Converting Your Business Model to Self-Publishing Guest Post by Jaleta Clegg
But first a note by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Making the Leap from publishing through a publisher to self-publishing is a lot harder than simply starting out aiming to self-publish.
When I started out, I thought I'd enjoy publishing a fanzine. I tried it -- nope. As Dr. McCoy would have said, "I'm a writer not a publisher."
Today, those who have multiple talents from cover design to marketing, and from fiction writing to copy-writing, are spending their young years honing all these skills and building the social-network following to make them pay off.
All of this broad-ranging talent development will eventually change the world drastically, a change I look forward to eagerly. This is the way things started out, long before the fixed-type printing press, and only later became so complex a writer couldn't do it all alone.
Today, there are tools, websites, indie-editors, indie-book designers, indie-publicists, and so on combining skills to circumvent the large Internationally Owned publishing houses.
Bookstores are morphing as fast as they can, looking for a way around the collapsing marketing chains. Distributors and warehousing, trucking and delivery services are all going -- "printing" is a thing of the past, as most of the operations are now computerized, and printing presses consist of huge buildings streaming tons and tons of paper through to get printed.
Well, then there's CREATE SPACE and many other Print On Demand operations that can make paper books to order, rather than warehousing them. Most bookstores can't afford to carry POD books -- the margins just don't work with traditional distribution discounting.
But Amazon can and does make a profit on POD. It's all in the business model.
Many writers off the New York Times Bestseller list, in Romance, Mystery, Western, Historical, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and general fiction, have also abandoned the big publishers and are releasing their own backlists, sometimes along with new novels in their series, self-publishing through smashwords and other outlets. You'll find me on that organization's website, too, in the dropdown of authors listed.
They organized to help them promote their novels -- you can find their SALE ITEMS listed on this page:
http://www.backlistebooks.com/
There is a seething ferment of change coming at us out of the FANFIC communities, and we'll talk more about that in December or maybe January.
Meanwhile, listen here to a writer who has been working with a small press publisher, and finally had her career swerve into the self-publishing Indie business model despite all her best intentions.
-----------GUEST POST BY JALETA CLEGG--------
Hi, I'm Jaleta Clegg and I'm a self-published author now. (Check out my site at http://www.jaletac.com)
I never wanted to be a self-published author. I have a lot of author friends who love it and wouldn't have it any other way. I respect them. But I never wanted to be one of them. I published my first three books and lots of short stories through small presses. Sure, there were shortcomings and things that weren't as I'd envisioned when I set out to publish. But I was happy, satisfied with the choice I'd made.
Then it happened. My current publisher called me up. "Your books are great. Everyone loves them. They get great reviews. But no one's buying them. We're going to have to let the rest of the series go."It was a business decision, one I support. But not one I wanted to live with. After spending a week agonizing over my options, I took a deep breath and dove head-first into self-publishing. I'd dabbled before with some short stories, got deeper with two short story collections last June, but this was over-my-head jump-in-the-deep-end-and-hope-I-can-swim.
I won't lie and tell you self-publishing is all roses and loafing around on sofas watching TV and eating chocolate. It's a business. And sometimes you have to make hard choices. You have to do paperwork. You have to be your own cheerleader. You have to be your own boss. That's hard work.
An author writes, right? Yes. A publisher edits, does cover design and interior layout, writes cover blurbs and advertising blurbs, makes contacts for marketing, and gets the book out where people can find it and buy it. They also deal with taxes and business licensing and a myriad other business things. If you're about to jump into self-publishing, stop and ask yourself this question, "Do I really want to run a business and be my own boss?" If you thought meeting a publisher's deadline was difficult and put the pressure on, it's a thousand times worse when you're the boss. If you aren't self-motivated, don't jump onto the self-publishing bandwagon. You're the one who will have to poke and prod yourself into getting the edits done on time. You're the one who has to run naked in public, I mean make contacts for advertising and marketing your book. (Can you tell this is one I hate more than the others?) You're the one who will have to track income and sales and figure out taxes. It will eat your life if you let it. It isn't just about writing a great story when you self-publish, it's about taking care of all the details that publishers get paid to deal with.
Don't assume you can do it all yourself, either. I'm blind as a bat to many of my writing faults. I need a good editor to help my books shine. I haven't found one I can afford on my own yet, so I'm trusting my beta readers more than I should. That's another myth people think about self-publishing: It won't cost me anything to get this out there. That's true if you don't really care about editing it or creating a really nice cover. Don't do it yourself unless you're sure you have the skills and expertise to pull it off professionally. That said, there are many websites popping up that cater to the self-published author. The cover for Kumadai Run is directly from http://www.selfpubbookcovers.com/ and it's beautiful. It also cost me a small chunk of change. It was worth it, in my opinion. I've done cover design before and it's very hard. It takes hours to get those photos and fonts just right. I'm happy to pay someone else to make it for me.
It shouldn't cost you a fortune to get your book out, though. A few hundred dollars at most, all of which you can write off as a business expense, provided you've set up a business for your publishing. You haven't? Watch out for the government, then.
Would I go back to the publisher? Probably yes, mostly because it simplifies my life. Maybe I just haven't been bitten hard enough by the self-publishing bug. Maybe I really don't mind turning over control to someone else so I can focus on writing more books and taking care of my family.
But that's out of the picture now. What publisher would want books 4-11 of a space opera series, especially when the first three haven't sold well? No one. I could publish them myself or let the series fade and die unfinished. I couldn't disappoint the few rabid fans I've got, so I bit the bullet and put book 4 out there with the rest to follow.
So anyone want to read a fun space opera adventure series with a strong female lead character and a whole cast of sometimes kooky characters? The Fall of the Altairan Empire series is getting good reviews, especially from people who loved the campy golden age pulp sci-fi stories of the 50's and those who just enjoy a good fun beach read with plenty of action. Check out the books at http://www.altairanempire.com
Or look for my short stories at http://www.jaletac.com. They range from science fiction adventure stories that tie in to the series, to fantasy, to silly horror, to romance, and even a couple of weird westerns.And if anyone wants to trade books for website design, I could really use a website designer's help!
You can find me on Twitter as @Jaleta_Clegg or on Facebook as Jaleta Clegg's Altairan Empire series.
Or look me up on Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/Jaleta-Clegg/e/B0036WC0FC
Good resources I've found for self-published authors:
Covers - http://www.selfpubbookcovers.com/
Smashwords for ebooks - https://www.smashwords.com/
Createspace for paperbacks -
https://www.createspace.com/
Kindle Direct Publishing for Kindle ebooks - http://kdp.amazon.com/
Supportive sites for indie authors:
Bestsellerbound - a wonderful community and a great resource.
Need help? Just ask. http://quietfurybooks.com/messageboard/index.php
Facebook has many many groups including the Science Fiction Romance Brigade and Author's Think Tank
BroadUniverse - supporting women authors of science fiction, fantasy, and horror - http://broaduniverse.org/
---------END GUEST POST BY JALETA CLEGG--------------------
All right, Jaleta Clegg has pointed you at a variety of resources.
Remember, no publisher DOES IT ALL THEMSELVES.
The business model of publisher is that the publisher does almost nothing and makes a big profit doing it. They out-source the specialty tasks, and hire "editors" to choose books that will sell well via the distribution channels the publisher has established.
Each publisher's imprint, and each line within a publishing house, is designed so that all the books are "the same but different" -- everything with a particular logo on it is designed to appeal to a specific market. All publishers actually do is define markets, set up mechanisms for reaching those markets, and then feed product into the pipeline to those markets.
All editors do is conform the writer's product to the publisher's delivery channel's size and shape so it'll get to the reader the publisher targets (not the reader the writer targets; the reader the publisher targets. You will sell well if your writing conforms to your publisher's delivery channel.)
If you are going to be your own publisher, you should be thinking in terms of the target market you need, how to reach that market, and where to get the individual Talents you need to package your merchandise to appeal to that market. That is what publishers do - they package and deliver a uniform product.
The more uniform the product, the more regular the delivery of it, the bigger the publisher's profit. It's that simple. Be your own publisher; pocket the publisher's share of what your book can earn.
Think of this in two ways while researching:
A) You are a writer looking at your publishing options;
B) You are a character in a novel about having to look at your publishing options.
Either way, you will learn a lot by clicking links in this post.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg
Showing posts with label Guest Post. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guest Post. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Tuesday, June 04, 2013
Settings Part 4: Detail - Guest Post by J. H. Bogran
These posts that appear on this blog on Tuesdays are
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
But occasionally, I present a Guest Post by someone else. Today, we have an interesting one on SETTING.
As I noted in Part 1 of this series on SETTING, I ran into Jose Bogran on the twitter chat #scifichat (Friday 2-4 PM Eastern) and today we have a second writing craft post from him.
Good choices for SETTING come directly from pondering your THEME which we've been discussing in the advanced set of posts on Theme-Plot Integration these last few weeks.
We'll have to get down to the nitty-gritty of Theme-Setting Integration eventually. One of the first articles I ever wrote on writing craft had to do with the use of DETAIL, so I found it fascinating that J. H. Bogran has focused in on DETAIL in SETTING.
Here are the links to prior posts on THEME-SETTING
The index post collecting long-ago posts is here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/index-to-theme-plot-integration.html
And the last few weeks have been extending those posts:
Theme-Plot Integration Part 8 - Use of Co-incidence in Plotting
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-8-use-of-co.html
Part 9
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-9-use-of-co.html
Part 10:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-10-use-of.html
And here is the series on SETTING starting with a Guest Post by J. H. Bogran:
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
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/04/settings-part-3-dreamspy-in-e-book.html
In Part 3, examining my space-war novel DREAMSPY, we begin to look at the steps in reasoning from IDEA to CONCEPT to THEME to SETTING, to see how a writer chooses to put a particular story into a specific place.
As I've said before, it's kind of like driving a car -- you do most of the work with the non-verbal, mostly inaccessible part of your brain. That's why it seems so mysterious to writers who just "have an idea" and then just "write the novel." They don't know how they do what they do or why they do it a certain way and not another way. If they've got it right, they sell big, and if they miss they can't sell at all.
Those very Talented writers don't make great teachers because they can't explain what they are doing (because they don't know.)
The rest of us, though, have to figure out how to do it -- and so the process can be revealed to beginners, saving sometimes years of struggle.
J. H. Bogran is such a "beginner" -- working in two languages! OK, from my perspective, he's a beginner.
So it is worth our while to pay attention as these techniques are laid out by someone who has just learned to do it, and with time we may watch Bogran polish techniques and then explain how that happened.
Here, then is a new Guest Post.
--------------------- GUEST POST-------------
Setting in the details
by
J. H. Bográn
Back on part one, I discussed the larger aspects of a setting and its direct relation with the plot, characters and other intrinsically relevant areas of a novel. This time around I’d like to expand into the old adage that the beauty is in the details. Jacqueline even reminded us about Star Trek being first pitched as Wagon Train to the Stars. Something I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t know, so bear in mind I’m such a sucker for trivia bits. So, thank you Jacqueline for the added bit to my trivia library!
