Can Serials Work Via E-publishing?

I Retweeted a post on twitter and got into a discussion of the Question titling this post.

First a quick primer on basic Twitter which, if you know how twitter works, you may skip. If you don't "do" twitter, please read this.

-------Writer's Tutorial On Twitter -------------

Even if you don't plan to join twitter, you should be aware of the potential use of tweets in your narrative writing to shatter your Expository Lumps. Tweets work in drama because you can optionally set twitter to tweet to your phone, not just in a browser. News Services and TV News Shows twitter breaking news and even Amber Alerts and CDC alerts. Twitter is THE bulletin source for moving plots fast forward.

People in different parts of a theater can tweet or text during a show and discuss dialogue lines, or plan dinner, or plot an assassination (because tweets can be "private" and even coded.

On Twitter, RT means "re-tweet" meaning that you copy a tweet from someone you follow, paste it into your 140 character tweet box at the top of your page, put RT and an @ sign in front of the person's handle, and trim to 140 characters, then send it out. Your own handle gets auto-added so people who follow you and thus get your tweets will see that you are forwarding what someone else said. Only the tweeple who follow you will see what you posted. The tweeple who follow the person you're RT'ing will NOT see your RT unless they follow the person you're RT'ing too.

Twitter is one-way communication unless you make it two-way. But tweets are "public" and can be sorted by keyword, so strangers can converse.

If a RT is interesting, the people who follow you might follow the person you RT'd.

So when you "talk" by tweeting on twitter you have to be aware that readers will see only what you said, not what you're responding to. Like listening to half a telephone conversation. There's an art to including kibitzers gracefully and your Expository Lump suffering readers are kibitzers.

On Twitter, clicking a twitterer's handle (@something) sends you to their homepage where you can find out who they say they are and what they've been tweeting lately.

That's on the crude interface supplied by Twitter. There are "clients" you can download that present twitter data more neatly.

I wrote a long post about Web 2.0 recently,
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/11/i-love-web-20.html
and Twitter is just one of the newer and more popular components of Web 2.0. Twitter can be RSS "syndicated" so you can follow your twitter traffic on friendfeed.com or just follow me on friendfeed.com (scroll down the right sidebar of this post for my friendfeed box). And you can put your tweets in a box on your blog, so your blog always shows what you've just been talking about, with links). Simplify and organize your web-life.

-------END TUTORIAL ON TWITTER---------

So I (who follow KFZuzulo and "hear" all her tweets) retweeted a retweet sent by KFZuzulo where she starts with her own comment, then supplies the comment she's Retweeting.

It looks like so:

@KFZuzulo Or by "episode"=Serials!! ->RT @kriheli prediction on where publishing is heading chapter by chapter publishing #followreader

So KFZuzulo was answering kriheli's comment that publishing is headed for chapter-by-chapter presentation, and KFZuzulo said that means "episode" or "serials" which I know is in fact already successful with certain readerships online.

The hashtag #followreader was in @kriheli's original post. These hashtags are used to let strangers sort the whole twitter feed by subject and find people saying interesting things in order to follow more interesting tweeple.

Frankly you might want to follow @kriheli if you're interested in the E-book business model that Margaret Carter discussed here
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/business-model-of-e-publishing.html

So in response to my RT of her RT, @KFZuzulo asked me a question that looked like so:

KFZuzulo @JLichtenberg Do you think serials can work via e-publishing?

And I replied with a #followfriday hashtag because it was Friday and thus the hashtag was "allowed" by protocol. #followfriday means I recommend that other Tweeple should follow @KFZuzulo who is Kellyann Zuzulo who supplied us with a Guest Post here on this blog
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/living-with-fatal-flaw.html
My reply to her looked like this:

@KFZuzulo Serials working in E-publishing? THAT's a blog topic not 140C's I'll try to cover it #followfriday @KFZuzulo

Another feature twitter has is that you can sort the feed so you can see any post with your handle in it. I'm @jlichtenberg and you can find me at
http://twitter.com/jlichtenberg

Though twitter allows for private Direct Messages, all these posts I've mentioned went to all our followers, in aggregate, probably over 3,000 tweeple.

So my answer is much more than the 140 characters limit on twitter.com

1) My answer is related to the difference between Knowledge and Wisdom (oy, she's waxing metaphysical again!)

2) My answer is related to the history of the media in all its glorious forms.

3) My answer is related to the 4-generation rule (unto the 4th generation); it takes 4 generations to effect a basic cultural change.

4) My answer is related to my blog post here "I Love Web 2.0"
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/11/i-love-web-20.html

Let's do those points in reverse order.

4) Technology is the natural place to start since this is a question about E-publishing, a new form of delivery system for fiction.

We've finally got handheld screens that are legible to most people, and not most but a lot of people are used to cell phones with some "features" like web access (called smart phones). I read e-books on a PALM TX which has wi-fi access to the internet if there's a hotspot. But it's not a phone and doesn't have wireless access to the internet. I have a phone that does have wireless access to the internet, but it doesn't have a download for mobipocket reader which is the one I use.

And of course, we now have the electronic paper display used by Amazon's Kindle that pleases a lot of other people. Sony and others are making readers, and building in wi-fi or wireless capabilities to make it easy to download e-books and newspapers.

Some new, lower-energy-consuming chips are revolutionizing the palm top market, (with more innovations on the market next year) so we are very close to solving the tech problems and dumbing down the machinery so anyone can use it. At the same time smart-devices like smart-phones are smarting-up the users. Generally, you like what you're used to and you like new things that are easier than you're used to.

I covered a lot of the Cloud Computing and interactivity on the web in my "I Love Web 2.0" post, so we won't go over that again. Just remember it and think about the rising tide of CHANGE sweeping over us. At the same time, think about why Science Fiction is a shrinking genre while SFRomance is a growing genre.

(Though I have to admit EUREKA's use of smart-roads and boson-clouds as a landing field for a crash-down of a space ship is pure SF at its best! TV Shows like EUREKA (on scyfy channel) are also smarting up the users.)

Smarting-up the users is where the 4-generation rule comes into play.

Here's where you should either read or remember Alvin Toffler's first book, FUTURE SHOCK. The point he made is still valid, and much of what he predicted has already come true (the rest seems on the way).


Humans are hardwired to tolerate only so much change. A person can make only so many "decisions" (a brain function as much as it is a mental function) per day. As you age, you can tolerate change less and less, make fewer decisions per day. Read Toffler's book for the full explanation. And trust me, to understand the e-book publishing potential, you need to read FUTURE SHOCK. It's not out-dated (yet).

The result of this purely physical nervous system limitation of humans to make major changes in the way they think and do things during a single lifetime is the 4-Generation rule. It takes nearly 80 years at the very least to make a major change to a culture.

A recent study revealed that multi-tasking (the tempo of the modern world) actually chips away at efficiency and productivity.

Here's an article:
http://www.apa.org/releases/multitasking.html

---------QUOTE-------------
The measurements revealed that for all types of tasks, subjects lost time when they had to switch from one task to another, and time costs increased with the complexity of the tasks, so it took significantly longer to switch between more complex tasks. Time costs also were greater when subjects switched to tasks that were relatively unfamiliar. They got "up to speed" faster when they switched to tasks they knew better, an observation that may lead to interfaces designed to help overcome people's innate cognitive limitations.

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

So the last word on the tech underpinnings of the new Fiction Delivery System has not been posted! But the culture is changing.

3) The 4-generation rule (unto the 4th generation); it takes 4 generations to effect a basic cultural change.

In the last 20 years with the advent of the Web and now Web 2.0 and even 3 and 4.0 starting to show up, with the digitalization of TV broadcasts, and other fundamental infrastructure changes especially integration by "aggregators", we have made several of these fundamental changes in the whole way "the world" works, all at once within one generation.

