Showing posts with label Faye Kellerman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Faye Kellerman. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 07, 2020

Reviews 55 Walking Shadows by Faye Kellerman

Reviews 55
Walking Shadows
by
Faye Kellerman  

Reviews haven't been indexed yet.

The last few Reviews posts have discussed recent entries in long established (non-Romance) Series.  There is a reason for this focus that has to do with story structure.  It is a subtle point, and one you are not likely to learn by reading Romance genre - even series.

I have also brought Gini Koch's ALIEN series
to your attention, and though it's plot is mainly driven by a Romance that lasts right on through marriage and children, it is a hybrid genre series.  It's well done, fabulously entertaining, and a far reach outside the pure Romance genre.

Still, Romance fans love it (as do I).  The problem with trying to learn structure from the ALIEN series is simply that it is way too well done.  It's structure is buried under heaps of detail, texture, and everything-and-the-kitchen-sink plotting.

Historically, Romance genre novels did not EVER do "reprints" -- and thus were inhospitable to series writers.

To make it worthwhile to do a Series of novels, you must be able to keep reaching a wider and wider readership, while providing access to previously published novels.

Today, authors even of the SFWA Grand Master status, such as C. J. Cherryh, whose Foreigner series we discussed in Reviews 54



are providing their backlist titles as self-published or e-book only publisher items.  Kindle has been helpful for doing this.  Commercial, mainstream publishers simply can't do it because of the tax laws (which derailed many writers' careers) taxing warehouse inventory.

To drive a Series of novels to a satisfying and memorable conclusion, to the kind of payoff for reading so many books that makes the money-time-effort-attention worth while, a writer needs constant, continuous, reprint or availability of previous entries in the series.

The world has changed to where e-books can do this job.

During this shift, Romance genre, propelled by a handful of adventurous editors, managed to introduce Romance readers to that big-bang payoff that only a well crafted, long running (15 books or more), can deliver.

Because of ineptitude of series structure (it does take practice!), many series peter out instead of delivering that one, final, definitive bang that flings the Happily Ever After future right out before the reader's eyes.

It took Romance a while to grasp what Science Fiction had been doing for a couple of decades, and now I think we are seeing a transformation of the Romance field that will shift the views of the general public about the real-life possibility of the HEA.

Faye Kellerman (wife of the world famous Jonathan Kellerman, master of the Mystery Genre series), burst onto the publishing scene with a spectacularly different Mystery/Romance hybrid, Ritual Bath.  That novel won awards in spite of being far outside the bounds of what Mystery editors were looking for from a new writer.

The Ritual Bath,

the first in this long (so far 26 novels in the Decker/Lazarus series), introduced the Detective (Decker) to a witness to a murder (Rina Lazarus, a widow with 2 boys), they fall in love and over the course of 26 (so far) novels, Decker returns to his Jewish/religious roots because Rina is very observant (and may as well be an Alien From Outer Space from Decker's point of view), and they get married, have a kid, adopt kids (sort of) raise kids, send them off to college and marriage, move from one neighborhood to another, then retire to a different state, while Decker's daughter by a previous marriage is now a police Detective, too, and a valuable contact in another city.

Here is a list of the 26 novels:
https://amazon.com/gp/product/B07XX9XPGW

Meanwhile, Decker continues his career as a police Detective, retires to detect in a small town, and keeps on stumbling over stumper cases.

Rina, as always, sticks her nose in where it doesn't belong and solves a few of his cases, here and there (sometimes becoming a target of a murderer), drags him into her family's life, and generally is a stalwart, heroic woman.

Walking Shadows is #25 in this series, and #26 is Lost Boys, to be released in October 2020.

I have always given my highest (10 out of 5 Stars!!!) to the Decker/Lazarus series because it is one of the earliest examples of triple hybridization in publishing and broke ground for the mixed genre concept.

Isaac Asimov did lay the foundation with his Black Widow science fiction mysteries, and other writers have woven Paranormal elements into Detective novels, and fantasy worlds.  It took decades to achieve the conditions favorable to the Decker/Lazarus concept -- Mystery structure, Romance, and Religion.

Since fans seemed to object, the Religion elements get submerged in the later books, dissipated under the Mystery, and Romance per se does not burgeon into a big part of their family life.  It might have been more interesting to me if Rina had taken up the profession of the Match Maker, thus keeping Romance a hot element in each novel, while mixing it with Religion.  Also I'd have loved to see more novels drawing them into the religious life of other religions -- Los Angeles, the setting for most of the novels, certainly has enough variegated Religions.

My point is not that Religion is the important topic, but rather that the carefully balanced blend of all 3 genres in the initial novel, Ritual Bath, became distorted.

This happened because of reader feedback and editorial pressure, I'm sure (though I have no first hand knowledge).

The series is structured by the Life Cycle of the typical second-marriage couple, and that Life Cycle is optimized for a hard-working Los Angeles Detective (Vice squad to Homicide) by the addition of the third leg of Romance's footstool, Religion.

Rina Lazarus and Peter Decker are Soul Mates. That just glows out of the first novel in the series, they meet and parks fly.  It is intense, and artistically juxtaposed to murder.

They take several years to arrange life into marriage-and-a-kid.

That is how real life usually structures.

Compressing a life-cycle pivot point series into ONE novel spanning just a few weeks or months (or less) from First Sight to Wedding Bells reduces the real-life-cycle of actually lived events to a Comic Book.

It is a child's view of reality, of adulthood.

And that could be why so many people just can't accept the idea that there can exist such a thing as a couple "living happily ever after."

It's a childish view of adulthood, to them, and offering any single Romance genre novel as an example of how it is real just repels them more strongly.

Living life takes time.

Children just don't experience time the way adults do.

To a child, every endeavor is a one-step-process.  "Let's go to the park," says the child, and expects to drag Mom out the door.  But Mom first has to clean up breakfast, take dinner out of the freezer, answer the phone, go to the bathroom, change the kid's clothes, set the clothes washer going, pack toys and food for the kid, THEN go out the door, get into the car - oh, and on the way to the park, stop for gas, drop off the dry cleaning, and then head for the park, look for a parking spot, -- and by the time they are traipsing across the park, the kid has to go to the bathroom.  Go to the park is a multi-step procedure, and none of the regular parts of life can be neglected when you add Park to the list.

From the child's perspective, all that excess stuff is irrelevant.

Perspective may be the reason some people just can't grasp the reality of the HEA.  To progress from where that reader is to where the HEA is real is a multi-step procedure that includes many routine life-tasks plus a few special preparations, and requires some delayed gratification, some self-discipline, some heavy lifting, and long-tedious journeys between.

To the child who wants to go to the Park, getting there isn't real until he's swooping down the slides, deviling other kids on the playground, feeding the ducks, and fighting for a spot on the swings.

The child who has been to the Park before has building expectations, knowing there really is a Park, but it just isn't here right now.

The adult reading a Romance doesn't know there is an HEA, and has no idea what the connection is between this time-consuming, tedious, Romance, and the HEA.  Just as the child doesn't see the point of taking dinner out of the freezer before leaving, then stopping on errands along the way, the adult reading a Romance may not see the point of Romance.

Today's culture encourages people to confuse Romance with sex -- and that's another discussion.

There was a time when no publisher would publish a Romance novel that had even one sex scene.  Think about that.

In real life, Relationships are built over years, even decades. What a person means to you is the summation of thousands of interactions, of challenges met together, of favors done, of achievements admired, of movies watched together, and even children raised together.

Today, we are more keenly aware of what other people mean to us because of the sharp, sudden, unexpected loss of loved ones, co-workers, friends, distant relatives, neighbors, due to the Covid-19 virus, or due to lack of available treatment for a condition because of the focus on Covid-19.

People grow roots into each others' guts.  Loss of such a closely rooted person is like a tree falling over in a storm, leaving root system jutting into the air.  It's a ripping hurt.

A single novel, even a big, thick one spanning years of time, can't depict the growth of such a root system between people.

It takes a Series, maybe like the Decker/Lazarus series, spanning decades, to grow the Character's roots into the guts of the reader. To understand what the Characters mean to each other, the reader has to live their life parallel to that character.  It might take a week or two to read a long novel - and that just isn't long enough to feel, to believe, the evolutionary change of maturity the Characters have to go through between First Sight and HEA.

