On the Road with Questions and Answers

I've spent the past two weekends on the road (yes, it's the silly season again), teaching writing workshops and doing book signings at a community college in Leesburg FL, a library in Mount Dora FL, an art center in Naples FL and a library in New Port Richey FL. Next weekend I leave for a week-long conference in Pittsburgh (the annual and wonderful Romantic Times BOOKlovers convention).

The questions asked me by writers at these events tend to range all over the lot. Some of the questions are very on-point--you can tell this person is serious about wanting to get published because they've done their homework. Other questions seem to be just fishing--the person really has no idea of how a book goes from an idea to sitting on the shelf in a bookstore.

I'll share some from both camps here as maybe you've had similar questions too:

Q - Why don't you tell your publisher to print your books in hardcover, not just paperback?

A - I don't tell Bantam anything. I have a contract with Bantam that delineates I will provide them the content but an author is not in a position to determine or demand (at least, not unless you're sooper oodley famous) how that content is presented. The decision on cover art, format (paperback, trade paper or hard cover, audio book, ebook) and the like is done by the corporate end/marketing departments of NY publishing houses (please note I'm not talking about self-published or small press published here). Of course, my agent (or I through my agent) can make suggestions. But Bantam is not obliged to follow them.

I personally like mass market paperback as the medium. It's small, priced well, easy to carry. Durability isn't the same has hardcover but mass market ppb (paperbacks) are a lot more affordable than hardcover: $6.99 versus $25 or so.

Q - Where does your agent place advertisements for your books?

A - I'm getting the feeling lately that there's a real misunderstanding out there as to the role of a literary agent. Literary agents are not publicists. A literary agent presents your book to publishing houses in an attempt to acquire a contract with the house to publish your book. The agent then negotiates the terms of the publishing contract. A literary agent doesn't book my signings, conventions or speaking engagements. She doesn't create or place ads in the media for my books. Mine does advise me on the status of my career and my brainstorm things like workshops and conferences and signings with me. But she doesn't handle the actual placement of ads.

The publisher--in my case, Bantam--has an advertising campaign for each of the books it publishes. Bantam will create and place ads in viable publications for my books. Bantam doesn't ask me what magazines to use. I find out about the ads after the fact.

The majority of the advertising, signings and workshops are up to each author. I handle that myself. Yes, writing is a business as well as an art and a craft.

Q - What is "voice?"

A - Gee, have two weeks? I probably should do an entire blog on the subject (actually, I'm going to be teaching Point Of View and Voice at the RT con next week...). Voice is not one thing. It's probably easiest to say I know it when I see it but that's really not helpful.

Voice is the unique combination of a number of elements in the art and craft of writing that a writer employs to tell his or her story in a way that is recognizable as his or her own.

Voice includes, but is not limited to, pacing, word choice, sentence structure and characterization.

Let me give you a visual example. If I say "fast food restaurant" you likely think of a long counter, menu overhead, cash registers staffed by people in identical uniforms, seats bolted to the floor, screaming children, no tablecloths, condiments in tiny packets. Brightly lit, lots of tile and/or formica.

Those images, that style is the "voice" of a fast food restaurant. It could be McDonald's. It could be Wendy's. It could be Chick-Fil-A. I could drop you into any one of those, blindfolded, whip off your blindfold and you'd immediately recognize the kind of experience available there.

In the same sense, I could pull out a dozen pages of a JD Robb "In Death" book, hand them to you and having read those pages, you'd know--even without the bookcover--that this was a JD Robb "In Death" book. La Nora has a unique "voice."

I'm told so do I because of my word choices, characters, pacing and so on. Voice is not just one thing and it's very hard to teach voice. I can tell you what comprises it but you still have to create your own.

Q - My critique partners tear apart and change everything I write. What am I doing wrong?

A - Possibly nothing. Possibly everything. My first concern is, who are your crit partners? Do they have books on the shelves of Barnes & Noble or Waldenbooks? Have they actively studied the craft of writing? Or are they just starting out, putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard?

Jack Bickham, a noted writing guru, states in his The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, "Usually it's a mistake to seek advice from other amateurs at writers' clubs. I don't think it's a good idea to ask family or friends to read and 'criticize' your manuscript, either...for two reasons: they won't be honest; they usually don't know what they're doing anyway."

I risk being flamed here, but I agree with Jack. Unless your family member is Colby Hodge and your critique partner is Jacqueline Lichtenberg. But the amateur writer or hobby writer is not qualified to tell you if what you produced is publishable.

Please note my use of the word publishable. A book can be competently written but not publishable. (IE: you can build the most beautiful, fabulous, well constructed butter churn in the world but you'll have a tough time selling it because very few people use butter churns anymore.)

I'm not saying don't attend writers groups. They can be terrific places to make other writerly friends and listen to workshops given by published authors. But someone on the same level as you in writing may not be the most helpful crit partner.

I do encourage you to join professional author and writer groups. The reasons should be obvious but if not, ask. I also encourage you to take online writing classes presented by professional writing organizations and taught by published authors. You can find a (growing) list of those on my website under writing tips.

But even if a published author tells you your scene is wrong, remember it's still your story. Providing the error isn't one of craft (ie: spelling, grammar) then consider what the author recommends but change it only if you feel it's an improvement.

Two caveats:
1 - when I crit, I never tell a writer something is wrong unless I can tell them how to fix it. (IE: if I don't know the right way, how can I know that's the wrong way?)
2 - if your agent or editor tells you change it, do so unless you really really really have a reason for doing it the way you did. They are professionals in the business of producing publishable books.

And as always, I leave you with CJ Cherryh's superb advice: Follow no rule off a cliff.

~Linnea
www.linneasinclair.com

Characters come to life

A lot of times we are asked who we would cast if our books ever became movies. I think for most of us writers it usually goes beyond that. A lot of us have someone in mind when we first create our characters. Since I'm a visual type person I enjoy having that image fully formed in my mind when I sit down to write.

For Stargazer I had Tom Welling in mind for the role of Shaun. He plays a young Clark Kent on Smallville and I think he's much better when he's bad. Plus I would love to see him in a more grown up type role. John DeSalvo go the cover. In my mind he was a bit too mature in the face to be Shaun and I'm not a fan of all the skin but the cover sold a lot of books. I saw Tom Selleck as the Soverign Alexander and George Clooney as Michael. The women usually are not as distinct. Usually because I'm playing out my own foolish fantasies through them. But occasionally one comes to me.

In Shooting Star my inspiration for Tess was Evangeline Lilly from Lost. David Beckham was Ruben. I saw a picture of him on the cover of GC and he just clicked in my mind. Star Shadows had Ian Summerholder as Boone. Although Adam Levine from Maroon Five showed up occasionally after I watched the Makes Me Wonder video about a thousand times. In Twist Paul Walker became the Avatar for Shane after the guy on the cover came out with blonde hair. What can I say, I like dark hair on my heroes but I was more than happy to go with Paul. And it worked.

But now I actually get to see one of my heroes come to life. At the upcoming Romantic Times conference in Pittsburgh the Mr. Romance pageant is featuring my book, Star Shadows and Chris Winters, is playing the role of Zander. Chris is also a most awesome actor so he's reading the book to learn the dark side of Zander who is one of my most tortured heroes. To learn more about Chris go here.

Having Ideas and Getting Ideas

In MISERY, Stephen King's writer protagonist makes a distinction between "having an idea" and "getting an idea." In the novel the writer's "number one fan," enraged that he's killed off her favorite character, demands that he bring the character back to life—but she must be resurrected plausibly. The author has an idea: His heroine was mistakenly buried alive. Now he needs to "get an idea"—to build on the moment of inspiration by figuring out what put her into a death-like state. C. S. Lewis made a similar distinction between the story concepts that spontaneously flash into a writer's mind and the linking material that must be consciously invented. He said ideas usually came to him in the form of mental pictures (e.g., the Narnia series began with an image of a faun carrying an umbrella and an armful of packages in a snowy forest). When he had received a number of "pictures" that seemed to belong to the same story, he then had to do the deliberate work of constructing a plot to fill in the gaps.