As a result, there are those of you reading this blog who shudder and flee at the idea of opening a twitter account. You don't know what it is and you don't want to know. You want it to go away, and you can't see any reason why the TV News shows give it so much attention and credence.

Your grandchildren will cling to networks like twitter (it's losing money and may not survive, but microblogging probably will; there's now a micro-blog that lets you use a lot more than 140 characters) and those grandchildren will likewise shudder at the thought of opening a something-else-account.

Through the middle-decades of life, humans embrace these new tools or major changes, shift career direction, experiment with new brands etc. By age 40, advertisers have lost interest in you. By age 50, you've lost interest in advertisers with NEW NEW NEW things to offer. By age 70 you actively resent anyone changing anything.

That's not wrong, or evil, or anti-progress. It actually is progress to resist change! It's progress toward stability, and valuing what progress has already been made more highly than progress that might (or might not) yet be made.

The 70-something's aversion to rapid change is nature's way of stabilizing society because at a certain rate of change, all society will disintegrate. Humans can't tolerate it.

And, according to Alvin Toffler, we're right at the edge of that rate of change.

What happens when a society disintegrates?

WORLDBUILDERS LISTEN UP.

The portrait of a disintegrated society has been painted before our eyes by CNN in these last few decades. Bosnia. (Ireland almost got there) Afghanistan. Iraq. Everyone for himself and devil take the hindmost. Then non-combatants aggregate themselves under the protection of "strongmen" who bears arms to protect, to ferociously exact revenge so his group will be feared and left alone. (Hatfields and McCoys to the 4th or 5th generation).

When the social glue fails, there's blood in the streets (literally) and starvation at home. Foreign countries see an opportunity to seize the disintegrated region for its raw materials and labor resources. Conquest is the result of social disintegration. Starvation. Poverty beyond belief.

So "society" a nebulous, almost indefinable thing (try explaining "social networks" to someone who's not online!) has a use and a purpose, as well as a structure!

So where does society come from? How do we stabilize large groups?

2) That question brings us to the HISTORY OF THE MEDIA IN ALL ITS GLORY.

When society disintegrates, there is no education of the young except in how to scavenge enough to eat today, and build a fire for tonight.

Our vertical integration of generations is what stabilizes society. Lore. Campfire morality tales. Cave paintings. Faith. History. And maybe above all technology, and the science that goes behind it. Technology gave us flint knives and which berries are edible. Today it gives us e-books, a new medium, and "social networks" which are currently "destabilizing" society while they form a totally new platform for stabilization.

But all this change takes time if it's not to be destructive. For a serious tutorial on the hows and whys of that time-requirement, read

C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner Series

Yeah, read SF about a non-human society to understand what humans create and use for "society."

Vertical integration of the generations is why the resistance to change built into the human brain during aging is GOOD. The job of youth is to innovate. The job of age is to discard innovations that are destructive to the stability of society -- because without society we're back to every-man-for-himself-and-devil-take-the-hindmost.

So it isn't improvement or progress toward a better world that elders resist. But they do resist.

They resist INSTABILITY caused by running experiments in change in society at large when such changes really need to start on the lab bench, and proceed to the pilot plant and field testing before being released. But youth is "impatient" with methodical testing. It's the nature of youth, and that's not bad unless it is not restrained by age. Not STOPPED, mind you, but RESTRAINED (slowed).

What the elders understand that youth does not is just what is at stake in their madcap pursuit of "progress" in all directions except stability.

If society disintegrates to hand-to-mouth again, and if two generations don't get book-learning educations, continuity is lost and society disintegrates even further. With climate change threatening famine, sword-rattling threatening mass destruction, and free-travel mixing up the genes of viruses and bacteria, bedbugs making a come-back because of hotels not changing sheets every night, and bedbugs being a prime vector for bubonic plague which is mutating and making a comeback, -- those who have lived long enough to learn to see "4 moves ahead" in the chess game of life want to avoid any innocent looking first move that could lead to destabilization in a 4th move.

Elders can see that we can't afford to be off-balance taking a step forward just when we must face one of those major threats (threats that youth discounts as something that will never happen because youth is immortal).

We stand on the shoulders of giants.

What we have today is the result of vertical integration of the generations - the elders teaching the youth, and restraining youth until they get some sense.

OK, this resistance to change analysis is very simplistic, and you can easily argue against my thesis here, but just wait a few minutes and think about these points as a skeletal outline in the subject of serialization as the future of the fiction delivery system.

So "the media" started around campfires in caves, then minstrels roving the countryside singing for their supper (advertising business model), and continues unbroken to Radio, TV, CNN, satellite feeds, and RSS feeds. (do subscribe to this blog; you won't regret it, and if you don't know how to subscribe to a blog, click one of the SUBSCRIBE icons to the right. Try GOOGLE and it'll lead you to the Google Reader setup.)

Ponder Margaret Carter's post on the business model of the e-book again.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/business-model-of-e-publishing.html

And consider this treasure of a post titled Traditional v self-publishing: a false comparison by Alasdair White (who isn't the famous musician Alasdair White, but rather the famous business management consultant Alasdair White). I met him on LinkedIn where he answered a question on publishing with the following totally brilliant analysis:

http://pm-solutions.com/infosys/blog/?p=32

Note that "e-publishing" is synonymous in some people's minds with "self-publishing" which couldn't be farther from the truth. But the e-publishing industry has grown up from scratch in about 10 years or so. Nobody knows what e-publishing IS, least of all the e-publishers, except that it's a big change. Just as TV started by copying the business model of Radio, e-publishing started copying publishing, and has now diverged markedly.

After reading Alasdair's analysis, I pointed him to Margaret Carter's post on the business model discussion among Romance Writers of America members and he wrote me back with the following illuminating insight which I'm quoting with permission:

----------------FROM ALASDAIR WHITE------------------
LinkedIn
Alasdair White has sent you a message.

Date: 8/31/2009

I read through the post you link below and it seems to me that there are still some fundamental misconceptions as to the relationship between author and publisher (no matter what form the publisher takes). The author, publisher, bookseller and reader form a value chain (in business terms). The author invests their time in the creation of a manuscript. The publisher invests their skills (and adds value) to the manuscript and turns it into a saleable product. The bookseller invests in facilities and stock and takes the product and sells it, The reader invests in buying the product and 'consumes' it.

Each part of the value chain is investing time, skill, and/or money in their part of the activities of the value chain. Each is taking a 'risk' with their investment. Each receives a reward for risk taken once the value chain is completed. Except when the author is commissioned by a publisher (who then effective buys the time and skills of the author who then has no investment in the product) there is no valid reason for an author to assume that they have any relationship with a publisher other than that of supplier.

Normally, if a product is supplied to another part of a value chain, then the supplier is recompensed at a fixed value - but very few authors simply want to be paid a fixed price for their manuscript - they want to garner the rewards of the sales (hence the royalty system). Thus, in exchange for a greater potential reward, they risk their short-term recompense.

BUT, and this really irritates me, authors then want an advance against the royalties - so they are now expecting the publisher to become a bank and to lend them money- which is possibly OK (although poor business management) because the publisher could set up the contract in a way that the author has to repay the advance proportionately if the sales fail to reach a certain break-even level. But can anyone name an author who would accept that?

No, the author wants an advance (fixed amount payment) AND a royalty and consider those publishers that don't pay advances as exploiting the authors and trying to avoid the risk. Now that is pure unadulterated greed speaking - but I bet the same complainers are criticizing those bankers who were paid bonuses in the good times but don't have to repay them in the bad - but it is the same argument.

