what passed for a city in those days, Abraham knew the little statues he sold were "empty" and curiosity gnawed at him about the REAL DEAL -- so when God came to him and offered Ways to Walk In, that was it for him.

Abraham is all about PLOT, all about DOING.  Remember, Abraham is the character who circumcised himself, a deed that elevates the Mind over Emotion.  The body seeks to avoid pain.  The mind has other ideas.  Abraham was of the mind. 

Remember, PLOT = ACTION

At Mount Sinai, after leaving Egypt, God gives the 10 Commandments and the Nation answers WE WILL DO and WE WILL LEARN -- DOING FIRST just like Abraham.

And then comes the whole Covenant, the Torah, the teaching.  The Torah is taught by Moses (a man about whom no story of drunkenness is recorded; a man very different from Noah).  And if you've read that teaching, you know it is ever so very intellectual.  There's lots of juicy scandal, misdeeds and sexuality, (lots of hot sex stuff in there, and it's very different from what the History Channel movie depicted).  But it's all about how to BEHAVE, what to DO and how to DO IT.

The prescriptions for misdeeds all involve doing something, but the misdeeds targeted by these remedies all involve doing something motivated solely by emotion, placing emotion above rational thought, the urges of the body above those of the mind. 

The emphasis is on keeping "apart" from the Nations.  What is being separated from what?

At danger of over-simplifying, let's call it Phil-2 is being separated out of and walled away from Phil-1, thus creating a counter-culture minority embedded in the whole of humanity.  Humanity is descended from Noah and operating on the supremacy of Emotion over Mind, just like Noah.  Abraham likewise is descended from Noah, but turns down a different path. 

It doesn't matter what religion you practice (or don't practice), and it doesn't matter whether you think the events depicted in the Bible ever happened or not. 

From our over-view of time, looking down on the history of the world, superimposing onto what we know of history this view of history as a War Of Two Philosophies, you can see where the first one is the majority, and always has been, and where in Time a counter-current was injected.

How that injection happened, and who did it, you can decide for yourself.  To understand the SFWA Controversy, you need only be able to See this Battle of Two Philosophies as very ancient, and very much the issue of our day mostly because it's ancient. 

Today, the two philosophies have inter-mingled and gotten mixed into one another, as the the Bible says must not happen.  

Like two galaxies colliding and inter-mingling their stars, then pulling apart again, leaving new stars, composite stars, and hungry black holes behind, the two philosophies are pulling apart again, each taking with it parts of the other.  What a mess.  What an opportunity for stories! Talk about the War of the Worlds!

You might be thinking that there aren't enough Jews in the world to matter, so who cares?  And that's true, except for one little problem.

Christianity and Islam are daughter philosophies of Judaism, thus composed mostly of Phil-2. 

I'm not sure if all together the adherents of Christianity and Islam constitute a numerical majority over Hinduism et. al., but after all these centuries of missionary zeal, all the rest of the world has been infused with some of the "stars" from the Phil-2 galaxy. 

Which brings us to Vampire Diaries (the TV show).



The object of these writing lessons is to show you what the world looks like from the eyes of a writer.

Writers don't watch TV the same way that viewers do. 

So in June, as I watched the season finale of VAMPIRE DIARIES, I saw within it this Phil-1 vs Phil-2 vision of the target audience (basically I'd say 14-30 yr olds for this show, but I love it!) exemplified loud and clear.

I'd also been watching Season 5 of Gray's Anatomy on Amazon Streaming video.  Really great without commercials.

Both these shows have a lot of plot, both are very well written (i.e. the plot and the story are integrated by solid and clear thematic statements). 

Vampire Diaries uses some wild variants on the Vampire mythos, but here's one element that is a great example of Worldbuilding, using show-don't-tell to make an abstract point.

Vampires can turn their emotions off.  And on again. 

When they turn their emotions OFF, Vampires become the Evil Scourge of traditional vampire myth, and have no compunctions about murdering humans, care only about self-gratification, and have little or no regard for other Vampires (thus very little Romance potential). 