My experience is similar, except that I don't have a very visual imagination. I "have ideas" in the form of concepts, sometimes with a protagonist and scraps of dialogue attached. Right now I'm trying to compose a paranormal romance novelette for the new Silhouette Nocturne Bites line of electronically published stories. Immediately I knew I wanted to set my story in a Lovecraftian background. The first idea that occurred to me was a young woman who possesses an artifact that allows the wearer to control certain creatures from an alien dimension (I imagined them as similar to the Hounds of Tindalos in the classic Frank Belknap Long tale). The villain will try to steal the artifact and will succeed in stealing another object she owns, one of those forbidden books ubiquitous in Lovecraftian horror. The heroine and hero will fall in love while tracking the villain. Then I had to start working out the details. Since I want the heroine to be ignorant of her potential power, I had to explain why she owns these objects in the first place. I decided she inherited them from her late uncle, an anthropology professor. She should also have untrained psychic power of some kind. The hero should also have power, but he would know the secret behind it and the artifacts. How did he get involved with her? Silhouette Nocturne wants "alpha" type heroes, so if the hero was an archaeologist who worked with her uncle, he'd have an adventurous, somewhat exotic background and personality to fit that requirement. Also, this back story explains how the heroine could be previously acquainted with and secretly attracted to him. Moreover, I decided their ancestors came from the same village many generations back, as an explanation for why they have similar powers and why the hero sought out her uncle as a mentor to begin with. What kinds of psychic talents should they have? I considered and discarded several possibilities before settling on telekinesis, a useful all-purpose gift. I also decided they would have an empathic and erotic bond activated when they both touch the artifact simultaneously. What kind of artifact? Rings and amulets (necklaces) are overused, yet it has to be something that can be conveniently worn by a person of either sex. I thought of a bracelet or armband, which sparked the image of a bronze armlet etched with arcane symbols, an object that could be of great antiquity.

Because I'm an outliner, not a pantser, prone to paralyzing anxiety if I face a blank screen with no idea of what happens next, I need to work out these details and many others before I start. My problem with brainstorming is to keep myself open to alternate ideas as far into the process as possible. I'm too inclined to let myself get locked into one particular sequence of events too early in the planning stage, thereby missing other fruitful plot potentialities.

Solar Heat Excerpt

Chapter One

Talk about unlucky missions. Everything that could go wrong had. One moment Azsla and her crew of four "fugitive" slaves had been on course for Zor, the next the starboard stabilizer had malfunctioned, damaging the hull. The spaceship had jolted, and engine failure had turned their systems inside out, and slammed her crew into unconsciousness. The cosmic whammy had dealt them one hell of a beating, and she thanked Holy Vigo for the lifelong supply of salt that had given her strength and enabled her to remain alert.

The ship was currently powerless and drifting toward the portal that was supposed to have transported them to Zor and freedom. The lights flickered. With a snap of a toggle, Azsla cut the blaring alarm. She didn't need a news flash to know that unless she altered her damaged ship's course, the forces sucking them into the black maw would squash them flatter than a neutron particle.

By now, the backup system should have come on line automatically. Azsla initiated emergency procedures and flipped open the auxiliary engine panel. Twisting the manual override, she thrust the handle to starboard. But the reboot mechanism was also on the fritz. When no lights or controls lit up, licks of alarm shot down Azsla's back. Mother of Salt--a double cosmic whammy.

Keep it together. She'd drilled for emergency situations. Only this was no drill. They were in trouble. Bad trouble. And fear ignited in the pit of her gut like a retro rocket on nitro.

She checked her watch, then estimated the triple threat of time, distance, and mass. At the inescapable result--certain death--her scalp broke into a sweat. As a First of Rama, Azsla had been entitled to a life of privilege and all the strength-building salt she could swallow. But what should have been a life of luxury on Rama had been destroyed by a slave rebellion that had led to hundreds of thousands of slaves escaping from Rama to Zor, a planet in another solar system. To prevent further uprisings and retaliation from the slaves, she'd agreed to go to Zor as a spy. She'd always known her mission would require sacrifice and she'd accepted the danger of pretending to be an underfirst, a lowly slave, in order to assess what kind of weapons Zor was developing against Rama. But to succeed, she had to get to Zor.


Right now, that didn't seem likely. Or even possible. She glanced around at her still unconscious crew. She'd always thought she'd understood the risk of covert operations. When her superiors had cooked up this mission, she'd volunteered. The decision hadn't been a hard one. Fifteen years ago when she'd been in her early teens, a slave uprising on Rama had killed her parents and ruined her home. Some 200,000 slaves had escaped her world and resettled on the planet Zor. Eventually the Firsts had regrouped and regained control, but life as Azsla had known it was over.

After losing everything, her existence had gone from street orphan to ward of the state. When the Corps offered to train her as a weapons specialist and promised her a shot at stopping any chance of another slave rebellion, they hadn't had to ask twice. As a First she'd understood, even as a teenager, that as long as Zor offered safe haven to slaves, all Ramans stood in peril, their way of life threatened.

However to become an effective spy, Azsla had been asked to accomplish what no other Raman had ever done, she'd undergone years of training to suppress her Quait, a First's ability to dominate. She'd accepted she might never succeed--but she had achieved the impossible. Sort of. As long as she kept her emotions in check, her Quait didn't take over and Azsla could prevent herself from overpowering the will of her crew and outing herself. Reining herself in tight, she could now pass as one of them.

If her crew sniffed out her real role, they'd sabotage the journey to Zor. Slaves might be weak, but they were fanatical. Dangerous. They placed little value on life, even their own. To find out what the Zorans were up to, Azsla had to be just as ruthless. Knowing any one of them would turn on a First to keep her away from Zor reminded her to keep up her guard. Always. While it had been surprisingly easy to leave behind her regimented existence where no one would miss her, she'd never considered that engine failure might kill her in this tin can before she'd even landed on Zor.

One by one, the systems went down. Getting to Zor, at this point, was secondary to staying alive. Artificial gravity failed. The air grew stale. It was freezing cold, as if the heat hadn't just turned off in the past few moments but hadn't been on since liftoff three days ago. Azsla gripped the command console to maintain her position at her station and ignored the white vapor puffing from her mouth, the prickly bumps rising over her flesh, her body-racking shivers. Her unconscious crewmen floated away from their stations as the ship lost gravity and she couldn't blow off a spark of sorrow over their plight. During the long months of training for this mission, she'd come to know her crew, and, to her surprise, respect them. Now, she couldn't remember when she'd stopped thinking of them as slaves and started thinking of them as people.

"Anyone awake?"

None of her crew answered, likely frozen, shocked, and possibly injured. Yet, they weren't dead. Rak, her second in command, drew in choked breaths. Kali, the copilot and chief engineer, flailed on the ceiling, seeking leverage to alter his altitude.

Knowing she had mere moments to divert the ship, Azsla stayed put. If she couldn't change their course, the wormhole would devour the ship, leaving nothing, not even scattered debris, to mark their passing.

"Report," she repeated, her voice lowering an octave as if ashes filled her mouth, her cold-numbed fingers flicking the damaged control toggles, frantic to restart the engines. Surely Jadlan or Micoo in the sleepers had been jarred awake? Or had they ditched protocol, abandoned their posts, and ejected in their escape pods? Azsla had no way of knowing, not with her instruments off line, but as always, she cut her crew some slack, all too aware that none of them had her superior intellect or physical strength. After all, they were slaves.

Taking stock, she assessed their predicament with as much presence of mind as she could summon. Instant depressurization had collapsed the aft stabilizer. Her damage-weakened ship now spiraled end over end--straight toward hull-crushing forces that would terminate her mission--unless she found some miraculous way to steer clear.

Azsla ripped open the panel's cover to examine the wiring. The reek of burning plastic singed her nostrils. Smoke filtered into the cabin and fear scratched along her skin like claws, ripping and shredding, threatening to tap out her last reserve of Quait control. Damn her crew. They should have responded by now.

Not that she was even close to normal. Her fingers trembled and she loathed her own weakness as much as that of the underfirsts who hadn't responded to her plea for information. With her gut doing a slow spin job, she battled fresh panic.

Easy. She was beginning to hate the empty brutality of space. Not that she was bitter. Sweet Vigo, people were supposed to live on planets where they didn't have to breathe recycled air, where every little mechanical failure wasn't life threatening, where a stray piece of dust didn't create lethal havoc with her ship's systems.

Trying to buy herself a little relief from pounding panic, Azsla attempted to dial down her emotion. She cornered it, squashed it. Beat it into submission. Pretend it's just another drill. After ten years of keeping her cool and suppressing her Quait, her spontaneous instinct to dominate should have been under control . . . yet, as the port fuel tank exploded, her natural inclinations to overpower kicked in. Hard. Every cell in her body ached to reach out and make the crew work as one. But if she reverted to instinct and used her Quait to save all their lives by forcing them to fix the ship, her crew would then learn that she wasn't one of them. If they didn't kill her, she would wind up returning home in defeat. Sure, mind scrubbers could erase her crew's memories, but the Corps didn't accept failure. Azsla would never get another shot at returning to Zor.