If authors are paid an advance, then they should receive no royalty whatsoever until the sales reach a break even point which is determined by advance+in-house investment in bringing the manuscript to print+production costs (designers, printers etc)+marketing spend+lost opportunity cost (return that could have been generated had the money not been used as it was). This would, on an average novel push the break even sales to around 3000-5000 copies - which, for most novels is fantasy.

The fact that e-publishing does not have the printing costs (usually less than 30% of the final production cost) means only that producing an e-publication is marginally less costly than doing it as a hard-copy. And authors who feel hard done by need to take a crash course in the economics of publishing.

Even with our parsed down operating model it still costs a lot to link the first part of the value chain with the last part and authors need to consider whether they wish to take a risk of greater rewards (royalties only) or to be paid for their work at a fixed price. Personally (as both an author and a publisher), I feel that the combined advance+royalties model is unworkable and essentially unfair as it penalizes the publisher. If authors want the greatest return then they simply have to be willing to share in the risk.

Alasdair
http://pm-solutions.com/infosys/blog/?p=32

----------------------END QUOTE FROM ALASDAIR WHITE--------------

What has this to do with "Can Serials Work Via e-publishing?"

Well, that question is actually a complex question. First you must understand what publishing is/was. Then get a good grasp of the Web 2.0 model of cyberspace -- and anticipate where Web 4.0 will take us.

Alasdair is teaching us some things about "Media" as an industry that writers don't generally internalize. He's showing us "what" we as writers are actually doing. And his posts reveal a world totally different from what any creative artist would envision as the delivery mechanism for their art to their end-consumer.

Understanding the infrastructure of the fiction delivery system, and the meaning to "society" of the madcap pace of CHANGE in that delivery system over the last few decades, we can turn our attention to the really difficult part of this Question: What exactly is serialization?

In the history of the MEDIA, when did the SERIAL arise?

I honestly don't know.

But I think the origin of the Serial relates to my post on the Medium Is The Message:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/medium-is-message_19.html

Fiction has always been a for-profit endeavor by the fiction creator. The shaman was supported by the tribe in exchange for Wisdom conveyed in a form they could understand and use. The Minstrel brought news and got fed for it. In the Middle Ages, Church copyists copied older documents and were supported by charity gifts to the church, and by their scribe function. Think about it in terms of a business model - the fiction-delivery-system and the news-delivery-system.

The printing press, of course, is the evolutionary step in "The Media" which is comparable to the leap into electronic distribution.

But this one, Web 2.0, social networking, and gaming (interactivity between the consumer and the story), is much bigger even than the printing press or even "motion pictures."

If words are to be distributed FOR PROFIT, they have to go down a delivery system that has a pre-determined size, shape, delivery point and most especially that "value chain" that Alasdair White tutored us in.

The delivery system is the "business" and the words are just the commodity being purveyed by the business.

This is something new writers trying to "sell" their work have a very hard time grasping. They think of editors as "gatekeepers" who favor one person over another rather than African hunters spearing fast-moving antelope in a jungle to supply meat to a Packer shipping to South America.

I wrote a lengthy reply to a Question on a LinkedIn Group I'm on (LinkEds & Writers). I'm going to insert that Answer here because most of you won't be able to access it inside the Social Network and INSIDE a "Group" within that Social Network. Most readers can skip this insert. I'm mostly just sending the new writers to absorb Alasdair White's post on publishing as a business.

-----------FROM Q&A on LINKEDIN.COM LINKEDS&WRITERS----------

Q: I just distilled and posted an email I got from a very disgruntled young writer. It's a rant about the industry - what would you advise this writer?

Here's the transcribed email
http://ontext.com/2009/08/beginning-writer-bitches-publishing-industry/

A: (by Jacqueline Lichtenberg - there are well over 30 Answers so far -- I'm editing mine down)

I have encountered this "beginning writer's rant" that has echoed down the ages.

Beginner Commercial Artists are both right and wrong because they don't understand what they are doing or what the "industry" does or should do, but they do understand that what the industry is doing is wrong somehow, inadequate or philosophically askew.

I'm in a discussion with another LinkedIn member who answered a question on self-publishing with a marvelous analysis of the business models of publishing of all sorts.

His name is Alasdair White (but he isn't the famous Scottish musician).

I saw his answer to a question on LinkedIn and urged him to post it on a blog where anyone could get at it so I could point people at it. I mentioned it on twitter and made White a new fan out of a publisher.

The blog entry is here:
http://pm-solutions.com/infosys/blog/?p=32

Then I linked to White's post in a blog I will post on Tuesday Sept. 1, 2009. I'm a writer and co-blog with other writers on the craft and the industry, with a lot of beginning writers among our readers. My day to post is Tuesday.

I told Alasdair White that I would post a link to his blog, and pointed him to a post on the co-blog about an argument among Romance Writers of America members regarding the status of e-publishing.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/business-model-of-e-publishing.html

Alasdair kindly read that entry by my co-blogger Margaret Carter, and emailed me a lengthy and brilliant answer which I am going to ask if I can insert into my blog with a link to his. But I found this question first.

I think this discussion and analysis of publishing as a business from the management point of view that Alasdair brings to it (and his exemplary articulateness) is just the vision that new authors in the "rant" stage need the most.

Armed with this view of art as commodity, and understanding publishing (or video or TV or other media) as a business that must be managed, a new writer in the throes of The Rant may be able to found his own publishing business and serve his own target audience, or perhaps become the dominant player in the entire Entertainment Delivery System.

I am convinced our Fiction Delivery System is massively out of kilter and about to break. I think it should break. We are entering a new era and need an entirely new Fiction Delivery System.

However, the principles Alasdair so succinctly gives us in plain layman's language, will prevail. Nobody who attempts to create the new Fiction Delivery System can succeed without a full grasp of this picture.

Alasdair gives us the view from outside that artists need to make the leap from Art to Commercial Art.
-----------------END QUOTE FROM Q&A-------------

So again, what has this to do with where Serialization came from and where it's going?

We have serialization because the STORY we want to send down that value-chain delivery system channel is larger than the channel, so we have to break it into pieces (just as an email or web-page is broken to be sent across the internet then reassembled).

A cave dweller's campfire only lasts so long, and dawn's chores come too soon. Stories had to be SHORT -- or serialized.

Dickens serialized his novels in newspapers, same reason. Reach more people, don't try their patience with long involved exposition, leave them wanting MORE, serialize the story.

Magazines, especially genre ones like Action, Mystery and Science Fiction, relied on the Serialized Novel to bait readers into subscribing (back when a magazine cost 25 cents and that was a lot of money).

Radio brought the radio serial, and soap opera serialization which became the story-arc I've discussed here at length along with story structure and how to create and place climaxes, though I didn't address the issue of how to structure climaxes to allow a novel to be serializable. (yes, there is a craft technique for that, too.)

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/amber-benson-tara-on-buffy-vampire.html

Radio serials like The Lone Ranger and Superman translated directly to early TV. Yes, though made in anthology format, The Lone Ranger (also running as a comic strip in newspapers), actually had a story arc, the story of the man who was the lone survivor of a Ranger compliment ambushed by the Cavendish band. The Lone Ranger had a story-arc mission -- nail Cavendish. He wore the mask so Cavendish would not know he was a survivor of that battle, and would drop the mask only after Cavendish was dead.

And of course, don't forget Dr. Who just because it was only in England all those years before we imported the TV show.

And early film resorted to the Serial installments (Buck Rogers etc) to get people into the theater to see the A and B pictures even if they really weren't that interested -- and that loyal audience then made superstars out of actors like Ginger Rogers, Cary Grant, Bing Crosby. The weekly serial installment was the value-added along with a few cartoons.

So serials exist because the delivery mechanism is too narrow for the entire story as one piece, and as bait to get an audience for some other product.

The "delivery mechanism size" issue includes the problem of the audience's attention span.