Ritual Bath was first published in 1986. I think it was 1992 that I first discovered a paperback of it at a book store.  It's 2020, and I can barely wait for the next installment!

Decker and Lazarus, Peter and Rina, are living the HEA - the real-life-kind of HEA, full of growth, change, challenge, and the application of the lessons learned at First Sight to the deeply entwined roots into each others' Souls.

If you want to argue the HEA with your readers, plan a long series, and be certain it has a firm structure built from the autobiographical bones of real people's real lives.  Then flesh out those bones with variations that bespeak the underlying themes you are dealing with.

Each individual novel in the Series has to open, and explicate, some sub-theme that is derived from that main envelope theme.

Note how C. J. Cherryh, in her Foreigner Series, treats the material of a single novel - an Event, a Problem, and the Solution - all focused around a theme - as a trilogy.  There is an overall theme to the series, and a sub-theme illustrated in each trilogy.

The series is structured around the life, and life-cycle, of Bren Cameron -- who is a father-figure to the young Atevi prince.

Bren stumbles from crisis to crisis -- yet he is living the HEA many readers say doesn't exist.

Think about that.  What is your vision of an HEA?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World Part 13 New Entry Ways To Publishing

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World
Part 13
New Entry Ways To Publishing 
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous entries in this Blog series are listed here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/05/index-to-marketing-fiction-in-changing.html

As a professional reviewer, I get many books from publishers' publicity departments -- and I am offered many more than I accept or review.

I tend to focus on fiction, science fiction - especially galactic stories with aliens -- double-especially Relationship/romance driven galactic plots.

Every once in a while, I accept a non-fiction book, or one that's fictionalized non-fiction, and from those I sometimes hit a jackpot of information.

Today I want to point you to a book that is being promoted heavily by one of the biggest publishers in the world, Penguin Group.  I was offered this book by their publicist.



The first thing I noticed when I got the paper edition, in the acknowledgements at the back of the book, the author says she would never have attempted to write a book if not for the encouragement of a Penguin UK editor - she apparently knew personally.

Remember all the Faye Kellerman mysteries (Decker & Lazarus series) that I've pointed you at? 


Faye Kellerman is the wife of Jonathan Kellerman,



He's been an established mystery writer since before she published her first novel, a prominent award winner Ritual Bath (which is English for Mikveh).



Last week, I pointed you to an obscure title that just could not find entre into the major mass market paperback publishers that should have picked it up, given the popularity of futuristic mystery-romance, Murderer In The Mikdash.  (that's MIKDASH not MIKVEH -- mikDASH is the Temple; mikVEH is a deep pool of water.  Murderer in the Mikdash is set in the near-future, while Ritual Bath is set in the "present" of when it was written (see wikipedia) The Ritual Bath (1986) (Winner of the 1987 Macavity award for Best First Novel, nominated for the 1987 Anthony Award in the same category

So last week we pondered MURDERER IN THE MIKDASH, and why you hadn't heard of it before now.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/05/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding-part.html

And I analyzed why this particular draft of this particular novel could not get a toe in the door for this (incredibly accomplished) author. 

It's all marketing, and though there are principles of marketing you can learn from college textbooks and seminars -- this world is changing so fast that there just are no rules, except for the oldest, most dependable rule of all -- "It's not what you know; it's who you know." 

That's the founding principle behind LinkedIn.

LinkedIn.com takes it one further.  "It's not who you know; it's who knows you."  People who know a lot of people are averse to meeting people who want to meet them.  In other words, fame creates overload and overload creates aversion.

So we are back to the Victorian "society" where people "move in circles."

This week, we contrast the publishing presentation of that immensely worthy but obscure novel, MURDERER IN THE MIKDASH (a first novel) and this first "reality TV" style fictionalized non-fiction book, LOVE BY THE BOOK.

Murderer in the Mikdash has Romance aplenty, relationships, and powerful motivations based on the human search for love, respect, and establishment in life, security and a sense of personal identity.

That same description fits LOVE BY THE BOOK.  The format and artistic emphasis, the theme, the structure, the location, absolutely everything about LOVE BY THE BOOK is in stark, sharp, vivid contrast to either MURDERER IN THE MIKDASH or RITUAL BATH.

But the publishing trajectory of LOVE BY THE BOOK and RITUAL BATH also demonstrate a stark difference -- which is not due to content, to size of intended audience or potential sales volume, or even to potential film contracts. 

It's due to promotional money behind the title.

And not just to money.  If an Indy author like Gidon Rothstein spent the same amount of money to promote Murderer in the Mikdash that Penguin is spending to promote Love By The Book, he wouldn't be able to reach the same level of prominence with bookstores, online book sellers, or readers.

Why is it not just the amount of money spent?

Because the real secret to Best Seller volume is (as with launching a political campaign) "Organization."  An efficient, well established publicity organization can make a huge profit promoting things because the vast majority of the money is spent greasing the product's way through the distribution channels.

An Indy author does not have an "organization."  The publicist spends a lifetime creating and nurturing "contacts."  The Golden Rolodex used to be the touchstone of publicity -- today it's the Contact List.

Bottom line, though, it's going to the right parties, being personable and cheerful fun entertaining the "right" people, being part of the quid-pro-quot network of favor trading, -- just being a resident of the "right" neighborhood.  I don't mean that geographically, though it sometimes matters where you life.  I mean that neighborhood of people who know each other and see each other at gatherings in various countries all around the world -- the jet set of publishing.

It's not about who you know.  It's about who knows you -- and why they should care.

I don't know Melissa Pimentel personally.  All I know about her book's marketing is what she wrote in the back of this book.

You will never be able to replicate exactly what happened to her -- an editor at a big publishing house with a big publicity department urged her to create this hybrid-fictionalized non-fiction book, and then publicized it.

It's a "gimmick" book.  "Gimmicks" are a gamble, but when they work, they go Big.

The gimmick here is that Pimentel found herself at loose ends in London and decided to run an experiment, reporting it in a Blog.

She read a Dating instruction book a month and spent the month applying those instructions, reporting the results on the blog.

She admits that the book is re-arranged because she met the Man of Her Dreams early on, but in the book doesn't reveal which man it is until the end.

So in a way it's a mystery.  No murders, though. 

So, the author read non-fiction, wrote non-fiction about the non-fiction, and then wrote semi-fiction about the non-fiction titles.

Only today could we have such a gimmick in our hands!  The power of blogging is brought to the fore.  The general interest in "dating" and the idea that one needs instruction to do it "right" is as old as the hills.  The distribution of testing results on those instructions via the Web is NEW.

So just like Hollywood asks -- give me something the same but different -- Pimentel did.

I don't know how the editor came to notice the blog, or the hit-rate and discussion furor on that blog, but you couldn't do that for yourself on purpose anyway. 

Blogging is not how you get to know people -- it's how people get to know you.

That's why linkedin.com has begun a "blog" type section where members can sound-off on topics they think are interesting.

If you can grab the attention of "the right" person on linkedin.com and induce them to get to know you, then you might just find your own, new and unique, way into publishing or film production.

On Twitter, at #scifichat, in January, the topic brought to notice the dearth of comic books slanted toward 7 year old girls.

The topic of the #chat spun off from this article -- blog.

http://www.itinthed.com/16328/what-taking-my-daughter-to-a-comic-book-store-taught-me/

And @DavidRozansky decided to explore adding a comics line to his publishing house, aimed specifically at this wholly unserved market.  His particular expertise is marketing, and his field is Gaming, Science Fiction, Horror, Fantasy -- all our stuff.

If an actual line of published comics results -- it will be a result of people talking on Twitter.  Such a "gimmick" line of products might be discussed in the NYT book review, and blogged about. 

And again, my point is that finding that big break is all about who knows you, not about who you admire or who you know or look up to.  Not about all the famous people who have influenced your thinking, but rather it is about how you influence them.

The influence you want to have on them is to further, enhance, enlarge, and progress their career -- not your own, theirs.

Who knows you is about them, not you.

Who you know is about you, not them.

It takes both to close the circuit and get something to happen.

So while you are working on your writing skills, also work on your social skills, your social circles, and your social spirals.

Which brings us back to LOVE BY THE BOOK.  Read this book, (it's very readable, engrossing, well constructed, and well paced).  Note particularly how the author picks up different advice books on that one topic - dating - and evaluates the applicable elements in each book, then sums it all up.

