Smart Animals

A pictorial piece on ten "geniuses" of the animal kingdom, including some that we don't typically identify as "smart":

Animal Geniuses

Raccoons can learn to pick locks! That's a new one on me, though I already knew from experience that they can pry lids off garbage cans. Maybe they are plotting to replace us as the dominant species on Earth? Today, opening lids and locks; tomorrow, hacking computers. Crows construct tools out of twigs and know how to use water displacement (dropping rocks into a container of water) to get things they want. Pigs understand mirrors—also new information to me—and can learn shapes "as quickly as human children" (some scientists estimate their intelligence as equal to that of human three-year-olds). I knew about the problem-solving skills of octopuses and rats. I was surprised, however, that the list includes sheep, usually stereotyped as pretty dumb. They allegedly can remember faces for up to two years. Pigeons also recognize faces and, like pigs and some primates, can recognize themselves in mirrors. Another small-brained animal on the page, the squirrel, gets included because of its phenomenal ability to recall the locations of buried nuts.

Two types of insects also make the list—creatures that we ordinarily don't acknowledge as having intelligence at all. Argentine ants brought together from far-flung parts of the world seem to recognize each other. Bees are credited with "hive intelligence," and their communication of food sources through dance is highlighted. These two examples challenge our definition of intelligence and raise the question of whether it can exist without self-consciousness. (I've previously mentioned Peter Watts's BLINDSIGHT, which postulates a species of aliens whose minds work that way—intelligence without consciousness.) Also, if intelligence comes in such unlikely shapes as insect hive minds, would we necessarily recognize ET sapience if we met it?

And on a related topic, an editorial that appeared in the Baltimore SUN this Monday, musing about the defense of a house on a wooded lot against the incursions of critters great and small:

Would Nature Miss Us?

The author segues to the larger theme of nature's overrunning the ruins of human civilization in places such as Chernobyl (a prospect explored in depth in books such as THE WORLD WITHOUT US, by Alan Weisman). Maybe the carpenter bees and wolf spiders are conspiring with the bears, crows, and raccoons in preparation to take over if we go extinct.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Reviews 15 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg - A Few Good Men by Sarah A. Hoyt

Reviews 15
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
A Few Good Men by Sarah A. Hoyt

I have pointed you to other works by Sarah A. Hoyt.  Here's my review of a novel she wrote, and here's one about whether you as a writer need to make up a pen name.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/10/heart-of-light-by-sarah-hoyt.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/05/should-you-make-up-pen-name-part-i.html

Sarah A. Hoyt is one of the most versatile and accomplished writers you will find working in any field.

Her Feb 2014 title from Baen Books titled A Few Good Men had to have been written in 2012 or 2013, based on 2011 science.

At the beginning of 2015, a scientist made news by talking about the ambition of doing whole-head transplants, and immediately the scientific establishment jumped on him saying it can't be done.

The "jumping on him" just fueled the publicity of an idea that would have been ignored, but it highlighted a wonderful science fiction novel that you just have to read to appreciate. 

Here's the discussion from FORBES
Read the article here:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/arthurcaplan/2015/02/26/doctor-seeking-to-perform-head-transplant-is-out-of-his-mind/


---------QUOTE-----------
The neuroscientist Sergio Canavero of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group in Italy thinks the time has come to start transplanting heads. Canavero plans to announce his noggin exchange program at the annual conference of the American Academy of Neurological and Orthopaedic Surgeons (AANOS) in Annapolis, Maryland, this June. His ambitions have gotten plenty of attention this week. They should. It is both rotten scientifically and lousy ethically.

Dr. Canavero is not trying to perfect an approach that is cosmetic. He does not seek to find a way to give you the body that you always dreamed of without the burden of diet or exercise. He wants to use head transplantation surgery to extend the lives of people whose muscles, bodily organs and immune systems have degenerated or wasted away.

Scientifically what Canavero wants to do cannot yet be done. It may never be doable.

To move a head on to someone else’s body requires the rewiring of the spinal cord. We don’t know how to do that. If we did there would be far fewer paralyzed people who have spinal cord injuries. Nor, despite Canavero’s assertions to the contrary, is medicine anywhere close to knowing how to use stem cells or growth factors to make this happen.

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

But the principle in science fiction is, "if we can dream it, we can do it." 

You may note that this attitude is the key attitude behind the whole Romance Genre, the driving fuel behind the pursuit of the Happily Ever After ending (the HEA) that is so scorned.

That "scorned" regard is something that Romance and Science Fiction have in common, a pivot point around which to build SFR, Science Fiction Romance. 

Every science fiction novel depicting something that hasn't been done has been derided as ridiculous because the story assumes humanity can do the impossible.

And then we do it, and ho-hum-yawn "we knew that all the time." 

Today, online dating sites and match-making computer algorithms are trying to duplicate the success rate of the Match Makers as depicted in FIDDLER ON THE ROOF.  In the tiny, closed communities where everyone knew everyone for generations and generations -- that worked.  It even works today in tight-knit communities that are spread geographically but closely connected by technology. 

So science, fiction, and romance are really just one subject, and go together naturally. 

Remember Jules Verne's space-ship concept was considered silly fantasy? 

Right now, we're ranting about "climate change" -- and some people are talking crazy about controlling the climate by putting certain kinds of objects in orbit to inject more (or less) solar energy into the atmosphere.

Crazy, right?

Well, the best science fiction writers pick up the notions floating around among the 'craziest' scientists, put that together with bits and pieces of technology, some notions mechanics are playing with, and notice how the age-old arguments about politics and government are cycling at the moment. 

Heinlein did this. 

Asimov did this. 

Now Sarah A. Hoyt has done it -- and it's not the first time for her.

Her Darkship series from Baen Books starts with a novel titled Darkship Renegades,



and continues with Darkship Thieves


And you will enjoy a future history work titled Ganymede



All of these embroider creatively on various "impossible" premises toyed with by scientists for years, and just now being presented in the general media with a somewhat serious tone -- ideas about living on asteroids, about various satellites of Earth, about things we are only now discovering in our solar system.

A Few Good Men is Book 3 in the Darkship series, and the subject of this blog entry:



The title, A Few Good Men,  is a play on words.  In this far future Earth, climate and politics and science, and genetics, have changed everything.  I'm not sure I'd term it progress.

A Good Man is a little King, an owner-proprietor-boss-chief-executive of a section of Earth where people live.  There are about 80 such sections, and these Good Men are anything but good. 

There's a feudal element involved.  If there is no heir to the title, those who worked for that Good Man may be subject to a purge when another Good Man takes over the territory - it's all about loyalty.  Loyalty is keeping secrets.  Loyalty is not-noticing there's a secret that needs keeping. 

Each Good Man rules with his own personality, shaping the forms and cultural norms of the area he governs. 