Cave men couldn't sit by the fire for 6 hours every night. Today's audience won't sit in a theater for 4 or 5 hours to watch 2 movies, 2 serial installments, and 4 cartoons (an afternoon like that used to cost $0.50 -- $0.25 if you were under 12).

So today's theaters offer 2 hours and COMMERCIALS. But films are more and more often becoming series if not actual serials!

Meanwhile, we have a trend I've been documenting in my review columns for the beginning of 2010, reviewing many many books which are parts of long series or beginnings of new series.

http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2010/

Series and serials have one thing in common -- cliffhanger climaxes. It's only the placement of the climaxes and story-arc shape that differs. But they both accomplish one thing. They break a story into short chunks that can fit into the commercially driven business of delivery and parse into that "value chain" that White is tutoring us in.

Although the e-book and blog-posting format doesn't limit the size of posts (except for the technical issue of how long it takes to download which is largely solved), the person who reads the e-media limits the practical length by simply not having the attention span, or the actual time to read, or possibly the interest. (Yes, I know, this post is way too long and very boring, but it's a complicated question!)

The generation raised on Sesame Street has been conditioned to the commercial-break sound-byte length installments.

So though the actual e-medium can carry 6 or even 10 hours of reading in one download, the longer the piece the smaller the audience.

One thing all writers agree on. The objective is to reach a larger audience, the bigger the better. That's why microblogging like Twitter is burgeoning and the quality of a tweeter is measured by the number of followers, and their followers rather than the information density of the tweets put out.

The children of the Sesame Street generation and their children now, are jittery nervous wrecks compared to readers of the Elizabethan era.

The expository lump was regarded as richness in the Elizabethan era, and practiced as an artform (really! I studied it as an artform in High School where it was revered!) Today the expository lump is anathema.

So serialization leaves you with the problem of "What Has Gone Before." The e-serial can solve this with a hyperlink! But most readers won't follow the link.

Which leaves writers with this problem I indicated in my first point.

1) My answer is related to the difference between Knowledge and Wisdom

Can you tell me what that difference is and why it's related to the issue of whether serials can work via E-publishing?

Let's try this easy thumbnail, micro-blog size definition.

Knowledge is facts; Wisdom connects facts into a pattern.

That's wholly inadequate, but let's run with it.

I've talked a lot about pattern recognition on this blog, because it's a basic component of art. Here's one of my posts which is about the key question any Romance has to answer, "What Does She See In Him?"

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-does-she-see-in-him.html

Notice how I keep tossing in links here to other blog posts? To answer the question Can Serials Work Via E-Publishing?, I have to arrange those little but convoluted points I've made in previous blogs into a pattern you can recognize.

What have I been talking about here since I launched into my 20 posts on The Tarot?

See: http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/12/10-pentacles-cake-comes-out-of-oven.html
and follow the links back to Ace of Swords.

The overall objective of my many posts here is to figure out why the Romance genre in general, and maybe the SFR and PNR sub-genres too, are so scorned.

This question, Can Serials Work via E-publishing holds a clue to the answer if you can see the pattern behind these 4 points I'm highlighting.

The solution to a problem lies in the formulation of the problem. How you ask the question determines the answer. You can't solve an algebra problem unless you can state it properly.

KFZuzulo has given us an opening statement that could lead to the solution.

20 years ago, Romance genre publishing shunned the sequel, the series, and the story arc. Each novel had to be self-contained, (have very little if any sex), and end with an HEA.

Each story would have to start with the couple meeting, and end with them deciding to settle down together.

That's a tiny slice out of a story-arc of life, and it's the slice where more than likely Neptune is messing both of the characters up with some transit or another.

Usually, the Romance Novel would cover a time-span of weeks, months at most -- some maybe a year so you could do two Thanksgiving Dinner scenes.

The couple would meet, forget the rest of the world exists, and settle down to live HEA. The background, setting, world news situation, career goals, supporting cast, and everything else was incidental and often not well done. The Historicals, Regencies, etc broke through that mold and gave us richly researched detail from the real world history, showing that the typical Romance reader was educated and curious, and could enjoy learning useless trivia just for fun.

But the main story was still largely without conflict, without combat to the death, without a town or corporation or enterprise that was more important to the couple than their relationship. And most especially without challenging the premise: Love Conquers All.

The general reader would see the Romance as too easy, too comic-book, too facile. Too obvious.

In the old fashioned comic book (not the graphic novel mind you!) the characters would CHANGE the instant they hit epiphany, saw the light, understood who the villain really was, and would act without hesitation or introspection -- and all this would happen within a ridiculously short time frame.

For a real person to undergo serious spiritual enlightenment, character change at a basic level, major maturation, takes TIME. Years, not months. Decades not years. The bigger the lesson, the longer it takes to go from the mental insight to actual behavior.

The Romance often turns on an issue of the commitment-shy, on previously burned lover who just can't be sure this isn't a rerun of that failure.

Other plots use various reasons why one lover can't give her/ himself completely to another person, and use that instead of real conflict. (that's an internal conflict, not enough to turn a plot)

Romance has always explored the deepest psychological urges, wishes, aspirations, and vast issues of self-image, self-esteem -- massive psychological issues.

But 20 years ago, the genre required an author to invent new characters for each book, and resolve that character's deepest (hardest) psychological issues in 400 pages (or less).

These novels would span a few days, weeks, months, and chronicle personality changes that in reality take years, decades, or several lifetimes of karmic progress.

And the characters would walk away from these life-long problems scott free into HEA, as if they would never have that problem again.

This compressed time-frame and abbreviated page-count created a story that most people just couldn't decode. It would seem that the characters were cardboard puppets manipulated by the authors through unrealistic gyrations.

Today that's all changed. (well, not in all branches of the field).

Today though, the Fantasy field has produced the super-sized long novel sometimes spanning decades and generations. Some characters are hundreds of years old already (I do love Vampire novels).

The SFR can span decades of a character's life.

Women in Romances are expected to have a career, hobbies, interests, and an eclectic education. Some women are corporate bosses, and still have Romance in their souls.

Both women and men can be deeply involved in the issues of their world. That means that the internal conflicts that take a lifetime to work through can be REFLECTED in the external world the writer builds, and those conflicts can be tackled and partially resolved externally, or even symbolically, and thus the resolution and character-arc can seem far more realistic to readers (because that's how life actually works as explained in my Tarot posts).

Which means there can be, and usually has to be, a sequel or three.

With more room, the writer can tell you a much more realistic story about the stages of maturation and soul growth any human must go through in order to cement a love relationship that has a chance to last HEA.

Which brings us to the ultimate point.

KNOWLEDGE of what happened to a couple can be conveyed in one of these old fashioned Romance novels. The reader can add the details and stages of development by imagining it all on a more realistic time-frame. The novel only has to convey the KNOWLEDGE of what happened and who it happened to.

But if a reader is not already in the context of the Romance field, ready to imagine the years and years of character arc that are not detailed in the story, and picks up one of these old-style abbreviated novels, and absorbs the KNOWLEDGE of what happened the story makes no sense. And they discard the whole genre because of the "shallowness" of the characters.

The Romance author has given KNOWLEDGE (facts, actions, feelings as facts) but no WISDOM.

The reader outside the context of Romance can't see the PATTERN. They can't see there is a Wisdom to be acquired.

The main theme of the Romance Genre is LOVE CONQUERS ALL.

"Love Conquers All" is WISDOM, not knowledge.

I can tell someone that love conquers all with a straight face and they'll just laugh and shrug it off as inappropriate hyperbole.

They get the FACT that I said it. They have the KNOWLEDGE of what it means. But the WISDOM escapes them totally because they can't see the pattern made by scattered bits of knowledge that I have but they don't.

You can't convey the meaning of Love Conquers All, or the realistic-ness of it, in 400 pages. That's too small a chunk to contain wisdom, though it can contain knowledge.