But the aching instinct to survive at any cost began to burn. Sizzle. Her blood boiled with the need to take charge . . . for the sake of self preservation.

She was about to lose it and take over the will of every underfirst on board. With no time to talk herself down slowly, she popped a tranq, swallowing the pill without water. Immediately, the fire eased. The seething boil cut to a manageable simmer. Of course, later, if she lived that long, she'd pay for relying on the tranq. If her superiors ever discovered she'd resorted to artificial tactics, it would put them off--enough to shut her down, boot her from the Corps. But with the metal hull groaning, official consequences were the least of her problems.

The portal was sucking them in. Thanks to the tranq, her Quait settled and the need to dominate abated. Finally, praying to save the ship from annihilation, she struggled to route the last remaining battery power into the bow thrusters.

Her fingers manually keyed in instructions, and she regained her normal tone of voice. "Kali. What's doing?"

Kali groaned, opened his eyes, shoved off the ceiling and buckled into the copilot's seat. He slapped his flickering monitor. "Navigation's a bust. Hyperdrive's non-operational. Engineering's off line. Life support's nonfunctional. Time to bail?"

Unless she could alter their direction, they'd have to abandon ship or be crushed four ways to summer solstice. However, the portal would draw in the sleeping pods, and, as long as the emergency batteries maintained the pods' shielding, they'd shoot straight through to Zor. Hopefully someone at the other end would pick up an automated distress signal--if not, they would drift in space, frozen. Forever. Not an appealing option, but neither was instant death.

Azsla jerked her thumb toward the safety pod. "Hit the air lock."

Although her crew often disappointed, not quite living up to her standards, they tried hard. And she wasn't cruel enough to dash their hopes and reveal they had little chance of survival, never mind escape. Of course, the Corps never intended for her crew to achieve the freedom they sought. On Zor, they'd be rounded up by other spies and sent back to Rama in chains as an example of what happened to slaves who attempted escape from the mother world.

Kali unsnapped his safety harness, snagged Rak off the ceiling, and swam toward the rear. "Captain, you coming?"

"Just messing with the bow thrusters." She didn't exactly lie. Although she had little hope of cranking out a course alteration with the bow thrusters, she used the excuse to stay at the helm to secretly shoot the logs and a report of the disaster back to Rama, a last-ditch effort to inform the Corps of their predicament. Notifying home was a calculated risk. Her crew believed they'd escaped Rama, when in actuality the government had allowed them to leave in order to insert Azsla into their midst. If any of them caught a whiff of what they'd consider betrayal, there was no telling if she could handle them after swallowing that tranq.

"Captain."

At Kali's sharp tone, Azsla stiffened. Had he seen her dispatch the log? Despite the tranq, she couldn't conceal the edge to her voice. "Yes?"

"Ship temperature's approaching freezing. The hull's breached. Shields are failing. We need to leave, now."

Relieved her cover remained intact, Azsla skimmed her hands over the keys, robbing the remaining power from every system except the pods. "I'm right behind you."

Kali soared through the control cabin into the ship's bowels. She heard him pop open the pods and the terrified voices of her crew. So the others had awakened. She shouldn't be thinking about them. Slaves were easily replaced. Weak. A waste of salt.

Yet . . . this crew had trained hard. Not as hard as she had. But then they didn't have her abilities. Still, they'd done what they could with what they had.

Finally, she shunted the last of the power into the boosters.

Done. She turned and shields began to go down. The injured hull squealed in agony, the tearing of metal a death knell. Diving for the escape pod, she overshot her mark. Kali snatched her by the ankle, saving her from a painful smack into the bulkhead.

"Thanks." She seized a handhold and righted herself. He'd already stuffed Jadlan, Micoo, and Rak into the pods and ejected them through the air lock.

"Ready to bounce?"

"Absolutely." Totally on board with the plan, she slapped the button to open her sleeper. Kali slid into the last remaining pod.

She tensed her muscles to do the same. Only her pod didn't open. "What the frip?" All hell was about to come down on the ship and she nailed the button mechanism again with her fist.

And got zip. Zero. Zilch. The canopy refused to budge. Her high-pitched gasp shamed her and she hoped Kali put it down to the cold that seemed to have frozen her bones.

This was insane. Surely every freaking system on the ship couldn't fail . . . unless someone had sabotaged the mission. But who? If the slaves had known about her subterfuge, they would have killed her, or died trying. Not even they would have vandalized the entire ship. And she had no other enemy. The Corps wanted her to succeed.

The delay didn't seem to faze Kali. Instead of ejecting, he moved smoothly, climbing from his pod. "Let me." Picking up a wrench, he slapped the release button.

"It's no good." She pointed to the hull that had caved, crushing her pod, the metal cross brace obstructing the release mechanism from firing properly.

The hull howled like a wild beast, the last of the shields failing. From the ship's bowels, the engines rumbled like a volcano about to erupt. Her ability to issue orders dulled by the tranq, she said nothing as Kali picked her up, slipped her into his pod, and closed the canopy with a click of finality. Hit the eject button.

Her last sight of him floored her. He seemed at peace. Eyes closed, his lips moved, and if she hadn't known better, he'd appeared to be praying. At peace with his death.

She shot into space, a rush of emotions flooding over her tranqed emotions. Relief. Hope. Astonishment.

Kali had given up his chance to live. For her.

She hadn't even used her Quait. She closed her fingers into fists. Kali had meant nothing to her. Slaves were easily replaceable. Unworthy. Yet, she'd spent enough time with her second in command to know Kali's life had meant everything to him. He'd planned to begin anew on Zor. Marry. Have children. His dreams would never have happened because of her mission . . . but Kali hadn't known that.

Turning, she watched the ship implode and vanish into the portal. Kali was dead, his body relegated to tactonic dust.

She shouldn't have cared. Cold from the sleep capsule spread over her skin like guilt. She told herself slaves died every day. So what?

But if Kali's selfless sacrifice didn't matter, then why was her vision blurred? Why were tears freezing on her cheeks?

A Little Something Came Up Part II

This continues my post of Tuesday, March 25th 2008.

So what is the "art" that Cindy (in her Saturday, March 23rd post) was talking about when she wrote: "Character is what rises to the top when put under extreme pressure."

What is that pressure -- where do you find it -- how do you apply it to a character you've created? How do you couch your message in the language of Art?

As in most artforms it isn't what is there in a story that carries the message -- but what is not there. The white space. The silences speak volumes.

What was Cindy Holby talking about? Where do you go to learn to create a character and imagine a kind of pressure that other people would recognize as plausible?

She's describing a PLUTO TRANSIT. Happening at the same time as a Saturn transit, a Pluto transit can precipitate the sort of "test to destruction" events -- often and usually coupled to a Saturn transit -- that make for great story.

Even readers who would not touch astrology, or couldn't understand it if they did, recognize the major life transits because they've seen it among people they know. That's why you can learn to do this by reading biographies.

As I said last Tuesday, you can learn just about as much from studying psychology, sociology, statistics, anthropology, archeology, history and pre-history as you can from Astrology.

If you leave out a grounding in Astrology, though, you might be tempted to put a 30 year old through the crisis only 60 year olds must face. That won't seem plausible, no matter how well you write it.

Art is the SELECTIVE depiction of "reality" (the "reality" the Seer in you sees) -- what you select and what you leave out forms a pattern which carries your thematic message, but that only works if the pattern is familiar to the readers.

But let's assume you've done all that learning and have a very well constructed idea of who your characters are and where their karmic weakness is -- and at what age in life they will confront the key developmental tensions of a specific Pluto and Saturn transit set.

You know what kind of events Pluto precipitates, and what typically happens at, say, a Saturn return transit.

You know where your character is strong - and where weak - and you know what the blow is that will roust him/her out of a safe, complacent life and into a harrowing circumstance where (as Cindy says) Character will rise.

As Cindy pointed out, the reader loves to believe that they, too, would be able to react "heroically" in a life or death situation.

Why do we like to believe that? Why do we doubt ourselves and seek vicarious validation of our own heroism through fiction?

The secret to the answer to those questions lies within the usual experiences of a Pluto transit.
Where Saturn throws shit at you, strips you of your dignity, friends, spouse, parents or relatives, and resources, or gives you enough rope to hang yourself by delivering fame and glory, Pluto hands you a shovel, an ally, a confidant (who may betray you later [the Royal Butler writes a book]), a stiff upper lip, or the ability to concentrate like never before or after that moment in your life.