The heir is supposed to take over with a seamless continuation of policy and style.  The secret is the reason for the seamlessness.  And it has everything to do with extrapolating the science developing behind that claim of being close to doing whole head transplants -- or body-transplants, depending on how you look at it.  Hoyt has taken a grand leap into an all-too-plausible direction.

In this Book 3 in the Darkship series, we learn the secret the Good Men have been keeping for centuries. 

We follow a younger son of a Good Man whose father and older brother have been assassinated, leaving him unexpectedly heir.

The Good Man's retainers don't even know that this heir is still alive when he shows up on the palace's doorstep.

The story of how he takes over, and what he learns both in his official briefings and unofficially -- the infiltration of the household and office staff by opponents of the Good Man rule - why they oppose and what they do when an unexpected heir shows up creates a page-turner of a story.

Really, this is a "can't put it down" read. 

I was delighted to learn from Sarah A. Hoyt (who gave me a copy of A Few Good Men) that there will be more of these delicious books to come. 

As with last week's discussion of Charles Gannon's Trial By Fire, this is not strictly speaking a genre Romance, but in Sarah's novel the love story is integral to the plot, to the story, and to the world-views that clash. 

Doing a contrast/compare of these two series will give you a broad platform for displaying a genuine Science Fiction Romance where the Science and the Fiction are not weaker components than the Romance.

Here's what Sarah told me about the future of this Darkship series:

-----------Quote from Sarah A. Hoyt-------------
The series is a series of revolutions against the Good Men, as the revolt fans out over the Earth. I was going to make it one book, and then realized not all revolts would be the same or end the same.

Some of them end badly indeed. The next book, Through Fire, is the revolution in Liberte Seacity, the domain of Simon St. Cyr.

I'm disgracefully late with it, because Lucius' voice STUCK in my head, and I thought I'd need the services of an exorcist to write a book from another POV ever.

The series doesn't have other books in his voice, but it will have a book (probably fourth. I'm a pantser so there's wiggle room) Blood Brothers which is the story of Luce and Nat's twin sons.

(It's the future. Yes, they're assembled in a lab.)

And the last book in the series will be from the point of view of their much younger (than her brothers) daughter, Abigail Keeva Remy.
---------- END QUOTE-----------

There you see the genetic engineering of the future -- not-so-far-future either -- as two guys have children together. 

http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/uk-allows-ivf-using-dna-three-parents

Times chance so fast, science fiction writers can't keep up -- Sarah A. Hoyt is leading the pack here. 

And Sarah gave me a glimpse of the opening of the next book in the revolts against the Good Men, When Worlds Collide:

---------quote------------
When Worlds Collide

A spaceship mechanic has no place in a fairytale, not even when she’s dressed in a flowing gown and being courted by one of Earth’s most powerful men.

I was designed to be able to repair spaceships and to navigate them home safely. I had calluses on my hands from working with heavy tools on delicate machinery. I was strong enough to kill a grown man with a casual blow. And I had burner strapped to my ankle under my ball-gown.

The man courting me was a scoundrel, a dictator, and likely a murderer. And we were dancing at a spun-sugar palace, atop a fairytale island. It was his ballroom, his palace and his island. He was my only protector on Earth and my host for the last six months. He wanted me. He had been gentle and caring and solicitous of me. I wanted to escape the happy-ever-after fairytale ending.

You should be careful what you wish for. It was a relief when the palace exploded.

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

You want to read this book. 

Go to this page and on the left, under her picture, click the "follow" button to be notified when new books are released.

http://www.amazon.com/Sarah-A.-Hoyt/e/B001HCVAX6

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Orphan Works And Mass Digitization

The Office of Copyrights has issued a Report and Notice of Inquiry for public comment concerning works that users wish to exploit, when they cannot locate the copyright owners.

It is likely that the legal penalties will be limited when a copyright owner discovers that his/her copyrighted work has been exploited by someone else.

http://www.infodocket.com/2015/06/04/u-s-copyright-office-releases-report-on-orphan-works-and-mass-digitization/

This link leads to a summary, which in turn contains links to the full text of the Report and to the Notice of Inquiry upon which you may comment.

Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry

Awe and Altruism

A faculty member in the psychology department of one of my own colleges, the University of California in Irvine, has conducted a study that appears to demonstrate a connection between feelings of awe and impulses toward altruistic behavior:

Awe Promotes Altruistic Behavior

Awe, "that sense of wonder felt in the presence of something vast that transcends one’s understanding of the world," seems to promote unselfish behavior by diminishing our egoistic sense of self-importance. Religion and spirituality, art and music, and the grandeur of nature are some experiences that can evoke this "sense of wonder."

I tend to take experiments like the ones described in this article with a grain of salt. Can "pro-social" behavior produced in an artificially structured setting, where it doesn't cost the giver much if anything, be validly generalized to the complex phenomena of unselfishness in real life? Nevertheless, it's an encouraging study anyway. It hints that responses to both the transcendent and the needs of others spring from innate human traits and may be fundamentally connected.

In his early work THE PROBLEM OF PAIN, C. S. Lewis traces the two strands that grew together to form religion as we define it. The first, the Numinous, he identifies with the emotion of awe. This feeling transcends ordinary fear. Lewis maintains that the awe-filled reaction to numinous phenomena can't be derived from external events or natural experiences but seems to be inborn in the human mind; he believes this emotion to be a genuine revelation of the supernatural. The second strand is the ethical element, an awareness of "a moral law at once approved and disobeyed." In fact, he's talking about the very factors in human nature that the Irvine researcher analyzed. According to Lewis, "The moral experience and the numinous experience are so far from being the same that they may exist for quite long periods without establishing a mutual contact." Religion as we know it arises when the two strands intertwine, so that the numinous power or powers become understood as the source of ethical values.

Lewis suggests that this combination isn't necessarily inevitable. Given the results of the Irvine study, maybe he was mistaken. Maybe the human brain naturally connects cosmic awe with transcendent ethical values, and maybe that happens because (a point Lewis would agree with) those phenomena have objective reality. Moreover, if the connection comes naturally to us, maybe a similar link between the numinous and the ethical evolves in the brains of all sapient species no matter what planet they inhabit.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Depiction Part 11 -- Depicting Complex Battle-scenes by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Depiction Part 11
Depicting Complex Battle-scenes
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

Here's the index post for this series on Depiction:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

The big secret of writing Award Winners and Best Sellers is more about what you leave out than what you put in.

But to know what to leave out, you have to think through every tiny detail, from within the point of view of your main character and know what it is you are leaving out, and why you are leaving it out.

Within the main character's point of view, you know what that character knows -- and you don't know what that character does not know.

It sounds so simple when you say it.  Not simple at all.  It's another craft technique, and a tool for your toolbox.

Mastery of that writing tool - leaving OUT the most interesting part - is the hallmark of the great writers.

