Pearls, Rebels and Lovers

A mish-mash of blatant self promotion today.

Last night HOPE'S FOLLY won the PEARL award for Best Romantic Science Fiction--something that was quite a surprise. I love the PEARL awards because they break down paranormal romance subgenres into categories. It's touch--especially when you write the quirky subgenre of science fiction romance--to compete against vampires romances and fallen angel stories. The characters, the plot lines, the things that make readers go yes! yes! yes! just aren't the same. With the way the PEARL defines their categories, it gives all the subgenres a logical chance against similar books. Also in the winner's circle were Susan Grant and Jess Granger. Both top notch SFR books. It's a total honor to share the winner's circle with them. Both Susan and Jess write to the same premise that I do, and I can highly recommend their books to my readers. Not that I can't also recommend books by other authors who write paranormal romance, but I've learned--or am learning--that there's not a true and consistent cross-over from readers of, say, Sherrilyn Kenyon or Nalini Singh to the kinds of stories that Susan, Jess, and I conjure up. We batted back and forth on this blog (as well as on others) the differences between SFR and the rest of the PNR subgenres, and whether or not we even belong in the PNR corral. Point is, with the PEARL awards, we get our own little corner of the galaxy. And I do heartily thank those at the Paranormal Romance site and list for doing so.

Also happening this week--tomorrow, actually--is REBELS AND LOVERS. It hits the bookstore shelves (and should already be pre-shipping from the online sites) March 23. This is book four in the Dock Five Universe series which started with GABRIEL'S GHOST. I've also just signed the contract with Audible for audio books for the series. Nope, no clue when they'll be available but as soon as I know, you'll know. This is an exciting process--I've never been out in audio book format before.

Other than that, the conference silly season is starting for me. To say I'm going nutzing futz is an understatement.

Happy reading, all! ~Linnea

REBELS AND LOVERS, March 2010: Book 4 in the Dock Five Universe, from Bantam Books and Linnea Sinclair—www.linneasinclair.com

Kaidee hated when her ship didn’t work. Dead in space was not a place she liked to be. Especially with an unknown bogie on her tail, closing at a disturbingly fast rate of speed that made her heart pound in her chest and her throat go dry.

REBELS AND LOVERS: the making of a cover

Interesting that we're getting visual here lately...
Bantam did something recently they're not done before: they asked for my specific input on the cover for my next book. Yes, they do always as for verbiage: is she a brunette, is he a blond? I always send photos I've snipped from celebrity sites or iStock. This time, for REBELS AND LOVERS, they sent me actual model shots.

Whoa Nellie.

I've had a very clear picture of what Devin Guthrie looked like since before I started writing the book. He's my geek (that's GEEK not GREEK) hero. Straight out of THE BIG BANG THEORY but cuter. I used as a template the character Michael Weatherly played, not in NCIS, but Dark Angel (which I have NEVER seen, sorry). The geek with the spiky hair and glasses.


Yes, I know this is SFR. But eyeglasses have been around for centuries and I do believe they will likely be around a bit longer, laser surgery notwithstanding. I mean, I wear them. There are a variety of reasons why people opt for glasses as opposed to surgery or contacts, and when you get to know Devin, you'll know why.

Just as a world building aside, I don't think that "alternate high tech society" (or "future Earth") equates with All Problems Solved. If you asked someone in 1642 what he thought 2009 would be like, I'm sure he'd guess life would be perfect, disease free and so on. Reality shows that life doesn't work that way. We still have the common cold. While, yes, we have iPhones, we still have pencils. If there's an assumption I dislike in SF/SFR, it's the flat, perfect high-tech world or future. Given humans (or other sentients), and given history, it's unlikely.

So, yes, Devin wears glasses. And travels in personal starships.

Kaidee (Captain Makaiden Griggs) was, to me, a Katee Sackhoff in Battlestare clone. These are actually the images I sent to my editor at Bantam--just as I've done for seven books before.

What surprised me was what they came back with.

BEEFCAKE! I had the tough decision of wading through about a half dozen professional male models' images ::fans self:: and ended up with the one below for Devin.