When they turn their emotions ON, Vampires become just ordinary people, with their old human personality showing through, with whatever sense of respect for human life that they had during their own lives.  They're just very long lived, very durable, human beings, as bad or as good as humans usually are.

THEME: Absence of Emotion Is Definition of Evil.

Or put another way, the theme of THE VAMPIRE DIARIES is that the only thing that makes humans Good (however good any given human can be) is EMOTION.  All goodness is emotion.

That is a clean, bright, definitive show-don't-tell of Phil-1, the oldest philosophy, Noah.

Here's another example.  On Gray's Anatomy and on Vampire Diaries, couples are changing partners all over the place, trying out sex with this and that one, getting all deep and introspective over the question of whether they love this one or that one more (which you can determine only by whether the sex is better).  It's so important to find out who you love because you absolutely must do what your emotions lead you to want to do.

I Love You is a statement regarded as a surrender to an inevitability.  I can't help who I love.  It's just a mystery.  And if I love someone, I must be with him -- regardless of all other considerations.  And I can't help it.  Good common sense and solid reasoning have nothing to do with it.  "Forbidden" has nothing to do with it (such as if you fall in love with a cousin, or an under-age kid, you must have sex with them regardless). 

The Theme says, "We are victims of emotion."  Both those TV Series (ultra-popular TV Series) depict that philosophy -- how you feel determines what you must do, and doing anything else is unhealthy. 

Emotion dominates, emotion leads, action must follow emotion.  Thought is not allowed to enter into it, at all.  That is a clear statement of the core of Phil-1, Noah. 

Now, go back over the Tarot posts, where I lay out the "Worlds" of Kaballah according to one (of several) schools of thought.  Wands, Cups, Swords, Pentacles.  Idea, Emotion, Deeds, Results.  (Fire is Tarot Suit of Wands/ Love is Tarot Suit of Cups)

That is the sequence I explained in those Tarot posts, but there is another sequence taught by a different school of Kaballah. Idea, Deeds, Emotion, Results.  And I think that's a closer depiction of the Phil-2 explained in the Torah.  There are good arguments on each side, and that's what makes for a great novel! 

In either case, Idea (thought, intellect, mind) leads, emotion comes in between, results come last.

Phil-2 from the Torah commands that men put a blue thread in the fringe of their garment to see it and REMEMBER (mind) the Commandments and NOT FOLLOW YOUR HEART that you yearn to follow, not follow emotion, but REMEMBER what you've promised to do and do it. 

Judaism also encompasses the concept of the Tzadik, the truly righteous man, who has completely harmonized Mind and Heart, thought and emotion flowing smoothly into deed and result -- so smoothly it seems like Magic.  Remember any technology that's advanced enough will seem like magic.  With Astrology and Tarot you are looking at a technology just that advanced. 

Which brings us back to the SFWA Controversy and whether it is actually about sexism, or not.

Phil-1 says if you feel something, if you want to do something, you must do it.

Phil-1 says people are best off, healthiest, when they understand that they are just smart animals with an animal body.  Male animals are attracted by female beauty, and when that happens it is the male's duty to the species to attack the female. (in many species, females don't put up with that)

Phil-1 says males can't help (you are helpless before your emotions and the body rules) being aroused by feminine beauty, and when that happens, it's unhealthy and morally wrong to resist your emotions. 

Phil-2 says put a blue thread on your garment, and gaze upon it and THINK FIRST.  Remember your promises, keep your word of honor. Blue, oddly enough, is considered the "cool" color, emotionally low-key. 

Phil-2 says humans have a Soul breathed into the flesh by God, and the Soul is infinite (most of it resides "above" and only part inhabits the body).  The human Soul is the Fire of God's Love.  Because of that Soul, humans have Free Will and may choose their course of action.  The Soul rules the body and its emotions, not the other way around, but since you have Free Will, you can allow the body to rule the Soul, you can allow emotion to rule action.  It is your choice.