The great writers engage the creative imagination of readers, luring them into creating their own version of the story, bringing the characters alive within the reader's mind.  That is done by leaving room for the reader to insert themselves into the story - to think like the character.

If you detail every thought in the character's mind, or go into long conversations or arguments about whether to do something anyone who is an expert in the choices being discussed would KNOW would not be considered -- just the explain to the reader why you didn't write a thing a certain way -- you lose your primary audience, and repel any casual reader who will read anything.  In other words, you write boring stuff.

So a big chunk of characterization lies within what a character does NOT think, not simply within what the character does think.

I found a beautiful example of this in a book I was reading because the author had been one of my first writing students.

He is Charles E. Gannon - Chuck Gannon on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/chuck.gannon.01
(don't shorten that link - there's another by the same name)

His publisher put up on Amazon the following bio:

About the Author
Charles E. Gannon is a breakthrough rising star in science fiction with a multiple short story and novella publications in Baen anthologies, Man-Kzin Wars XIII, Analog, and elsewhere. Gannon is coauthor with Steve White of Extremis, the latest entry in the legendary Starfire series created by David Weber. His most recent novel is 1635: The Papal Stakes cowritten with alternate history master, Eric Flint.  A multiple Fulbright scholar, Gannon is Distinguished Professor of American Literature at St. Bonaventure University.

When he brought his first attempt to write a story to me, he was just a kid -- really young kid.  Look what he grew up to become! 

Chuck Gannon's first novel in his Tales of the Terran Republic, Fire With Fire, A Caine Riordan Novel...



...was nominated for the Nebula and won another award. 

Here's my discussion of that one:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/07/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

The second Caine Riordan novel, Trial by Fire, with much more of a "Military Science Fiction" tone (an invasion of Earth by recently contacted Alien coalition) garnered a Nebula Nomination and lots of Hugo attention just like the first.  And there are a lot of reasons for that.



In short, Trial by Fire is a fabulous Mission: Impossible TV episode, or better, movie, writ large.



The plot of the novel unfolds a massive, complex, (beautiful) piece of psychological leverage, of Assumption Judo used against non-humans and featuring the best of human nature.  Trial by Fire is a jaw-dropper just like the Mission: Impossible TV Series episodes, especially of the First Season.  So it has my highest recommendation - with the caveat that it is not a Romance genre novel.  But Romance readers who love Relationship plots will not be bored. 

This blog is about Science Fiction Romance, but just as with the Romance element in World War II movies, Science Fiction Romance often includes long, intricate, complicated, battles. 

In fact, Fantasy Romance does, too, when vast armies on horseback deploy to fight for a Kingdom. 

So a Romance writer who leaps into the science fiction field has to know how to do this kind of thinking, how to lay out battle tactics, how to choose weaponry, how to think like a soldier or a Commander -- and most importantly how to know what to leave out, and why to leave it out, even though it's interesting to a big part of your audience. 

The skill-set is termed Selectivity in many books on writing, and it is a key to all forms of Art.

Selecting what to put in requires precision handling of the Theme. 

Selecting what to leave out requires precision handling of the Characterization. 

In the case of Charles E. Gannon's Trial by Fire, the armies and armadas of Earth are fighting for control of Earth. 

The main character we follow, among many, Caine Riordan, is a "polymath" -- he doesn't think the same way most humans do.  He doesn't think the way anyone else in the novel does. 

There are a couple of good, solid Love Stories twined through this plot -- the Hero is deeply (and oddly) involved with two women, with a lot of heroism and angst, but those relationships don't drive the invasion or the counter-strike of this plot.  It's a good read, and if you study the battle scenes, it will teach you a lot about what to put in and what to leave out of a sex scene. 

So as I was reading the Kindle version of this novel, I took some notes using the Kindle note feature. 

Then I thought about it all, went back to a note I dropped into his Chapter Fifty-Two (they are short chapters, but this is a very long book) and decided to drop a grain of sand onto Chuck Gannon's Facebook Wall, and see if he made me a pearl.  Sure enough, he did.  I can be very irritating at times.  So I posed my question from my note in the most provocative way I could imagine. 

I wrote on his wall:
---------QUOTE--------
A question: when communications are all out in the Jakarta region and they have to instruct troops about the action, why don't they send out loudspeaker trucks and guys with bullhorns? Is this so far in the future nobody has such things or are they all destroyed? Or did I miss something?
---------END QUOTE-------

CHUCK ANSWERED ON HIS FACEBOOK WALL

---------QUOTE---------

Chuck Gannon
Lots of reasons. In no particular order: (and I speak of trucks, but same would apply to runners with bull horns)

1) counter targeting invite. Audial triangulation would find snipers easily by this time; Speaker trucks would be like "shoot me" signs.

2) difficulty with centralized control relaying to trucks. Control net by subsurface fiber optic, in absence of any ability to use airwaves, or to trust that you could safely signal in the clear, means you have to go for secure hardwire/fiberwire.; Trucks would have to get messages, return for more. Turnaround time fatal for contemporary MOUT scenario depicted.

3) centralization trackback of source of truck messaging: a half witted adversary will realize the trucks are having to get updated with messages. Find, observe, follow messenger or truck path to update point, and you take out a commo nexus. Given difficulty of insurgent C4i environment, it is probably a command and control nexus. Hi value target; crippling blow to insurgents.

4) trucks not historically used in front line engagements as passing info; usually preop marshaling, often for civilians, not troops. Useful for issuing mass directives to masses. The more closely orchestrated or tightly sequential an operation is, the more its communications must be inaccessible to the threat force, swift, clear, coded. None of that is possible with speaker trucks.

There are more reasons (having to do with logistics, inability to get immediate ping backs to determine yes/no on receipt of message and therefore op timing confirmation, etc.)
--------END QUOTE-------------


That is a precious pearl for beginning writers to study in the context of this high profile novel. 

A few fans of his jumped on the discussion, and one who is involved in creating a wiki for the Universe Chuck is writing in captured his response for the wiki -- and put my name on there. 

http://tales-of-the-terran-republic.wikia.com/wiki/Command_&_Control_Considerations

The discussion thread is:
https://www.facebook.com/chuck.gannon.01/posts/10203596444013156

So get these two books and start following the adventures of Caine Riordan, the Polymath. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

High Fantasy: The Long and Short of It

Natasha Pulley, writing for THE GUARDIAN, maintains, "Fantasy cannot build its imaginary worlds in short fiction." Huge novels in multi-volume series, according to this blogger, aren't a cynical marketing ploy but a necessity of the genre. When satisfying high fantasy short works exist, in her opinion, they tend to be spinoffs from established fictional universes.