The setting is more than just a location. It is the place where the events of a particular scene happen. A full description of a room can break the flow of the plot, but when carefully planned it can serve to enhance it.
Picture a man that regularly visits the city museum. Except, today is different because his wife was buried the day before, and now he’s seeking refuge in the paint strokes of masters. Today he notices for the first time a tiny frame, no bigger than a post card, depicting a sailboat riding tall waves amidst a storm. He watches mesmerized as he thinks of people aboard: will they ever reach the coast or will the wave bury the little boat? He recognizes the tune coming out of the P.A. system. It’s an instrumental version of Michael Bolton’s “When I’m back on my feet again,” and although he had always hated the cheesy pop star, he now finds himself humming along the song as he discovers he remembers the lyrics.
See how the painting and the tune mirror the man’s feelings? He had probably seen the painting a thousand times, and heard the environmental music an equal number of times. They add to the setting, but also to the feelings of the character.
One of the main differences that I’ve found between writing screenplays and novels is the level of description required for each. In the screenplay, description is generally limited to one line: Day. Interior. Jose’s room. Now, try to get away with that in a novel, I dare you! One of my early writing teachers suggested to make a drawing, and to mark where the doors, windows and furniture were located. He claimed the knowledge would slip through the writing even if we didn’t use all of the details. I’ve learned other tips and tricks since then, but one of those things is that he was right!
In the case of my sci-fi short The Outpost, I conceived space stations guarding the entrance to the Solar System. Believe it or not, the awful drawings I made must still be lying around somewhere in the rusty two-drawer file cabinet. I visualized the dimensions, colors, and plenty of other little details. Not all of them went into the final draft, of course. Here’s the opening of The Outpost with the details that made it to the final draft:
Excerpt from The Outpost (Red Rose Publishing, 2008)
Karl Jackson awoke suddenly to find his face barely an inch from the metal ceiling; he was floating.
“Joe! What happened with the gravity?”
Monitoring the whole of space is an impossible task. Thus, humans settled to monitoring the edges of the solar system. They figured that Earth could only be seriously affected by something entering the system. Thousands of outposts peppered the outskirts to detect anything coming in.
Track Seven was one of many cylindrical-type stations that monitored traffic in and out of our home planet. The top of the station was a transparent dome, enabling the operators a full 360-degree view. The main control room contained two chairs placed back to back, each facing a console full of monitors, transmitters, and switches that could make the inexperienced dizzy in a matter of seconds. Between the chairs was a trap door leading to the living quarters below.
Joe Doyle’s head appeared through the hole, relief visible on his face. “Didn’t know you were awake,” he said with his usual heavy drawl. It had always amazed Karl that Joe had embraced the Texas accent so completely, having only lived there for a couple of years before taking his post in NASA.
End of excerpt.
Yep, the station is very similar to a capsule you would find inside a Walgreen’s bottle. Not sure why I designed my guarding stations that way; perhaps I had a headache and took the hint from a gel-cap.
In short, not only do you have to have a detail list, but you also must choose which ones to use.
The help make the decision, I’d recommend you consider their impact on the characters, their significance to the plot, and finally, their ability to weave seamlessly into the story.
Author Bio and links:
J. H. Bográn, born and raised in Honduras, is the son of a journalist. He ironically prefers to write fiction rather than fact. José’s genre of choice is thrillers, but he likes to throw in a twist of romance into the mix. His works include novels and short stories in both English and Spanish. He’s a member of the International Thriller Writers where he also serves as the Thriller Roundtable Coordinator.
Website at: http://www.jhbogran.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jhbogran
Twitter: @JHBogran
Direct links to books:
The Outpost: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003ZDO3SY
Deeds of a Master Archer: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009DPAO7C
Treasure Hunt: http://www.amazon.com/gp/B004MDLSWK
The Assasin's Mistress: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007BOC0OW
----------END GUEST POST-------------
What I find interesting here is that when I decided to be a professional writer, even before HIGH SCHOOL, I read copies of Writer's Digest and all the books on stage, screen and novel writing in my local library.
That trick of sketching the layout of an environment where you are placing a scene or story was often repeated in those sources (which were old and falling apart when I read them!), so I adopted it right at the very start of my first attempts to create a character and his/its story (my first was a blob).
I have some very crude sketches of the venue for scenes in some of my published novels.
I particularly sketch scenes at formal dinner tables or long tables in restaurants, noting who is sitting beside whom, and across from whichever other characters. Imagine the noise level, the cross-talk, and be sure that the bits of dialogue you want your character to hear or overhear are actually within his/its/hers hearing distance in that echoing environment.
Now, the big caveat for new writers is this: Don't Make Sketches For Every Scene!
And don't describe who is sitting, standing, walking, riding next to or across from whom UNLESS YOU ARE SETTING UP AN ACTION-SCENE.
When a writer introduces a scene with the local floor-plan or layout in excruciating detail, it is a signal to the reader that all hell is about to break loose.
For example, if you establish a WINDOW on the 20th floor, with a tiny ledge beneath it, you jolly well better have that ledge be either the escape route for the hero or the entry-route for the villain, or the hiding place of a Key, weapon, whatever.
If you disappoint the reader by describing details you don't later use as part of the PLOT, the next scene where you include detail the reader will likely just skip the detail. The third scene you do that in, the reader will toss the book aside -- or maybe in the trash.
And this is where that all-powerful and all-important element THEME comes in.
How do you decide which details to USE IN THE PLOT and thus describe in many words?
Each time you set up a floor-plan or load passengers into a car in a given arrangement, or seat them all at a dinner table, or sprinkle them around a crowded restaurant, first go into that setting yourself and open your eyes (like a swimmer opening eyes under water) and take a good look around.
You will see thousands of details in that setting. SELECT the four, or no more than five, that bespeak the THEME.
Ask yourself, "Given that my POV character is in THIS MOOD, what exactly WILL SHE NOTICE?" And then, what will she NOT NOTICE? What she doesn't notice can be a cited detail in your narrative, but only if it is a near-fatal oversight by the POV character because of her mood.
Bogran illustrated this point very well in the Museum scene. The character is in a MOOD because of the funeral. Though the setting is familiar, suddenly previously overlooked details become IMPORTANT.
Now the story didn't progress to the point where the storm-tossed ship and the particular song he heard would become clues in solving a murder mystery, or lead to discovering the painting was a forgery which would lead to meeting the museum curator and falling in love with her. But it could have!
Once the character's MOOD and the details that mood REVEALS are set up, your reader is drawn deep into your story.
The Museum Scene described lacks only the DETAILS that will be the springboard into what happens NEXT to this bereaved man because of his MOOD at that point.
For example, perhaps the Museum is about to be robbed, and this man is a retired Security Guard who really knows the place. Perhaps among the details of the ship painting and music, something catches his eye and he's uneasy but doesn't know why. Inspecting the tiny frame, he notices that one of the security cameras is dark when it should have a tiny flashing light showing from that angle. Hmmm. He looks around for someone to report that to. BANG the robbers burst into the display room pushing the Museum Curator in front of them.
NOW WHAT? the reader is thinking.
Do you see how this works? The reader expects the details of the Museum setting to have some significance in terms of WHAT HAPPENS NEXT (i.e. the plot). The detailed detail description is not just to explicate the main character's mood of the moment, but to explicate the theme which can only be done via plot -- via something happening because.
Remember Plot = Because Line.
Because his wife died, because he's just come from her funeral, he seeks refuge in something familiar, and because he's THERE at just that time, THIS HAPPENS TO HIM, because of which he DOES SOMETHING, because of which SOMETHING HAPPENS, because of which HE DOES SOMETHING ELSE -- etc -- until his GRIEF (the theme here is grieving) is RESOLVED.
As I set it up, this retired Security Guard would thereupon risk his life to save the Museum Curator from the Robbers, and possibly her career from ruin BECAUSE HE NOTICED THE DEAD CAMERA and had time to DO SOMETHING that thereupon allowed him to be able to save her life, BECAUSE OF WHICH she reacts in some way to resolve his grief.
Choice of detail to describe is not arbitrary. It's not an "art." It's not mysterious and doesn't require Talent. Choice of detail is like choice of vocabulary -- sounding spontaneous is a matter of careful preparation. (a Robert Heinlein quote - can you name the source?)
by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
But occasionally, I present a Guest Post by someone else. Today, we have an interesting one on SETTING.
As I noted in Part 1 of this series on SETTING, I ran into Jose Bogran on the twitter chat #scifichat (Friday 2-4 PM Eastern) and today we have a second writing craft post from him.
Good choices for SETTING come directly from pondering your THEME which we've been discussing in the advanced set of posts on Theme-Plot Integration these last few weeks.
We'll have to get down to the nitty-gritty of Theme-Setting Integration eventually. One of the first articles I ever wrote on writing craft had to do with the use of DETAIL, so I found it fascinating that J. H. Bogran has focused in on DETAIL in SETTING.
Here are the links to prior posts on THEME-SETTING
The index post collecting long-ago posts is here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/index-to-theme-plot-integration.html
And the last few weeks have been extending those posts:
Theme-Plot Integration Part 8 - Use of Co-incidence in Plotting
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-8-use-of-co.html
Part 9
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-9-use-of-co.html
Part 10:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-10-use-of.html
And here is the series on SETTING starting with a Guest Post by J. H. Bogran:
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
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/04/settings-part-3-dreamspy-in-e-book.html
In Part 3, examining my space-war novel DREAMSPY, we begin to look at the steps in reasoning from IDEA to CONCEPT to THEME to SETTING, to see how a writer chooses to put a particular story into a specific place.
As I've said before, it's kind of like driving a car -- you do most of the work with the non-verbal, mostly inaccessible part of your brain. That's why it seems so mysterious to writers who just "have an idea" and then just "write the novel." They don't know how they do what they do or why they do it a certain way and not another way. If they've got it right, they sell big, and if they miss they can't sell at all.
Those very Talented writers don't make great teachers because they can't explain what they are doing (because they don't know.)
The rest of us, though, have to figure out how to do it -- and so the process can be revealed to beginners, saving sometimes years of struggle.
J. H. Bogran is such a "beginner" -- working in two languages! OK, from my perspective, he's a beginner.
So it is worth our while to pay attention as these techniques are laid out by someone who has just learned to do it, and with time we may watch Bogran polish techniques and then explain how that happened.
Here, then is a new Guest Post.
--------------------- GUEST POST-------------
Setting in the details
by
J. H. Bográn
Back on part one, I discussed the larger aspects of a setting and its direct relation with the plot, characters and other intrinsically relevant areas of a novel. This time around I’d like to expand into the old adage that the beauty is in the details. Jacqueline even reminded us about Star Trek being first pitched as Wagon Train to the Stars. Something I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t know, so bear in mind I’m such a sucker for trivia bits. So, thank you Jacqueline for the added bit to my trivia library!
The setting is more than just a location. It is the place where the events of a particular scene happen. A full description of a room can break the flow of the plot, but when carefully planned it can serve to enhance it.