You all know how many books are in print advising you how to break into print, how to break into the movies, how to break-in. 

Pick a break-in topic, and blog your heart into it, maybe on LinkedIn, keeping in mind "who" might be reading it.  Entertain your target audience, just as you would at a cocktail party, standing in a circle, telling people a story about your adventures getting to the party.  (the airline lost your luggage, what you did about that, who you met along the way)

The point of the blogging exercise is for others to get to know you - not for you to get to know others. 

The changing blogosphere is part of the publishing landscape.  Learn your way around.



Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, February 03, 2015

Depiction Part 6 - Depicting Money and Wealth by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Depiction Part 6
Depicting Money and Wealth
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

In Depiction Part 5
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/01/depiction-part-5-depicting-dynastic.html
we started to look at Depicting Dynastic Wealth with an eye toward the Romance form of how to marry a millionaire, billionaire, Prince, King, Duke -- how to marry above your "station."  How to marry into the 1%.

The previous parts of the Depiction Series are:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-1-depicting-power-in.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-2-conflict-and-resolution.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-3-internal-conflict-by.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/12/depiction-part-4-depicting-power-in.html

This type of novel depicting the uber-wealthy from the inside is difficult for a writer to create because most writers aren't wealthy. 

Like musicians, actors, and other performing artists, writers are generally work-a-day schmucks, more like Cinderella than like the Prince.  

Those who hit it lucky often live like suddenly discovered movie stars, or suddenly popular athletes on a winning streak, and adopt a lavish lifestyle that eventually bankrupts them.  Those who work for a living (other than Investment Bankers) usually have no reason or means to learn Wealth Management. 

It is difficult to portray real wealth, from the inside, to portray a Character who was raised to wealth and privilege.  From the outside they all seem stuck up, and that makes them plausible to your reader and easy to portray.  

We ended off Depiction Part 5 with the observation that a shift of point of view produces strange inversions. 

In Historical Times, Kings ran the government and made the decisions.  Today voters run the government and make the decisions, then hire working-stiffs to carry out those decisions, bestowing such titles as Prime Minister or President.  But voters (working stiffs) are King now, and now Kings don't run the government, voters do.  It is a point of view shift.

However, while the people we elect either are wealthy, magically become wealthy while in office, or are from dynastic wealth, the voters in general are not. 

We are hiring people to manage trillions of dollars while we have no clue what the world looks like from the point of view of a Billionaire, or what skills it takes to manage trillions. 

The voters are looking at the wealthy from the outside and seeing aloof or stuck-up people.  Is that true insight or just a perspective? 

If you are interested in writing a Science Fiction Romance with a theme centered on Dynasty, you could find some interesting material studying the family backgrounds of dynasties where transmission worked, and where it failed. 

But before you dive into that research, think about what you know about our world, today. 

What does it take to learn Wealth Management?  What does it take to learn the difference between money and capital?

http://amazon.com/Rich-Dad-Poor-Robert-Kiyosaki-ebook/dp/B004XZR63M/

RICH DAD - POOR DAD is a key work by Robert Kiyosaki that's been around for years, yet still holds a truth that is the core of depicting the ultra-wealthy, or the scion of the uber-wealthy. 

We learn our initial attitudes from our parents, most especially our attitudes toward possessions, toward power over others ("Come here this instant or you're grounded for a week!"), and toward money and wealth, ("No you may not have an advance on your allowance.") from our parents.  After that, in college, peers and teachers toss in some adjustments, and eventually with our own paychecks, we see what works and what doesn't.

Most people never figure out why the behaviors that work are effective -- or why they can't control a budget or a diet. 

Self-control, self-discipline, self-governance can't be transmitted from parent to child with words. 

It's a do-as-I-do situation. 

Parents have to "model" budgeting, saving, investing, and all the fact-gathering and decision-making processes that go into wise behavior in order to transmit these behaviors.

The children of Aristocrats who grew up to manage inherited wealth well (rather than drinking and gambling it away) were trained from pre-verbal years to view privelege as a responsibility. 

The successful ones absorbed by osmosis the assumption that power must never be used for personal gain, particularly not for the "gain" of soothing one's own emotions. 

We are now seeing some new Fantasy Romances, and Science Fiction Romances, that depict the well-raised (well-mothered) scion of a rich, or nobel family who has internalized this attitude.

Here is a must-read novel from RoC by Juliet Marillier titled DREAMER'S POOL.  It contains a magic-using "Wise Woman" (herbal healer), a Prince, an Arranged Marriage fraught with real Romance, and mistaken identity all rolled into a fast reading tale of wealth and privelege properly stewarded.



Why are these novels of historical Aristocracy such successes in today's market where everyone knows Aristocracy was an utter disaster of a governing process, where the bloody French Revolution taught us so much, where women would never let their parents choose their husbands, and where being a Billionaire is prima facie evidence of skullduggery? 

Why do we think Cindarella got a better deal than her step-sisters? 

Why do we dream of being rescued into a life of wine and privelege when in real life we throw rotten tomatoes at the limos of the 1%? 

Perhaps it is because we are convinced that, given wealth enough to wield real Power, we would do it right.  Consider the biographies of winners of the Lottery twenty years later.  Very often, they lose everything within 5 years.  Could that be because they were not raised by wealthy-powerful parents and don't know the difference between money and wealth that we discussed in Depction Part 5? 

The poor -- or merchant/craftsman/artisan middle income folks -- look at Real Wealth from the outside and see it as easy to live that way. 

When such a 1%'ers life is lived by a person who was raised to it by a woman who was raised to raise boys to wield power without bullying, that 1%er's life looks easy -- from the outside. 

In fact, that "looks easy" effect is the definition of "Mastery."  When a master of a craft does it - it looks easy.  It looks as if anyone could do it without schooling or training or practice.

Have you ever watched a master glassblower?  Then tried it yourself? 

Massive wealth is fragile and must be handled delicately -- and it is very dangerous if it shatters.

History, and historical fiction, is littered with tales of the ne'er-do-well playboy, scion of a Titled Family, who fritters away his inherited fortune, goes into monstrous debt, and either finds his Soul Mate or ends badly in a duel.

Great fiction is composed of the juxtaposition of improbables.

SAVE THE CAT! calls that story type the "Fish Out Of Water."  A person who is out of his element, coping with the resultant conflicts.  A Lottery-Winner is a fish out of water if he/she wasn't already a 1%-er raised by 1%-ers. 

A mermaid on land is story material.

A human in space is story material.

An Aristocrat without principles living in the gutter is story material.

A gutter rat with principles living in a Palace is story material. 

A cop who does a great job as a cop is not story material, unless the story is based on the conflict between the Master Cop and Master Criminal -- and that's not a fish-out-of-water story. 

A cop who gets sucked into the vortex of some Bad Cops (maybe drug running or taking mob money to look the other way), is story material, and potential hero or villain.

An Orthodox Jewish Master Detective from Los Angeles who retires to be a small town patrol cop, but busts an international art theft ring and runs afowl of a Federal government plot involving the library collection of the most respected Rabbi of modern times -- THAT is story material.

Faye Kellerman has been writing a post-Romance series (22 books and counting) called the Decker/Lazarus novels.  The 2014 entry is exactly the fish-out-of-water novel I just described.  It's titled Murder 101.



MURDER 101 gets its title from being set in a college town, where the veteran Detective has taken on a protege.

The Dynastic Transmission of his professional skills (which are a power-management skill set, just like being a King or a Billionaire) is evident in the one family-dinner scene set in a restaurant where his kids and children-in-law gather, where an engagement is announced, and the protege who comes from a rich but dysfunctional family sees a functional working-stiff family functioning.

Decker's kids are cops, or work in allied fields using similar skill sets.  They all manage Power well.  The dominant factor in that values transmission success is Rina, Decker's wife, but his daughter by his first marriage is a successful cop, too.  She gets it from Decker, though she was raised by her mother. 

As I noted in my Amazon review of MURDER 101, the portrayal of the young protege is "off" just a bit.  He goes around with Decker, and Decker gets him to look up information online using the boy's iPad.  OK, fine, a small town police department would not issue high end equipment, but the iPad is the boy's own hardware.  The boy keeps asking people they are questioning the logon code for their wi-fi networks -- NOBODY WOULD DO THAT. 