Now this pattern materializes only where the aspects of Saturn and Pluto within the natal chart form certain patterns.

A badly placed natal Pluto, for example, produces the sort of life pattern one sees on Soap Operas -- what I call the "pillar to post" existence that's so exaggerated nobody really believes it. Melodrama. That's a badly placed Pluto.

A well placed Pluto on the other hand brings certain kinds of strength to the character. And when well placed at birth, it will come in behind every Saturn blow to deliver the means to deal with the bruises.

Of course, none of that is inevitable. It all depends on how the Soul living this Life manages and deploys the available resources to which chosen goals.

For example: When an otherwise undistinguished daughter is left to tend to a failing parent, from SOMEWHERE inside that daughter comes the incredible physical strength, the patience, the fortitude, and the obsessive attention to every financial detail of the Medicare billings -- the tenacity to fight for every benefit due. Friends and other family simply can't comprehend how this skinny willow branch of a daughter is doing all this. And in fact, many will believe that SHE isn't doing all this, and therefore that it's not being done at all.

For Example: You're diagnosed with Cancer or some other life-threatening disease. Read the astrolger Noel Tyl's books and you'll discover the connection between Pluto and life-threatening diseases. With a good Pluto natal position, the challenge of the disease will coincide with a hugely exaggerated ability to do research on it, to understand all the information on the web, to search and search and search "obsessively" until you find the right doctor, to force (Pluto is coercion) the insurance companies to allow the treatment you've chosen, to survive the side-effects, to obssess your way through rehab and emerge a new person.

For Example: Take the film, THE BOURNE IDENTITY. (see my post on Spoilers) I just saw a rerun of THE BOURNE IDENTITY so it's fresh in my mind. You don't know WHAT caused Bourne to lose his memory until the end, but when you find out what happened, you can see the Pluto transit influence throughout the film.

Bourne is a "secret" agent (Pluto is secrets, covert ops). He's an assassin. Pluto is violence. Pluto is explosive violence -- traumatic violence that comes out of "nowhere." Bourne is an assassin's assassin. Bourne is so good at it, he may as well be an Alien, so you can class this movie as Alien Romance and not miss a beat. (It's so much the exact same movie as STARMAN, which I adore.)

Bourne was sent to assassinate an international figure, and sets up the hit on a yacht. He's a 30 million dollar killing weapon. And apparently really good at it. Then he confronts a Saturn moment (Saturn is a separating force, a hard blow from concrete reality). He is standing there aiming his gun at a sleeping man whose child is lying on his belly. Bourne CAN'T (restraint is Saturn; conscience is Saturn) pull the trigger.

Setting Saturn against Pluto inside Bourne rends his MIND.

The betrayal of all he is becomes so traumatic he later can't remember that moment or even his identity. He turns and runs. He's shot in the back, falls overboard, and the film OPENS with him being fished out of the sea (Neptune, of course, dissolves and erases -- also Neptune is Idealism) one stormy night with bullets (bullets = Mars) in his back (backbone = Saturn). (the Swiss Bank Account number hidden in his Thigh=Jupiter=wealth-growth-inclusion-Law)
Neptune and Saturn rob him of his very Identity. Pluto gives it back.

Pluto is "obsession" -- the ability to concentrate -- the ability to focus on a huge job one piece at a time, and keep inching ahead a step at a time.

Filling out your parent's tax return, digging up all their legal papers, auditing every medical bill for errors, informing all their friends, and so on. It is a huge job and the only place for the strength to come from is obsession - Pluto. That's the deepest well of strength, in the world, in your Self. Pluto is pure POWER. Sometimes more of that Power explodes through your Natal Chart than you can handle, and the backlash spreads through all other aspects of your Self.

Focused, collimated, directed, Pluto's power can augment every grace and ability you have. It is your death - or your survival.

Most of us face this Pluto type challenge once in a lifetime. Some natal charts throw that challenge at the person again and again and AGAIN -- soap opera style melodrama.

But everyone recognizes these dramatic events as plausible. Drama is what story is all about. Anyone who wants to write a story needs to master the concepts that produce DRAMA. (Scorpio, Pluto - yes indeed - but also Leo and the Sun, the Will to Sovereignty).

So how did Bourne get his identity back? Obsession -- and he shared that obsession with a woman who stayed with him, got shot at, ran for her life, through Plutonian experience after experience (including Plutonian style sex).

He forced her to leave him -- turned and confronted those trying to kill him, and was reminded of that one key scene he had blocked from memory that told him who he is and why he didn't want to be himself -- refusing to murder a father holding a child.

Once he got his identity back, he didn't want it any more. He really didn't want it. He fled. And he went to find the woman who helped him. (hey, we all know there's a sequel -- and we can only hope our own lives have sequels.)

Cindy says that until we are actually put to the test, we don't know how we will react. That's not entirely true if you've made it through your 30th year, through your first Saturn return at 28-29 and survived the aftershocks.

Somewhere in that time, you will hit a period where terrible, awful, destructive and reconstructive things happen. And after you've coped with it all, you will look back and doubt your ability to do it again. You simply don't know how you did it. The answer is often a fortuitous Pluto aspect natally scheduled to couple with the Saturn transit. It's all in the timing of your moment of birth.

From Astrology, you can learn whether that ability to obsess on what must be obsessed on (instead of irrelevant trivia) will come again, coincidentally with the next set of major challenges.
Since we've seen this in ourselves and others around us in real life, we can believe it in fiction. We have seen people NOT rise to the occasion when something comes up to derail their lives. We have seen others perform miracles.

In our fiction we want to see a believable character -- one composed of a set of traits that go together into a recognizable pattern -- be challenged and not only rise to the occasion but come out of it transformed into a better person.

Coming out of it a better person is rare in real life. So we crave it in our fiction to grasp hold of the vision so that next time our own life is challenged we, too, can emerge transformed into someone we like better than our old self. And that, really, is what a "hero" is -- someone who saves others and is thereby saved. If you have the "saved others" without the "thereby saved" part, you have a martyr (also a good source of drama).

So, coming out of it a better person is what makes THE BOURNE IDENTITY a classic among classics. Bourne chooses a new self and reaches across an unfathomable abyss for love. (OK, it has a sequel - yeah - but that's because it's COMMERCIAL FICTION or maybe because Bourne has a difficult Pluto in his natal chart.)

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

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

A Little Something Came Up -- PART II

This continues my post of Tuesday, March 25th 2008.

So what is the "art" that Cindy (in her Saturday, March 23rd post) was talking about when she wrote: "Character is what rises to the top when put under extreme pressure."

What is that pressure -- where do you find it -- how do you apply it to a character you've created? How do you couch your message in the language of Art?

As in most artforms it isn't what is there in a story that carries the message -- but what is not there. The white space. The silences speak volumes.

What was Cindy Holby talking about? Where do you go to learn to create a character and imagine a kind of pressure that other people would recognize as plausible?

She's describing a PLUTO TRANSIT. Happening at the same time as a Saturn transit, a Pluto transit can precipitate the sort of "test to destruction" events -- often and usually coupled to a Saturn transit -- that make for great story.

Even readers who would not touch astrology, or couldn't understand it if they did, recognize the major life transits because they've seen it among people they know. That's why you can learn to do this by reading biographies.

As I said last Tuesday, you can learn just about as much from studying psychology, sociology, statistics, anthropology, archeology, history and pre-history as you can from Astrology.

If you leave out a grounding in Astrology, though, you might be tempted to put a 30 year old through the crisis only 60 year olds must face. That won't seem plausible, no matter how well you write it.

Art is the SELECTIVE depiction of "reality" (the "reality" the Seer in you sees) -- what you select and what you leave out forms a pattern which carries your thematic message, but that only works if the pattern is familiar to the readers.

But let's assume you've done all that learning and have a very well constructed idea of who your characters are and where their karmic weakness is -- and at what age in life they will confront the key developmental tensions of a specific Pluto and Saturn transit set.

You know what kind of events Pluto precipitates, and what typically happens at, say, a Saturn return transit.

You know where your character is strong - and where weak - and you know what the blow is that will roust him/her out of a safe, complacent life and into a harrowing circumstance where (as Cindy says) Character will rise.

As Cindy pointed out, the reader loves to believe that they, too, would be able to react "heroically" in a life or death situation.

Why do we like to believe that? Why do we doubt ourselves and seek vicarious validation of our own heroism through fiction?