Phil-2 says women are closer to God. It's pointed out in the Torah and the Mishna any number of times that when the People as a whole sinned, the women did not participate.  So therefore, many of the remedies for the propensity to allow Emotion to rule action, are not incumbent on women (such as the blue thread).  (Honest!  Lots of maligning rumors have been promulgated about Judaism, many of which are believed by Jews who thereupon find Judaism revolting.  The idea that Judaism is sexist is one of those lies.  I didn't make that up.)

Phil-1, the older philosophy of Noah, subjugates women because men can't help attacking them.

Phil-2, the newer philosophy of Abraham, elevates women because men can control their bodies. 

OK, that's way oversimplified, but we're looking for a way to extract a simple framework from what passes for "reality" and use it for what publishing considers "fiction." 

The counter-arguments abound.  There's the whole issue of Biblical Commandments that treat women as chattle (a man buying a wife, making contracts for women who are living in their father's house or married, testing the woman for adultery but not the man).  Each of those could make the basis for worldbuiding an entire alien culture.  And of course, these Commandments were directed specifically at Jews.  Everybody else is responsible only for the 7 Noachide Laws:

---------quote-------------
THE 7 LAWS

1
Acknowledge that there is only one G-d who is Infinite and Supreme above all things. Do not replace that Supreme Being with finite idols, be it yourself, or other beings. This command includes such acts as prayer, study and meditation.

2
Respect the Creator. As frustrated and angry as you may be, do not vent it by cursing your Maker.

3
Respect human life. Every human being is an entire world. To save a life is to save that entire world. To destroy a life is to destroy an entire world. To help others live is a corollary of this principle.

4
Respect the institution of marriage. Marriage is a most Divine act. The marriage of a man and a woman is a reflection of the oneness of G-d and His creation. Disloyalty in marriage is an assault on that oneness.

5
Respect the rights and property of others. Be honest in all your business dealings. By relying on G-d rather than on our own conniving, we express our trust in Him as the Provider of Life.

6
Respect G-d's creatures. At first, Man was forbidden to consume meat. After the Great Flood, he was permitted - but with a warning: Do not cause unnecessary suffering to any creature.

7
Maintain justice. Justice is G-d's business, but we are given the charge to lay down necessary laws and enforce them whenever we can. When we right the wrongs of society, we are acting as partners in the act of sustaining the creation.
----------END QUOTE--------------

So Noah was never expected or tasked with putting thought or intellect above emotion, not directly, but it seems to me it's the easiest way to accomplish those 7 goals.  Since when do humans elect to do things the easiest way?

Look around at this world today, and you see both of these philosophical attitudes expressed in a tangled up, mixed up, confused mess, without regard for ostensible religion, creed, color, or culture. 

In fact, you probably think my summary of Phil-1 and Phil-2 with regard to women is nonsense because of the criss-crossing and conflicting assumptions in your subconscious.  Take this idea I'm presenting here and go around observing the world with writer's eyes for a while and see if you can tease apart some of these tangles and find the two warring philosophies (regardless of what you call them). 

Humans are capable of absolutely, solemnly and really believing two mutually exclusive things at once.  So Phil-1 and Phil-2 can both be held in the same human mind at the same time. 

The resulting tangle of motives and deeds produces a similar tangle of mixed results that are very confusing to analyze.

Which brings us back to the confused fulminating about the SFWA Bulletin cover being sexist, and comments on the objections just adding fuel to the fire leading to disparaging comments about SFR.

SFWA is supposed to be home to those who train to think "outside the box" and to "go where no man has gone before." 

Science is the fearless and systematic examination of all ideas, and the organizing of the results of experiments into a reliable and repeatable body of knowledge.  These are the people who are supposed to be the best trained imagineers in the world.

And they are very confused, which accurately reflects the confusion in this society as a whole (which accurate reflection makes a professional writer, professional.)

If you've ever written a melee battle, or just watched a movie with a good melee depicted, you understand what happens when two huge armies interpenetrate, just as when two galaxies collide. 

The sequence of events (plot) gets lost in confusion, and all there is left is the story -- the subjective impressions and personal meaning to the individual fighting for life, for mere survival. 

That's what we are living inside -- the interpenetration of the army of Phil-1 with the army of Phil-2, formations dissolved, one-on-one combat to the death, and the battlefield is inside our subconscious minds where the story of our life happens where we can not see it.  But we smell the smoke.   