Picture a man that regularly visits the city museum. Except, today is different because his wife was buried the day before, and now he’s seeking refuge in the paint strokes of masters. Today he notices for the first time a tiny frame, no bigger than a post card, depicting a sailboat riding tall waves amidst a storm. He watches mesmerized as he thinks of people aboard: will they ever reach the coast or will the wave bury the little boat? He recognizes the tune coming out of the P.A. system. It’s an instrumental version of Michael Bolton’s “When I’m back on my feet again,” and although he had always hated the cheesy pop star, he now finds himself humming along the song as he discovers he remembers the lyrics.
See how the painting and the tune mirror the man’s feelings? He had probably seen the painting a thousand times, and heard the environmental music an equal number of times. They add to the setting, but also to the feelings of the character.
One of the main differences that I’ve found between writing screenplays and novels is the level of description required for each. In the screenplay, description is generally limited to one line: Day. Interior. Jose’s room. Now, try to get away with that in a novel, I dare you! One of my early writing teachers suggested to make a drawing, and to mark where the doors, windows and furniture were located. He claimed the knowledge would slip through the writing even if we didn’t use all of the details. I’ve learned other tips and tricks since then, but one of those things is that he was right!
In the case of my sci-fi short The Outpost, I conceived space stations guarding the entrance to the Solar System. Believe it or not, the awful drawings I made must still be lying around somewhere in the rusty two-drawer file cabinet. I visualized the dimensions, colors, and plenty of other little details. Not all of them went into the final draft, of course. Here’s the opening of The Outpost with the details that made it to the final draft:
Excerpt from The Outpost (Red Rose Publishing, 2008)
Karl Jackson awoke suddenly to find his face barely an inch from the metal ceiling; he was floating.
“Joe! What happened with the gravity?”
Monitoring the whole of space is an impossible task. Thus, humans settled to monitoring the edges of the solar system. They figured that Earth could only be seriously affected by something entering the system. Thousands of outposts peppered the outskirts to detect anything coming in.
Track Seven was one of many cylindrical-type stations that monitored traffic in and out of our home planet. The top of the station was a transparent dome, enabling the operators a full 360-degree view. The main control room contained two chairs placed back to back, each facing a console full of monitors, transmitters, and switches that could make the inexperienced dizzy in a matter of seconds. Between the chairs was a trap door leading to the living quarters below.
Joe Doyle’s head appeared through the hole, relief visible on his face. “Didn’t know you were awake,” he said with his usual heavy drawl. It had always amazed Karl that Joe had embraced the Texas accent so completely, having only lived there for a couple of years before taking his post in NASA.
End of excerpt.
Yep, the station is very similar to a capsule you would find inside a Walgreen’s bottle. Not sure why I designed my guarding stations that way; perhaps I had a headache and took the hint from a gel-cap.
In short, not only do you have to have a detail list, but you also must choose which ones to use.
The help make the decision, I’d recommend you consider their impact on the characters, their significance to the plot, and finally, their ability to weave seamlessly into the story.
Author Bio and links:
J. H. Bográn, born and raised in Honduras, is the son of a journalist. He ironically prefers to write fiction rather than fact. José’s genre of choice is thrillers, but he likes to throw in a twist of romance into the mix. His works include novels and short stories in both English and Spanish. He’s a member of the International Thriller Writers where he also serves as the Thriller Roundtable Coordinator.
Website at: http://www.jhbogran.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jhbogran
Twitter: @JHBogran
Direct links to books:
The Outpost: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003ZDO3SY
Deeds of a Master Archer: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009DPAO7C
Treasure Hunt: http://www.amazon.com/gp/B004MDLSWK
The Assasin's Mistress: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007BOC0OW
----------END GUEST POST-------------
What I find interesting here is that when I decided to be a professional writer, even before HIGH SCHOOL, I read copies of Writer's Digest and all the books on stage, screen and novel writing in my local library.
That trick of sketching the layout of an environment where you are placing a scene or story was often repeated in those sources (which were old and falling apart when I read them!), so I adopted it right at the very start of my first attempts to create a character and his/its story (my first was a blob).
I have some very crude sketches of the venue for scenes in some of my published novels.
I particularly sketch scenes at formal dinner tables or long tables in restaurants, noting who is sitting beside whom, and across from whichever other characters. Imagine the noise level, the cross-talk, and be sure that the bits of dialogue you want your character to hear or overhear are actually within his/its/hers hearing distance in that echoing environment.
Now, the big caveat for new writers is this: Don't Make Sketches For Every Scene!
And don't describe who is sitting, standing, walking, riding next to or across from whom UNLESS YOU ARE SETTING UP AN ACTION-SCENE.
When a writer introduces a scene with the local floor-plan or layout in excruciating detail, it is a signal to the reader that all hell is about to break loose.
For example, if you establish a WINDOW on the 20th floor, with a tiny ledge beneath it, you jolly well better have that ledge be either the escape route for the hero or the entry-route for the villain, or the hiding place of a Key, weapon, whatever.
If you disappoint the reader by describing details you don't later use as part of the PLOT, the next scene where you include detail the reader will likely just skip the detail. The third scene you do that in, the reader will toss the book aside -- or maybe in the trash.
And this is where that all-powerful and all-important element THEME comes in.
How do you decide which details to USE IN THE PLOT and thus describe in many words?
Each time you set up a floor-plan or load passengers into a car in a given arrangement, or seat them all at a dinner table, or sprinkle them around a crowded restaurant, first go into that setting yourself and open your eyes (like a swimmer opening eyes under water) and take a good look around.
You will see thousands of details in that setting. SELECT the four, or no more than five, that bespeak the THEME.
Ask yourself, "Given that my POV character is in THIS MOOD, what exactly WILL SHE NOTICE?" And then, what will she NOT NOTICE? What she doesn't notice can be a cited detail in your narrative, but only if it is a near-fatal oversight by the POV character because of her mood.
Bogran illustrated this point very well in the Museum scene. The character is in a MOOD because of the funeral. Though the setting is familiar, suddenly previously overlooked details become IMPORTANT.
Now the story didn't progress to the point where the storm-tossed ship and the particular song he heard would become clues in solving a murder mystery, or lead to discovering the painting was a forgery which would lead to meeting the museum curator and falling in love with her. But it could have!
Once the character's MOOD and the details that mood REVEALS are set up, your reader is drawn deep into your story.
The Museum Scene described lacks only the DETAILS that will be the springboard into what happens NEXT to this bereaved man because of his MOOD at that point.
For example, perhaps the Museum is about to be robbed, and this man is a retired Security Guard who really knows the place. Perhaps among the details of the ship painting and music, something catches his eye and he's uneasy but doesn't know why. Inspecting the tiny frame, he notices that one of the security cameras is dark when it should have a tiny flashing light showing from that angle. Hmmm. He looks around for someone to report that to. BANG the robbers burst into the display room pushing the Museum Curator in front of them.
NOW WHAT? the reader is thinking.
Do you see how this works? The reader expects the details of the Museum setting to have some significance in terms of WHAT HAPPENS NEXT (i.e. the plot). The detailed detail description is not just to explicate the main character's mood of the moment, but to explicate the theme which can only be done via plot -- via something happening because.
Remember Plot = Because Line.
Because his wife died, because he's just come from her funeral, he seeks refuge in something familiar, and because he's THERE at just that time, THIS HAPPENS TO HIM, because of which he DOES SOMETHING, because of which SOMETHING HAPPENS, because of which HE DOES SOMETHING ELSE -- etc -- until his GRIEF (the theme here is grieving) is RESOLVED.
As I set it up, this retired Security Guard would thereupon risk his life to save the Museum Curator from the Robbers, and possibly her career from ruin BECAUSE HE NOTICED THE DEAD CAMERA and had time to DO SOMETHING that thereupon allowed him to be able to save her life, BECAUSE OF WHICH she reacts in some way to resolve his grief.
Choice of detail to describe is not arbitrary. It's not an "art." It's not mysterious and doesn't require Talent. Choice of detail is like choice of vocabulary -- sounding spontaneous is a matter of careful preparation. (a Robert Heinlein quote - can you name the source?)
by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Tuesday, January 03, 2012
Story Springboards Part 1: Art Heists by Patricia McLinn
Today we have a wonderful article by Patricia McLinn on the romantic aspects of the Art Theif. We're all fans of Remington Steele, and It Takes A Thief, and now White Collar, but what is it about these television shows that are so fascinating to Romance readers?
Oh, and if you haven't read any Patricia McLinn titles, oh please do look up her novels! See end of her post for how to find her publications.
-----------GUEST POST BY PATRICA McLINN ------------
Oh, and if you haven't read any Patricia McLinn titles, oh please do look up her novels! See end of her post for how to find her publications.
-----------GUEST POST BY PATRICA McLINN ------------
Fiction, as
it turns out, is way better than fact when it comes to art heists.
But that’s
starting at the end of this blog, and I should take you back to the start,
which was my offhand Tweet wondering why art heists stir the imagination. That
sparked a Twitter/e-mail exchange on the topic with my esteemed blog hostess.
From what
seemed to be off the top of her head, Jacqueline listed nearly a dozen angles a
fiction writer could pursue while playing in the art heist sandbox
--There's the historical importance - holding a piece of history
--There's profit - the black market fence has a client if you can get the painting or statue
--There's stealing it to keep it just for yourself, very personal, very intimate.
--There's maybe the thief is a reincarnation of the painter or the subject and just wants the thing and doesn't know why?
--There's the simple thing like climbing a mountain -- break through their security because it's there (like hackers).
--There's just hurting the owner because you don't like him/her/it.
--There's striking back at the nose-in-the-air art-patron public because you don't like them.
--There's "liberating" the art from the dog-in-the-manger owner so that posterity can have it (stealing from the Nazis).
--There's keeping it from destruction in a shooting war (think recent events in Egypt).
--There are all the things about Art that make it interesting -- and then there's the whole D&D board game fascination with STEALING (the Thief character with all sorts of sub-traits).
--There's the whole "magical" dimension of how great art depicts or connects to the human Group Mind -- and all the voodoo that can be done that way.
As a
novelist, that list has me salivating.
However, I also have a background in journalism, including being an
editor at the Washington Post for mumble-mumble years. As Lawrence Block said
in the title of one of his wonderful books on writing, I love TELLING LIES FOR
FUN AND PROFIT – but I want to know when
I’m telling lies. Mark Twain gave great advice: “Get your facts first, and then
you can distort them as much as you please.”
So, I
started checking into why the public finds art heists romantic and alluring,
and the psychology behind art heists.
Sorry,
folks, the experts agree that to the extent that the public finds art heists
romantic and alluring, it’s because we don’t know the truth behind them. (Note
to anyone writing an article about art theft: Cary Grant went after jewels, not
art in TO CATCH A THIEF. Saw that wrong several places.)
Former
Scotland Yard detective Charles Hill is reported to have said that stealing
great works is less a daring act than a
sign of an unimaginative thief [[http://www.simoleonsense.com/the-psychology-of-art-thieves]],
because the thief is doomed to obtaining nothing near the true value of the
art.
Yet thieves
do steal art – reportedly as many as 20,000 pieces a year in Italy. [[http://www.artcrime.info/facts.htm]] Why?