The secret to the answer to those questions lies within the usual experiences of a Pluto transit.
Where Saturn throws shit at you, strips you of your dignity, friends, spouse, parents or relatives, and resources, or gives you enough rope to hang yourself by delivering fame and glory, Pluto hands you a shovel, an ally, a confidant (who may betray you later [the Royal Butler writes a book]), a stiff upper lip, or the ability to concentrate like never before or after that moment in your life.

Now this pattern materializes only where the aspects of Saturn and Pluto within the natal chart form certain patterns.

A badly placed natal Pluto, for example, produces the sort of life pattern one sees on Soap Operas -- what I call the "pillar to post" existence that's so exaggerated nobody really believes it. Melodrama. That's a badly placed Pluto.

A well placed Pluto on the other hand brings certain kinds of strength to the character. And when well placed at birth, it will come in behind every Saturn blow to deliver the means to deal with the bruises.

Of course, none of that is inevitable. It all depends on how the Soul living this Life manages and deploys the available resources to which chosen goals.

For example: When an otherwise undistinguished daughter is left to tend to a failing parent, from SOMEWHERE inside that daughter comes the incredible physical strength, the patience, the fortitude, and the obsessive attention to every financial detail of the Medicare billings -- the tenacity to fight for every benefit due. Friends and other family simply can't comprehend how this skinny willow branch of a daughter is doing all this. And in fact, many will believe that SHE isn't doing all this, and therefore that it's not being done at all.

For Example: You're diagnosed with Cancer or some other life-threatening disease. Read the astrolger Noel Tyl's books and you'll discover the connection between Pluto and life-threatening diseases. With a good Pluto natal position, the challenge of the disease will coincide with a hugely exaggerated ability to do research on it, to understand all the information on the web, to search and search and search "obsessively" until you find the right doctor, to force (Pluto is coercion) the insurance companies to allow the treatment you've chosen, to survive the side-effects, to obssess your way through rehab and emerge a new person.

For Example: Take the film, THE BOURNE IDENTITY. (see my post on Spoilers) I just saw a rerun of THE BOURNE IDENTITY so it's fresh in my mind. You don't know WHAT caused Bourne to lose his memory until the end, but when you find out what happened, you can see the Pluto transit influence throughout the film.

Bourne is a "secret" agent (Pluto is secrets, covert ops). He's an assassin. Pluto is violence. Pluto is explosive violence -- traumatic violence that comes out of "nowhere." Bourne is an assassin's assassin. Bourne is so good at it, he may as well be an Alien, so you can class this movie as Alien Romance and not miss a beat. (It's so much the exact same movie as STARMAN, which I adore.)

Bourne was sent to assassinate an international figure, and sets up the hit on a yacht. He's a 30 million dollar killing weapon. And apparently really good at it. Then he confronts a Saturn moment (Saturn is a separating force, a hard blow from concrete reality). He is standing there aiming his gun at a sleeping man whose child is lying on his belly. Bourne CAN'T (restraint is Saturn; conscience is Saturn) pull the trigger.

Setting Saturn against Pluto inside Bourne rends his MIND.

The betrayal of all he is becomes so traumatic he later can't remember that moment or even his identity. He turns and runs. He's shot in the back, falls overboard, and the film OPENS with him being fished out of the sea (Neptune, of course, dissolves and erases -- also Neptune is Idealism) one stormy night with bullets (bullets = Mars) in his back (backbone = Saturn). (the Swiss Bank Account number hidden in his Thigh=Jupiter=wealth-growth-inclusion-Law)
Neptune and Saturn rob him of his very Identity. Pluto gives it back.

Pluto is "obsession" -- the ability to concentrate -- the ability to focus on a huge job one piece at a time, and keep inching ahead a step at a time.

Filling out your parent's tax return, digging up all their legal papers, auditing every medical bill for errors, informing all their friends, and so on. It is a huge job and the only place for the strength to come from is obsession - Pluto. That's the deepest well of strength, in the world, in your Self. Pluto is pure POWER. Sometimes more of that Power explodes through your Natal Chart than you can handle, and the backlash spreads through all other aspects of your Self.

Focused, collimated, directed, Pluto's power can augment every grace and ability you have. It is your death - or your survival.

Most of us face this Pluto type challenge once in a lifetime. Some natal charts throw that challenge at the person again and again and AGAIN -- soap opera style melodrama.

But everyone recognizes these dramatic events as plausible. Drama is what story is all about. Anyone who wants to write a story needs to master the concepts that produce DRAMA. (Scorpio, Pluto - yes indeed - but also Leo and the Sun, the Will to Sovereignty).

So how did Bourne get his identity back? Obsession -- and he shared that obsession with a woman who stayed with him, got shot at, ran for her life, through Plutonian experience after experience (including Plutonian style sex).

He forced her to leave him -- turned and confronted those trying to kill him, and was reminded of that one key scene he had blocked from memory that told him who he is and why he didn't want to be himself -- refusing to murder a father holding a child.

Once he got his identity back, he didn't want it any more. He really didn't want it. He fled. And he went to find the woman who helped him. (hey, we all know there's a sequel -- and we can only hope our own lives have sequels.)

Cindy says that until we are actually put to the test, we don't know how we will react. That's not entirely true if you've made it through your 30th year, through your first Saturn return at 28-29 and survived the aftershocks.

Somewhere in that time, you will hit a period where terrible, awful, destructive and reconstructive things happen. And after you've coped with it all, you will look back and doubt your ability to do it again. You simply don't know how you did it. The answer is often a fortuitous Pluto aspect natally scheduled to couple with the Saturn transit. It's all in the timing of your moment of birth.

From Astrology, you can learn whether that ability to obsess on what must be obsessed on (instead of irrelevant trivia) will come again, coincidentally with the next set of major challenges.
Since we've seen this in ourselves and others around us in real life, we can believe it in fiction. We have seen people NOT rise to the occasion when something comes up to derail their lives. We have seen others perform miracles.

In our fiction we want to see a believable character -- one composed of a set of traits that go together into a recognizable pattern -- be challenged and not only rise to the occasion but come out of it transformed into a better person.

Coming out of it a better person is rare in real life. So we crave it in our fiction to grasp hold of the vision so that next time our own life is challenged we, too, can emerge transformed into someone we like better than our old self. And that, really, is what a "hero" is -- someone who saves others and is thereby saved. If you have the "saved others" without the "thereby saved" part, you have a martyr (also a good source of drama).

So, coming out of it a better person is what makes THE BOURNE IDENTITY a classic among classics. Bourne chooses a new self and reaches across an unfathomable abyss for love. (OK, it has a sequel - yeah - but that's because it's COMMERCIAL FICTION or maybe because Bourne has a difficult Pluto in his natal chart.)

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

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

Writing and Amazon and Survival on the Cyber-Shelves...

It's Monday after 6pm and I haven't blogged. No, didn't forget it was "my day." Actually thought of it while I was doing a half dozen other things that were pushed backed due to my being away for several days (out of town) at a book festival. (Thank you, Lake County Library for inviting me! It was great!)

I was going to talk about the craft of writing but I'm going to take a side road and talk about the business of writing.

I'm sure many of you are aware of a recent announcement by Amazon that will require or request small press houses selling through Amazon to utilize Amazon's in-house printer, Booksurge, or be shunted to a different selling system on the site. I will right up front admit I've made neither an intensive study of the issue nor read every posting on it. I've read snippets and opinions posted on my fan group and other writer/reader sites.

So keep that in mind as you read this blog. I have not read everything and I'm no legal analyst or expert. I'm an author with a valid business background. I'm also a former small press author now published through New York.

First, Amazon can do whatever Amazon wants. It's their site, their company. If they want to only catalog books with yellow covers, they can do so. If they only want to sell books with the word "Tuesday" in the title, they can do so.

Second, life is full of things legally right but morally wrong. I learned that early on as a private detective. It's a lesson that has stuck with me. It's a valuable one.

Third, as I've posted on my private fan group, I'm a huge proponent of small press. Hell, I was one and I'm not so far up that I've forgotten my beginnings. I made some fabulous friendships in the small press and acquired many of the fans that are yet with me today. I was also screwed over royally in the small press.

Given that, I can think of several logical valid reasons why Amazon would want to control the small press products it offers--"greed" (which seems to be the pat fallback) notwithstanding. Small presses can be underfunded. They can reneg on monies due and fail to perform on shipping requirements. It doesn't matter how good their printer is. If they don't pay their printing bills, books don't ship to Amazon's warehouse. But nine times out of ten, I'll bet you dollars to donuts it's Amazon's customer service that takes the hit. So Amazon's wanting more control over a very slippery section of their inventory isn't a ridiculous goal.