Imaginary Worlds

She makes a valid point in proposing that the "mega-novel" is "the natural format for anything so sprawling as a fantasy universe." I don't dispute that fully developing a secondary world (in Tolkien's terminology) requires time, space, and many thousands of words. However, the claim that a satisfactory imaginary world can't be built in a short story—that "If you write real high fantasy in 4,000 words, details and all, it tends to be a snippet, not a story"—goes too far, in my opinion.

While that task might be an insurmountable challenge in 4,000 words (and I don't necessarily accept that to be the case), a short story can go up to 10,000 words or so, a novelette or novella considerably longer. Surely the realms of fantasy and SF offer plenty of counter-examples to disprove Pulley's claim. Octavia Butler's "Bloodchild" immediately leaps to mind. This classic short story gives the reader a vivid, three-dimensional picture of an alien planet, its dominant intelligent species, and the role of the human colonists in that world. No doubt a novel would tell us much more about that world, but we know all we need to know for the purposes of the story, which is complete in itself, not a "snippet." In high fantasy, Marion Zimmer Bradley's SWORD AND SORCERESS anthology series offers dozens of stand-alone tales to refute Pulley.

I can't help wondering whether she deliberately exaggerates for effect in her defense of multi-volume sagas, in order to provoke just such a discussion.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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


Faye Kellerman is the wife of Jonathan Kellerman,



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



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

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

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

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

That's the founding principle behind LinkedIn.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's due to promotional money behind the title.

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

Why is it not just the amount of money spent?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who knows you is about them, not you.

Who you know is about you, not them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Marilynn Byerly On Fan Fiction

This week, a couple of copyright-related topics caught this author (Rowena Cherry's) attention.  Facebook is abuzz (if you know where to look) with a story about someone who might be called a permissionless innovator taking screen shots of other people's photographs on Instagram, blowing them up, allegedly removing any watermarks or embedded attribution, and selling the images for tens of thousands, with no payment  to the copyright owners.  This disruptive enterprise appears not to be in compliance with Instagram's TOS
https://instagram.com/about/legal/terms/

Secondly, allegedly on FanFiction.net there is a discussion of what one might call the literary equivalent, where someone is alleged to have copied works of short fiction written by various authors from DeviantArt and posted these stories under a different name and title. Unlike what has been alleged about Instagram, DeviantArt appears to this author to have a very good copyright policy, and prohibits "lifting". http://about.deviantart.com/policy/service/

And so to Marilynn Byerly's advice to published authors about fan fiction. Marilynn gives conditional permission for authors: "As all my articles on copyright are, you are welcome to use it with attribution and a link back to my site." 

http://marilynnbyerly.com/fanficandcopyrig.html 

Fanfic or fan fic or fan fiction -- stories written by fans using someone else's world. For example, lots of kids write their own Harry Potter fanfic stories. 
Readers and writers of fanfic often ask about the legality of writing stories using media or book characters. 
IN A LEGAL SENSE, fanfic is a copyright violation, but the owner of the copyright can choose to ignore it or prosecute it at their discretion. 
The essential rules of writing fanfic are-- • If the owners of characters in any media are fanfic friendly, it's okay to write and share it as long as it's not for profit. • If the owners of the characters, etc., in any media aren't fanfic friendly, don't share your fanfic in that universe if you don't want to be chased by lawyers disguised as pit bulls. • If the owners of the characters, etc., are friendly to fanfic but ask that you not write slash (heterosexual characters taking a partner of the same sex) or erotic stories, don't write it. Appreciate the creator's generosity in allowing you to use their universe and respect their wishes about their characters. 
Lots of fans like to thumb their noses at the copyright and trademark laws for various reasons, but it boils down to a matter of respect and thanks. If you enjoy someone's work, don't screw them financially, trash their characters, or disrespect their wishes on the subject. 
How does this relate to those of us who write original fiction? 
According to most publishers, we should ask readers not to write fanfic using our characters because it endangers our copyright. If you aren't averse to fanfic, you should check with your publisher before allowing it. 
Copyright violation is much more severe if the violation is in the same media. In other words, fanfic is more dangerous to the fiction writer's copyright ownership than it is to a movie's copyright. 

Marilynn Byerly 

http://mbyerly.blogspot.com/ 
http://marilynnbyerly.com 

Happy Memorial Day!

Rowena Cherry

Enforcing Sexual Mores

An article on why people monitor their neighbors' sexual behavior and apply social pressure to punish those who break the rules:

Other People's Sex Lives

Evolutionary psychology, according to this article, speculates that condemnation of casual sex is ultimately a matter of economics. A study in THE ARCHIVES OF SEXUAL BEHAVIOR "found that promiscuity—by both men and women—is more likely to be considered a moral violation in places where women are economically dependent on men." Men don't want to be tricked into supporting children they didn't father. Women don't want their husbands diverting resources to other women (and their children). Women, according to this research, are more inclined than men to "shame" other women who engage in casual sex, because someone who "gives it away" (to use an old-fashioned term) is spoiling the field for women who play by the rules. Now that contraception has separated sex from reproduction and most women in our society don't depend on male support for survival, condemnation of casual sex should fade away. However, attitudes that have become hard-wired through evolution—assuming this behavior really has evolved that way—lag behind changes in culture.

This perspective on sexual relations goes back a long time. Samuel Johnson, for instance, declared that an unfaithful husband does no serious harm to his wife because a man who commits adultery doesn't foist bastards on his wife. I would rather see marital fidelity as rooted more in equally shared love and intimacy than in economics!

The article concludes that "judging other people’s sex lives remains an act as innately human as sex itself," making the economically-based demand for fidelity sound universal. In fact, though, it's culture-bound. In some pre-industrial societies, for instance, a woman's acceptance of multiple sexual partners works in her favor where support is concerned. A pregnant woman shares sex with as many men as possible, because every man she couples with thereby becomes a "father" to the infant. Children can have several fathers, all of whom contribute to their maintenance.

Women's economic dependence on men has no relevance to sex in matrilineal cultures, where the child belongs to the mother's clan, and she stays with her family of origin rather than living with her mate. The biological father doesn't play the role of family headship and financial support traditional in our society. The children's uncle—the mother's oldest brother—fills that position.

No connection at all among sex, proof of paternity, and financial support would exist among the logical Vulcans. Reproductive sex can happen only during pon farr, and that can occur only between bonded mates. So sexual straying, even if possible (T'Pring's plan for her future with Stonn hints that it is), could not result in offspring to cloud issues of inheritance. And of course the whole concept would be totally irrelevant to a species such as the one in Le Guin's LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS, humanoids who remain sexually neuter except for a brief period each month and become male or female, potentially father or mother, at random.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Plot-Character-Worldbuilding Part 5 - Murderer In The Mikdash

Theme-Plot-Character-Worldbuilding
Part 5
Murderer In The Mikdash

Analyzed by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous entries in this 4-skills integration series are:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding_14.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding_21.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/05/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding.html

Last week we started dissecting a novel, Murderer in the Mikdash.