I wasn't given a choice for Kaidee but I think they did fairly well:

So here's the book blurb and the cover:

REBELS AND LOVERS - Linnea Sinclair

March 2010 Bantam Dell

Book 4 in the Dock Five Universe

For these two renegades, falling in love is the ultimate rebellion…

It’s been two years since Devin Guthrie last saw Captain Makaiden Griggs. But time has done little to dampen his ardor for the beautiful take-charge shuttle pilot who used to fly yachts for his wealthy family. While his soul still burns for her, Kaidee isn’t the kind of woman a Guthrie is allowed to marry—especially in this time of intergalactic upheaval, with the family’s political position made precarious by Devin’s brother Philip, now in open revolt against the Empire. And when Devin’s nineteen-year-old nephew Trip goes inexplicably missing, his bodyguard murdered, this most dutiful of Guthrie sons finds every ounce of family loyalty put to the test. Only by joining forces with Kaidee can Devin complete the mission to bring Trip back alive. Only by breaking every rule can these two renegades redeem the promise of a passion they were never permitted to explore At risk? A political empire, a personal fortune and both their hearts and lives...

I think they matched my vision of the characters very well.

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

Vid Interview: The story behind Gabriel's Ghost, Shades of Dark & Hope's Folly

Another segment from the video interviews from Romantic Times Magazine, just in case anyone thinks writing is a logical, planned experience:



Linnea Sinclair - HOPE'S FOLLY from Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Vimeo.

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

With any other woman, he’d interpret her absence as sulking. But this was Rya Bennton. She wasn’t sulking. She was scheming. He knew it. He could feel it.
He was just going to have to outscheme her.

Addiction, Danger and Flaws, Oh My!

Continuing Rowena’s theme from yesterday, I’m going to yammer on today about the flaws in characters in SFR, not just because I think it’s a worthy subject, but because I think it’s a fun one.

Rowena’s right: we do tend to load our alpha (and other) characters with problems. There are a couple of reasons for that (and many of you probably already know them if you study the craft of writing fiction).

One has to do with the Mary Sue Complex (or Marty Sam, if you will). The Mary Sue/Marty Sam is the character that is too perfect—not only to be believable—but to be likeable. Remember the girl in high school who was not only the best cheerleader but she was the prom queen and class president? Her clothes never wrinkled, her hair never frizzed and she never once had a zit. Remember how much you hated her?

That’s why we don’t write Mary Sues/Marty Sams. Readers can’t identify with them (neither can authors—my hair frizzes and my clothes and my skin both wrinkle). Instead we create characters with flaws, quirks, foibles, follies, addictions and annoying habits.

You know. Like us.

The second reason we love flawed characters is that we want to see a character succeed and grow. If the character is already perfect, there’s no growth. It was either Jack Bickham or Dwight Swain (both are writing gurus and I’m not going to drag out their tomes to figure out who said it) who said that readers have a need to pass judgment on someone (ie: character). Part of that “passing judgment” means judging whether the character DESERVES to win the book’s stated goal. If that character already has everything, is perfect, then it’s likely the reader will find some other character in some other book more deserving.

The third reason is that—according to Dwight Swain—a character “must start a fire he can’t put out” in the opening part of the book. Perfect characters don’t start fires and if they do, they can put them out, perfectly. So the “can’t put out” is lost with a perfect character.

We want the warts and all with our characters.

Only one of my characters to date had a stated addiction to a physical substance—and that’s Sully (Gabriel Ross Sullivan) in Gabriel’s Ghost and Shades of Dark. His addiction was to a substance known as honeylace—a drug of sorts, illegal except when used in religious ceremonies. Sully’s addiction to honeylace was his means of coping with the pain of what he was: a mutant human-Ragkiril, a telepathic shape shifter whose powers were feared and hated by everyone around him. Including himself. It was a combination of self-loathing and self-preservation that made him indulge in honeylace. Honeylace kept his talents muted. He needed that to survive in a world that would otherwise deem him the lowest of outcasts.

But addictions aren’t only to substances. Rhis in Finders Keepers was, quite honestly, a power addict. He was the one no one dared say “no” to. Except, of course, Trilby. She became the fire he couldn’t put out.