Now, I can see a number of small press people getting ready to tar and feather me. I'm not saying ALL small presses don't pay their bills. But I can state from personal experience there are those that did not and therefore books did not ship and therefore customers ranted at--and blamed--Amazon.

To me, it would make more sense to no longer do business with those houses that can't fulfill inventory requests. But Amazon is Amazon and they have a right to do things as they see fit.

Do I think it sucks that the legit small presses are being tarred and feathered with the same brush? Totally. Again, I'm not saying Amazon is right or morally right. I'm just saying I'm not surprised. Their move is neither unprecedented nor illogical given that there is a segment of small press publishers with unhealthy fly-by-night tendencies.

There is also a segment of small press publishers that gather the brightest and best of talents, giving voices to stories that--at the moment--NY has chosen to ignore. I will also say that, loudly. Some of the best reads on the planet do not come out of NY houses. For examples of extraordinary talent in the small press, go here and here and here. For starters. (There are dozens more. If you want to meet them, join my Yahoo Group where they post free samples of their books.)

But sadly, small press authors rarely background the small press publishers who offer them contracts. I know. Been there, done that, am a poster child wearing the freakin' T-shirt. So because of Amazon's impending decision, many brightest and best voices may not have an avenue for expression for a while.

For as long as it takes for the small presses to organize. To counter with a "better way." A brighter idea.

Amazon is not the only game in town. There are other venues for small press books. There are indy bookstores on line. Hell, there's eBay, the ubiquitous intergalactic garage sale.

A door never closes but for another to open.

I would imagine the other POD printers--like Lightning Source--are very aware of Amazon's "Booksurge" directive. I would imagine at this very moment the head brains at Lightning Source are looking for ways to counter that and not lose clients.

I would imagine other online bookstores, previously not as popular as Amazon, are now frothing to fill the gap.

There may be a hiatus. There may be a downtime. But if Amazon is foolish enough to let some of the best reads on the planet slip through their fingers and slide off their site's pages, then rest assured there are other entreprenurial, just-as-greedy-thank-gawd book site owners ready to jump in and fill the gap.

Greed can be a wonderful thing. Be very greedy, very hungry for good books. Support those sites that provide them with your pocketbook. But recogize that Amazon has a bottom line, like any corporation. It's that bottom line that funds the brightest and best thinking that even created the online bookstore venues in the first place.

For every thing there is a season.

And remember. When life hands you lemons, go find someone to whom life handed vodka.

Namaste, ~Linnea
www.linneasinclair.com

Authors' Sites of Excellence

I've always loved the positive attitude embodied in "I don't know, but I know where to find out..." Or even in Jim Cramer's "You've come to the right place!"

Jim Cramer talks about stock tips. We talk about alien romances, paranormal romances, intimate adventure, space opera, space action adventure, futuristics, science fiction romance... and a great deal more.

You've come to the right place if you want to know where some of the best and most informative websites in the science fiction romance genre can be found. Just look at the links in our sidebar!

We have links; links to links; links to blogs, and links to blog links. (We'd welcome more, by the way.)

Jacqueline Lichtenberg has an amazing chart on the intergalactic quality simegen site, which identifies authors and their genres and subgenres.

http://www.simegen.com/romance/authors/


Linnea Sinclair put the original chart together, and Linnea's site is well worth a visit for it's gobsmacking, out-of-this-world splendour, and all the really useful advice and insights it offers.

Angela Verdenius also has a chart of Paranormal/SFR authors. I believe Angela and Linnea independently came up with similar, useful ideas at the same time, which so often happens in our world.

Also, look out for
http://plotmonkeys.blogspot.com;
http://boxingtheoctopus.blogspot.com;

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com



Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry

How much?

I'm in Jacksonville FL at the Southern Lights conference this weekend. I don't have a craft post prepared but a question that arose last night in a discussion. How much romance do you want in your sci-fi? Or on the other hand, how much sci-fi do you want in your romance? Should the romance take center stage? Or the technical stuff? Or the story its self. Since this is a growing genre it would be great to know exactly what the reader is looking for and or expects.

Off to hear Suzanne Brockman speak

New novel: WINDWALKER'S MATE

This coming Tuesday, April 1, Amber Quill Press (www.amberquill.com) will release my Lovecraftian romance WINDWALKER’S MATE. This novel revisits one of my favorite themes, union between human and nonhuman beings, although in this case the union is more like rape. As a teenage runaway, Shannon took refuge in a small cult run by the father of Nathan, two years older than she. In a ritual to summon the Windwalker, the entity possessed Nathan, and Shannon became pregnant. Now Nathan’s father, almost five years later, tries to make contact with the little boy, whose existence Nathan has been unaware of. The time for the Windwalker’s child to open the Gate between worlds draws near. I had fun trying to imagine a four-year-old boy who bears the genes of a monster from another space-time continuum. Here’s an excerpt, in which Shannon has just heard thunder from a clear sky and her son Daniel chanting in an unknown language:

She dashed to the window and looked out. She saw no clouds except for a few stray puffs of white. At the same instant, she heard both televisions, in her bedroom and the living room, switch on. A few seconds later, the air conditioner cycled on.

A wind sprang up and lashed the trees. Shannon whirled around to find Daniel still chanting. “What are you singing? Stop it!”

He fell silent and stared at her as if shocked by the rebuke. The TVs and the air conditioner cut off. When she glanced out the window again, she noticed the traffic light in the next block had gone out, too. She heard the squeal of brakes as a car swerved on the way through the intersection.

“Daniel, turn the electricity back on.” The shrill pitch of her own voice reminded her to take a deep breath.

“I don’t know how.” He sounded close to tears.

Poor kid, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. If he’d done anything at all. Maybe she was losing her mind, to think her child had that kind of power.

“Do you know what did—” she started to ask. She stopped in shock when the sky turned neon purple.

She clenched her fingers on the window sill. The gale still howled around the house, but only there. Branches on trees over a block away didn’t move.

The sky cracked.

She stared in horror at the jagged line of eldritch light. “Make it stop,” she whispered. “Please make it stop.” If the crack widened and that gigantic eye beamed upon her again, she feared she would shatter into a million fragments and never become whole again.

“Mommy?” Daniel’s whimper tore her away from the window.

Falling to her knees, she wrapped him in her arms. “It’s all right.” She rocked him back and forth, praying the lie would become true.

Daniel babbled a string of unintelligible sounds. After a few seconds of silence, he spoke one word. The wind stopped. The sickly light vanished. With a glance over her shoulder, Shannon confirmed that the sky looked normal again. Except that for an instant she saw it as a painted stage backdrop, only a flimsy sheet of cardboard covering black depths of nothingness.

“Honey, can you tell me what just happened?”

“Daddy wanted me to open a door.” He rubbed his eyes and squirmed.

Suppressing a shudder, she relaxed her hold on him. “Don’t do it! It’s dangerous.”

“I can’t. It’s not time yet.”

-end of excerpt-

Solar Heat

The extremes that an author will go to just to sell a book . . .


Even as I wrote Solar Heat I was imagining how we would make the book video. Most authors do something to promote their books and since I like making the videos, I knew I wanted to do another one. But my last video, KISS ME DEADLY a romantic suspense set on Earth was way easier to figure out than a book that didn’t have one scene on planet Earth!



We needed sets, costumes, makeup and special effects—a tall order for someone who didn’t know anything about this technology three years ago. I decided to start by hiring a specialist to create the spaceship bridge. That had to be the central piece in the video. Next we had to create a giant green screen as a background so we could pop out the actors and replace the green background with otherworldly pictures and videos. To make the greenscreen, my husband painted a bunch of 4 foot by 8 foot pieces of Styrofoam and taped them together. We ended up with a stage about fifty feet long and thirty feet high. For the floor, we painted a huge piece of canvass green.

During this process I sat down and wrote a script. The hard part was trying to write a story that represented Solar Heat when I didn’t know what we could do technically. I hired a male and female actor to play the parts. Luckily these same models were also on the book cover (thank you Tara—my daughter the photographer) so we had continuity. For costumes, I found these wonderful shirts that looked like uniforms and I lucked out when the female model had a friend who designed clothing that looked futuristic.

We actually shot all the scenes in one day. My son and his friend filled in as the bridge crew. All the scenes were shot in front of the greenscreen, except the boardroom scene, the bar scene and the couch scene.



And then a very talented friend Mike, who has a camera shot the scenes. For the shower, my husband rigged a hose in front of the greenscreen and we dropped in the background later. The bridge scene where the ship is under attack was interesting. My son and the hero stood on a trailer. We put green canvas under their feet and behind them. Then my husband used a forklift to lift one end of the trailer and dropped it. Where the actors are catching their balance, they look real because we actually dropped them. Later Mike popped the actors out of the green background and put them on the bridge. And then with some technological wizardry, he shook the ship to match the actors’ motions.