Motivation One: USA Today [[http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-05-23-Parisartheist-motivation_N.htm]]
quoted Joel Silberberg, Director of the Division of Forensic Psychiatry at Northwestern University, as saying, “If you look back
historically at other pieces of stolen art, the motivation is idiosyncratic.
Look at the Mona Lisa's theft — taken from The Louvre in Paris in 1911 by an Italian patriot. He
resented that one of Italy's
greatest pieces of art was being displayed in France. So you get individual motivation
there, or a political motivation.”
(For more
on the 100th anniversary of the Mona Lisa theft earlier this year, click here.
[[http://blogs.artinfo.com/secrethistoryofart/tag/kempton-bunton]].)
Motivation Two: Said Hill: “Then
there’s the trophy-hunting art thieves. They don’t make much money at all and
cause themselves endless aggravation. But they enjoy doing it. It gives them a
buzz.”
Let’s call
those Crackpot 1 and Crackpot 2.
Motivation Three: Money.
A few of the money-motivated art thieves might be stealing to fulfill an
order from an unscrupulous art collector, but not many.
Instead,
according to the experts, most of the money garnered from art thefts goes to –
And here’s
where facts will forever change my view of the fiction.
-- organized crime and terrorism.
Yikes.
Makes the crackpots look appealing by contrast. But the crackpots are in the
minority when it comes to art thieves.
According
to the website of the Association for Researching into Crimes against Art
(known as ARCA[[http://www.artcrime.info/facts.htm]]): “Most art crime since
the 1960s is perpetrated either by, or on behalf of, international organized
crime syndicates.”
ARCA, citing
information it “compiled
from sources including Interpol, the FBI, Scotland Yard, Carabinieri,
independent research and ARCA projects,” also says, “Art crime
represents the third highest grossing criminal enterprise worldwide, behind
only drugs and arms trafficking. It brings in $2-6 billion per year, most
of which goes to fund international organized crime syndicates.”
That just
ground my image of the dashing art thief into dust.
Two other
areas of art theft (though not heists) that greatly concern the experts are
fraud/forgeries (so the Audrey Hepburn-Peter O’Toole movie HOW TO STEAL A MILLION
is practically a documentary, right?) and theft by destruction, most often
perpetrated by repressive groups (think of the Taliban’s destruction of the
Bamyan statues.)
So, have
the facts taken all the fun out of the fiction?
Not,
necessarily. First, of course, there’s
that whole fiction thing -- as in we make stuff up. As fiction writers, we don’t have to adhere
to the most statistically likely thing to happen.
Also, there
are some intriguing elements among the facts.
Take ARCA.
Among other
things, it offers a blog with current art-theft news [[http://art-crime.blogspot.com/]].
(Forgive them the incorrect “it’s”.)
There’s
also the history of Noah Charney, founding director of ARCA. He says he
developed an interest in art crime while researching a novel, THE ART THIEF.
“I am most interested in the field from a practical
standpoint—how the academic study can help to inform contemporary law
enforcement and art protection,” he says on his website[[http://www.noahcharney.com/bio.htm]].
In June 2006 he held a conference “in Cambridge entitled ‘Art Theft: History,
Prevention, Detection, Solution.’ It was
attended by the heads of the FBI, Scotland Yard, and Carabinieri Art squads
(Vernon Rapley, and Col. Giovanni Pastore) as well as academics and art
professionals with interest, if not previous experience, in the study of art
crime” and since then, he says, he has
forged alliances with the law enforcement experts.
How about
pitting a Charney-esque character against a terrorist mastermind in a clock-ticking
effort to protect, oh, say, a Vermeer exhibit?
If that
doesn’t get your fiction-writing juices going, how about this:
The
should-be-world-renowned Museum of Bad Art (MOBA), in Somerville, Mass.,
has been the victim of two art heists.
First, the
painting Eileen was taken in 1966. According to the museum’s Wikipedia
entry [[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Bad_Art]],
“The museum offered a reward of $6.50 for the return of Eileen,” and donors
later increasing the reward to $36.73. To no avail. A decade later, someone
claiming to be the thief demanded a $5,000 ransom. MOBA refused. The painting
was returned.
Despite a
sign proclaiming "Warning. This gallery is protected by fake video
cameras", another criminal struck in 2004, leaving a note demanding $10
for Rebecca Harris' Self Portrait as a Drainpipe. This time, the art was
returned soon after the theft … with a $10 donation.
If these
heinous crimes don’t stir your imagination, you are far too stolid a soul to be
writing fiction.
~ ~ ~
Patricia McLinn [[http://www.PatriciaMclinn.com]] is the author of
26 novels, focusing (as much as she focuses on anything) on relationships. Many are now available as e-books at the
major outlets. She encourages you to purchase those she’s indie published
(without overtly urging you not to buy those from a publisher.) Her first
non-fiction book – WORD WATCH: A Writer’s Guide to the Slippery, Sneaky, and
Otherwise Tricky -- draws on her mumble-mumble years as an editor at the
Washington Post and a lifetime of cranky reading. Her first mystery will be
released in June 2012, and at that time she will encourage you to buy from that
publisher.
You can follow Patricia at Twitter [[http://twitter.com/PatriciaMcLinn]]
and Facebook [[https://www.facebook.com/PatriciaMcLinn]]. WORD WATCH Tweets
[[http://twitter.com/WordWatchBook]] and Facebooks [[https://www.facebook.com/WordWatchTheBook]]
for itself.
---------- END GUEST POST BY PATRICIA MCLINN -----------
POSTED BY JACQUELINE LICHTENBERG
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Part 2 of this series is at
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/04/story-springboards-part-2-tv-shows.html
Parts 3 and 4 will be:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/story-springboards-part-3-art-of.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/story-springboards-part-4-art-of.html
Part 2 of this series is at
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/04/story-springboards-part-2-tv-shows.html
Parts 3 and 4 will be:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/story-springboards-part-3-art-of.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/story-springboards-part-4-art-of.html
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Doranna Durgin On Changes in Publishing
C. J. Cherryh introduced me to Doranna Durgin on Facebook because Doranna had begun a Group called Backlist eBooks. Here below is more from Doranna Durgin directly.
Backlist eBooks is a group of professional writers who've been working in Mass Market and Hardcover (many in Romance) now posting their own novels in eBook at bargain prices. Here's an Amazon store full of their work:
http://astore.amazon.com/backlebook-20
You can see the list of names at the left, click and see a list of their eBook releases. Amazing!
Helping build this Group has been an adventure, and I don't regret a moment of the time spent on it, though the last few weeks I've been ignoring all the List posts from Backlist eBooks.
I will get back to participating in the Group's projects (which are legion, and include an anthology I'm probably going to be in) now that I've finished the 118,000 word novel, THE FARRIS CHANNEL (Sime~Gen #12) and now it's in production. The previous 11 Sime~Gen novels are already available in eBook and POD. You can find them listed neatly here:
http://astore.amazon.com/simegen-20
Margaret Carter said nice things about Sime~Gen on this blog:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/04/new-sime-gen-books.html
Since I met Doranna I've read one of her novels, THE RECKONERS from Tor and reviewed it (rave; 5 star) for my column scheduled for August 2011 http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2011/
Yes, she writes our kind of stuff. Get to know her!
.She says of herself:
~~
Doranna Durgin writes across genres to include fantasy, mystery, tie-ins and various flavors of romance--from the action-oriented Bombshells to STORM OF RECKONING, her latest paranormal release; she also manages the Backlist eBooks project with author partner-in-crime Patricia Ryan. She spends what's left of her time hanging around with horses, dogs, and wildflowers.
For more about Doranna's books, you can catch up with her at her webstead, FaceBook, Twitter, or her blog. There are also free bookmarks to be had!
-----
And here she is talking about what I talk about a lot here - CHANGE!
-----
Publishing Industry changes--boy, is there a lot of talk about that! We've seen them coming, watched them loom close, and now they've caught us up in its airstream on the way by (complete with doppler train sound effects.) They’ve also left us spinning around in their wake, and really, the only question is…where are they going to spit us out?
I have now used up my big meaningful metaphors for the day. Ow.
The obvious point is, we're doing our best to land on our feet.
Of late--as professional authors who have always channeled our work through big house publishers--we've had more tools to do that. We've got online digital options to publish that book that never quite sold no matter how we believe in it, or the manuscript that lingered because it fell short not in quality, but market predictability. And we've got online digital repubbing options for out-of-print favorites.
And because publishers have pushed and pushed and pushed, dropping ever more responsibility on our authorly shoulders, we also have the experience with marketing. So, that big bugaboo of taking on the e-production chores…? In exchange for the freedom of muse and the freedom from absurdly low royalty terms, the payment delays, and the struggle to regain the rights to our own work when our publisher is no longer supporting it? To plenty of us, it seems a decent trade.
That's why long-time friend Patricia Ryan and I have started a project called Backlist eBooks, featuring the author-repubbed work of experienced writers. We have a FaceBook page (okay, who doesn't?), and we have a web page, and in both places we keep a list of members--where to find their books (all the formats, with plenty of DRM-free options) as well as a groovy Kindle store for convenience.
We've also got a permanent web site under construction, and once that launches in late spring, each author will have a page, each backlist ebook will have a page, and each of these will have direct links for purchase at all available options. There will also be the occasional original--a chance to see what we would have written in these past years, if we'd had a chance. The books that wouldn't let us go.
It is going to be WAY COOL. (There's a newsletter sign-up form if you'd like to keep in touch about the sales we run and the web site launch.)
And while I've waxed poetic about what this particular revolution means to us as authors, that point was abruptly and completely driven home to me within the past weeks…and suddenly it all means so much more than it did before. Because my beloved ConneryBeagle--my performance partner in many sports, primarily agility and of late, tracking--is in prime of his life...and he's sick.
He's always walked a brittle line, coping with a questionable immune system with great heart and enthusiasm, and I've always also worried that one day I wouldn't be able to meet his needs. And now...here we are. He needs testing; I'm at the long end of a long string of publisher delays: late payments and contract slow-downs that push the next income further and further out regardless of my work delivery schedule.
So--thanks to the new publishing options and the experience I've gained with my backlist ebooks--I'm compiling The Heart of Dog collection, the proceeds of which will provide the procedures to help us understand what's going with him, and the means to treat whatever it is. The story collection is full of not only my best spec-fic dog goodies, it has a bundle of donated work by Jeffrey Carver, Julie Czerneda, Tanya Huff, John Mierau, Fiona Patton, Jennifer Roberson, Kristine Katherine Rusch, & John Zakour .
It's work I had available within a month of conception, and the pre-orders quickly made all the difference in the world to us.
So…do I still wish for the old days, when I could simply write, and when writing the very best possible story encompassed the sum of my job? In fact, I do. Like most authors, writing isn't something I do; it's something I am. And that means I'll do what I have to so I can keep doing it. If what I've learned saves my dog's life in the process?
Priceless.
-------------
So now you've met Doranna Durgin. Notice she knows the writers we know? Does that tell you something about the world of cross-genre publishing? And the future of cross-genre Romance?