Branden Kel-Paten had a number of addictions, not the least of which was his obsession with Tasha Sebastian. I mean, he had her followed—for years. He hacked into her transmits. He dictated long missives to her (that he never sent). He had a secret stash of photos and holos of her. We’re talking serious addiction. (And it has been rightly pointed out that many characters in present day novels would, if real people, likely be arrested and/or committed to psych wards. But that’s because fiction is larger than real life. And—as Jacqueline Lichtenberg has wisely noted, fiction is drama.)

Kel-Paten was also obsessive with his privacy, his ship and his fleet. He was a rigid individual in many ways (his cybernetics notwithstanding) because he found solace and protection in that rigidity.

Both Admiral Mack (An Accidental Goddess) and Detective Theo Petrakos (The Down Home Zombie Blues) were work-a-holics. A benign flaw in some ways and also in some ways an addiction. Both defined themselves by their jobs. And interestingly, in Zombie Blues, so did my female protagonist, Commander Jorie Mikkalah, zombie-hunter extraordinaire. Conversely in Goddess, the last thing Gillie wanted was to be defined by her job. She didn’t want her job at all (and she clearly stated that several times in the book. She wanted to be “just Gillie.” Not a goddess. Not a sorceress. Not someone to be worshipped.) So while I paired Gillie and Mack as opposites, I paired Theo and Jorie as two sides of the same coin.

Did I do this deliberately? Yes. Why? Because of something on conflict I read on Jacqueline’s site:

"What is keeping them apart" is the CONFLICT. Misunderstanding and distrust are minor and trivial complications. The CONFLICT has to be real, about something substantive. And it has to be both INTERNAL and EXTERNAL at the same time - reflected one in the other. And each of them has to have the OBVERSE of the other's conflict if you're going to do dual-pov. Take her internal conflict,
twist it 180 degrees, and that's HIS internal conflict. (You can get a more complex novel by twisting her inner conflict into his external conflict).

I had to read that over about a dozen times before I “got it” and I’m still not sure I totally have it. But it’s something I use to work flaws and addictions and obsessions and danger into my characters and my stories.

In Hope’s Folly, one of Rya Bennton’s inner conflicts is her overwhelming sense of being unworthy. Of not being good enough, pretty enough, thin enough, experienced enough. So I took that and slapped it onto Philip Guthrie’s external issues. I put him in a situation where his previously acknowledged (and in some cases, lauded) experience, expertise and reputation were shattered. His external authority was challenged while her internal self-authority caused her pain.

Rya saw herself as flawed. Philip was born with the proverbial and clichéd silver spoon in his mouth. But because of that, his personal expectations were also very high. And the higher you are, the more painful the landing when you fall.

They both fell…and fell in love.

Flaws and all.

~Linnea

www.linneasinclair.com

Galactic Bachelor Number One

A recent blog by Heather Massey about one of my characters over at the Tor publishing house site (and they’re not even my publisher) not only made me all a-flutter but again made me realize that when I create my characters, I haven’t a clue in a bucket ::ka-ching to Paula L!:: about what works for readers and what doesn’t. Honest, I don’t, and I’m sure if I can get Rowena, Jacqueline, Cindy, Margaret, Susan and the rest of the SFF/SFR authors to chime in here, the general consensus would be that when creating our heroes, we are very much flying by the seat of our intergalactic pants.

It’s not that there aren’t guidelines—there are. There’ve been oodles of things written about what makes fictional characters successful. There are theories and charts about the alpha, beta, gamma and whatsis male protagonist and why those traits do or do not work. There are archetypes; most notably by Tami Cowden, who also breaks down heroes by trait, denoting them at the chief, the charmer, the lost soul, whatever.

The thing is, when you write SFF/SFR, the very genre itself adds a whole ‘nuther layer. And often a whole different slant.

When I created Detective Sergeant Theo Petrakos in The Down Home Zombie Blues, I could easily draw on “collective archetypes” because Theo—unlike my other characters—is from this planet, born in Florida in the good ol’ USA. Readers learned very quickly that Theo was 1) a homicide cop 2) divorced and 3) of Greek heritage. None of those things required great explanation. All are familiar concepts to readers. Readers know—thanks to television shows like The First 48, and less so to some of the CSI shows—what a homicide cop does, what the requirements and duties of the job are. Readers know—likely through personal or family experience—what it means to be divorced and living in the current day. They can guess with fair accuracy the kinds of experiences and emotions Theo’s been faced with because they’re things that the readers see on a daily basis.