And Mike did all the special effects and the sound. Some of the scenes that flash by in a second of viewing take weeks of work. And all this was done to grab readers’ attention so they will buy the book. I’ll bet you didn’t know it was so hard to sell a book!

All of my book videos are posted on my website. You can see them at www.susankearney.com




--
http://www.susankearney.com
-----

JULIE LETO

Julie Leto is doing some great giveaways at her blog,
http://www.plotmonkeys.com

starting today!

She's not only giving away a chapter a day of her upcoming paranormal
romance, PHANTOM PLEASURES, but she's also sweetening the pot by offering a
$20 Amazon/Borders gift card per day to one winner per day, chosen from the people who comment.


Rules...



1. One winner chosen from each day’s comments
2. Winner chosen by Julie Leto
3. Winner choice is final.
4. Winner must come back to Plotmonkeys on the subsequent day to see if they won...Julie will not contact the winner outside of the blog posting, except to make arrangements to send the prize.
5. No purchase necessary (though this goes without saying because they can’t buy anything on my blog!)

THANK YOU!!

Julie

Vampires are so five minutes ago...
PHANTOM PLEASURES, April 2008
From NY Times Bestseller Julie Leto
http://www.julieleto.com
http://www.plotmonkeys.com (blog)

A Little Something Came Up PART I

Linnea did a great job tackling this subject, but let me go back to Cindy's original post on torturing characters.

Cindy Holby wrote in her Saturday March 22nd Post on torturing characters:
-------------
Character is what rises to the top when put under extreme pressure. We all would like to think that we would react "heroically" when we are put into life or death situations. But until we actually experience it we do not know how we will act.
--------------

Cindy's right. Pressure builds when old, internal issues come boiling to the top as things go wrong on the way to an important karmic appointment.

But this is one of those eternal truths writers have to learn the hard way.

Yes, we know we love books that torment the most lovable hero. Yes, we swoop along on that terrible ride pretending we could do as well or better in real life, gasping at the twists and turns, and squirming in our seats.

But now we're facing that dreaded blank white computer window, determined to write one of "those" stories -- and we don't know what to put.

Who is this guy? Where did he come from? Why is he scared blue-lipped? What would it take to make him pee his pants? And how can we ever think of it?

You can't just pick a few traits arbitrarily and expect them to go together to create the image of a great guy in readers' minds.

Human beings (or believable aliens) are made up of traits that "go together" -- that form a pattern, that have something to do with each other, that are not arbitrary or random. That underlying template, archetype, pattern is what we mean when we say "character" and what Cindy meant when she said "character rises to the top".

What "rises" -- what becomes visible -- is the "right stuff" inside the character, the guts, and other body parts we use to represent strength, judgement, moral fiber, kindness, motivation, values.

The character is recognized by the reader/viewer as "real" because the traits revealed fit together to form a recognizable pattern. This can be a pattern we've seen inside ourselves and know that nobody else sees -- or it can be a pattern we've seen in others -- yearning for such a person to discern our own secret pattern.

How do you figure out what collection of traits would make your reader's eyeballs glue to your pages, yearning for your character to recognize their internal "right stuff?"

That question is not a "craft" question. It can't be answered by craft.

It is an "art" question -- and believe it or not, it does indeed have an answer that can be learned and applied by anyone who can write a literate English sentence.

The "art" of story is a huge, deep question that spreads far and wide into the realm of philosophy, spirituality, and even politics.

How do you "become" a writer? How do you get to where the writers you admire so much are? Where do you go to learn to write?

You can find most community colleges and even universities offering some courses in writing, (some in business writing or journalism which actually pays better or steadier). But many of those courses are titled "Creative Writing" -- which is not (trust me) what you really want if you aspire to become a commercial writer of fiction.

For each field or genre of writing, there is a system of thinking that generates the words. Fiction is no exception, at least not commercial fiction.

I've written extensively about the art behind the craft of writing in my review column.

http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/

Many writers do their "art" subconsciously and speak at length about how they just feel their way into a story, maybe write bits and pieces out of sequence, -- or it all just appears in mind, a character demands to have his story told. But not everyone who has that experience turns out a piece of truly commercial fiction.

What's the difference between what wells up from your subconscious and what wells up from Cindy Holby's subconscious?

It's not just craft -- though without craft even the best stuff won't make it on the commercial market. Today's readers are spoiled by a consistent level of craftsmanship in published books.

One reason e-book sales haven't grown faster is that initially many e-books had that inspiration and art behind them, but lacked craft. Readers weren't satisfied.

That's changing and the competition is getting tougher.

So where can a writer go to learn what other writers are born knowing?

Philosophy. Religion. Anthropology. Even TV News.

Since I have a mathematical bent of mind, I found astrology to be the quickest path to making sense out of Internal and External conflict and how it generates plot -- in an artistic way. But I read a lot of psychology textbooks before I hit on astrology. You can learn all of Astrology by reading biographies, psychology, sociology, history and anthropology. Or you can take the shortcut and learn astrology which combines all of that with Art.

See noeltyl.com for lessons.

Now what is "art" - in general and in specific.
You might say Art is a language -- a language of the soul, perhaps. Art is a method of depicting something intangible and literally un-know-able -- i.e. something that can't be accessed via the cognitive faculty which produces "knowledge."

A Seer, a Prophet, a Wise Woman, (or a writer) apprehends a pattern that subsumes all reality, a prototype of reality -- the template upon which our lives are based, and struggles mightily to convey that Vision to people who have no Eye to see it with.

That "struggle" is not a conscious struggle. It comes from the same place inside us that the need to talk comes from -- as a baby learns to say words, an artist learns to "say" characters, form, motion, color, dimension, beauty and ugliness contrasted, balanced or over-balanced.

What that Seer produces in her struggle is what we call Art. It is a language in which we discuss emotion, feelings, aspirations, dreams, and hope.

Think shamanistic storytelling.

Think Bard.

Like any language, it has grammar and syntax, vocabulary where "words" are related to each other in a systematic way.

In the world of Art, baby-talk doesn't sell books.

Erudite and facile use of the language of art, use that profiles and displays the art form itself as an end in itself, does indeed sell books.

TO BE CONTINUED NEXT TUESDAY - if Rowena remembers to post Part II. I will be teaching at Ecumenicon Thursday March 27-30, back at my desk on April 2.
http://www.ecumenicon.org

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

Oh, The Pain...Characters and Conflict

I haven't skinned a character alive, as Cindy notes in her recent blog entry but as she also notes, it's not just the physical pain we authors put our characters through that creates workable story conflict. It's not the car going over the cliff, the "Die Hard" style big rig being chased by a jet fighter, the super heroine leaping tall buildings in a single bound. If that's all conflict was, then most novels would be comic books.

Conflict is both external and internal. And quite honestly, the internal is the more powerful. Because two people must care, think and feel this external conflict or it's useless: the character and the reader.

Let's take the example of the car going over a cliff. Your character, Mortimer, is in the car. But Mortimer is an immortal alien being incapable of dying. Mortimer knows this so he has no fear, no worries. Okay, he'll need to find a new car--and his insurance rates will likely go up--but he'll walk away unscathed.

If your reader knows Mortimer can't die, then s/he, too, walks away unscathed.

If your reader knows nothing about Mortimer--ie: you introduce this scene on page one--s/he doesn't care enough about the character to give a fig if Mort lives or dies.

See, there's no internal connection. If there's no internal connection, there's no internal conflict. External conflict--without a matching internal conflict--falls flat.

Cindy/Colby wrote: "Star Shadows is the story of Elle and Boone but it also introduces Zander who loses his memory in the first half of the book and then becomes an assasin. He has no recall of learned boundaries from his youth so therefore he does not know why or how he has become a killer. All he knows is kill or be killed. "

Ah, see? We're introduced to Zander as a character. Then he loses his memory. We have an experience of him, we get into his skin, we feel his loss, we feel his confusion. Now, put him in that vehicle hurtling over a cliff just as he's on his way to the clinic where his memory will be restored, and he'll be made whole--and we care. (And that's not what happens in Colby's book but I'm hijacking her character to make a point.)

Yes, it will hurt when he dies or is injured or in some way prevented from reaching his "goal" of memory restoration, but the physical pain is only powerful because of his internal pain of failure. Of loss. Of "I almost had it. I coulda been a contender. I shoulda had a V-8..."