Artists (and as Alma Hill taught me; Writing Is A Performing Art) reveal those patterns that people with scattered bits of knowledge can't see.

What art is for is to convey WISDOM, not facts.

To convey Wisdom vertically down the generations, binding society together and stabilizing it so the children can grow up secure in self-knowledge is the mission of the Artist.

The old Romance Genre was constrained to eschew Art and thus could only suggest a sketch of the Wisdom that Love Conquers All. To enjoy reading that old genre, you pretty much had to engulf the Wisdom that love conquers all before you started reading.

The new Romance Genre has had the shackles taken off by competition from e-publishing, just as women threw off the shackles of second-class citizenship in the 1970's. That was nearly 40 years ago. 2 X 20 years ago. We're HALFWAY through the 4 generations needed to make this change.

The new Romance Genre may lead us through the second half of this transition because of the advent of (#4 of my points) TECHNOLOGY.

Web 2.0, interactivity, RSS feeds, blogs, all these tools of distribution and publicity, are a new delivery system constrained by the audience to the short-take and the sound-byte. The YouTube video says it all in 90 seconds or less. Usually much less.

Structure the story into SCENES as I described in
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/6-tricks-of-scene-structure-part-2.html

The Love Conquers All romance novel SERIES or SERIALIZATION is uniquely suited to convey this intangible, unbelievable but vital bit of wisdom to younger generations because now you can tell your whole story, raise understanding of the rich complexity of identity and relationship, and then connect your data points into a pattern your artist's eye sees.

That pattern seen by the artist, encoded into fiction, and conveyed to the non-artist is Wisdom. And that Wisdom is the "Value" you contribute to Alasdair White's "Value Chain."

So with online technology you can tell a story that spans a long enough time-frame that the psychological changes your characters undergo seem realistic, convincing, maybe inevitable. You can do that by serializing Flash Gordon style -- or maybe invent an entirely new style.

With the 6 tricks of scene structure, you can block your scenes and connect them into neat chapters that will each start with a powerful narrative hook and end with a cliff hanger fraught with questions about what will happen next. Somebody please remind me to do a Part 3 to the scene structure series covering serialization.

With serialization giving you enough space to develop the details of step-wise psychological change, you can tell a Romance to anti-Romance readers and make them believe every word.

It's all about enough space to tell the story, and as our ancestor storytellers have taught us, the way to get more space is to serialize and serialization turns knowledge of isolated facts into the rich tapestry of wisdom.

Love Conquers All as knowledge is worthless. As wisdom, it is priceless.

You can deliver that payload of wisdom, even or maybe especially, in the e-published serialization, whether it's self-published, or in a newsletter or e-zine, or by a volume e-publisher or a big trade publisher.  But whatever method you adopt, Aladair White's wisdom about the "Value-Chain" has to be applied. 

That Value Chain concept is an Ancient Wisdom we all need to grasp. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://twitter.com/jlichtenberg

Alternative Science

The wordsmith in me cannot get beyond the apparent oxymoron of a "Quantum Leap". Leap connotes a major effort or expenditure of energy, not necessarily with legs flying. I think of leap years, salmon leaping over waterfalls, leaping to conclusions, growing by leaps and bounds, taking a leap of faith/in the dark.

On the other hand, I am very comfortable with "A Quantum of Solace". That is nice understatement, given that a quantum is a very small portion (quantity or amount) of something.

Last week, I visited the Ontario Science Centre, and my bedtime reading was the September 2009 issue of Discover Magazine. In the former, what piqued my alien-romance-writing interest was the exhibition about truth, perception, and science. There was a great deal of thought-provoking material about alienation, and also about "bad" science.

In the latter, there is an in-depth interview with Roger Penrose, which touches upon the "fundamental failings of quantum theory". One absolute grabber of a headline is "When you accept the weirdness of quantum mechanics, you have to give up the idea of space-time as we know it from Einstein..."

Wow!

Back to the exhibit sprawling through Hall D in the bowels of the Ontario Science Centre where I could also test my potential as a spy --and I did-- and discover what my IQ would be if a Hip-Hopper were in charge of testing. There was a small wave machine. Apparently, South Sea islanders can tell where unseen islands are by recognizing patterns in waves. Apparently (also) South Sea Islanders sailing from one island to another believe that the stars are fixed, and their boats are fixed, and the islands move.

The exhibit asks the question, "If the science works well for the limited purpose for which it was developed, who are we to say that it is wrong?"

Another fascinating question was, "Does our Sun move?" It must, of course, if our entire galaxy rotates around a black hole. Yet, if it does, why does Orion's Belt look much the same to us today as it did to the Pharaohs? And why is Deneb still at the back end of Cygnus?

Meanwhile, a disturbing news item that might make many of us question what we think we know is http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/6105902/Moon-rock-given-to-Holland-by-Neil-Armstrong-and-Buzz-Aldrin-is-fake.html It reminds me of novels I've read by Jeffrey Archer, and by Dan Brown!

All the best,
Rowena Cherry

The Business Model of E-Publishing

If you belong to the Romance Writers of America, you’re aware of the ongoing controversy over the validity of e-publishing and whether RWA treats e-pubbed authors unfairly. Many of us e-published authors get frustrated with the impression that detractors don’t understand how the e-book industry works and insist on confusing all e-publishing and Print on Demand with vanity publishing. A letter in the latest RWR (RWA’s membership magazine) approaches the issue from an angle I haven’t seen before. The writer says, “Publishers who do not pay advances use a profit-sharing model without any base compensation.” After repeating the frequently stated argument that absence of an advance signifies the publisher’s unwillingness to accept risk (paying for website space, editing, cover art, and online distribution doesn’t constitute an investment in the work?), she further says, “Unions have always fought against profit-sharing models of compensation because they provide no guarantee the worker will actually be paid for her work.”

This argument does seem, at first sight, to make some sense. It occurred to me, though, that the parallel may not be completely valid. Authors aren’t employees of their publishers (except in specialized “work for hire” situations). Authors are independent contractors. Moreover, aren’t there a few jobs in which even employees’ incomes depend directly on sales volume (I think—isn’t that the way car salesmen and real estate agents work?)? Personally, I don’t feel my e-publishers are taking avaricious advantage of me by paying much higher royalty percentages at more frequent intervals in lieu of up-front advances.

Over a period of almost forty years, I’ve had books released by academic publishers, print small presses, e-publishers, and mass market publishers. Each type has advantages and disadvantages. Large traditional publishers pay advances and get books into national distribution. The writer gets the benefit of the “impulse purchase” factor by having her work on the shelves of chain bookstores where readers who haven’t heard of her before may stumble across it. So a traditionally published book from a major publisher (as opposed to a small press, which may have trouble getting its books widely distributed) will probably sell lots more copies than an e-book. On the other hand, the book may not “earn out” for years after publication (if ever), producing a long wait for royalty payments over the advance. And mass market publishers tend to be painfully slow in evaluating submissions and putting books into print after acceptance. From initial submission to actual publication could easily take three years.

Most e-publishers work a lot faster, both in replying to submissions and in getting books on the market. They typically pay royalty rates of 35% or more, and payments come quarterly (or in some cases, monthly) instead of semiannually. Communication from the publisher is likely to be much more frequent and prompt. Authors are allowed input into decisions on cover art, blurbs, etc. The only drawback of e-publishing, actually, is that unless you’re already famous or have stellar promotional skills, you probably won’t achieve nearly the level of sales you would with a mass market publisher. While it’s true that most independent e-publishers embrace the best of both worlds by publishing their products in trade paperback as well as electronically, there’s still a distribution problem.