Theo’s “one of us.”

Creating Branden Kel-Paten was a horse of a different color. Or in this case, a galactic bachelor of a different mindset.

First, let’s start by saying that yes, of course, there are similarities and commonalities. I’m still writing for an “Earth-based” readership. I have to present my characters—no matter how alien—in terms my readers can understand. And yes, love is love, hate is hate and fear is fear…or is it? When you take your characters out of the realm of the common and known, even those things can change.

Nowhere was this more true than with Gabriel Ross Sullivan, first in Gabriel’s Ghost and then in Shades of Dark (probably more so in Shades as I really put Sully through the paces in that book.) What Sully and Kel-Paten have in common is that the rejection they’d experienced in their lives had nothing whatsoever to do with something found here on our planet. Now, we can use analogies, and we can understand being rejected because you’re a shape shifting mutant or part cyborg because we have similar prejudices in our lives: we have racial prejudice, we have gender-preference prejudices, we have religious prejudices and more. So while, yes, we can understand the concept of rejection because of prejudice, we have no exact experience with what it’s like to be a Kyi or a bio-cybe. We can guess. We don’t really know.

All an author can do is bring the reader into the character’s world…and hope something resonates.

Which brings me back to the topic of building galactic bachelors.

It’s hard enough (ask any author) creating workable fictional male protagonists in contemporary or historical fiction. And both those genres are based on “the known” of our existence. It’s simply a lot tougher creating those same sexy, brave, attractive, likeable male protagonists in the unknown of SFF/SFR.

In her blog for Tor, Heather Massey states: “And I mustn’t fail to mention that Branden Kel-Paten is a virgin hero. All of that pent-up sexual energy, fueled by a cybernetically enhanced body? That’s hot.”

To be honest, I did not, at any moment, sit down with the intention of writing a virgin hero. I intended to showcase Kel-Paten’s struggle with his emotions (or lack of) but at no point was his experience (or lack of) with women a key factor in creating the character. However, judging not only from Heather’s blog but other blogs, reviews and yes, from fan mail, this whole virgin hero thing is something that floats a lot of readers’ boats. And not just female readers. I’ve a number of nice emails from male readers who appreciated that Kel-Paten could be a hero and inept. (I guess James Bond is a tough role model to live up to.)

Kel-Paten’s virginity grew out of his isolation, and his isolation grew out of the fact that he was a bio-cybe: too much machine to be accepted by humans, too much human to fit in with machines (not that there were others he could fit in with). He was isolated by being the only surviving (that he knows of) cybernetic experiment. He was in some ways like a galactic Pit Bull: his reputation of being lethal preceded him, and molded him and his experiences with others. He learned that being feared was something he could handle because it kept him out of the uncertain territory of being accepted and ultimately rejected.

All this I knew about him as I put him through his paces in scenes, as I let him—pardon the pun—flesh himself out for me.

I had no idea he was going to resonate so strongly with readers (though my agent delights in telling me, “I told you so”)

I have no idea why he resonates so strongly with readers. Yes, I understand the whole angst-thing. I understand we relate to and root for the underdog. But gosh-golly, there are shelves full of underdog heroes and heroines out there. Kel-Paten fans are of a particular die-hard breed.

And I don’t really honestly know why. Why does Kel-Paten engender such a strong response when Theo Petrakos—certainly a worthy hero!—doesn’t? (Not that Theo doesn’t have his fan club. He does. But not to the extent Kel-Paten has.) Rhis in Finders Keepers and Mack in An Accidental Goddess also have their devoted fans. But not like Kel-Paten. The only other hero who runs neck-and-neck with him is Sully.

And both, yes, aren’t strangers to rejection by their worlds and cultures. (Worlds and cultures which, again yes, are unique to SFF/SFR. I don’t know if translating Kel-Paten’s story to, say, current day Alabama or Colorado, and making him, say, a Pagan or a Baptist or a Muslim or a Budhhist in a religiously-intolerant setting would carry the same weight or engender the same reaction from readers.)