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Backlist eBooks is a group of professional writers who've been working in Mass Market and Hardcover (many in Romance) now posting their own novels in eBook at bargain prices. Here's an Amazon store full of their work:
http://astore.amazon.com/backlebook-20
You can see the list of names at the left, click and see a list of their eBook releases. Amazing!
Helping build this Group has been an adventure, and I don't regret a moment of the time spent on it, though the last few weeks I've been ignoring all the List posts from Backlist eBooks.
I will get back to participating in the Group's projects (which are legion, and include an anthology I'm probably going to be in) now that I've finished the 118,000 word novel, THE FARRIS CHANNEL (Sime~Gen #12) and now it's in production. The previous 11 Sime~Gen novels are already available in eBook and POD. You can find them listed neatly here:
http://astore.amazon.com/simegen-20
Margaret Carter said nice things about Sime~Gen on this blog:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/04/new-sime-gen-books.html
Since I met Doranna I've read one of her novels, THE RECKONERS from Tor and reviewed it (rave; 5 star) for my column scheduled for August 2011 http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2011/
Yes, she writes our kind of stuff. Get to know her!
.She says of herself:
~~
Doranna Durgin writes across genres to include fantasy, mystery, tie-ins and various flavors of romance--from the action-oriented Bombshells to STORM OF RECKONING, her latest paranormal release; she also manages the Backlist eBooks project with author partner-in-crime Patricia Ryan. She spends what's left of her time hanging around with horses, dogs, and wildflowers.
For more about Doranna's books, you can catch up with her at her webstead, FaceBook, Twitter, or her blog. There are also free bookmarks to be had!
-----
And here she is talking about what I talk about a lot here - CHANGE!
-----
Caught in the Airstream
by
Doranna Durgin
Publishing Industry changes--boy, is there a lot of talk about that! We've seen them coming, watched them loom close, and now they've caught us up in its airstream on the way by (complete with doppler train sound effects.) They’ve also left us spinning around in their wake, and really, the only question is…where are they going to spit us out?
I have now used up my big meaningful metaphors for the day. Ow.
The obvious point is, we're doing our best to land on our feet.
Of late--as professional authors who have always channeled our work through big house publishers--we've had more tools to do that. We've got online digital options to publish that book that never quite sold no matter how we believe in it, or the manuscript that lingered because it fell short not in quality, but market predictability. And we've got online digital repubbing options for out-of-print favorites.
And because publishers have pushed and pushed and pushed, dropping ever more responsibility on our authorly shoulders, we also have the experience with marketing. So, that big bugaboo of taking on the e-production chores…? In exchange for the freedom of muse and the freedom from absurdly low royalty terms, the payment delays, and the struggle to regain the rights to our own work when our publisher is no longer supporting it? To plenty of us, it seems a decent trade.
That's why long-time friend Patricia Ryan and I have started a project called Backlist eBooks, featuring the author-repubbed work of experienced writers. We have a FaceBook page (okay, who doesn't?), and we have a web page, and in both places we keep a list of members--where to find their books (all the formats, with plenty of DRM-free options) as well as a groovy Kindle store for convenience.
We've also got a permanent web site under construction, and once that launches in late spring, each author will have a page, each backlist ebook will have a page, and each of these will have direct links for purchase at all available options. There will also be the occasional original--a chance to see what we would have written in these past years, if we'd had a chance. The books that wouldn't let us go.
It is going to be WAY COOL. (There's a newsletter sign-up form if you'd like to keep in touch about the sales we run and the web site launch.)
And while I've waxed poetic about what this particular revolution means to us as authors, that point was abruptly and completely driven home to me within the past weeks…and suddenly it all means so much more than it did before. Because my beloved ConneryBeagle--my performance partner in many sports, primarily agility and of late, tracking--is in prime of his life...and he's sick.
He's always walked a brittle line, coping with a questionable immune system with great heart and enthusiasm, and I've always also worried that one day I wouldn't be able to meet his needs. And now...here we are. He needs testing; I'm at the long end of a long string of publisher delays: late payments and contract slow-downs that push the next income further and further out regardless of my work delivery schedule.
So--thanks to the new publishing options and the experience I've gained with my backlist ebooks--I'm compiling The Heart of Dog collection, the proceeds of which will provide the procedures to help us understand what's going with him, and the means to treat whatever it is. The story collection is full of not only my best spec-fic dog goodies, it has a bundle of donated work by Jeffrey Carver, Julie Czerneda, Tanya Huff, John Mierau, Fiona Patton, Jennifer Roberson, Kristine Katherine Rusch, & John Zakour .
It's work I had available within a month of conception, and the pre-orders quickly made all the difference in the world to us.
So…do I still wish for the old days, when I could simply write, and when writing the very best possible story encompassed the sum of my job? In fact, I do. Like most authors, writing isn't something I do; it's something I am. And that means I'll do what I have to so I can keep doing it. If what I've learned saves my dog's life in the process?
Priceless.
-------------
So now you've met Doranna Durgin. Notice she knows the writers we know? Does that tell you something about the world of cross-genre publishing? And the future of cross-genre Romance?
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Gene Doucette Discusses his novel IMMORTAL
This below is a guest post by the author of the novel IMMORTAL that I discussed in my previous post here on January 18, 2011.
Of course I know he didn't intend to write an Action Romance or any kind of romance. I understood what he was doing, and I intended to make it clear that he did achieve that objective. My discussion and dissection of his novel is a writing lesson for those attempting to do something entirely foreign to Doucette's genre. I believe readers of this blog who love Romance and perhaps are writing Romance will find reading IMMORTAL to be a worthwhile experience simply because it is so far away from the Romance genre.
My personal reading tastes are broader than my readership's, or the intended readership for my professional review column. In fact, you might say I'm a professional reader. Nothing that is well written will fail to rivet my attention. I am a lifelong devotee of fanfiction. I even love badly written or "Mary Sue" fanfic!
At the end of his guest post, Doucette asks me a question. I shall answer. I highly recommend that you read what he says here carefully.
--------------GENE DOUCETTE---------------
I’m not certain how to begin a response to a critique that simultaneously describes Immortal as a chore to read and as something that could not be put down.
But I will try.
I’m going to start with the bottommost point, which is that this story should not belong to Adam the immortal narrator, but to Clara, a character that appears in roughly 1/4 of the book.
There are many things I could say about this suggestion, but to begin with the most obvious: it’s not her story, and I’m not interested enough in telling her story to build the novel around her. What I was interested in—what I am still interested in—is what it might really be like to live through the breadth of human history. If I wanted to tell that story through the eyes of a twenty-something year old college student, I would have written a different book.
(Read about what kind of book Immortal IS at http://genedoucette.me/immortal )
The description for that hypothetical book would have been “pretty young college student discovers an immortal man, and is pulled into a secret world of intrigue and danger. And she may be falling in love…” I expect the most common response to the description would be either, A: “oh; another one of those” or B: “is that the new Twilight book??”
This holds no interest for me.
Lichtenberg seemed to want me to write a different kind of book entirely, but this is not a romance, or even a love story. It’s also not about the moment in the life of a very old man in which he found his One True Love. It isn’t that the love story was given short shrift, it’s that there is no love story, triangle or otherwise. There is sex, and there is sexuality, but in this part of the life of my jaded protagonist, he is not coming across a One True anything. Or, to be more precise, he has come across several One True Loves in his lifetime, but this is not one of those times.
Adam is of course capable of love, and of caring about the people around him. Despite his age, he is very much human and very much a part of the human race. That means, like anyone, he has defense mechanisms to protect himself that leave him emotionally closed off much of the time. He is also not particularly good at talking about his feelings—unreliable narrator—so his actions are sometimes more telling than his words.
(Some words from Adam:
http://genedoucette.me/2010/07/20/immortal-excerpt-adam-explain-himself/
http://genedoucette.me/2010/07/13/immortal-quotes/)
So knowing what this book is not—a romance about a girl helping a sexy but mysterious immortal man—let’s talk about what it is.
As much as is possible I tried to put myself in the position of someone who had actually lived through history. I used “magical” characters because they made his history more interesting, and because the idea of playing with fantasy tropes and then stripping away all of the magic to see what was left appealed to me. But at the very core of it is Adam’s voice and his experiences. I had to make a number of discrete decisions and forced definitive limitations on myself—for instance, writing an action novel in first person is a real pain in the ass—in order to tell the story. I also had to decide what KIND of person, and personality, would be capable of living that long without dying accidentally or on purpose.
(One of my biggest beefs with the modern “romantic vampire” character is that they all act like twenty year olds. I think it’s perfectly possible for a person whose personality is stuck somewhere between Act III and Act V of Romeo and Juliet to become a vampire, but I find it incredibly unlikely for them to have survived beyond a couple of decades. It is not a survivor ethos.)
And so Adam’s personality—which Lichtenberg has lauded—is the result. A sarcastic, sometimes unpleasant, very clever man who tells the story of his life with a Raymond Chandler-esque bitterness.
(What others have said about Adam: http://genedoucette.me/media/ )
More generally, I find the points about convention and structure to be a bit strange. Why would I take my unconventionally structured, unconventional story and turn the whole thing around so that it’s about a different character, has none of what makes it compelling—the narrator’s voice—and jam it into a structure that so very many other novels already adhere to? At some point it stops being THIS novel and becomes someone else’s novel, and we’re about three steps past that.
(My discussion of genres: http://genedoucette.me/2010/10/07/on-genres/ )
“You have a lovely cat,” Lichtenberg seem to be saying, “and he would be even more perfect if he was a horse.”
Some other points:
--Adam’s unlikability. Lichtenberg comments that I have given myself an uphill battle in attempting to tell a story from the perspective of an unlikable character. My problem with this is I don’t think Adam’s unlikable. I never have. He is complicated, bitter, and drunk through much of the first part of the book, but I don’t believe him to be unlikable. Yet this is not the only place I have seen this comment, so I don’t know what more to say about it than “all right, but you still liked him enough to keep reading.”
(I discuss his apparent unlikability more in: http://genedoucette.me/2010/10/22/mary-sues-and-assholes/)
--Drinking. I thought the comment that Adam was unlikable specifically for enabling two college students by buying them alcohol was very telling. The implication being he’s buying for minors and that they would not have otherwise had access to alcohol. We are talking about COLLEGE here; this is a preposterous suggestion. There is also nothing in the text whereby Adam “keeps them drunk”, nor does he ply them with alcohol. He is not recklessly manipulating mortals into drinking with him; he’s drinking with mortals who are inclined to drink as well. As he says on multiple occasions, his preference is to hang out with bar drunks and college students. It’s a social thing.
A larger point would be that, again, this is a man who has lived an incredibly long time. It is only in the last hundred years or so that alcohol has developed a (deserved, I admit) stigma, and he was drunk for most of them and probably didn’t notice. In earlier times—one need not go back far at all, actually—drinking regularly and in large quantities was very common. His interest in drinking is perfectly in keeping with his character.
--Murder. It was hard to tell whether the “gritty realism” point was a critique or merely a comment, but I thought it worth pointing out that if one establishes a character that began life as an African tribesman sixty thousand years ago, one has to reconcile oneself with the fact that the character is a murderer. And again, look at the historical record of the human species: the remarkable thing is not that Adam has, can, and will commit murder to protect himself, but that he hold the lives of anyone other than himself to any degree of esteem. The idea that all life is sacred is a very new concept.