Furthermore, they are in New York, where Verizon has LTE coverage, and no way on earth would a trust-fund-kid like this one ever fail to connect his iPad to Verizon's LTE (or something faster).  It's cheap and much more secure than strange wi-fi networks.  No way would a trust-fund-kid who is RICH fail to upgrade his iPad to wi-fi capable.  That is a FAIL on the author's part in "depicting dynastic wealth" (trust-fund-kids qualify as dynastic wealth portrayals.)

I call the Lazarus/Decker novels post-Romance because the first novel in the series, RITUAL BATH, is the actual romance -- where Decker and Rina Lazarus first meet.  After a while, they get married, have kids, raise kids, have crises, get invaded by the bad-guys who Decker is chasing, defend themselves well, and get through it all to retirement. 

Meanwhile, in other novels, they also deal with Decker's parents (who adopted him) - with a boy they adopt whose father is a mobster handling Power in a different way - and with Rina's very Orthodox family.



In MURDER 101 we see the Power-handling-skill-set being passed on to another kid who is bound for Harvard Law School and inheriting a serious fortune.  We see the step-by-step progress Decker's tutelage makes on this kid who has lost his way -- and we can infer the effect Decker's teaching will have on how the kid manages the extreme power the inheritance will bring.

In Jim Butcher's new Dresden Files novel, SKIN GAME, we see MAGICAL POWER in the hands of a man who lives, financially, hand-to-mouth.

He is a cop, of the magical variety, and regards that as a responsibility for the safety of Chicago, not as power over the peasants of Chicago.  He's had some love affairs -- and is currently getting more and more involved with a mundane cop who now knows all about the covert world of magic under Chicago.

Dresden comes back from exile on an island to find his woman and his protege and some friends have been trying to keep Chicago safe in his absense.  In the process, they have grown braver, gained skills, and amassed much power as well as wisdom in using it.

His style of power-management has rubbed off on them -- or he is friends with them because they share that attitude.

Jack Cambell is writing two series in the same universe.  I like one better than the other, perhaps just because I like the Hero.  Cambell has a whopping love story holding his THE LOST STARS series together, two military leaders trying to turn themselves into politicians co-ruling a star system even though their training conditions them to distrust each other.

In the IMPERFECT SWORD, they are separated and fight two different battles, winning despite the tricks played against them.  They win by applying their new theory of governance acquired from their former enemy, BLACK JACK.

Most of these novels, in both series, are nothing but large battles told from the POV of the General in charge, or the ship's captain dealing with enemy ships.

But the story and motivations of the characters is all about Relationship.

Taking a purely Relationship driven story, fraught with political philosophy, to an audience that hates romance and won't read non-fiction, and succeeding so very well at it, makes Jack Campbell a phenomenon to behold.



I've just given you 4 very recent novels, all aimed at very different readerships, all sharing a single attribute -- transmission of power-handling-skills.

Each of these novels depicts dynastic wealth of some sort.

Remember, wealth isn't money.  Money symbolically represents wealth, but wealth is not money. 

Wealth is something else.

Many people say that if you have a loving, functional family, you are wealthy even if living hand-to-mouth.  If you have your children around you, you are wealthy -- even if squatting on a dirt floor nibbling raw moldy potatoes.

Others say the only wealth they can't take away from you is your education.

In the Middle Ages, wealth was the ability to apprentice your boys to a Master Craftsman. 

In the Dresden Files, Dresden had built a magical laboratory, spending countless hours tediously creating magical tools from scratch.  By SKIN GAME, all that wealth had been ripped away from him, and he's left with only one tool he's just built plus his training and talent.

Wealth is fragile, but the responsibilities that go with such wealth are enduring.  Long after the wealth has shattered, the responsibilities will hound you. 

Wealth is the potential energy inherent in your very existence which you have packed into the forms of material objects.  If the wealth shatters, the material objects disappear, or wander into someone else's hands.  The objects themselves are not wealth. 

The energy of your life is your wealth.

So Wealth Management is self-discipline.  Wealth management is your ability to  make friends with yourself and persuade yourself to behave well.

So what is Dynastic Wealth?

Is there such a thing as inherited wealth that you have not earned?

If you assume that the concept "Soul Mate" has a valid corrolary in our everyday reality, then you have to consider that the children of Soul Mates somehow actually 'belong' to that couple.

If Souls are Mated, then the personal potential energy that each brings to the One they are when joined manifests as their wealth.

Children are one concrete manifestation of potential energy actualized. 

Children contain some of the potential energy contained in each parent Soul.

If the wealth generated by two mated Souls is inherited by the Child of those Souls, that inherited wealth is, sum and substance, an integral part of the two Parent Souls and the Child Soul. 

You can earn money, but you can't earn Wealth.  Wealth is the substance of your Soul made manifest -- you don't "earn" it; you "are" it. 

Your Wealth (in this science fictional theory) is part of you, just as your body is.

A strong man (or woman) can exert a considerable Power -- with muscles, or clever engineering -- creating a physical blow that can change things.  Hammering a nail.  Blowing up a dam.

What prevents a strong man (or woman) from hammering everything around them to smitherines?

Self-control governs -- the stronger you are, the stronger your self-control must be. 

Laws can't control you.  Taxes (Kings stealing your wealth) can't control you.  Kings can't control you.  "You" are both body and Soul, welded into a unit. 

Historically, we are still here, but Kings are pretty much gone. 

The Kings that are still here rule a constitutional monarchy.  The despots and strong-men are on their way out. (they keep popping up, but my bet is on democracy).

Dynastic Wealth is wealth accumulated over time, over generations.  The demonstrable fact that a second, maybe a third and fourth, generation has hung onto the inherited wealth, and added to it, shows that the wealth is truly theirs - truly a part of their Soul as their Soul is part of their Parents' Souls.

The Mate chosen to marry into a massive fortune (as the Princess-to-be in DREAMER'S POOL), both acquires that fortune and contributes to it, then produces an heir.

The heir is part of the Two Souls Joined, thus part of that fortune, not separate from it. 

That statement is almost a THEME.  To make it into a theme, you need to take it apart and inject the CONFLICT. 

For example, "Only Legitimate Heirs Can Manage Dynastic Wealth And Pass It On."

That would be a theme.  The conflict is in the question so urgently begged by the thematic statement: "So what constitutes Legitimate?"  And is loss of wealth under your management proof you aren't Legitimate? 

Does the husband have to be the father of the child for the child to be Legitimate? 

Is an adopted child a Legitimate heir?

What if something was wrong with the magical component of the Marriage Ceremony?   Would the children be Legitimate?

What if the Parents aren't of the same species? (Think SPOCK!)

What sorts of Tax Laws on inherited or Dynastic Wealth would species on other planets make?  What if they didn't have Souls, but humans did --- or vice-versa? 

THEME: Dynastic Wealth Accumulation is Toxic to Civilization.

CONFLICT: The Legitimate Heir to a throne flees the clutches of those who would place that heir on the throne (and manipulate them?) because the heir believes Dynastic Wealth is bad for Civilization.  Those who want to enthrone the legitimate heir believe the only way to avoid total war is to enthrone a legitimate heir.

ROMANCE: The current occupant of the throne (who is not legitimate) falls head over heels in love with the True Heir, who wants no part of any of this.

This scenario plays out in our real world in varying degrees all the time, especially in the USA.

Today a King doesn't have to be a Billionaire, or a 1%-er.  Today, the owner of a store, a business or a farm, or even possibly just a house, is a King, or at least a Duke, and the heirs have this same tricky problem of somehow managing to hold it all together, add to it, and pass it on.

Since, historically, some of the largest Fortunes (Rockefeller, Railroad Barons, Shipping Magnates,) from the 1800's industrialization, have been inherited by people who have apparently abused that Power, the USA has soured on the entire concept of Dynastic Wealth.

We are all "self-made" successes (or failures). 

Today's 50-somethings do not expect to inherit a single cent from their parents, and expect they won't be getting social security.  It's a bleak outlook.

Those folks are part of your audience, as are their children. 

In the 1940's, Congress made a series of laws essentially oblitterating the ability of a family to build dynastic wealth.