Myth depicts this as Armageddon, or the final battle of the gods. 

Judaism sees it as the prelude to the arrival of the Messiah.  (Maybe some Islam sects do, too). 

Christianity sees it as Good vs. Evil.

I see it as the collision of two galaxy sized philosophies. 

Or maybe more accurately, the MATING of two philosophies -- fired, violent, messy, sweaty, grunting, and utterly ferocious. 

So take this multi-thousand year perspective of a battle between philosophies, one extracted from the older, larger other, and see if that vision yields a new perspective on today's headlines.  Then take that new perspective and generate your screenplay or novel and see if there's a fired up love life in there. 



by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Settings Part 3 - Dreamspy in E-book

Last week we discussed a bit more about Settings, and I mentioned how closely connected Setting and Genre are, as topics. 

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/04/guest-post-by-j-h-bogran-settings-part-1.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/04/settings-part-2.html

If you're writing for a Western market, your Setting has to have horses, wagons, Sheriffs, rattlesnakes, guns, desperadoes, muddy streets, maybe a herd of cattle.  The Western Romance was a growing sub-genre at the time Those of My Blood and Dreamspy were first published. 

About three years before Those of My Blood came out, the first novel in my Dushau Trilogy won the Romantic Times Award for Best Science Fiction.  That was so long ago that the credit for it is not on their website!  I still have the trophy, though.

Dushau is science fiction romance without Vampires. 
http://www.amazon.com/Dushau-The-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B002OSXNM8/

If you can sell Western Romance, why not Science Fiction Romance?  They just couldn't encompass the concept.  Editors were convinced "mixed genre" just could not be sold -- and the evidence before their eyes confirmed that resoundingly.  They had just begun computerizing sales data, and they believed the computer printouts. 

A writer may know, absolutely, that there are readers who want the kind of story they have to tell, and they may be correct, but if marketers don't know "where" to reach those readers, they won't try to reach them.  And the marketers are right about that.

I've seen, lately, several self-publishing writers wailing on Google+ and Twitter about how they can't sell copies of their books - even giving them away, or charging only 99cents, they can not sell books that the few who've read those books rave about.

Writing books and pleasing readers is one thing --- selling books is something else.

Here's a tweet from twitter:
--quote------
twliterary 10:42am via Web (Literary Agent who has nearly 5k followers)
http://www.twliterary.com
Author whose submission was rejected just EM that book pubbed to nice review. Truly happy for you, even w/ gratuitous "nyah nyah" note.
-----endquote------

LESSON: don't crow when you score against the establishment, just bank the check.

So how does a market change?  First comes the publication of a daring new genre, or mix of genres, or an exploration of a Setting (Ancient Egypt?  Victorian England?  The Moon?).  The mix-mixing of a new setting with a type of characer who doesn't belong there (as far as marketers know) has to start with a few books that are marketing failures.  Those novels have to get good reviews, even though they don't sell. 

Then comes an imitation or two, and there's a pre-built tiny market.  Then "word" goes viral, and the new genre gets a name and an identifyable market to publicize to.  Then big bucks get spent on "marketing" another new item designed to appeal to that market, and that's when you hear about this new item. 

This creation of a genre is a slow, tedious process, but the e-book is speeding things up. 

To find out how to achieve this result, study how it happened in the past, change the parameters that technology and social networking has changed, and launch a project into that new non-market.  Become a market maker.

Those of My Blood and Dreamspy are good examples.  Original first printing Those of My Blood has sold for $400-$500 in collector-quality condition (that means unread).  Now you can get Those of My Blood for $3.19 and Dreamspy for $3.99 (I don't control the price, the publisher does.)






So how do you think of what to mix up with what to create something "new?"  Or something you haven't ever encountered before? 

Think about popular SETTING, and inject a character that doesn't belong there, living through a story that's familiar from a different setting. 

The same old worn-out Western story can be told in Science Fiction if the Setting has Stars, Space, Spaceships, spacedrives, and space-type hazards to take the place of rattlesnakes, guns and desperadoes.  To be good science fiction, the story needs hazards that aren't now possible.  The characters have to solve problems that can't possibly exist by getting over their notion that the problem does not exist. 