--The third act. I disagree with the suggestion that the switch from past tense to present tense is jarring and unnecessary. I think it’s fundamentally necessary if only for the obvious fact that the italicized sections at the beginning of each of the chapters in the rest of the book are all in present tense. More centrally, I find that the present tense makes the action in the final act much more palpable and direct. You already know, in every other part of the book, that Adam survives, because he’s telling the story from a safe distance. In present tense, while Adam is still narrating, some of that safety net is removed. It was something that began as a logical decision—because of the chapter pieces—that became what I consider a happy secondary result: a more gripping ending.
--Saving the cat. It should have been obvious to anyone reading the prologue—in which Adam recounts a time, eons ago, when he hunted and killed a large cat—that I’m thumbing my nose at this convention as well.
--Convoluted, expository lumps. I’m not really sure what to say about these comments. It’s a story about an immortal man told by an immortal man, with small historical tales nested inside of a larger present-day story arc. It’s not convoluted; Adam just has a lot to say.
Lichtenberg pointed out that there were things Adam talked about that she didn’t need to know, using the Egypt flashback as an example. The point of the novel was NOT to solve the overarching mystery of who is after Adam—which is revealed roughly the halfway point anyway—or necessarily even how he escapes. It is ONE point, but it is not THE point. THE point is, he’s an immortal man, he has some stories, and he’s sharing those stories. The Egypt passage was pertinent because it was on the subject of why he has trouble trusting women, and he’d just been put into a situation where he didn’t know if he could trust the woman he was sleeping with. It was a pertinent story, because it was a developing characteristic of Adam, and Adam IS the story. (And as a spoiler aside, the discussion of cultures revering men as gods is pertinent to Hellenic Immortal, the second book.)
In conclusion, I’d like to steal one of your points: look at the title. This book is called Immortal because it is about the immortal man telling the story. He may be complicated and some readers may not like him, but this is first and foremost a character study of someone who is, in my mind, an anthropomorphic representation of mankind. (And I mean man- not humankind.) The book has its digressions and its discursions, it may be messy at times, but it’s a compelling, interesting story that is difficult to put down.
So let me throw this back to Jacqueline Lichtenberg: in our past discussions you have lauded the idea of innovation and finding new ways to tell stories in fiction. You have been handed a book that ignores very nearly every convention yet manages to be addictively readable, and your response to this is to suggest what I think is a tired, conventional story I couldn’t even imagine WANTING to write. You clearly enjoyed the read. Why are you back-tracking?
----------END GENE DOUCETTE'S GUEST POST------------
Why am I "back-tracking?"
Of course, it doesn't seem that way to me. I would never do such a thing. I am all about the future, not the past.
You executed the "form" you chose for this novel perfectly (the pre-chapter inserts from captivity; the joining of the two plot threads.)
You applied that form expertly to the story you wanted to tell.
My judgment is (and there's a lot of taste involved in this) that the story you wanted to tell doesn't fit the form you chose. I see an artistic mis-match. The virtuoso performance of the writing art does not hide the major problem - passive hero, hung hero, lack of plot-movement.
I found the "couldn't put it down" appeal because I'm me, but I'm a very rare type of reader.
I judge that because of the artistic mismatch between form and story, the readership will be more limited than the story deserves.
I feel more people would be drawn to (reread and search for sequels) this character if the form matched the story artistically.
So to solve that problem which many beginning writers have and can't cover up the way you did, (and to demonstrate to writing students some points I've made previously) the writer either changes the form or the story -- or possibly both.
Switching the POV is one way to do that with dispatch and economy, to do it in a way that a commercial writer who is writing for profit (i.e. more than minimum wage) would prefer. But you can only do that way before you start to write, preferably before you "have the idea for the story."
Yes, of course shifting makes it a different story and changes the genre. In fact, that's a standard exercise in writing class - change genre by changing pov.
However, the book the reader reads is not the book the writer wrote.
The "can't put it down" story for me was the story of the young girl utterly caught up in the "affairs of wizards" and falling in love with this Immortal guy. (title would still apply perfectly from her POV -- that's ALL she can see; that's become her whole life.)
That "become her whole life" effect is the core effect of Romance Genre.
From her point of view it's a Romance. If you're not a Romance fan, reader or writer, small wonder you don't think that would be interesting, or that the novel would be utterly unique in the anals of commercial fiction.
If I wrote this story about this Immortal guy from that young girl's point of view (and from her POV the other woman is an arch rival and a threat) there would be nothing, absolutely nothing, about the resulting novel that could be described as "tired" or "conventional." Ask my fans if they'd expect that it would be tired or conventional coming from my hand.
But of course if I wrote the novel, the Immortal guy would have a totally different character. So the novel I want to read is the one you would write from her point of view.
When one writer reads work by another writer, they rewrite it in their heads to be their own.
And the brutal fact is that all readers do that too, sometimes without knowing it.
The book the reader reads is not the book the writer wrote. I learned that from Marion Zimmer Bradley who always quoted it from one of her mentors, and I don't recall who (which irks me).
It's no doubt something her mentor learned from someone else. It's forever true.
Writers don't do the innovating in the storytelling field. Readers do.
So thank you for giving your readers a glimpse of the inner workings of your mind as you crafted the first book in this budding series, IMMORTAL.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Of course I know he didn't intend to write an Action Romance or any kind of romance. I understood what he was doing, and I intended to make it clear that he did achieve that objective. My discussion and dissection of his novel is a writing lesson for those attempting to do something entirely foreign to Doucette's genre. I believe readers of this blog who love Romance and perhaps are writing Romance will find reading IMMORTAL to be a worthwhile experience simply because it is so far away from the Romance genre.
My personal reading tastes are broader than my readership's, or the intended readership for my professional review column. In fact, you might say I'm a professional reader. Nothing that is well written will fail to rivet my attention. I am a lifelong devotee of fanfiction. I even love badly written or "Mary Sue" fanfic!
At the end of his guest post, Doucette asks me a question. I shall answer. I highly recommend that you read what he says here carefully.
--------------GENE DOUCETTE---------------
I’m not certain how to begin a response to a critique that simultaneously describes Immortal as a chore to read and as something that could not be put down.
But I will try.
I’m going to start with the bottommost point, which is that this story should not belong to Adam the immortal narrator, but to Clara, a character that appears in roughly 1/4 of the book.
There are many things I could say about this suggestion, but to begin with the most obvious: it’s not her story, and I’m not interested enough in telling her story to build the novel around her. What I was interested in—what I am still interested in—is what it might really be like to live through the breadth of human history. If I wanted to tell that story through the eyes of a twenty-something year old college student, I would have written a different book.
(Read about what kind of book Immortal IS at http://genedoucette.me/immortal )
The description for that hypothetical book would have been “pretty young college student discovers an immortal man, and is pulled into a secret world of intrigue and danger. And she may be falling in love…” I expect the most common response to the description would be either, A: “oh; another one of those” or B: “is that the new Twilight book??”
This holds no interest for me.
Lichtenberg seemed to want me to write a different kind of book entirely, but this is not a romance, or even a love story. It’s also not about the moment in the life of a very old man in which he found his One True Love. It isn’t that the love story was given short shrift, it’s that there is no love story, triangle or otherwise. There is sex, and there is sexuality, but in this part of the life of my jaded protagonist, he is not coming across a One True anything. Or, to be more precise, he has come across several One True Loves in his lifetime, but this is not one of those times.
Adam is of course capable of love, and of caring about the people around him. Despite his age, he is very much human and very much a part of the human race. That means, like anyone, he has defense mechanisms to protect himself that leave him emotionally closed off much of the time. He is also not particularly good at talking about his feelings—unreliable narrator—so his actions are sometimes more telling than his words.
(Some words from Adam:
http://genedoucette.me/2010/07/20/immortal-excerpt-adam-explain-himself/
http://genedoucette.me/2010/07/13/immortal-quotes/)
So knowing what this book is not—a romance about a girl helping a sexy but mysterious immortal man—let’s talk about what it is.
As much as is possible I tried to put myself in the position of someone who had actually lived through history. I used “magical” characters because they made his history more interesting, and because the idea of playing with fantasy tropes and then stripping away all of the magic to see what was left appealed to me. But at the very core of it is Adam’s voice and his experiences. I had to make a number of discrete decisions and forced definitive limitations on myself—for instance, writing an action novel in first person is a real pain in the ass—in order to tell the story. I also had to decide what KIND of person, and personality, would be capable of living that long without dying accidentally or on purpose.
(One of my biggest beefs with the modern “romantic vampire” character is that they all act like twenty year olds. I think it’s perfectly possible for a person whose personality is stuck somewhere between Act III and Act V of Romeo and Juliet to become a vampire, but I find it incredibly unlikely for them to have survived beyond a couple of decades. It is not a survivor ethos.)
And so Adam’s personality—which Lichtenberg has lauded—is the result. A sarcastic, sometimes unpleasant, very clever man who tells the story of his life with a Raymond Chandler-esque bitterness.
(What others have said about Adam: http://genedoucette.me/media/ )
More generally, I find the points about convention and structure to be a bit strange. Why would I take my unconventionally structured, unconventional story and turn the whole thing around so that it’s about a different character, has none of what makes it compelling—the narrator’s voice—and jam it into a structure that so very many other novels already adhere to? At some point it stops being THIS novel and becomes someone else’s novel, and we’re about three steps past that.
(My discussion of genres: http://genedoucette.me/2010/10/07/on-genres/ )
“You have a lovely cat,” Lichtenberg seem to be saying, “and he would be even more perfect if he was a horse.”
Some other points:
--Adam’s unlikability. Lichtenberg comments that I have given myself an uphill battle in attempting to tell a story from the perspective of an unlikable character. My problem with this is I don’t think Adam’s unlikable. I never have. He is complicated, bitter, and drunk through much of the first part of the book, but I don’t believe him to be unlikable. Yet this is not the only place I have seen this comment, so I don’t know what more to say about it than “all right, but you still liked him enough to keep reading.”
(I discuss his apparent unlikability more in: http://genedoucette.me/2010/10/22/mary-sues-and-assholes/)
--Drinking. I thought the comment that Adam was unlikable specifically for enabling two college students by buying them alcohol was very telling. The implication being he’s buying for minors and that they would not have otherwise had access to alcohol. We are talking about COLLEGE here; this is a preposterous suggestion. There is also nothing in the text whereby Adam “keeps them drunk”, nor does he ply them with alcohol. He is not recklessly manipulating mortals into drinking with him; he’s drinking with mortals who are inclined to drink as well. As he says on multiple occasions, his preference is to hang out with bar drunks and college students. It’s a social thing.
A larger point would be that, again, this is a man who has lived an incredibly long time. It is only in the last hundred years or so that alcohol has developed a (deserved, I admit) stigma, and he was drunk for most of them and probably didn’t notice. In earlier times—one need not go back far at all, actually—drinking regularly and in large quantities was very common. His interest in drinking is perfectly in keeping with his character.