Tax laws were used to break up budding fortunes before they could become big enough to make politicians dance to the tune of the 1%.  (OK, yeah, it didn't exactly work out that way, but we're writing fiction here.)

Here's from WIKIPEDIA (I said we're writing fiction, so this is a good authority.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estate_tax_in_the_United_States

---------quote--------------

The term "death tax"

The caption for section 303 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, enacted on August 16, 1954, refers to estate taxes, inheritance taxes, legacy taxes and succession taxes imposed because of the death of an individual as "death taxes." That wording remains in the caption of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended.[58] The term "death tax" is also a neologism used by critics to describe the U.S. federal estate tax in a way that conveys a negative connotation.

On July 1, 1862, the U.S. Congress enacted a "duty or tax" with respect to certain "legacies or distributive shares arising from personal property" passing, either by will or intestacy, from deceased persons.[59] The modern U.S. estate tax was enacted on September 8, 1916 under section 201 of the Revenue Act of 1916. Section 201 used the term "estate tax."[60][61] According to Professor Michael Graetz of Columbia Law School and professor emeritus at Yale Law School, opponents of the estate tax began calling it the "death tax" in the 1940s.[62] The term "death tax" more directly refers back to the original use of "death duties" to address the fact that death itself triggers the tax or the transfer of assets on which the tax is assessed.

Many opponents of the estate tax refer to it as the "death tax" in their public discourse partly because a death must occur before any tax on the deceased's assets can be realized and also because the tax rate is determined by the value of the deceased's persons assets rather than the amount each inheritor receives. Neither the number of inheritors nor the size of each inheritor's portion factors into the calculations for rate of the estate tax.

Proponents of the tax say the term "death tax" is imprecise, and that the term has been used since the nineteenth century to refer to all the death duties applied to transfers at death: estate, inheritance, succession and otherwise.[63]

Chye-Ching Huang and Nathaniel Frentz of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities assert that the claim that the estate tax is best characterized as a "death tax" is a myth, and that only the richest 0.14% of estates owe the tax.[64]

Political use of "death tax" as a synonym for "estate tax" was encouraged by Jack Faris of the National Federation of Independent Business[65] during the Speakership of Newt Gingrich.

Well-known Republican pollster Frank Luntz wrote that the term "death tax" "kindled voter resentment in a way that 'inheritance tax' and 'estate tax' do not".[66]

Linguist George Lakoff states that the term "death tax" is a deliberate and carefully calculated neologism used as a propaganda tactic to aid in efforts to repeal estate taxes. The use of "death tax" rather than "estate tax" in the wording of questions in the 2002 National Election Survey increased support for estate tax repeal by only a few percentage points.[67]

--------END QUOTE----------

So now, instead of being run by Aristocrats who have inherited Dynastic Fortunes, the USA is run by self-made million&billionaires.

Many first-term electees who are elected to the Federal House of Representatives or the Senate start out so stretched financially that they camp out in their Federal offices between trips home.  They can't afford an apartment in DC. 

If they are re-elected a few times, eventually they retire with a lot more money than you or I would ever imagine.  Nobody says how this little miracle happens, but one famous Mayor became famous trying to sell Barak Obama's Senate Seat because it was "Gold."  What do they know that we don't know?

Most of these self-made 1%-ers were raised by the Poor Dad described by Richard Kiyosaki in Rich Dad: Poor Dad.

The rags-to-riches stories of these people make great reading, very inspiring.

Many, however, did not rise from rags but from comfortable middle income families where they got a fairly good start.  The Founders of Microsoft and Facebook were college students at the time they quit school because their little fledgling enterprise was taking off into a full time job.

-------

Now pull back and take the long view of our Civlization -- not just the USA, but all of Humanity worldwide.

Take a view with a deep perspective showing Civlization all the way back to 7,000 BCE and the advent of Agriculture.

It seems Civilization has always been run by Dynastic Fortunes. 

If we run into Aliens in Outer Space who function on Dynastic Wealth, we should have no trouble understanding them. 

And we've always had "The Poor" -- usually if you were born poor, you were poor all your life and died really young.  Only recently has that changed, and it has not changed everywhere on Earth. 

We've always had Poverty as a fate.  Now we have poverty as a period in a person's life when they barely have clothes and food (think modern College Students).

It's healthy for the human spirit to learn just how little material wealth we actually need.  Some Eastern Religions (and Christianity, too) advocate shucking material "stuff" and venturing out into the world to live on luck and faith.  It works.  It changes people, and they think they're better off for it later.

But people who have never been "poor" (not knowing where your next meal is coming from) -- people raised in comfort if not luxury, taught by parents who imposed strick discipline because the child would become an heir to dynastic wealth, raised by people who had Kiyosaki's RICH DAD perspective and transmitted it, make decisions using a different process.

If you are so rich you don't know that you are rich, you don't look at the world from the perspective of fear or of poverty (except the mob may storm the palace.)

You don't "spend money" -- you achieve goals with your wealth.

True, the goals you choose may not serve the best interests of the poor.

But I'm talking here about a perspective - the attitude of a Character that would color their relationship with a potential Mate.

Civilization has always been run by Kings -- so much so, that when Israel was just starting to become a Nation, they asked God for a King like other countries had.  The Prophet they asked didn't understand why they needed a King when they had God.  A people where all the individuals behave according to the Commandments doesn't need much government -- people behave well and don't hurt each other or steal, and those who have take care of the poor.  If there's a problem, there are Judges in the Gates.  What do you need a King for?  Well -- everyone else has a King, and they won't talk to us farmers and ranchers; they want to talk to our King.

So Kings were the way of the World long before the Book of Kings.

A King who doesn't gain the throne by force of arms gains it by inheritance.

Thrones are all about Dynastic Wealth.

Dynastic Wealth has always run things -- for thousands of years -- and we're still here, wealthier for it.

In the 1940's, after WWII, in the USA, the Inheritance Tax was systematically rewritten specifically, (as a matter of the theory of governance by what we now call The Progressives) to prevent Dynastic Wealth from accumulating. 

So as I said above, we are now governed by New Money.

In this blog about the 1% I pointed out a quote from ROYAL PAINS on "New Money" and referenced the Estate Tax.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-7.html

New Money settles things with Lawyers; Old Money settles things over coctails. 

How much of the ineffectual decision-making we see in our current government is due to the decision-making processes inherent in the mind of a person of New Money? 

People raised by a Poor Dad (or no Dad) trying to handle the Power of real Wealth (and wealth that isn't their own) will grab at The Law to cure whatever problem they have.  Old Money knows how to apply dynastic power to finesse away problems and keep stability.  (If you hate the status quo, old money is the enemy!  Wow, Conflict!) 

Now go back to the 1960's and Johnson's WAR ON POVERTY initiative, and check out what progress we've made.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Poverty


http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/09/the-war-on-poverty-after-50-years
----------QUOTE------------
Since that time, U.S. taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs (in constant 2012 dollars). Adjusted for inflation, this spending (which does not include Social Security or Medicare) is three times the cost of all military wars in U.S. history since the American Revolution. Despite this mountain of spending, progress against poverty, at least as measured by the government, has been minimal.
------------END QUOTE----------

You want to write a HOT ROMANCE? 

Remember the STAR TREK episode CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER by Harlan Ellison.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708455/combined 

Kirk - adventure Hero Extraordinaire and crazy sexy playboy - meets up with his TRUE SOUL MATE who runs a soup kitchen during the Great Depression.

You can write that Romance, and end it with an HEA.

Worldbuild a place where Dynastic Wealth has been destroyed, and some hotshot yoyo idealist wants to get rid of all restrictions on inheritance and rebuild the Aristocracy of Extreme Wealth.

Opposing is the Soul Mate who sees any wealth in the control of a private citizen as purest Evil. 

This would work easily on an alien planet, maybe a shipwrecked human colony  living with some Natives (think about C. J. Cherryh's FOREIGNER universe).

Play that conflict out until their child comes of age with an opinion of his own -- maybe there are siblings?  Maybe one sibling is a clone of the father? 

THEME: we must rebuild the capacity to accumulate Dynastic Wealth
CONFLICT: The Couple accumulates wealth and is attacked by The Mob that greedily wants to steal or destroy it all (think French Revolution).