Another wonderful thing about e-publishing, however, is the flexibility. You can publish short stories and novellas as stand-alone works rather than part of a magazine or anthology. If you write novels of epic length, an e-publisher can afford to take a risk with that size of book because a large file doesn’t cost any more to upload than a small one. Also, you can mix genres and write about quirky topics, because e-publishers are more willing to cross boundaries. And with no inventory costs to worry about, they can keep your backlist on sale forever. New readers can always find your earlier books.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Theodore Sturgeon "Ask The Next Question."

Before you read this, you really should read the wonderful post right before this one by Cindy Holby and maybe read my comment on that post. It's amazing how the posts on this blog interweave so well when we don't hold a "Green Room" discussion before hand to agree on the Month's topics!

Theodore Sturgeon was known for his powerful sex scenes but not at all for Romance or even Relationship.

He was the original author who invented Pon Farr for Star Trek and drafted the episode AMOK TIME where we learn Vulcan males go into heat (a reversal of the usual pattern on Earth). So in a way he's the father of SF-Romance as a genre!



Sturgeon's SF held many reversals and twists on Earth's version of sex and reproduction just like Amok Time's male heat. In other instances he explored the darkest side of pure nightmare. You may remember some of his exquisite titles (he was exceptional at titling and it's well worth studying how he did it!)

Works by Theodore Sturgeon Available on Amazon

Theodore Sturgeon's wife was an accomplished Tarot reader and he admired her for that. I'll never forget when she read for me at his request and then asked me to read for her!

He was master of the dimensions of reality beyond the material, and his in-person personality was very different from the impression I got from reading his work. Yet, I had studied his work carefully. I didn't want to write like him, but I wanted to write about what he was writing about, using the ingenious thinking methods that would eventually produce the concept of Pon Farr (and you all know how many billions of fanzine words have been written on that subject).

At the time he first impressed me with a book called THE DREAMING JEWELS, nobody in that world believed a serious SF show would make it to TV. SF on TV was only kiddie shows and clones of The Lone Ranger In Space (which I loved, but it's not SFR!)



I wanted to probe into areas he left totally blank (Relationship as a plot-driving mechanism), but apply some of his techniques in turning the story. I stole techniques and issues from more than a dozen writers, often using many of them in one story.

I have this ongoing project of writing about those people whose work influenced mine, and in 1997 I wrote the following about Theodore Sturgeon.

This little essay is posted on the List of those who have influenced me
http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/welcommittee/influenc.html

If I were better at keeping notes, this list would double in size.

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

The first short story of Ted Sturgeon's that engraved his byline on my mind was titled "Bianca's Hands."

That short story contained a penetrating image that, for me, defined both the genre of horror and the reasons why people are so fascinated by this genre. The image was of detached hands chasing the protagonist around her house. It gave me nightmares.

It also defined for me why I don't like horror, but that's another story. Having taken notice of Theodore Sturgeon's writing, I studied it, because even then I wanted to be a professional science fiction writer. And so I came to understand how Ted handled various themes, most particularly alien reproduction.

In the course of this, I ran across some interview or article, I forget now, where Ted's concept of the Q with the arrow through it, which represents his own personal, primary philosophical stance on how to live the best possible life, was explained in some detail. In brief, it is simply, "Ask The Next Question". That's harder than it sounds, for it requires that you be able to penetrate the walls that your cultural conditioning builds inside your mind, compartmentalizing it.

Formulating the next question is very hard. It means you must never stop thinking, never take things at face value, never accept the illusion that you really understand everthing about a subject, never accept any theory as final.

The Q with the Arrow means "Life is Process" -- a dynamic, ongoing, neverending search over the rainbow, beyond morning, into the Unknown. It is an attitude which is almost exactly like Gene Roddenberry's "Infinite Diversity In Infinite Combinations" -- and Gene's idea that "When We Are Wise" we won't be xenophobic. Ted and Gene had a lot in common, not least of which was a deep, inner, gentleness of being.

Many many years after reading "Bianca's Hands," when I had become a devoted fan of the first Star Trek Series, I read in The Making of Star Trek that the upcoming season of the show would include a story about Spock's mating drive and that it had been written by Theodore Sturgeon. I spent the ensuing weeks imagining what that script would include. I had it in my mind, long before seeing it (or hearing rumors on the ST grapevine on what it would include) a sequence of scenes that had to be there, the basic premise of the Vulcan mating drive, and long sequences of dialogue. I knew that script word-for-word before I ever saw the show.

The most stunning thing about this was that, when I saw the show in first broadcast -- I was proved correct in every surmise. Knowing Ted's writing, I knew exactly what he'd do with the Trek premise.

For me, this validated my ambition to become a professional in this genre. I can do this kind of work. It was a very gratifying experience. "Amok Time" became my all-time favorite Trek episode.

But that's not all.

Years and years after that, at a Star Trek Convention in Great Gorge, New Jersey, I met Theodore Sturgeon for the first time.

I went into the room for my first panel, and he was the speaker on stage right before my panel. I sat in the audience, enthralled. And I asked a question which, today, I don't even recall. It started an audience discussion and I suppose brought me to his attention.

Later, I saw him sitting alone in the bar, and I went over to introduce myself. At that point, I was already well known as the primary author of the Bantam paperback, Star Trek Lives! I can't now recall if this was before or after I became the Chairman of the Science Fiction Writers of America Speaker's Bureau.

He taught me to drink Compari properly (no water, one ice cube) as he was famous for doing with all his acquaintances, and we talked for 3 hours or more, until one of us had another panel to do. During the course of this discussion, he personally explained the silver Q with an arrow through it that he always wore around his neck. I had forgotten all about it. I learned it the second time, in depth and detail during that weekend, and recognized in it one of the core elements in my own personal philosophy. (possibly I had absorbed this in my earliest reading years partly from his work)

Later that weekend, we were assigned to the same autographing table, and between customers, we sat and talked and talked -- and I finally got up nerve to tell him he was the author of the one story in all SF/F that I really HATED ("Bianca's Hands") and the one story in all televised SF that I thought was the best thing ever written in SF/F -- "Amok Time" -- and I told him how I had anticipated every element in it, scene for scene and word for word, based only on knowing he was the author and that it was television. As Trek aficionados know, the script Ted turned in is quite different from what was broadcast, and what I constructed in my mind at the time was the broadcast version.

At any rate, this started another marathon talkathon between us.

Years and years after that, at a World Science Fiction Convention in San Francisco, I ran across Ted with his wife Jane, and they invited me out to dinner. We got to talking about the Occult, and one thing led to another, and I admitted I was running the Tarot Workshop at the Worldcon. so we talked Tarot. Turned out Ted's wife Jane reads cards too, and during this discussion, she read for me. Afterwards, she was rather surprised at herself for it was the first time she'd ever eaten an entire meal in trance. She could barely remember what she'd eaten. And the reading was exceptionally good.

When Ted, May He Rest In Peace, left this world, I grieved seriously.

Lately, I haven't seen anyone carrying on the Q/Arrow philosophy, and I think it's time to create this little memorial to a great man.


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

Zombies as heroes? I don't think so.

It seems that the publishers are jumping on the band wagon of a new genre trend. Zombies. My response is "Ewwww" I just really don't get it. Now while I wouldn't mind reading a story about a couple fighting Zombies ala Resident Evil I'm pretty sure I don't want to know anything about loving a Zombie, even if they originally were the love of my life. Yet some publishers are asking for stories involving humans and zombies. The following is an editor request that's been going around the writer loops
"is looking for "love amongst the undead, between zombies
and the living, and (we hope) many stories about the hot, alpha male and
female zombie killers." She's interested in short stories from 1500 to 5000
words and novellas, 20,000 to 30,000 words."