I hope you've read the novel by now. 

We are looking for reasons it didn't make it into Mass Market Paperback, and what to do to fix that.  So we will include "spoilers" (which won't spoil the read for you even if you haven't read the book yet -- this book is that good!  You can't spoil it.) 

The same author has done a number of non-fiction works, and blogs and lectures. 

The book, Murderer in the Mikdash is a Mystery and a Romance -- but the ending of the Romance thread is ambiguous and open while the Mystery thread definitively resolves its conflict.   

In a twitter conversation with the author, I learned that the Romance thread will continue into the sequel. 

So let's examine the 4 elements this series on Theme-Plot-Character-Worldbulding Integration discusses to see how they are used in Murderer In The Mikdash.

Remember the 2 and 4 technique integration posts are "advanced" -- they are written assuming you've mastered the individual skills we have discussed individually and in pairs and that you are ready to walk-and-chew-gum.

The Romance thread ends with the couple abandoning what appears to be a Soul Mate Relationship because of fundamental philosophical differences that typically do destroy marriages. 

So the parting of the main couple at the end has an element of Mature Judgement.  These are sensible people with very pragmatic attitudes gained through a lot of pain, disappointment, and draining anxiety.

You respect the main couple because of that Maturity, but at the same time want to throw the novel across the room because it disappoints in the end, and you are screaming at the female lead, NO NO NO!!!  You idiot!  You coward!  You can't do that!!! 

So it's not an HEA ending to the love-story plot, and it's not even an HFN ending (Happily For Now).  It's more a QWA ending (Quit While Ahead.)

This couple agreed to part (and one big flaw in the writing is that they agreed to part off-stage, not in a Big Blowup Fight at the airport, getting one of them nabbed by Security.) 

Apparently, both of them agreed to part for the same reason.  Remember the ending to Casablanca?  That's what this novel needed and didn't get.  Remember the ending to Gone With The Wind?  That's what this novel needed and didn't get. 

None of the previous scenes showed them arguing over the point that eventually separates them.  The point is well defined within the narrative, and it is there in show-don't-tell, but it is not discussed in dialogue via SUBTEXT. 

This is one pervasive failing in the Dialogue techniques used in this novel: scenes are not powered by combat-couched-in-dialogue, and the real issues are not presented in subtext. Dialogue is used to move the plot but not often to move the story.  Dialogue is used to impart information to the reader, but sometimes not to the characters.

All we learn about their incompatible religious views we know from ON-THE-NOSE dialogue, not subtextual conversation.

We don't have enough information via subtext to decide for ourselves whether they could (or should) make a life together despite their different personal religious convictions and attitudes.  The facts are there, but the subtext is not.  Readers doubt text and believe subtext.  So one tool for convincing readers to suspend disbelief is not used. 

The plot of this novel is pure mystery - leaving no room for one member of the the proto-couple to act to convince the other to change attitude.  What action in that direction there was turned out to be ineffective, and not driven by the kind of heroic determination we expect of Soul Mates overcoming obstacles.  

Remember the TV Series Beauty and the Beast?  (not the Disney cartoon!)  That dimension is missing from Murderer in the Mikdash, but it would have worked fabulously well.



Or maybe the TV Series LOIS AND CLARK (an all-time favorite of mine).



In both those Urban Fantasy Romance series, you have the love story between a very human woman and an alien man -- a man with secrets, with powers, with complicated issues.  In fact that describes the reason Star Trek spawned so much fanfic: Spock/Viewer Relationship.

That is the overall genre that the core Romance material behind Murderer in the Mikdash seems to belong to.  Rachel Tucker, the ABC TV News Anchor (Lois) is pretty ordinary among human women.  The disqualified Cohen she seems so very interested in is so very-very the "mild mannered" coffee shop owner by day and the immensely talented psychological counselor (Cohen-skills-set) by night.  That Cohen is Superman-wrapped-in-Vincent-Clothing. 

For all intents and purposes, in our real modern world, a Cohen involved in the Third Temple operations would fill the spot in the Cast of Characters reserved in Alien Romance for The Alien -- such a character is a mysterious-mystery as alluring as Spock in STAR TREK. 

The market for this kind of real-life-alien-character is enormous and untapped. 

Fiction such as Lois & Clark and Beauty and the Beast strikes deep into the heart of every woman and gets at least a double-take from every man such a woman would be interested in. 

In Lois&Clark on TV, we rarely get those subtext-rich conversations about why they can't "be together."  But in the Lois and Clark films, we do indeed get a few moments of such conversations, mostly in subtext and imagery (remember a film is a "story in pictures.").  Who can forget any of those flying scenes with Lois -- or the balcony scene? 

In Beauty and the Beast, the TV series, we do get many such discussions both on-the-nose and very off-the-nose deep in subtext.

It is those conversations that readers live for. 

The Mystery part of the Plot of Murderer in the Mikdash (Is Her Husband Dead or Alive? Was her best friend murdered? Did it have something to do with her husband's disappearance?) has a big, firm platform built so that when that question is resolved, you believe the resolution.  It's a solid Mystery.  And it's an irresistible page-turner of a Mystery. 

The other part of this novel's structure that is exemplary is the Futurology.  Even as well done as it is, it does illustrate the dangers of working in a near-future world.

The book, set in Israel, was published in 2006 when smartphones weren't prevalent in Israel.  It was probably conceptualized a few years before that when the importance of the smartphone as an element in Mystery Solving was not apparent --- so characters in this novel write too much on paper, do not Google or use a Maps app (but do have GPS), and they do phone.  They also don't use Facetime or videochat. 

Given the recent release of iPhone 6+ and even sharper ones for 2015, some of the Galaxy Note and Lumia phones, the worldbuilding of Murderer in the Mikdash seems just "off" because the ABC news anchor Rachel Tucker (main female character) uses a separate "device" as a camera until her ABC cameraman arrives.  And she uses film-based thinking. 

Today you can get broadcast quality video off an iPhone.  With a small tripod and a lens-addition, an iPhone can do top-notch broadcast quality images.  What will the 2016 iPhone be able to do?  2017?

In 2006, the idea of a phone that could do that kind of video was ridiculous.  Not only that but TV screens and broadcast quality was much less.

So the author can't be faulted for the plot-wrinkle that has the "camera" get left in a car when it was most needed, or the worldbuilding problem of a camera that couldn't photograph hand written pages with enough clarity for them to be legible.  Today we deposit checks via phone.  Who knew?

An anchor would have an ABC issued top-notch phone, no nonsense.  And if the company wouldn't spring for a great phone, the heroic woman we want to identify with would have bought one for herself.

Look again at the title of this blog series -- Theme-Plot-Character-Worldbuilding.  Note that I started discussing Murderer in the Mikdash last week by pointing out issues with the genre signature and saleability of the novel.  Targeting an Audience

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

Targeting an Audience is the first thing you do before you frame the Idea into a story that generates a plot.  You define your audience before you build characters from the substance of the World you created. 