--Murder. It was hard to tell whether the “gritty realism” point was a critique or merely a comment, but I thought it worth pointing out that if one establishes a character that began life as an African tribesman sixty thousand years ago, one has to reconcile oneself with the fact that the character is a murderer. And again, look at the historical record of the human species: the remarkable thing is not that Adam has, can, and will commit murder to protect himself, but that he hold the lives of anyone other than himself to any degree of esteem. The idea that all life is sacred is a very new concept.
--The third act. I disagree with the suggestion that the switch from past tense to present tense is jarring and unnecessary. I think it’s fundamentally necessary if only for the obvious fact that the italicized sections at the beginning of each of the chapters in the rest of the book are all in present tense. More centrally, I find that the present tense makes the action in the final act much more palpable and direct. You already know, in every other part of the book, that Adam survives, because he’s telling the story from a safe distance. In present tense, while Adam is still narrating, some of that safety net is removed. It was something that began as a logical decision—because of the chapter pieces—that became what I consider a happy secondary result: a more gripping ending.
--Saving the cat. It should have been obvious to anyone reading the prologue—in which Adam recounts a time, eons ago, when he hunted and killed a large cat—that I’m thumbing my nose at this convention as well.
--Convoluted, expository lumps. I’m not really sure what to say about these comments. It’s a story about an immortal man told by an immortal man, with small historical tales nested inside of a larger present-day story arc. It’s not convoluted; Adam just has a lot to say.
Lichtenberg pointed out that there were things Adam talked about that she didn’t need to know, using the Egypt flashback as an example. The point of the novel was NOT to solve the overarching mystery of who is after Adam—which is revealed roughly the halfway point anyway—or necessarily even how he escapes. It is ONE point, but it is not THE point. THE point is, he’s an immortal man, he has some stories, and he’s sharing those stories. The Egypt passage was pertinent because it was on the subject of why he has trouble trusting women, and he’d just been put into a situation where he didn’t know if he could trust the woman he was sleeping with. It was a pertinent story, because it was a developing characteristic of Adam, and Adam IS the story. (And as a spoiler aside, the discussion of cultures revering men as gods is pertinent to Hellenic Immortal, the second book.)
In conclusion, I’d like to steal one of your points: look at the title. This book is called Immortal because it is about the immortal man telling the story. He may be complicated and some readers may not like him, but this is first and foremost a character study of someone who is, in my mind, an anthropomorphic representation of mankind. (And I mean man- not humankind.) The book has its digressions and its discursions, it may be messy at times, but it’s a compelling, interesting story that is difficult to put down.
So let me throw this back to Jacqueline Lichtenberg: in our past discussions you have lauded the idea of innovation and finding new ways to tell stories in fiction. You have been handed a book that ignores very nearly every convention yet manages to be addictively readable, and your response to this is to suggest what I think is a tired, conventional story I couldn’t even imagine WANTING to write. You clearly enjoyed the read. Why are you back-tracking?
----------END GENE DOUCETTE'S GUEST POST------------
Why am I "back-tracking?"
Of course, it doesn't seem that way to me. I would never do such a thing. I am all about the future, not the past.
You executed the "form" you chose for this novel perfectly (the pre-chapter inserts from captivity; the joining of the two plot threads.)
You applied that form expertly to the story you wanted to tell.
My judgment is (and there's a lot of taste involved in this) that the story you wanted to tell doesn't fit the form you chose. I see an artistic mis-match. The virtuoso performance of the writing art does not hide the major problem - passive hero, hung hero, lack of plot-movement.
I found the "couldn't put it down" appeal because I'm me, but I'm a very rare type of reader.
I judge that because of the artistic mismatch between form and story, the readership will be more limited than the story deserves.
I feel more people would be drawn to (reread and search for sequels) this character if the form matched the story artistically.
So to solve that problem which many beginning writers have and can't cover up the way you did, (and to demonstrate to writing students some points I've made previously) the writer either changes the form or the story -- or possibly both.
Switching the POV is one way to do that with dispatch and economy, to do it in a way that a commercial writer who is writing for profit (i.e. more than minimum wage) would prefer. But you can only do that way before you start to write, preferably before you "have the idea for the story."
Yes, of course shifting makes it a different story and changes the genre. In fact, that's a standard exercise in writing class - change genre by changing pov.
However, the book the reader reads is not the book the writer wrote.
The "can't put it down" story for me was the story of the young girl utterly caught up in the "affairs of wizards" and falling in love with this Immortal guy. (title would still apply perfectly from her POV -- that's ALL she can see; that's become her whole life.)
That "become her whole life" effect is the core effect of Romance Genre.
From her point of view it's a Romance. If you're not a Romance fan, reader or writer, small wonder you don't think that would be interesting, or that the novel would be utterly unique in the anals of commercial fiction.
If I wrote this story about this Immortal guy from that young girl's point of view (and from her POV the other woman is an arch rival and a threat) there would be nothing, absolutely nothing, about the resulting novel that could be described as "tired" or "conventional." Ask my fans if they'd expect that it would be tired or conventional coming from my hand.
But of course if I wrote the novel, the Immortal guy would have a totally different character. So the novel I want to read is the one you would write from her point of view.
When one writer reads work by another writer, they rewrite it in their heads to be their own.
And the brutal fact is that all readers do that too, sometimes without knowing it.
The book the reader reads is not the book the writer wrote. I learned that from Marion Zimmer Bradley who always quoted it from one of her mentors, and I don't recall who (which irks me).
It's no doubt something her mentor learned from someone else. It's forever true.
Writers don't do the innovating in the storytelling field. Readers do.
So thank you for giving your readers a glimpse of the inner workings of your mind as you crafted the first book in this budding series, IMMORTAL.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Ancient Egypt & Blood-Suckin’ Dead Guys
Here below is a Guest post by the commenter you've seen on this blog many times, KimberAn.
As she has mentioned, she has been writing novels, pondering all the advice given by the various professional writers on this blog -- and Lo! now she is a published fiction writer too.
It occurred to me that you might want to hear directly from her about what reading all these posts on this blog has done to help her. When you read her first novel (and many to follow I'm sure) you may be able to see how, when "advice" is incorporated into a creative work, it really doesn't exactly resemble the advice any more.
So the "advice" KimberAn will be giving her students won't look the same. But it will no doubt be the same.
Listen to her now.
------------KimberAn-------------
Guest Post By KimberAn
Ancient Egypt & Blood-Suckin’ Dead Guys
First, a big ‘thank you’ to Jacqueline Lichtenberg for inviting me to guest post for her!
Jacqueline has been talking a lot about world-building lately and thank goodness too, because I have a lot of it to
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/10/worldbuilding-with-fire-and-ice-part-i.html
Part II was posted on November 2, 2010 and Part III on November 9, 2010
After I first created my alien/human hybrids, the Newbloods, for Sugar Rush and made them vampire-like, I realized I had to bring in the mythic vampire, the Oldbloods, too or my blood-suckers wouldn’t make sense. The trouble is I’ve never been into mythic vampires. I had to, um, look ‘em up on Wikipedia.
Oh, sure, I liked Jacqueline’s blood-suckers in Those of My Blood and Peeps is my favorite Scott Westerfeld novel. But, those guys are Science Fiction, you know, aliens and parasites and stuff like that. Very cool.
Those of My Blood
Peeps
Fortunately, I really didn’t have to go into the Oldbloods much in Sugar Rush, except to say they originated the vampire myth and they think the heroine would make an excellent operative for them. Oh, okay, Brandon, Ophelia’s friend, was an Oldblood too, but he’s not a very good one. He loves the smell of Twinkies, plays Nintendo DS, and always looks both ways before he crosses the road. It just didn’t make sense to me that a newly created being wouldn’t go through a childhood and rebel against his society’s norm in an adolescence. The whole idea of instant-vampire, powerful and sophisticated, didn’t make sense to me.
The point is I didn’t have to do much world-building for the Oldbloods in the first book.
In the next book, Sugar Baby, which I hope to have out by April or so, I really need to get into the Oldbloods because the next book after that is heavy on the Newbloods and, again, the Newbloods won’t make sense if I don’t lay the Oldblood foundation first. I probably learned that here on Alien Romances a long time ago, but I can’t remember the exact post.
Anyway, I dug into my history books and discovered that you can find the vampire myth in just about every culture on Earth. The earliest records are in Ancient Babylon, Ancient China, and Ancient Egypt. When I learned this, I was like, “Cool! I love those dead guys!” I can do this. Yeah, yeah, sure I can.
Oh, yeah, fiction writers have to do their homework.
I read through Jacqueline’s series of posts, World-Building with Fire and Ice. It’s going to take a while to digest all the wisdom imparted in them, but a couple of things struck me right off.
From the November 11th post World-Building with Fire and Ice, Part II
One is the common belief that there is no Happily Ever After in real life.
The other is that audiences and readers only want to be entertained.
Interestingly, I thought, the same people who hold to these beliefs are the same ones who are baffled by the success of the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer (out in Kindle omnibus edition November 11, 2010) and the movies based on them. My daughter just got me into those stories, so I’m not really an authority on them.
The Twilight Saga (Boxed Set w/four Collectable prints)
I know more about Harry Potter.
All Things Harry Potter
Although I can’t pinpoint where all the type-ohs and kissing scenes are like she can, I adore the series and all the movies too.
Well, I learned a few things as a book reviewer for four years and a mom observing the Harry Potter phenomena, as well as other successful Middle Grade and Young Adult novels. If you know anything about child development, for example, you will know that J.K. Rowling totally nailed the emotional needs and perceptions of the average eleven-year old child in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. She didn’t simply play to the child, she *validated* and even *fulfilled* some of the child’s emotional needs. I watched her interview with Oprah Winfrey a while back and she said that a young person walked up to her in the street one day and said,
“You were my childhood.”
Do you realize what that means? I mean, okay, this is my opinion based on my Early Childhood education and experience and reading the Harry Potter novels. But, I believe it illustrates the secret of Rowling’s success.
She didn’t merely entertain the child. She engaged the child. And she gave him a Happily Ever After.
And she’s raked in billions of dollars worldwide and now has her own theme park in Florida.
This flies in the face of the belief in entertainment only and no such thing as HEA.
And it proves what Jacqueline has been saying all along. Check out
Worldbuilding With Fire And Ice posted on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com on November 2, 2010 for these quotes:
-------QUOTE JACQUELINE LICHTENBERG--------
A:
Today, projects which would reach vast audiences have to be shaped to exemplify that now institutionalized philosophy.
Audiences are just looking to be entertained, value for a buck. They don't care about philosophy. It's abstract and irrelevant to the thrill, kick, payoff of the "ending." But when everything you entertain yourself with conforms to a certain philosophy, it becomes an unquestionable truth within the unconscious part of your mind. It becomes your philosophy by which you make judgments and behave, regardless of what you think you believe or want or prefer to believe.
It's the steady diet that does that.
B:
We "know" the HEA is real and true, it's our unconscious assumption, but not shared by everyone. The artist, the performing artist, the writer must be able to see the world through the eyes of people who have unconscious assumptions (Philosophies) different from the writer's and explain one reader's assumptions to another reader who does not share those assumptions.