To make this work, you have to create a scion of a family that inherits Wealth and uses it well to keep people safe and government stable.  Opposing him/her, you need The Poor -- and you need a scion of a dynastic fortune that isn't a wastrel but is bent on gaining personal power.

Many of these novels have been published, many very well written, but there are still variations -- especially in the Science Fiction or Paranormal Romance hybrid genres -- that have to be treated.

Consider the role Romance novel has played in feminism, presenting the kick-ass heroine in a good light, showing young women what it is to be a hero and a woman at the same time. 

In the Western, we have heroic women who can keep a home together without a man to protect them and the children.  In Romance, we have women who rescue themselves and then turn around and rescue their guy. 

By looking at what it means to be a woman from every possible direction, women readers have come out of trying to dress and behave like men, to being charming and feminine in dress and manner, yet assertive and when warranted even aggressive at work, play, and local politics.

Perhaps it's time for the Romance hybrid genres to tackle the issue of what it means to be a Soul Mate, produce children, and bequeath them a Fortune.

I expect to see novels where children are tasked by their semi-wealthy parents to double their inheritance and pass it on, creating in 300 years or so, Dynastic Wealth in order to eradicate poverty as the "War on Poverty" has failed to do by destroying Dynastic Wealth? 

The four novels I've discussed here, Murder 101, Skin Game, and The Lost Stars: Imperfect Sword, and Dreamer's Pool, as well as the TV Series ROYAL PAINS, all in different genres aimed at different readerships, tiptoe around the edges of this theme of Dynastic Wealth as the prime weapon in the war against poverty. 

THEME: To command extreme wealth without destructive errors, one must be born and raised to the task.

Or:

THEME: Civilization will disintegrate without Dynastic Fortunes.

Consider, if today we decided the inheritance tax has to go -- so that we can rebuild dynastic wealth -- then what experienced people could train the next generation to wield that power in a constructive way?

Depict your King/Billionaire from the inside as understanding and acting upon the distinction between Money and Wealth, between Cash and Capital.  But when depicting such a King/Billionaire from the outside, those same actions will seem Greedy, callous, and irresponsible to the 99% who can not perceive the distinction.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Six Kinds of Power in Relationship

Blake Snyder in his two SAVE THE CAT! books on screenwriting





points out that to keep a story moving, to keep the character arcs changing throughout the 110 page screenplay (or for that matter, a 400 page novel) you need to start the main character off at the point in his/her life when he/she is forcibly confronted by 6 things that need fixing.

Starting at that point keeps the plot from dying or unraveling in your fingers, which some new writers misinterpret as writer's block. It's really not writer's block, but writer's skill deficit.

For truly sterling examples of this complex writing technique producing a truly simple but not simplified plot, see Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files novels.

OK, The Dresden Files novels are not strictly speaking "Romance" because there isn't a Couple whose relationship dynamics create the plot -- but to me, Dresden the written character is some kind of grandiose hunk! The TV Dresden was starting to grow on me, but it got cancelled. And on TV the troubles that beset Dresden had to be reduced to episode size and watered down for the TV viewer who doesn't know magick.

THE DRESDEN FILES - here's the first 3 in a boxed set:



There are so far I think 12 Dresden novels and more coming. Like C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner universe novels, this is a series to savour, but Foreigner is more Alien Romance than Dresden is (so far -- you never know about trends that will re-shape a long series).

But both Foreigner and Dresden sustain a focus very tightly on the main character and that character started out with at least 6 things that need fixing.

Here's another long series that grew out of things to fix piling up on the main characters -- and this one is HOT Romance with magic as a societal force to be reconned with (Vampires hot for Werewolves though it's forbidden!) This is the first 3 in the series -- and the next one to come out is dedicated to me and is set in an interstellar society, real Alien Romance growing out of an urban fantasy series! The working title is DEMON IN THE DARK.

This is Susan Sizemore's urban fantasy Prime series, and you really don't want to miss any of them.



And here's the latest in the series


And I'm reading an ARC of the next one already.

What these 3 disparate (long running) series have in common is the choice of the initial moment in the main characters' lives when their story STARTS.

Choosing the wrong place to start is one of the most widespread classic errors that beginning writers make. I see it in writing workshops all the time. 9 out of 10 submissions will give me no choice but to explain that this manuscript has NO CONFLICT and it has no conflict BECAUSE it starts in the wrong place in the character's life, a place where "the story" of that character has not yet begun.

So a character floats into your mind and starts demanding you tell his/her story. You gotta do it, but where do you start?

Generally speaking in real life, troubles come in strings, disasters come in sets of 3's strung out over 12-18 months. (everyone knows this pattern even if they are certain astrology is silly)

Ever heard of literary license? When telling a character's story, while the character is telling you how things happened one thing at a time over years, you must take "literary license" and COMPRESS the troubles into thematically inter-related bunches to create a series of long novels -- or even one, great, fat novel.

And Blake Snyder got it right. The magic number is 6. That's two different transits each happening 3 times.

That's why troubles come in 3's. The outer planets go over a point in a natal chart, go retrograde back over that point as the Earth rounds its orbit, then (retrograde is an optical illusion, you know) the transiting planet goes "direct" and crosses that natal point again. If all the energy doesn't blow through on first contact, it may trickle through in 3 parts, or 2 parts. That's why the pattern is hard to see. Sometimes one or two pieces are missing.

Since the most powerful and memorable and re-readable novels and screenplays are about plots driven by Relationships not just mere Characterization, we should look into the details of Relationships for plot-drivers.

One kind of transit that always generates serious trouble in people's lives is the exquisitely slow transits of Pluto. Pluto is about power (yes, I know they demoted it from planet status - but that doesn't matter. "Nevertheless, it moves!")

And as discussed at some length previously here, Neptune is the plot-driver for the Romance experience.

Also, in Kabbalah, 6 is all about Love. I talk about that in detail in my books on Tarot that have never been published yet, The Not So Minor Arcana: Wands and The Not So Minor Arcana: Cups.

So if we look into the structure of power in relationships to find the 6 things to fix, we should find some plot-drivers that really have legs! And they will automatically be thematically related because they all manifest Pluto. Pluto "rules" or is associated with Scorpio, the natural 8th House, and thus is very much all about the more primal side of sexuality.

Keeping your 6 things to fix thematically related is yet another trick for avoiding writer's block. You will always know what comes next and why it's interesting because it's all about power.

Choosing those 6 things to fix in a thematic bundle is the secret to keeping the surprise twists coming and coming, and holding the interest of an audience, sometimes not just through one novel but way past a dozen novels in a series.

That secret of choosing plot-driver sets meshes perfectly with the way I explained using Scene Structure for pacing last week.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/6-tricks-of-scene-structure.html

Plotting is an artform, not just a set of technical, mechanical tricks. The tricks are the brushes, pigments and canvass you use to bring your characters to life.

Art is a SELECTIVE recreation of reality. Verisimilitude is not the same thing as reality itself, but verisimilitude awakens a sense of being within a different reality. I covered that in the following post:

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

Linnea Sinclair has developed a knack for explaining how to develop characters and I highly recommend you read her blog entries on that subject. I'm sure they are as scattered as my own have been, so maybe she'll drop a list of them as a comment on this blog entry.

Linnea Sinclair showed you a lot about Worldbuilding in her post

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/world-building-for-writers-or-why.html

I'm hoping the others on the blog who've discussed worldbuilding will drop the URLs of their posts into the comments on this post.

So this examination on Power as a plotting tool isn't so much about characters and their internal conflicts, but more about Relationships between or among characters and how internal conflicts buried deep in a character manifest (unexpectedly) in external Relationships, creating Blake's "6 Things That Need To Be Fixed" formula for the opening of a story.

In previous posts here, I've explored the ways that professional fiction writers can use Astrology and Tarot (not believe in it; use it) to enhance their artificial worldbuilding so that the result is believable even when not plausible.

My posts on Tarot based on Kabbalah, Astrology and Worldbuilding as well as other writing craft techniques will soon be edited, expanded and collected into volumes and made available as e-books and POD versions on paper.

The first set will be 5 volumes on Tarot with the envelope title The Not So Minor Arcana.

The Astrology and Worldbuilding sets will come later.