Cindy asked about Branden Kel-Paten. For those of you who've been on sabbatical to the outer reaches of the Gensiira System and have no idea who he is, he's one of the male protagonists in Games of Command. He's also a biocybe: half human, half android. Not his choice, mind you, and we learn this and we learn about his fears and his feelings of inadequacy and his hatred of being a "freak" in the early chapters of the book. It's all internal conflict for Branden. Which was fun because physically he's incredibly powerful. He is half machine and as such, runs faster, jumps higher and does all that kind of top notch "Keds' sneakers" kind of stuff. He's one tough dude. He's also a total softie underneath.

Branden as a character is a poster boy for external/internal conflict. His outside is the invincible military officer. His inside is a mass of self-doubt and loathing because of what his outside is.

There's a universality in this and Cindy touches on that point as well in her blog. All of us differ in physical strength, depending on our height, age, weight, training, etc.. Rowena towers over me. Cindy and I are about the same height but she's much younger than I am. These are physical differences that make us unlike. But inside Rowena, Cindy and Linnea may well live very similar internal feelings. Self-doubt pretty much only comes in one size and flavor, and it doesn't really change with age or location. So while we as readers may not always understand what it's like to be in a car hurtling over a cliff, we all understand what it's like to feel ashamed.

There's a universality in internal conflict. It's a one size fits all set of feelings. It's a genderless, timeless, applicable-to-all-ethnicities experience.

That's why you can't have true workable conflict in a novel without it. ~Linnea

Where the UFOs are

I am thrilled to announce that Preditors and Editors has awarded my site the Author's Site Of Excellence Award.

Needless to say, I am thrilled, and would like to thank anyone who had anything to do with this great honor!


Now, for the UFOs....


It makes sense to me that different aliens would use different methods to land on Earth, which is why I love to watch The Discovery Channel and also The Science Channel.

In my next alien romance (KNIGHT'S FORK) I have an Imperial war-star, or rather, one or two of its foray shuttles; a Saurian craft; and a Volnoth "stargoer" ... all with pressing, secret business on our planet.

The Volnoth vessel uses electro-magnetic propulsion, and uses large, deep oceans as inconspicuous runways.


EXCERPT FROM KNIGHT'S FORK (approx Sept 2008)


North London
Hampstead High Street
Two weeks later


“Read all abaaaht it!” a boy of papers shouted by a strange, half-tented cart from which passers-by could exchange very small pieces of folded paper for very large, folded stacks of dirty paper, which they would then unfold, and look at.

Prince Thor-quentin was fascinated. He loitered to observe the folly of mankind. His attention was captivated by more efficiently folded papers. They were colored, and wrapped in a clear foil to stop them flipping in the London street wind. Many of these colored papers showed bare-chested males, proudly displaying their favorite exercise equipment, or modest females in heat, bending over conveniently placed vehicles.

The boy of papers varied his cries of what was interesting.

“Antipodean Alarm!” he wailed. “Australian Air Force Authorities allay anxiety over alleged alien…”

So many big A-words! Thor-quentin thought.

Then, he caught sight of the grainy, blurry, black-and-white photograph. The boy of papers might call the object diving into the sea a “twisted, distorted weather balloon”, but Prince Thor-quentin knew it for what it was. A Volnoth, water-capable shuttle.

He had practiced Djinncraft before on impressionable, sacrificial virgins. He’d never imagined that he’d use Djinncraft to obtain something as worthless as a pile of dirty papers.

Approaching the boy of papers at a suitable lull in the boy’s passing trade, Thor-quentin murmured, ‘I will take. You will not cry out.”

The boy of papers promptly turned aside, folded from the mid-section and vomited into the slightly lower level of the trafficway.

Slack damn! Less force is required in this lesser gravity, Thor-quentin noted. He helped himself to a selection of the folded stacks of papers, and passed a hand over the wad of small, purplish papers, as if he might be making a fair exchage like everyone else. In addition, since he could, he took one catalogue of the local females in heat.

Viz-Igerd had come after him. He needed a better place to hide.

***

’Rhett was returning on the Underground from St. Catherine’s House, where he’d been looking up the births of girl babies in Cambridge in 1962, whether born, admitted, abandoned, or given up for adoption.

The tomes had been huge, and the print had been large, but the keeping of the “Creed Registers” had only resumed in 1962, and it was hard to know whether or not the books were complete.

He knew that Freya had been admitted to Addenbrookes on Trumpington Street. He was not sure of the date, and since she had been presumed indigent and had no name when admitted –or when discharged-- it was hard to be sure.

Because the mother had no name, the baby, which was officially admitted upon birth, also had no name.

Hopeless!

A copy of The Sun newspaper lay abandoned on the seat beside him. He glanced at it. The headline, “Antipodean Alarm!” did not alarm him. The accompanying photograph did.

“Damnation!” he murmured, recognizing the aerodynamic, aggressive-squid contours of a Star-goer with electro-magnetic propulsion systems, capable of using oceans as an underwater runway to achieve supersonic speed and necessary velocity to escape the planet’s gravity when it left. “That looks Volnoth!”


Best wishes for a very happy Easter!
Rowena Cherry

Craft, Torturing your characters or developing inner conflcit

It has been pointed out to me in several recent talks I've given that I have built a reputaion for torturing my characters. When someone comments upon it I pause and think. "Well I did skin Zane alive in Whirlwind. And he deserved it too. He's been nothing but a trouble maker for six books." When writing that I had to think long and hard about acutally doing it. I knew it was graphic and would be a horrible experience for anyone to go through. Then I decided yep, just go for it. You can do it. He's your character. You can do what ever you want.

My editor said that I gave her nightmares while she was reading Rising Wind. There were some graphic examples of torture used by the Shawnee in the book taken straight from acutal accounts. My hero, Connor, in Rising Wind did not get tortured. I even had a chance to give him a lashing and I rescinded it. I figured Connor was torturing himself enough. Or I was torturing him.

The method of torture I used on Connor was self doubt. Through out the entire story his biggest fear was he would be captured and tortured. And when it happen he would show fear. I also set the story up so that in the prologue (see last weeks post) it showed Connor's father dying bravely at Culloden. In the first chapter he talks about his mother also dying bravely when hung by English soldiers for wearing the plaid. Thus I've set up Connor's internal conflict. His own form of self torture.

Star Shadows is the story of Elle and Boone but it also introduces Zander who loses his memory in the first half of the book and then becomes an assasin. He has no recall of learned boundaries from his youth so therefore he does not know why or how he has become a killer. All he knows is kill or be killed. He knows he hates what he is but it is also impossible for him to die. Plenty of self loathing and internal conflict going on in his mind. I also added a torture scene where he is tied down and raped by a woman that he later kills. Zander is set up to torture himself with all he has done when he finally regains his memory. I know this is why every one who has read Star Shadows is asking for Zander's book.

Its not about the torture. Its not about the internal conflict. Its about experiencing the journey as the characters examine themselves as they come up against their greatest fears and how they conquer those fears.

Character is what rises to the top when put under extreme pressure. We all would like to think that we would react "heroically" when we are put into life or death situations. But until we acutally experience it we do not know how we will act.

I guess you can say that is our own form of self toture. Our own self doubt.

Linnea? I loved to hear what you have to say about Kel-Patten and his interal conflict.

Form and Function

Reading COMMUNIPATH WORLDS, the omnibus edition of Suzette Haden Elgin's Coyote Jones novels, reminded me of how short mass market SF books used to be. Three full-length novels fit into one average-size paperback! Reflecting on the phenomenon of how the typical mass market novel has lengthened since the 1960s and early 70s led me to speculate about the influence of a book's format on its content. Think of the “triple-decker” novels of the nineteenth century, heavy on long descriptions and exposition. Nowadays, for instance, greater length allows for more complex plots and additional subplots. And might publishers' expectation of longer books in SF and fantasy lead or contribute to greater focus on character development? E-publishing accommodates books of widely varying lengths, from stand-alone short stories and novellas (thus offering markets for short works independent of traditional periodicals and anthologies) to novels of much higher word count than a paperbound book could economically comprise. How have these variations in length affected plot and characterization? Moreover, e-publishers from the beginning have embraced types of fiction major publishers eschewed as too unconventional, unclassifiable, or simply belonging to a currently "unpopular" genre. (Before paranormal romance soared in popularity, its fans knew they could find the desired books online. Recently, Regency romance fans are discovering the same source for their fiction fix.) Hence, e-pubs pioneered the cross-genre fiction trend that has triggered the explosion of new subgenres such as paranormal romance and urban fantasy.