If you don't do it in that order, you'll end up doing it in that order upon rewrite, or perhaps at editorial direction.  At some point in the production process, you will run the process in this order: audience, world, character, plot, theme.  At other points, other orders will prevail. 

If you do public speaking and use anecdotes, jokes and stories to illustrate points, you know that you can tell the same anecdotes, jokes and stories over and over to different audiences and every time you will frame the story differently.

You learn with practice that what you are saying can always be the same, but how you say it has to vary with to whom you are saying it.

So when a writer knows they have a story to tell, the first step is to look up and see who's listening, then frame the presentation accordingly.

You don't have to compromise who you are, or write to a "formula" to sell Mass Market.  You have to find your audience, and talk to that audience.  The editor who has to feed that audience will grab your manuscript after reading the first 5 pages, if you nail it.

Murderer in the Mikdash has a perfect opening 5 pages for an Amateur Detective Mystery -- the opening events that later unfold into a whole ball of yarn have the right symbolism, and all the things the novel eventually presents are rolled up into that ball of yarn.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html

The Mystery plot of Murderer in the Mikdash has the right opening, the correct middle in the correct place, with an ending that ends off with neat precision. 

The characters are introduced in the correct order, at exactly the right pages.  The mystery-conflict is perfectly presented. 

If you want to sell mass market - you have to read this novel and discover why it didn't make mass market.  Then compare this novel with what you write, and figure out how to aim your material at Mass Market Editors. 

The differences in your story are not about what you say, but to whom you say it.  You must speak in the audience's language.  This novel speaks MYSTERY exceptionally well.  It even has the proper Action Sequences in the correct places.

So while staring at the audience, knowing who you have to captivate, decide how to talk to them, then use that to build the world you will tell them your story within. 

That world is built from the unconscious assumptions that bind that audience into a whole.  Build the world right, and the audience will all laugh in unison, tear up at the same time, gasp in the right spots, and give you a standing ovation (OK, for a writer, it's buy the next book.) 

Murderer in the Mikdash is a genuine Futuristic and the Worldbuilding of that Future vision is as solid as I have ever seen from any Science Fiction writer. 

Because the "science" behind this novel's fiction is not physics, math and chemistry, not even psychology, or even parapsychology, but actual Biblical Prophecy, the novel is not Science Fiction. 

If it were fake Biblical Prophecy it might be classed as SF.  If it were say, Chinese or African mythology of an alternate universe, or re-imagined Ancient Greek mythology, it would be classed as Fantasy. 

As it is, the novel is more like "the Future" as depicted in the film Back To The Future:



You've read (and maybe written) any number of excellent Fantasy Romances that use various mythologies in place of the Science that science fiction uses.  That's why they are called Fantasy -- they use some mythology in place of science, and most often today, re-imagine the real mythology, rewriting mythologies freehand.

Some term the product of this kind of re-written mythology Science Fantasy, others are trying to popularize an umbrella term, Speculative Fiction.

Murder in the Mikdash uses real Biblical Prophecy (not rewritten or re-imagined) for the worldbuilding the same way Vampire Romances use the various different Vampire mythologies found in various cultures around the Earth. 

Murder in the Mikdash is more like science fiction.

Science fiction uses our real-world science that you read about in peer-reviewed publications and extrapolates from that science.  Murder in the Mikdash uses real-world Prophecy you can read in very-very old editions of the Bible or modern translations and extrapolates from that real Prophecy using the same cognitive skills a science fiction writer uses. 

To me, the precision of the thinking behind the futuristic worldbuilding in Murderer in the Mikdash is edifying. 

This novel, by itself, (nevermind the flaws I point out) is a lesson in Depiction. 

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

The worldbuilding is fabulous, and that world is depicted with a tight, disciplined focus that any writer in any genre would do well to emulate.

Murder in the Mikdash is set around the year 2048 (in other words, now), a few years after the Messiah is identified as of the line of David and is set on the throne as King of the New Israel (as prophesied). 

None of the creation of that throne is detailed in the book -- which is a great strength of the book, and to the writer's credit.  It is a perfect choice in the worldbuilding.  The Arrival becomes backstory. 

At the time of the story, the Kingdom is changing things among the nations fast.  Peace with the neighbors is setting in.  About 2/3 of the people are making contact with G-d, and that contact is changing social interactions slowly, plausibly, but emphatically.

Oh, I should explain MIKDASH is the Hebrew word for the Temple in Jerusalem -- the one on the spot with that other building sitting there right now.  At the time of this story, there is a nifty new Temple built on that spot and it is fully functional with all the offerings and ceremonies being done by Cohen descendants.  The Levy descendants attend to infrastructure details (alas, we never get to hear them sing, though). 

In this new world, the way you make contact with God is to go to the Temple and do whatever offerings the instructions detail for you, or just watch.

When you do that, it changes you, gradually, gently, barely perceptibly, but in an enjoyable way.  Going to the Temple services becomes habit forming because it's so pleasant.  People who start going, tend to keep on going -- even if they have to move to Israel to be nearby enough to make it often.

Some of the characters in this book never go to the Temple.  Others go every day.  Others on special occasions.  Through the array of characters and their behaviors, you get a feel for the impact of the Temple Service on the general behavior of the population.  Characters and their behavior is the correct way to reveal to the reader all the delightful intricacies of the world you have built. 

This author never resorts to the "info-dump" technique, the expository lump.  There is no preface or throat-clearing awkwardness in Chapter One.  You just leap right into the action and catch up as you go along.  Perfect writing technique.  You have to study this book. 

As you meet the characters, you also get to know characters who see the Temple operations as a wonderful chance to attain wealth and power.  And you see the opportunities that Organized Crime would spot in this nexus of wealth and power -- and those characters behave in the perfectly reasonable way any of them would behave today. 

You see people in transition from one type of person to another type.

You see the resistance within well-meaning people to making the transition to a more G-d centered lifestyle.

Many issues in such transitions are raised but not addressed in this novel -- which is one reason I was convinced it needs many sequels, long ones, a TV Series, maybe a movie or three.  There's a lot of material hidden in here.

I recall a novel from a long time ago by Herbert Tarr called The Conversion of Chaplain Cohen.  If that book could get published way back then, this one can make it today with a little tweaking. 



If you like humor, you should read The Conversion of Chaplain Cohen.

Character arc issues involving religion or change of religious convictions are all very difficult for an author to handle plausibly for a wide audience.

Religious issues are, at this point in our social evolution, not mentionable in polite company.  Political Correctness shuns any mention of religion, but especially of the exacting requirements of the G-d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob upon these people, but not upon those.