(see my Friendfeed box on the right column of this blog to find how to subscribe to me and be notified how to get these compilations, or just subscribe to this blog). But you can read much of it now by digging it out of this blog. Search on Tuesday - the day I post. Or you might start with these:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/07/astrology-just-for-writers.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/07/astrology-just-for-writers-part-2.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/10/astrology-just-for-writers-part-3-genre.html

There are 5 parts of Astrology for Writers so far, plus numerous references to Astrology as it can be used to create verisimilitude where there actually is none (i.e. a fantasy world you just built).

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/12/10-pentacles-cake-comes-out-of-oven.html (follow the links in this post back. Swords and Pentacles have been covered in 20 posts).

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/08/source-of-expository-lump.html is a key post in my Worldbuilding and writing craft series.

So you see, we've been building up to this more difficult subject of Relationship as a plot driving mechanism, one component craft technique at a time. The underlying purpose of all this analysis is to find a way to boost Alien Romance's respectability in the general media.

Keep your eye on the objective and the boring work will just get done. It's like watching TV while knitting. Do you really need to look at your hands?

So now let's knit together 6 kinds of Power that can make for problems (or solutions) in a Relationship while keeping the plot twisting, but keep our minds on AR on TV.

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

1) Control of the Agenda
2) Veto Power
3) Who holds the "gun" (real or figurative)
4) The Magic Address Book; The Golden Rolodex
5) Potentially embarrassing (fatal?) secrets
6) Purse Strings

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

1) Control of the Agenda

This may be the most famous kind of power there is in a relationship between one character and a larger group of characters. But it operates within couples, too.

It can be very subtle. And the more subtle the power over the agenda is, the more devastating a chokehold it can be.

Many people aren't even aware there is an agenda in every encounter, nevermind that it can be controlled without their knowledge.

Take an example ripped from the headlines today.

Congress is getting ready to thrust upon us a "Healthcare Reform" bill -- a huge bill, but none of them voting for it or against it will have read it because they couldn't understand it anyway.

The inner workings of Congress and the Senate are all about Agenda Control and everyone who browses the news understands how that works. It's seniority and majority party, getting Committee appointments, plus a lot of 18th Century customs that have lasted.

They never bring a bill to the floor unless they know how the vote will go. That means bills don't even get voted on unless the agenda is fully under control of the majority party.

That's pretty much how corporate executive committees work, too.

OK, we all understand that and can use it in stories.

But politicians love power and don't seem to know there is any other way to think. Some men seem to believe it's unmanly to think any other way, even in a Relationship.

When people say they don't want the government dictating their health insurance terms, or they don't want a government run single-payer system, Congress responds, "Oh. Yeah, I see your point. Well, don't worry. We'll GIVE YOU LOTS OF CHOICES so your health insurance will be your own choice."

As far as politicians are concerned that totally fixes the problem because it defuses your objection but they retain control of the agenda. Husbands on the road to divorce do this to their wives.

Congress did that with the Medicare Prescription insurance bill, and created a system where dozens of private companies "provide" prescription insurance as a proxy for the government, and "give you choices" none of which are adequate to anyone but the average person, and of course profitable to the offering company. But you must choose from the list presented to you, which is further limited by state laws. No matter which way you choose, the company wins. The agenda was set, but not by you.

Think about that power-play maneuver of retaining control of the agenda by limiting choices but forcing the other to choose from that menu and claiming that means freedom of choice.

Choosing among choices created by someone else is not the same thing as creating your own.

Think how that control of the menu of choices works in terms of a Romance relationship. Think how it might seem to non-humans.

What are the politicians doing? They know no other way to relate to voters except by exerting power over voters (so they can get elected).

How do they flimflam voters into thinking that the government is giving them FREEDOM OF CHOICE by giving them LOTS OF CHOICES?

It's like the dropdown menus in a program. THESE are the choices you get to choose from because that's all the choices the programmers could think to offer (or know how to offer or find profitable to offer).

GIVING the choices is "setting the agenda." This is what you have to choose from and if you want something else, or a little of this and a little of that, you can't have it.

The character who sets the choices before you is setting the agenda.

The character who chooses from that array of choices is the one without POWER in the transaction, no matter how large or varied the menu of choices.

The person who sets the agenda retains the power to LIMIT what you may choose from, and to force you to make a choice from that pre-set list where every item on it benefits them not you.

If you think about it, that's how the news media works (always has worked that way). "All the news that's fit to print" is still an agenda-enforcing chokehold because they choose what's fit and what's not. The internet is changing that business model faster than the media can adjust. The power centers in our cultures are shifting HARD.

So our taste in fiction has to shift, just as hard.

Think what non-human civilizations that had that power-center shift happen generations ago might be like. Then think of them arriving on earth to watch our comedy of errors.

Centralized Agenda Control is how business meetings are run at the corporate level - the one in charge sets the agenda, and anyone speaking outside that list of topics is out of order. Do that too often and presto - you're fired.

Local Town Council meetings are supposed to work that way but often frizzle out into shapeless shouting. Not good drama.

From a child's point of view, families are run from a centralized agenda (which is why we tend to run our families that way once we grow up -- don't know any other way).

"What's for dinner, Mom?" "Rice and Beans; or Beans and Rice, take your pick."

"Where are we going this year on vacation, Dad?" "The Jersey shore. Or there's that beach in Maryland you liked last year." "I don't want to go to a beach. I want to go to a Dude Ranch." "Not this year. Too expensive. And dangerous. There's a nice beach in Connecticut."

See? You can choose. You have freedom of choice, and you're BEING GIVEN A VOTE (given is the operative word). But you can't choose to stay home because you're a kid and can't stay alone. You can't have what you want because it's not on the menu. Choose a beach - any cheap beach. We're listening to you, but we're setting the agenda.

That's how people in our society use power and the process can generate a problem your main character must solve.

OK, so suppose we're writing Romeo and Juliet.

Juliet votes for the Connecticut beach and meets Romeo there. The entire plot and conflict of Romeo and Juliet stemmed from the fact that the parents set the agenda (but of course the parents didn't see it that way; they had their agenda set for them by society and the legitimacy of feuding as a way of life). For Romeo and Juliet, the resolution was that the kids didn't allow the parents to set their agenda.

So the position of Agenda Setter is the single most powerful position in any relationship, and that power is the most far-reaching and difficult to counter when it is exercised with subtlety. "Give the less powerful many, many MANY choices" and they'll never notice they have no freedom to choose.

So problem #1 for your main character can be either what choices to offer others, or whether to let someone else populate the menu of choices. How does your main character break out of that power-grip and assert his/her own agenda? Is your main character even aware he/she has been manipulated into a position of powerlessness? Or is holding only part of the power enough? What changes in your character's world to make it not-enough?

2) Veto Power

This is obvious. It's the power to say "NO" and make it stick.

But again, in our culture, it's socially and politically incorrect for certain people to use this power in certain ways. Thus the person with power can end up in a complex spiderweb trap with no way to exercise their power.

For an example, just read up on the lastest UN Security Council resolutions. That "Veto Power" was given to the 5 permanent members as a way of keeping them from exercising it. Say no to what others consider reasonable and you're dirt.

So one of the 6 problems your main character might have is a Veto Power they can't use. Or if they do use it anyway, the trouble generates the plot.

Take Romeo and Juliet again -- their veto power was suicide.

That's kind of like the DOOMSDAY MACHINE in Star Trek (actually, it's an old military concept). A weapon so powerful it could destroy both sides. You can't use it, and threats with it seem vapid. Well, Romeo and Juliet is a play Aliens might consider when threatening humans with a pre-set agenda of choices.

3) Who holds the "gun"

"The Gun" is a weapon somewhat short of Veto Power or a Doomsday Device, but hardly a precision tool in most hands. (Lone Ranger and Have Gun Will Travel fangirl here!)

The gun is a tool for doing damage of some sort. But it isn't enough to simply have a gun -- WHO holds that gun is the most important part of the threat to the power structure of a dynamic Relationship. The character of the gun-holder is the focus in this problem to be solved.

Take for example, an unarmed man in a sports suit and an armed man in an Armani suit. They are fleeing through a forest chased by a S.W.A.T team (maybe aliens who caught them spying on their beached UFO?).

The Armani Suit tries to use veto power on the Sports Suit who is busy setting the agenda for tricking the aliens into making a choice from a menu of one item.