Meanwhile Zombies are now the subject of research. Scientists say "If zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilisation unless dealt with quickly and aggressively." Even researchers are jumping on the trend. Publishers Weekly also mentioned a book deal featuring a Zombie professor who is now trying to find the meaning of life while fighting off humans that are trying to kill him. Well yeah, I'm pretty sure I would want to kill something that wants to eat my brains.
So what do you think? Is there a future with Zombies? Do you find them sexy? Would you lay down your money for a Zombie love story? Do you think Zombies will take over the shelves in the same way vampires have? I'd love to know what you think of this new trend in publishing. And no, I am not even considering writing a Zombie love story. As I said early, ewwww.

Living with a Fatal Flaw

Folks:

Here is a GUEST POST by a djinn-romance writer worthy of your attention, posted by Jacqueline Lichtenberg but written by K. F. Zuzulo

K. F. Zuzulo is the author of A Genie in the House of Saud: Zubis Rises. This supernatural thriller was a winner in the 2008 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Her genie romance novella, The Third Wish, was published by Sapphire Blue Publishing in June 2009. You can find out more information about the author, her writing, and the djinn at www.kfzuzulo.com.

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

We want our heroes to be heroic. We want them to have skills and abilities beyond your typical protagonist. Since The Epic of Gilgamesh was first told more than 5,000 years ago (the first historic romance in history), readers have looked to a main character’s strength or insight, virtue or tenacity to place them above the average. To be nearly perfect…but not totally perfect. In which case, we as the readers would have to dismiss that character as totally unbelievable.

Whether human or alien, djinni or elemental, the protagonist must have nobility of heroic enterprise served up with a soupçon of vulnerability. The fatal flaw is the quintessential element for bringing the protagonist to life. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, our hero Gilgamesh could not reconcile his abilities and strength and all the power he commanded with the death of his companion Enkidu. Gilgamesh exhibits the vanity of the hero's quest and the folly of the pursuit of immortality. His fatal flaw.

As described by Aristotle, the fatal flaw is most assuredly fatal. The protagonist must possess goodness, superiority, a tragic flaw, and a realization of both his flaw and that his tragic demise is inevitable. Well, in this day and age, that sort of fatalist angst isn’t going to sell a lot of books. Yes, we want our heroes to be sympathetic in some manner, but we don’t want them to die. We want them to struggle and to triumph over the antagonist and themselves. And we want to read the next book in the series.

When your characters are super-normal or supernatural to begin with—such as aliens who hail from distant solar systems or creatures of flame and air who travel parallel dimensions, or humans who possess uncanny, superhuman skills—the task of inserting that fatal flaw can be more difficult. However, it also can be more fun. As long as the worldbuilding foundation that the author creates can support it, your hero can do and say anything he or she wants. You want your reader to be on the edge of his or her seat, waiting for the behavior of the hero to be his undoing. In this manner, too, our hero encounters the depths of despair (loss of love, misunderstood communication, pride leading to separation, etc.) and must struggle all the more to redeem him/herself.

When we talk about the supernatural hero, magical skills and idiosyncrasies must be established early on and closely followed. A reader wants to get the sense that the character is someone they can understand. The only way for that to happen would be if the author knows their character as well as or better than she knows herself. Additionally, that character must be limited in a way that the reader is privy to and understands. The fatal flaw again. So if, for instance, our hero Shazam has a fiery temper that can erupt without warning, the reader needs to be given glimpses of that before the actual eruption. It builds tension, as well as an affinity for what Shazam is thinking and feeling.

The fatal flaw is an internal trigger that threatens the hero. Also exciting and equally fun to write is the external trigger or an Achilles Heel. Think Superman and Kyptonite. Established superstitions can be a great place to start when trying to identify a cogent Achilles Heel.

I happen to write fiction about the djinn.

It is well established in djinn lore that they are repelled by iron or by the hairs of a black-and-white cat that are burned in a bowl to smudge a room with scent. When the author places such items as these in conspicuous settings, the suspense is heightened.

Again, however, the worldbuilding is essential in these cases to support the delivery of these items in a scene. The author must establish the validity of that piece of iron being beneath the feather-down mattress of our hero djinni who is about lay upon it. And the author also needs to build in a believable exit route. Ultimately, we want our hero to stumble far from the Kryptonite, regain his vigor and live to be a part of another tale—perhaps damaged, definitely changed and, most assuredly, alive.

Aristotle may not mind killing off his heroes. But the smart, modern author keeps them alive to live another scene – fatal flaws and all.

See www.kfzuzulo.com

Print to Film

I enjoyed the novel THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE very much for its ingenious premise and the emotionally wrenching relationship between the characters. I haven’t seen the movie yet (I’ll wait for the DVD), but I wasn’t surprised that, judging from reviews, the story didn’t seem to translate well to the screen. What did surprise me was that every review I’ve read so far calls it “creepy” because of the scene in which the time traveler, Henry, first meets his future wife as a child. As you probably know, Henry involuntarily and unpredictably leaps through time. Therefore, he and his wife encounter each other at different ages and at different points on their personal timelines. When he leaps, he can’t take anything with him that isn’t part of his body (not even teeth fillings). All the reviewers fixate on the “creepy” image of a naked man introducing himself to a six-year-old girl. This negative reaction never occurred to me when I read the book. Partly I think that’s because in the novel we’ve already met Henry and his wife as adults and experienced the depth of their love, before we witness their first meeting in her timeline. (They first meet in his timeline while he’s in his twenties, when she has known his older self for years and already had a chance to fall in love with him.) More important, though, I believe is the fact that while reading the book we don’t literally *see* a naked man talking to a six-year-old girl. The printed page doesn’t “rub our face in it” the way a scene on film does.

We've all had the occasional experience of finding a book cover illustration or an actor's appearance on film jarringly unlike our image of the character in the story. Often that reaction springs simply from the difference between our personal vision of the character and the vision of the filmmakers. I think my negative reaction to the character of Edward in the movie adaptation of TWILIGHT, however, stems from a more basic problem. On the page, I can believe in the allure of a ravishing vampire with alabaster (and sparkly in sunlight) skin and blood-tinged lips, who looks like a teenage boy but projects the persona of someone much older, having experienced more than one lifetime. In the movie, though, when one of the girls whispered that Edward was “gorgeous,” my immediate reaction was, “No, he isn’t.” On screen, Edward looks to me like a teenage boy with grotesquely pale makeup and too much lipstick.

Some characters who can be credibly described in prose are extremely hard to portray convincingly in a visual medium. Remember the STAR TREK: NEXT GENERATION episode when the Enterprise visited a planet of hermaphrodites? That premise would have posed no problem in a printed work of fiction. But on TV, despite my enjoyment of the story and appreciation for its attempt to handle a genuine SF idea, nothing could keep me from seeing the aliens as flat-chested women with short hair. Animation would avoid that problem, but in live action, hermaphrodites have to be played by either men or women; finding enough real-life intersex actors to fill the cast would, I’d think, be an insurmountable problem. Makes me wonder how Theodore Sturgeon’s story of a similar society, VENUS PLUS X, or Ursula LeGuin’s LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS would translate to the screen.

Somewhere C. S. Lewis says the scene in the ILIAD when Hector's body gets dragged around the walls of Troy, while horrifying as narrated in the epic, would look absurd in a dramatic presentation. Yet that sequence is dramatized very convincingly in the Vincent Price movie THEATRE OF BLOOD. So I wouldn't dare to say any fictional scene would be impossible to film effectively, especially with the techniques available nowadays. (Consider how much more realistic the animals and mythical creatures in the new Narnia movies look than the ones in the live-action BBC videos of many years ago.) Still, some would have to be much harder to translate between media than others.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Unicorns

Want to see an awesome video from one of my favorite authors Diana Peterfreund? And if you like what you see you can read more at her website killerunicorns.org
Enjoy!