Most readers of this  blog don't remember when the word "sex" was not used in polite company.  Now that word and many of its more vernacular synonyms are perfectly acceptable, but the word God is not acceptable.  Nor is the Word of God (from any heritage). 

That pendulum of social acceptability is about to start on its backswing.  Murderer in the Mikdash and its sequels may ride that new trend. 

As authors of fiction about Soul Mates, you can catch that wave.

For all its being a "pure fantasy" of a future where Prophecy comes blatantly true in ways few expected it ever could, Murderer in the Mikdash resonates with a pragmatic realism about human nature and what it takes to change it. 

The Arrival of the Messiah does not cause all existing humans to suddenly become morally upstanding and angelically perfect.  The Arrival is not depicted as an ending, but as only a beginning of a slow transition to a different general public attitude. 

The specific details of individual behavior still run the gamut from Gentle Wisdom to Callous Viciousness, from Acquisitiveness and Avarice to Gracious Generosity, just as humans do today.  The characters in Murderer in the Mikdash are individuals. 

That spectrum gives the Characters in this novel a depth and realism necessary when spinning a fabulous yarn.  In an unrealistic world, the characters must be realistic.  In a realistic world, the characters must be unrealistic (Superman/Clark). 

So now we have examined the Target Audience of the novel, the Worldbuilding behind the plot and story, and now come to the Characters.

The main character is Rachel Tucker, an ABC News anchorwoman of some renown.  She's Jewish, but for her it is a matter of ancestry, and the rest is ignored or shrugged off -- despite the very real presence of a descendant of King David on the throne of Israel. 

Israel considers itself a benevolent dictatorship at the time of the novel.  Rachel Tucker has been dragged into living there by her husband.

While she loved this man and was glad to marry him, even glad to bear him a son whom she loves dearly, the main force in her life is her career.  Her  husband interfered with that career by "dragging" her to Israel.

She commuted to New York as necessary but did a lot of her work from Israel -- even strove to find stories to cover from there.  But she was feeling stress over that even before she got pregnant. 

While she was pregnant, and was in Israel with her husband, he disappeared.

No notice, no trace, no hint he would "leave her" -- no harbingers of difficulty in the Relationship, no reason at all.  He just didn't come home when expected.

At the time of the story, the baby has been born a couple weeks before. 

As the story opens, Rachel has hired a daytime babysitter and spends her days following a guy she suspects might have murdered her best friend, a woman married to one of the Priests at the Temple.

The best friend died in the street recently (backstory, before the opening of this novel).  The death was officially called Natural -- though the woman was young.  The man Rachel is following was seen near the friend as she died.

In the course of unraveling this mystery, answering questions the Police can't or won't answer, Rachel uses all her investigative reporting skills and resources, and in the end nails at least one ring in a chain of organized crime rings (SEQUELS!!!) -- and earns a place in the Most Wanted lists of such organized crime rings.  She has a knack for making enemies. 

This plot drips of Good vs Evil themes in the abstract -- what is Good?; what is Evil? -- why do both exist in G-d's world?  Potent stuff of which the best fiction is fabricated. 

All those nebulous, abstract themes are wrapped up in a bundle and buried within the Angst Cabinetts inside the Characters.  The reader hardly knows the issues are there -- but they drive the plot by driving the story which drives the Characters.  All of it is present on page 1, in the symbolism. 

Remember I use "Plot" to mean the sequence of Events chained together by the Because-Line (because this happens, A does that, because A did that, B does this, because B did this, that happens, because that happens, A does like-so, etc etc to AHA! and THE END). 

I use "Story" to mean the sequence of significances to a character of the Events on the because-line.  This happens - Character A feels that.  Character A feels that, does such-and-so, which causes Character B to do something else, from which Character A learns ). 

"Story" means the sequence of emotional-and-mental/spiritual lessons the Character takes from the Events of the Plot. 

The plot ends in a climax. 

The story ends in a moral. 

Ideally both plot and story end in a single IMAGE, or event which crystalizes the reader's understanding of "why" things happened.  The reader learns what the character learned. 

Not all writing teachers use the same terminology, but all do make that distinction between story and plot.

In a well written novel, the reader can't see any difference between the story and the plot -- the integration is seamless and invisible from the outside.

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

Murder in the Mikdash has some problems with the Characterization, with the depiction of the characters more than with the characters themselves.

These problems arise from the need to make the material "accessible" to the general reader (not a genre reader), and they throw the composition out of the Genre categories where it might sell to Mass Market.

The choice of a major network news anchor for Female Point of View Character is ingenius, and one of the reasons I think this work could make a great film or COLUMBO-style TV Miniseries. 

But don't forget the advice in SAVE THE CAT! by Blake Snyder, -- "Keep The Press Out Of It."  This novel breaks that rule, but I think Blake Snyder would agree with me, it is the exception that proves the rule. 









Pulling off the breaking of such a cardinal rule proves this author has both genius and vast discipline.

The choice of a disqualified Priest for the news anchor's love-interest and the core of the Romance plot is likewise perfect.  As I said above, Vincent from Beauty and the Beast or Clark from Lois&Clark. 

The characterization problems arise in Plausibility.  A genre Target Audience would have problems with Rachel Tucker's portrayal that a general Literature audience would not.

It appears the novel was originally designed to be marketed as general Literature, not Genre. 

In a general market, the Characters would seem plausible to the reader.  In Romance, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, Suspense, genres the female character just isn't plausible.

It has been my observation that smarter, and either better educated or more widely educated, people tend to gravitate toward reading Genres, even if they also read a lot of general audience literature.

That's why Genre is mostly called "Mid-List" -- Genre doesn't sell to untold millions because the material is aimed at narrower slices of humanity, people with specialty tastes, but who buy books in disproportionate numbers.  So Genre novels don't sell the most books -- and don't sell the least, but hit the "middle" of the sales statistics. 

Mysteries, Westerns, Historicals, Romance, Science Fiction of all mixed genres, and almost all varieties of Fantasy require not just having an education but enjoying the process of becoming educated.  This Mid-List reader segement learns stuff because learning itself is fun.  Different genres are just different stuff to learn. 

Genre readers tend to be people who love learning trivia -- the less useful the trivia in daily life, the more fun it is to acquire expertise in it.  Just note what Gamers know about the worlds they play in.

Genre reading is a bus-man's-holiday for people who work in fields where they are paid for their acquired expertise in something. 

Such people like learning, just for its own sake.

Rabbi Gidon Rothstein is an expert in the Biblical Prophets (among other things), and has infused Murderer in the Mikdash with a smattering of little bits of trivia to whet the appetite of the genre-reader for something new to learn, just for the hell of it. 

General Literature readers don't get excited over learning Star Trek trivia like the rules of Fizbin or the Rules of Acquisition, and for the same reason would not delight in ferreting out and learning the rules of entry to the Temple.  Geeks and Nerds would delight in a whole new set of trivia to become expert in. 