Armani waves the gun with authority saying, "The man who holds the gun gets his way." Sports Suit snatches the gun right out of Armani's hands levels it at Armani and notes that, "The man who holds the gun gets his way, right?"

It isn't who has the weapon that matters to the plot. It's who controls it. Who knows how to use it.

People who are masters with weaponry don't have to carry weapons. Anyone who wishes to contend for control of the agenda will bring plenty of weapons for everyone. Let them sweat under the weight. They'll get tired and it'll be easier to vanquish them.

So Problem 3 might be that the character who understands a particular weapon (doesn't have to be a gun -- could be a whole space ship with no overt weapons, or a sword, or a length of electrical cord, or a magical chant) does not currently possess that weapon.

Or the complication might be that the person who does possess the weapon doesn't understand the weapon. A character with no shooting-range experience is more deadly when waving a gun than a trained Marine. The Marine will hit what she aims at, and that fact can be very comforting when things get dicey.

4) The Golden Rolodex

Well, Rolodex makes software these days, but the cliche reference is to the cardfile or listing of the ones who will respond to a message as expected and wanted. "I need a speedboat by this afternoon." "Ah, well, I know a man ..."

The person who always "knows a man who" is the one with great power in every relationship. The go-to guy/gal.

I had a cousin with the family golden rolodex. When she sent invitations to a party, the whole family turned out from 3 states around. When somebody else threw a party, hardly anyone came. When I needed to throw a graduation party for one of my kids in New York, I called her in New Jersey. The whole family turned out from 3 states around - and California too.

It's a cliche, but it works. If you need some outlandishly unique operation to go down just the way you want it, you need to know someone who knows everyone and can select who to ask.

Thanksgiving Dinner makes a great plot-event for solving one of the 6 problems.

The character in a Relationship who knows all the email addresses, phone numbers, and URLs is the most powerful person in the relationship, even more powerful than the agenda setter in certain circumstances.

Take for example, the classic situation of the suddenly widowed woman who doesn't even know how to notify her husband's relatives that he has died. The husband paid all the bills. She doesn't know the phone company's phone number, or how to pay the water bill, or where that information is filed, or how much they owe on the house.

The person who knows which people know each other, who knows all their skill sets and their family situations, their political leanings, and personal hobby horses - that person has POWER in every relationship.

Corporations discovered this by scientific research and changed the Personnel Department into the Human Resources department.

I recall when they first started sending questionnairs to employees demanding the employees confess all their hobbies and incidental interests and skills because the employees' skills were the wealth of the corporation. No shit, they really did that and it upset people. Today people comply without thinking about the invasion of privacy -- the power they are giving up for no money. (Well, maybe it'll pay off if the company out of the goodness of their hearts decides to offer a RIF'd worker another position in a different profession.)

So the general reader knows that not being on the good side of "the man who" could be a major one of the 6 problems your main character must solve, especially if he's slipped outside the set Agenda and gotten himself fired.

5) Potentially embarrassing (fatal? Awkward?) secrets

This can be leverage. See the TV show Leverage which is a sort of remake of Mission: Impossible. Knowledge is power. The TV show (USA NETWORK - CHARACTERS WELCOME)
also uses psychology and knowledge as power.

As with Romeo and Juliet, the solution to being blackmailed is to refuse to let another character set the agenda. Just out the info yourself.

Ah, but the price!

One of the 6 problems that have to be solved might have to do with who knows what about which.

Trust issues come in here. Can this character who caught you sleeping with your boss's wife be trusted to keep her mouth shut?

Perhaps in Romance, the Sexual Blackmail potential of secrets is the hottest way to focus attention on the interface between Power and Sex, and distinguish both from actual Romance.

Laughter, embarrassment, and physical danger all have something in common, which is why sex or a giggling-fit often come right after a big physical fight.

PAIN is the element in common. Laughter happens right at the edge of subtle emotional pain. Embarrassment is likewise right at the edge of a kind of potentially fatal emotional pain (something that can change your life and your basic character if rammed through to the logical finish). Embarrassment taken to dramatic conclusion is social-rejection, shunning, and that can be fatal. Ostracism is worse than jail because you can starve or freeze and nobody cares.

For a character who has a hot secret, in their past the potential consequences IF IT WERE KNOWN can make a really good Problem #5 to be fixed.

What is the resolution of, say, the problem where someone falls in love and does not confess before the wedding day that he's in the witness protection program and every characteristic that made his Bride fall in love with him (taste in art, love of music, clothing, even profession) was made up for him. His real self just isn't like that at all.

Does your character say "I Do" before or after confessing? Does someone swoop in with the information? Does the Bride shrug it off saying, "I knew that from the first day we met," because she's a telepath from outer space spying on Earth?

In fact, THE SECRET as a problem works best of all when two characters in a telepathic bonding discover secrets about the other. Each one figured they must know everything about the other because of the telepathic bonding. What a shock.

6) Purse Strings

Well, the financial control in a couple relationship has been used to enslave women since forever. Ho-hum. Cliche.

Oh? But what about the woman who has financial control. Today, in the USA, according to a number of polls I've seen, it's usually the woman who handles the finances. That's one reason so many ads are aimed at women. Women make the purchasing decisions.

And then there's the widow(er) who doesn't even know where all the spouse's bank accounts are but thought she did. Think about variations on Madoff's wife's position. Not the reality. The potential drama in the position depending on how the cash flowed through that family.

If you really need to understand a situation, "follow the money" is the most productive way to spend your investigative dollar.

Any number of Columbo episodes, and even Murder She Wrote, were based on following the money, finding the purse strings, and thus finding the seat of power in the dynamic relationships being exposed because of a murder.

One great example of a murder mystery series that's a sizzling romance is Faye Kellerman's Decker and Lazarus series:



Oh, yeah, don't forget there's plenty of variations on this purse-strings problem to explore with the same-sex couple with scattered assets and limited legal rights in certain states. Your main character could have the problem of getting actual hands on his/her rightful inheritance from a deceased spouse and become a suspect because of those efforts.

Then there's the college kid waiting for his parents to send money. Suppose they're fighting over how much support he should get. Suppose the parents get a divorce, and don't inform him until after the decree?

Or take international politics. There's the Fantasy TV show KINGS, for example, where the war between neighboring countries is promulgated by the guy funding the King, and when the King wants to make peace, the funds go into war-mongering and palace intrigue and skulldugery where the profits are. You think the King was fooled? Watch that show. Love, Romance, Infidelity, Intrigue, the stuff of human relationships.

I think some of these short summer-replacement series are actually concocted with the idea of making the profit from selling the DVD's. Follow the money.

The power of control of the wealth works wonderfully well on the interstellar scene because it's something we all have intimate knowledge of and can believe as a motive even for aliens. It's primal enough that we can infer that even aliens would have "resource control" as a goal.

Purse Strings don't just control coined money. The "Purse Strings" power-mongering is about any sort of concrete resource control. Oil interests don't seem too enthusiastic about solar panel deployment for power generation, do they? Remember the TV show Dallas? Suppose you wrote an episode of that today, in the "alternative energy" revolution?

Consider the Wild West stories of the cattlemen vs. the sheep runners.

Water rights are still a huge bone of contention in the West USA (Colorado lakes are down to I think it's about a third of where they should be at this time of year; Colorado feeds Arizona and California water, and hasn't enough left for itself.)

A recent FORBES article pinpoints some of the calculation fallacies behind the concept of the locavore (eating local produce). This is an article fraught with story ideas because of all the things there are to "fix" that you can choose from, and the equivocal facts. The article contends that it's more "green" for England to import lamb from New Zealand than to raise sheep locally.

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0803/opinions-energy-locavores-on-my-mind.html

Business Week online is also a fertile source of Six Things To Fix for your main character.

http://www.businessweek.com/

And those are two of the most obvious places for writers to watch for plot driving things to fix involving purse strings and power.

These magazines are all about power and the power-structure that we are so embedded in that we are as oblivious to it as we are to the air (unless there's a storm wind or a bad smell).

The reader/viewer's obliviousness is the writer's most powerful tool for inserting the surprising twist that is nevertheless obvious in retrospect.
------------

So there are 6 areas of Power in Relationship fraught with dramatic potential. And that's derived from only half of Pluto's possible effects and we barely touched on what Neptune can do to perceptions.

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