A Vampire on the Moon, in Those of My Blood -- that is just such an "impossible" problem.  The  Vampire is Fantasy element injected into a Science Fiction Setting, then twisted from the Horror Genre into Romance -- another genre where Vampires don't belong  (according to marketers in the 1980's). 

So when venturing to innovate where marketers fear to go, mix-and-match Settings and Characters. 

So suppose instead of a Western, you had a Romance with International Intrigue and Vampires.  But you set the story in the midst of a Galactic War.  The Setting becomes Space, but the Romance drives the plot.

There was a time the marketers didn't know what to do with such a novel. 

I wrote two such orphan-genre novels (Science Fiction Romance) for the St. Martin's Press hardcover SF line in the 1980's.

Both got marvelous reviews, but St. Martins withdrew all advertising efforts from their Science Fiction line for strategic reasons.  The strategy was to publish the hardcover just to distribute to newspapers and magazines for review (because at that time, certain widely read venues would not review a paperback original). 

So they printed only a couple thousand hardcover copies (hence the collector price) and never distributed to bookstores.  You could buy (the month Those of My Blood was published) several hardcover and new paperback Vampire novels by very big name writers who got award attention for their novels. 

But Those of My Blood, a brand new hardcover hailed as my breakout novel, was not on any store bookshelves (except the Independents) the month it was published.  Where Independents special ordered it for those who knew it was forthcoming, they ordered only for the customer who wanted it and didn't put any on the shelves. 

And then neither Those of My Blood or Dreamspy ever made it into Mass Market. 

Eventually, another publisher picked them up, and they did pretty well, getting reprinted several times but only in trade paperback, and finally going out of print.

Then Wildside Press picked them up and now both novels are available in trade paperback and e-book editions. 

There are no sex scenes the way you'd expect now, but at that time sex scenes were not allowed in Science Fiction.  Marion Zimmer Bradley and Ursula LeGuinn changed that, but notice how their sex scenes differ from today's.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Alien Romances Is In The SFR Holiday Blitz











Once again, the alien romances blog supports The Galaxy Express (.net) Science Fiction Romance
Holiday event which encourages lovers of science fiction romance to revisit favorite sites and discover new sites and authors in the genre who might be new to them.

This year, the emphasis is on e-books, and anyone who leaves a comment on any participating site has the change to win free science fiction romance e-books (choice of format).

Please note (and this is a personal comment), no one is going to win the copyright of the e-books. What is on offer, unless any author personally tells you otherwise, is a license to read the e-book.


HOW TO ENTER

Entering is free and easy: Just leave a comment here, and on every other blog that is participating.
By leaving a comment here, you’ll be entered for a chance to win one (1) of the ebooks seen here.
Then visit the other participating blogs, which are listed below for your convenience.  
The deadline to enter (by leaving a comment) is midnight at EST on Friday, December 16, 2011.

Winners can choose from the following formats: PDF, Mobi, or ePub unless otherwise stated.

Event details:

*The contest will start at 3:00 pm EST on Sunday, December 11, 2011.
It will end at midnight EST on Friday, December 16, 2011.

*After the contest ends, each blog host will pick the winners—1 winner per book.
Each blog will announce the winners for their blog by Monday, December 19, 2011.
Winners will provide their emails to the blog host, who will contact the authors who will then distribute their prize to their winner.

*Winners can choose from the following formats: PDF, Mobi, or ePub except where otherwise stated.

E-book prizes being offered (1 randomly chosen winner per e-book) on this blog:

Hero and Border Dispute (Kindle format only) - Jacqueline Lichtenberg


Sealed in Blood (PDF format only) - Margaret L. Carter


The Slipstream Con (PDF, Mobi, ePub) - S. Reesa Herberth & Michelle Moore


The Limit of Desire (PDF, Mobi, ePub) – Nico Rosso



Participating blogs to visit, and comment on for a chance to win e-books.







http://vvb32reads.blogspot.com/