Science Fiction, and futuristic fiction of all sub-genres, tends to draw in people whose main personality trait is curiosity.

Wish-fulfillment Fantasy for such people has to show-don't-tell the unfettered joys of satisfying Curiosity.  And that is the essence of Romance of all kinds -- finding out things about the mysterious-stranger, reveling in the delight of revelation. 

Action genres, such as Mysteries, Westerns, and Science Fiction, also require the main character to be Heroic as well as indefatigably curious.

Integrate those two elements into the 'formula' for a main character, the point-of-view character, for a Genre novel, and you have to have a Main Character who is Heroic in the Quest to Satisfy Curiosity.

Rachel Tucker ALMOST has that attribute. 

We see it in her responses many times.  She just won't let go, even when the fatigue of recent motherhood swamps her.  She puts her baby first, but just won't let go of the mystery nobody is forcing her to solve.  She just wants to know, and that means she has to know.  That is the essence of her Character -- must-know what she wants to know. 

Throughout the body of the novel, what Rachel Tucker does -- the PLOT -- illustrates that kind of won't-let-go heroism.  Her day-job requires that kind of heroism, and in her interactions with people she interviews, she demonstrates an incisive ability to pose questions. 

She has it all, except in one dimension. 

To Integrate the Character with the Worldbuilding, and create Tucker as an "objective correlative" that the non-genre reading general audiences could identify with, she is given the trait of "just not paying attention" to the changes in the world around her, the implementation of Biblical Laws within a cell-phone-and-TV-News world. 

This "not paying attention" trait gives the writer the chance to surprise her with details of the new world evolving under this new King of Israel.  And it lets the author lead her into attempting an illegal act, the consequences of which eventually lead into her Cohen-quandry-Romance.  The consequences of that one illegal act also lead her to solving two mysteries and putting away a good chunk of an Organized Crime Ring. 

So her ignorance of what's really going on in this New Israel are integral to both plot and story.  A rewrite can't fix that though it is a major impediment to selling this novel as Genre Mass Market. 

If I had to solve this kind of Character-Plot Integration problem, I would have had the Law she violates be something she knows all about (because it's been in the news constantly for months as the Knesset members -- who are probably all Cohanim, Levites and Rabbis -- wrangle over how to do it, not whether, just how). 

As she was about to give birth, it would have been plausible that she missed the announcements of laws passed making this and that city a "City of Refuge" and then, after they are established and people have moved, the final piece of legislation passes implementing the Law she violates.  So then it would be perfectly understandable why she missed that one law and misunderstood the explanation of it when she did find out.

That she attempts an act which violates that Law is an absolute Plot requirement.  So it has to be there.  But somehow it has to be made plausible that a person of this calibre would not-know such a thing.

Such a person being ignorant is perfectly plausible to the typical reader of Literature.

Such a person being ignorant is unreal, impossible to identify with, for genre readers.

But at the same time, Rachel Tucker is too smart for general Literature readers -- too aggressive, too sharp minded, and way too famous to be their alter-ego in the story.  She's LOIS in Lois&Clark.  She is soooo Lois. 

The author did not sell me on the idea of a Character who's that smart, that successful (Blessed by G-d), that well traveled, and who speaks and interviews on such a wide range of popular topics, could possibly not-know what she does not know. 

So I'm just screaming mad that the novel is so spoiled by Rachel Tucker's ignorance of what everything in her character says she would know.

In other words, I take this novel very personally.  You all know what a Lois&Clark fan I am.  How can you write a Lois&Clark look-alike novel and make me disbelieve in Lois?  This has gotten very personal! 

And there you go with THE definition of a GREAT NOVEL. 

A Great Novel is a novel that the readers take personally, and therefore do not want to end.

In other words, SEQUELLSSSSS!!!!!  .

But no sequel can work with this out-of-Character trait that Rachel Tucker evidenced in Murderer in the Mikdash.
It is just not possible that such a woman would not know.  Every time there's a change in any little bitty twist of Israeli Law, especially anything to do with Religion, the Jerusalem Post (in English) is filled wall to wall with discussion, articles, videos on the various factions arguing the points.  People in the street are yelling at each other about it. 

Now, yes, an ordinary person might wall all that noise out of their heads, (especially when pregnant) but not an internationally successful NEWS ANCHOR.  Not LOIS!!!  (remember the iconic scene of Lois hanging from the underside of the elevator in the Eifel Tower?  Would she not-know???) 

Choosing to make the lead Character a news anchor is an act of genius. 

Making her ignorant of her adopted country's laws (however much she doesn't want to be there, and calls the USA home) undermines her Character in a way that makes her weak -- in a way no male character would be undermined.  If Clark wasn't Superman, he could never have out-reported Lois, not even once. 

OK, so now we come to the PLOT of Murderer in the Mikdash.  I covered most of PLOT here above and last week. 

It's near perfect as a plot.  I read a lot of mysteries, but I don't write genre-mystery.  I do know what goes into the writing, though, and I know marketable mystery manuscripts when I see them.

This is sizzle-hot marketable mystery-plotting.

I've always been a Columbo fan -- and before that Perry Mason.  All the Agatha Christie classics have my admiration.  Now I'm a total fan of Faye Kellerman's Decker & Lazarus series, though it's sort of Petering out (excuse the pun).

Murder in the Mikdash is top-drawer mystery.  Amateur Detective Cozy Mystery doesn't come any better than this.  The Mystery Plot is perfectly turned; the action-sequences are convincing; the pacing is exquisite.

But because of the Futuristic Urban Fantasy ingredient (real, solid, actual Biblical Prophecy totally realized right in front of your eyes) it can't be marketed under the Cozy Mystery brand (BTW I do love Cozy Mystery!!!).

The Romance and the Mystery are fully integrated, a flawless seamless whole rooted deep in the characters' unconscious minds.

Now Theme.

The theme in this novel is suitably obscure, buried inside everything, and it drives the central core of every character, every scene, every locale. The whole novel hums with fully orchestrated theme just as described in these previous posts.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/01/research-plot-integration-in-historical_31.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/02/research-plot-integration-in-historical.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/04/index-to-theme-worldbuilding.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/index-to-theme-plot-integration.html

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-to-use-theme-in-writing-romance.html

Maybe the theme in Murderer in the Mikdash could be stated: "The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same." 

Or maybe, "Human Nature doesn't have to change;,society just has to catch up."

In other words: "Humans Are Essentially Good -- but we screw up sometimes." 

Or, "It is possible to break the cycle of being doomed to repeat History, but it'll cost you."

But my favorite way to say it is, "Everything matters; just don't sweat the small stuff."

The envelope theme for a series based on this vision of the Future might be: "Human Civilization Doesn't Turn On A Dime, But Maybe on a Flaming Half-Shekel."

 Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com