But I don’t think it’s solely the rejection factor that makes readers resonate to these characters. If that were it, then all any author need do is create a character who’s faced rejection and she’d have an automatic best-seller.

Not.

So, see, we really don’t know what works with our characters. We have glimmerings. We had ideas. We scan our fan mails for some clues in hopes we can do it again. But we fully recognize that we might not be able to do it again in just that way.

Interestingly, I’m getting some very strong and positive feedback on the character of Admiral Philip Guthrie in my upcoming Hope’s Folly. I’ve had a number of beta-readers and bloggers who have, in the past, been solidly in Sully’s or Kel-Paten’s camps, tell me Philip has just zoomed up there in contention for the spot of Galactic Bachelor Number One.

“Hero: Admiral Philip Guthrie was totally not what I expected. After reading Gabriel’s Ghost, I thought stodgy was the best description for him. After Shades of Dark, he was a bit more interesting but not hero material to me. But in reading this book he became the "long-lost always-forever dream hero" one always hopes for but very rarely encounters.” (Aimless Ramblings)

“Hope's Folly is simply phenomenal. I absolutely did not want to put the story down. It had action, suspense, mystery, and passion.” (Kathy’s Review Corner)

And Philip is nothing at all like Kel-Paten or Sully. No rejection factor and he’s far from a virgin. But my beta-readers (and my agent and my editor) love him.
Which is why, as I told you at the beginning of this blog, I really have no clue what makes a good character into a great one in a science fiction romance.


~Linnea

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

“If we can’t do the impossible, then we need to at least be able to do the unexpected.” —Admiral Philip Guthrie

Two Heads Are Better...

I've had the pleasure this past weekend to have friend and author Stacey Klemstein aka Stacey Kade as my houseguest. Besides the fact that Stacey and I get along hilariously well (even though I'm near her mother's age) it's wonderful to be able to talk--at any time--to another writer. Writing is such a solitary occupation (other than the five hundred or so people living in my head). And yes, while I certainly chat a lot with other authors and authors-to-be via email, there's something special about sitting in side by side rocking chair, feet on the railing, sucking down a beer (me) or Fuzzy Navel (her) on my front porch, debating plot structure, conflict and why we like dark-haired male protagonists better than blonds. Or whatever.

No, it's not the same as speaking to another author on the phone. It's just not.

We've hashed out a number of issues this weekend--she, on her second book and proposal for Hyperion (her first YA paranormal--The Ghost and The Goth--will be out in 2010) and me, the follow-up book to Hope's Folly (the third book in the Dock Five series.)

The fun thing about this Linnea-Stacey combo is we approach the craft of writing fairly differently. She's very much in the Vogler/Writer's Journey camp. I'm solidly Swain's Techniques of the Selling Writer. We both subscribe to Deb Dixon's GMC but even with that, we come at ideas and structure in different ways. Which means she gets me thinking and I get her thinking.

Over the past few years that we've been critters for each other, we found it works very well. We've even started teaching writing workshops together.

I know there are authors who don't use critters or beta-readers (I use both). I was in a workshop this weekend with Romance Divas where a few posted that fact. That's great if they don't need the feedback. Me, I do. That doesn't mean I incorporate every comment. But I do consider andl listen to them. Sometimes they prove I'm wrong in my writing and I make changes. Sometimes they prove I'm right. Sometimes I can see why the comment was made but I feel strongly that what and how I wrote it is how it has to be.

But I still need the feedback. Understand--for those of you who aren't authors--that by the time a manuscript gets to the final draft, the author has likely read it over (and over and over) dozens of times. The brain fills in words or meanings that may not actually be on the page. Honest, it does. Fresh eyes and another brain, to me, are very helpful.

On the flip side, helping Stacey dissect her work makes me see more clearly how and why I do things. Explaining a concept to her helps me incorporate it more effectively in my own prose.

It's really a win-win situation.

So I'm in final edits now on Hope's Folly. Bantam has the manuscript and my editor, Anne, is giving it her fresh eyes once over. She, too, will have changes or suggestions. Which, yes, I'll run by Stacey. She knows my characters and worlds as well as I do. Maybe even better.

So I guess that makes three heads...

BIC HOK! (Butt In Chair, Hands on Keyboard: the writer's war cry)

~Linnea