I've said this before. The artist's subconscious communicates with the art-customer's subconscious directly, and does that best when the conscious mind is directed elsewhere (as a magician points at something to prevent you from noticing something he's doing on the other side).
Philosophy resides in the subconscious and over-rides the conscious mind's decisions (that's why it's so hard to stick to a diet unless your subconscious has decided to do it). That's why married folk have affairs against their conscious will and desire. The subconscious rules, and so the philosophy programmed into the subconscious is the deciding factor in the HEA problem and argument.
The method we have to figure out how to employ is the method the publicity and advertising folks who work for politicians are using against us -- our unexamined, unquestioned, unknown-to-us ASSUMPTIONS. A philosophy that lurks within the subconscious, unknown to us, can command our life-decisions -- and determine what fiction we enjoy.
-------END QUOTE OF JACQUELINE LICHTENBERG -----
How does that take me to Ancient Egypt and vampires?
Well, in order to engage your reader, you must understand human nature. Don’t get hung up on what people say. Watch what they do. See how they live. Get behind their eyes. Keep your mouth shut and listen.
A big chunk of this learning can be found in anthropology, the study of humankind. Besides my nanny training, my anthropology class in college has been the most useful aspect of my formal education. I really must look up my professor and thank her.
So, I read Jacqueline’s post, Ancient Egypt & Steampunk ...
Posted on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com on December 21, 2010
...with interest. I’ve always enjoyed exploring ancient mysteries. I’ve read all about Atlantis, including Atlantis: The Antediluvian World by Ignatius Donnelly.
Atlantis: The Antediluvian World and Other Works by Ignatius Donnelly (Halcyon Classics)
I loved the original Stargate movie.
Stargate (Ultimate Edition)
I probably would’ve loved the TV series too, but I just didn’t have time to watch it. I was enthralled by ancient machines on the History Channel (history.com).
History Channel Store on Amazon
It all got me thinking about the origins of my Oldbloods, but also of the other not-completely-human characters in the Sugar Rush stories. The Newbloods are recent arrivals in my fictional universe, but there are other humanoid species trying to make their way on planet Earth too.
Now, if I had any pride, I’d say I can’t tell you anymore about my world-building for the Ophelia Dawson Chronicles, because it would give away too much of the story. The pathetic truth is I still have a lot to learn and a lot of research to do and a lot of figuring out of what is what and who is who. I have a big posterboard tacked to my wall and I jot down family trees and species intermingling criss-crossing time and continents and such. I jot them down in pencil and I have a big eraser and lots of Advil. (Note to Self: Buy Post-It Notes)
‘Cause readers are smart. You may be busy and you may be tired, but you’re really smart. And I know no matter how hard I try, I won’t get everything past you.
I promise to do my best though.
;)
Kimber An
http://www.kimberan.com/
------------End KimberAn's Post-------------
And you may want to read the Guest Post I submitted to her own blog:
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
As she has mentioned, she has been writing novels, pondering all the advice given by the various professional writers on this blog -- and Lo! now she is a published fiction writer too.
It occurred to me that you might want to hear directly from her about what reading all these posts on this blog has done to help her. When you read her first novel (and many to follow I'm sure) you may be able to see how, when "advice" is incorporated into a creative work, it really doesn't exactly resemble the advice any more.
So the "advice" KimberAn will be giving her students won't look the same. But it will no doubt be the same.
Listen to her now.
------------KimberAn-------------
Guest Post By KimberAn
Ancient Egypt & Blood-Suckin’ Dead Guys
First, a big ‘thank you’ to Jacqueline Lichtenberg for inviting me to guest post for her!
Jacqueline has been talking a lot about world-building lately and thank goodness too, because I have a lot of it to
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/10/worldbuilding-with-fire-and-ice-part-i.html
Part II was posted on November 2, 2010 and Part III on November 9, 2010
After I first created my alien/human hybrids, the Newbloods, for Sugar Rush and made them vampire-like, I realized I had to bring in the mythic vampire, the Oldbloods, too or my blood-suckers wouldn’t make sense. The trouble is I’ve never been into mythic vampires. I had to, um, look ‘em up on Wikipedia.
Oh, sure, I liked Jacqueline’s blood-suckers in Those of My Blood and Peeps is my favorite Scott Westerfeld novel. But, those guys are Science Fiction, you know, aliens and parasites and stuff like that. Very cool.
Those of My Blood
Peeps
Fortunately, I really didn’t have to go into the Oldbloods much in Sugar Rush, except to say they originated the vampire myth and they think the heroine would make an excellent operative for them. Oh, okay, Brandon, Ophelia’s friend, was an Oldblood too, but he’s not a very good one. He loves the smell of Twinkies, plays Nintendo DS, and always looks both ways before he crosses the road. It just didn’t make sense to me that a newly created being wouldn’t go through a childhood and rebel against his society’s norm in an adolescence. The whole idea of instant-vampire, powerful and sophisticated, didn’t make sense to me.
The point is I didn’t have to do much world-building for the Oldbloods in the first book.
In the next book, Sugar Baby, which I hope to have out by April or so, I really need to get into the Oldbloods because the next book after that is heavy on the Newbloods and, again, the Newbloods won’t make sense if I don’t lay the Oldblood foundation first. I probably learned that here on Alien Romances a long time ago, but I can’t remember the exact post.
Anyway, I dug into my history books and discovered that you can find the vampire myth in just about every culture on Earth. The earliest records are in Ancient Babylon, Ancient China, and Ancient Egypt. When I learned this, I was like, “Cool! I love those dead guys!” I can do this. Yeah, yeah, sure I can.
Oh, yeah, fiction writers have to do their homework.
I read through Jacqueline’s series of posts, World-Building with Fire and Ice. It’s going to take a while to digest all the wisdom imparted in them, but a couple of things struck me right off.
From the November 11th post World-Building with Fire and Ice, Part II
One is the common belief that there is no Happily Ever After in real life.
The other is that audiences and readers only want to be entertained.
Interestingly, I thought, the same people who hold to these beliefs are the same ones who are baffled by the success of the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer (out in Kindle omnibus edition November 11, 2010) and the movies based on them. My daughter just got me into those stories, so I’m not really an authority on them.
The Twilight Saga (Boxed Set w/four Collectable prints)
I know more about Harry Potter.
All Things Harry Potter
Although I can’t pinpoint where all the type-ohs and kissing scenes are like she can, I adore the series and all the movies too.
Well, I learned a few things as a book reviewer for four years and a mom observing the Harry Potter phenomena, as well as other successful Middle Grade and Young Adult novels. If you know anything about child development, for example, you will know that J.K. Rowling totally nailed the emotional needs and perceptions of the average eleven-year old child in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. She didn’t simply play to the child, she *validated* and even *fulfilled* some of the child’s emotional needs. I watched her interview with Oprah Winfrey a while back and she said that a young person walked up to her in the street one day and said,
“You were my childhood.”
Do you realize what that means? I mean, okay, this is my opinion based on my Early Childhood education and experience and reading the Harry Potter novels. But, I believe it illustrates the secret of Rowling’s success.
She didn’t merely entertain the child. She engaged the child. And she gave him a Happily Ever After.
And she’s raked in billions of dollars worldwide and now has her own theme park in Florida.
This flies in the face of the belief in entertainment only and no such thing as HEA.
And it proves what Jacqueline has been saying all along. Check out
Worldbuilding With Fire And Ice posted on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com on November 2, 2010 for these quotes:
-------QUOTE JACQUELINE LICHTENBERG--------
A:
Today, projects which would reach vast audiences have to be shaped to exemplify that now institutionalized philosophy.
Audiences are just looking to be entertained, value for a buck. They don't care about philosophy. It's abstract and irrelevant to the thrill, kick, payoff of the "ending." But when everything you entertain yourself with conforms to a certain philosophy, it becomes an unquestionable truth within the unconscious part of your mind. It becomes your philosophy by which you make judgments and behave, regardless of what you think you believe or want or prefer to believe.
It's the steady diet that does that.
B:
We "know" the HEA is real and true, it's our unconscious assumption, but not shared by everyone. The artist, the performing artist, the writer must be able to see the world through the eyes of people who have unconscious assumptions (Philosophies) different from the writer's and explain one reader's assumptions to another reader who does not share those assumptions.
I've said this before. The artist's subconscious communicates with the art-customer's subconscious directly, and does that best when the conscious mind is directed elsewhere (as a magician points at something to prevent you from noticing something he's doing on the other side).
Philosophy resides in the subconscious and over-rides the conscious mind's decisions (that's why it's so hard to stick to a diet unless your subconscious has decided to do it). That's why married folk have affairs against their conscious will and desire. The subconscious rules, and so the philosophy programmed into the subconscious is the deciding factor in the HEA problem and argument.
The method we have to figure out how to employ is the method the publicity and advertising folks who work for politicians are using against us -- our unexamined, unquestioned, unknown-to-us ASSUMPTIONS. A philosophy that lurks within the subconscious, unknown to us, can command our life-decisions -- and determine what fiction we enjoy.
-------END QUOTE OF JACQUELINE LICHTENBERG -----
How does that take me to Ancient Egypt and vampires?
Well, in order to engage your reader, you must understand human nature. Don’t get hung up on what people say. Watch what they do. See how they live. Get behind their eyes. Keep your mouth shut and listen.
A big chunk of this learning can be found in anthropology, the study of humankind. Besides my nanny training, my anthropology class in college has been the most useful aspect of my formal education. I really must look up my professor and thank her.
So, I read Jacqueline’s post, Ancient Egypt & Steampunk ...
Posted on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com on December 21, 2010
...with interest. I’ve always enjoyed exploring ancient mysteries. I’ve read all about Atlantis, including Atlantis: The Antediluvian World by Ignatius Donnelly.
Atlantis: The Antediluvian World and Other Works by Ignatius Donnelly (Halcyon Classics)
I loved the original Stargate movie.
Stargate (Ultimate Edition)
I probably would’ve loved the TV series too, but I just didn’t have time to watch it. I was enthralled by ancient machines on the History Channel (history.com).
History Channel Store on Amazon
It all got me thinking about the origins of my Oldbloods, but also of the other not-completely-human characters in the Sugar Rush stories. The Newbloods are recent arrivals in my fictional universe, but there are other humanoid species trying to make their way on planet Earth too.
Now, if I had any pride, I’d say I can’t tell you anymore about my world-building for the Ophelia Dawson Chronicles, because it would give away too much of the story. The pathetic truth is I still have a lot to learn and a lot of research to do and a lot of figuring out of what is what and who is who. I have a big posterboard tacked to my wall and I jot down family trees and species intermingling criss-crossing time and continents and such. I jot them down in pencil and I have a big eraser and lots of Advil. (Note to Self: Buy Post-It Notes)
‘Cause readers are smart. You may be busy and you may be tired, but you’re really smart. And I know no matter how hard I try, I won’t get everything past you.
I promise to do my best though.
;)
Kimber An
http://www.kimberan.com/
------------End KimberAn's Post-------------
And you may want to read the Guest Post I submitted to her own blog:
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
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