Amber Benson: Tara on Buffy The Vampire Slayer

And my point here is that Amber Benson is also a screenwriter, director, producer, webisode involved, AND an on-paper novelist too. This is a woman to study (Google her up). She has a lot to teach. So let's see if we can learn.

The last few entries I've done here have been long and full of abstract advice and arcane demands on writers to do the impossible (sometime before breakfast at least if not before coffee).

Now once again, lets get back to the practical by looking at a writer, her novel and the background she brings to the craft.

How does a writer actually WRITE? Where does the flowing poetry of images and words come from? What level of an Urban Fantasy needs poetry, or poetic justice, and where do you put the dense philosophy of the theme? Do you dare touch Religion?

Where do ideas come from and how do you organize them into fictional formats that can be understood by readers?

As I keep telling you, it's the writer's subconscious that does most of the work. And as I learned from Red Skelton and Jack Benny, the best material is stolen. The trick is to steal only from the best.

But after you've stolen your ideas from say, The Bible, or Isaac Asimov, what do you do with them?

You put them into your subconscious. You've watched me say that a lot.

Amber Benson's novel Death's Daughter is a flawless amalgam of her background, her life, and her career coming to high focus in a blazing burst of artistic freedom. It's just not so easy to see that art that comes from a well stocked and disciplined subconscious. But if you can see it, how do you do it?

I have no clue how she did it other than her public biography, but I do know how others have done it. Each person has to store stuff in their subconscious via a different mechanism. Writing (un-storing the stuff in your subconscious) is the opposite of the storing procedure, but they are related.

So HOW do you store stuff in your subconscious? How do you train your subconscious to regurgitate these marvelous classic ideas all wrapped up and organized to be just like something famous, but different.

What is the mechanism within the human mind that can achieve this feat?

If you can explain how you do it, please drop a comment on this post.

Meanwhile, I want to talk a little bit about the various ways I've seen accomplished writers do it, how I was taught, and how I find it works best for me.

This process of programming the subconscious to produce Art you can sell is a "feat" -- like an athletic feat, or like an adagio dance exhibition, a Chopin concert at Carnegie Hall, or recording a perfect operatic aria. It is a feat you must train for. And even so you might not equal or break a world record ever in your lifetime.

First you must establish a regimen in communicating with your subconscious.

The relationship between conscious and subconscious is, as I see it, best described by THE STRENGTH CARD, of the Tarot. It's usually a picture of some kind of beast (a lion or mythic creature known for ferocity) being petted and gentled (and dominated quietly) by a "defenseless" Maiden figure.

The beast represents the subconscious. The Maiden represents some part of the conscious mind -- perhaps the level of CUPS or perhaps WANDS. (or both)

There was an article recently on research into dog intelligence.

http://news.aol.com/article/dogs-as-smart-as-2-year-old-kids/609181

A dog may be as smart as a 2.5 year old, but the dog will be socially mature and still be only that smart.

Studies have shown that if a dog's owner is aggressive, the dog will become aggressive.

Dogs are copy-cats. (oy)

My dog learned the household routine. Even though I was never aware of how very routinely identical my daily procedures had become (I've since changed to inject variety) until my dog showed me by EXPECTING what would ordinarily come next.

Dogs recognize patterns and get disturbed if the pattern is broken.

Art is all about patterns. Poetry is about patterns. Poetic justice is all about patterns. If there isn't poetry inside your novel, the novel is missing an important ingredient because our real, normal world runs on poetry.

Dogs maybe can't "learn" in the way humans do but they can be trained, just like your toddler can be trained but not really "taught" (yet).

A toddler is not going to respond to all these magnificent abstractions I love to indulge in. The reasons for holding your hand crossing a parking lot don't mean a thing to a toddler. The statistics about toddlers killed in parking lots, the statistics about toddlers kidnapped, the stats on those maimed for life, zilch, nada, nothing.

But insist the first time, and never miss insisting on that little hand in yours, and next thing you know the 3 year old will force his hand into yours. The 5 year old - not so much - but dogs don't get to the 5 year old level (though some primates do!).

And your subconscious is about 2-3 years old, give or take. Forever.

Your subconscious doesn't CARE about all my beloved abstractions and meta-cognition and subtle value system comparisons. Subconscious is totally primal (which is why Blake Snyder kept saying make it PRIMAL).

The subconscious is where the "helpless" nightmare comes from, and why horror novels are so popular! We all have a scared little 2 year old inside somewhere who doesn't understand the world and still nurses lingering echoes of infancy's true helplessness. Adults still have some of that, which is why dark- mysterious- incomprehensible- insurmountable makes such a great movie!

So subconscious can be trained but not taught.

How do you train subconscious to produce poetry, art, music and stories complete with theme and structure?

It's that pattern recognition function built in as a survival mechanism!

Dogs have pattern recognition, even through time. (this comes after that) And people do too, on just that same very primal level where "reason" is not a factor.

That's another reason Blake Snyder was always saying get down to the PRIMAL level even a caveman could understand, before technology, before international trade, before Wall Street cartels.

Inside our sophisticated world wise behaviors, we are driven by the most primal issues of love, loyalty, reproduction, life, death, protection, possessing, command of power.

The story comes from the subconscious of the writer, and must be presented in such a way that the subconscious of the reader can recognize the pattern, the primal pattern.

Not SIMPLE pattern. PRIMAL pattern.

Life and Death are very primal, and not at all simple, but still very much what our subconscious is designed to handle magnificently.

That's why life and death are the subject of so many novels, and the stakes in so many plots. You don't have to explain what's so important about it. Using something that primal is almost a cop-out because it's so easy to grab for Life, Death, and Devil archetypes to drape your story on.

But Amber Benson has gotten away with it gracefully in HER NEW NOVEL "Death's Daughter" -



and thereby hangs the tale of a lesson in writing.

And the lesson in writing is READ.

As you train your toddler to hold your hand in a parking lot (pattern recognition triggers habitual action), so you can train your subconscious to steal IDEAS when reading a good PRIMAL novel (pattern recognition triggers habitual action).

The first step in training your subconscious is to sort your to-be-read stack into Good, Better, Best. (some of these will be re-reading projects)

You should pick writers and books that you want to emulate, or that have sales statistics you want to achieve. Most likely, the ones with the sales statistics you want to achieve will contain elements you seriously dislike or balk at. Those elements are very possibly the source of the sales statistics, so study them and reinvent them in new guises that you do like.

There are two kinds of fiction you should read to train your subconscious.

One is the really slick, highly professional, so well synthesized you can't reverse-engineer it to see how it was done.

Another is the awkward, not-quite-right, fumbling, jerky neo-pro product you most often see these days in the e-book form because Manhattan isn't publishing midlist and beginner writers as much as they used to.

That's not casting aspersions on e-books! I've reviewed a number of e-books that are better constructed than you generally find from Manhattan! The e-book has stolen from Manhattan the right to be the home of the mid-list as well as the beginner, launching what will soon be stellar careers.

Manhattan will soon be in financial trouble because they are not fostering the new beginners and will not have their loyalty (loyalty is primal, remember?)

Reading to train your subconscious to write is very different from reading to enjoy a good read.

As you start doing this exercise, your ability to enjoy any novel will falter and may disappear. If you persist, a new and very intense pleasure will emerge as you read interesting novels that also tickle your pattern-recognition nerve.

You start by reverse engineering a number of your most favorite novels until you can see their moving parts as detailed here in previous posts.

One tried and true technique is to take colored highlighters or pens and highlight or underline words, phrases and sentences. Don't do it just mentally. The physical act of marking is what communicates to the subconscious. Just thinking about it won't achieve the same communication level.

Mark DESCRIPTION, DIALOGUE, EXPOSITION, NARRATIVE in separate colors. A really top flight writer like Andre Norton will use all 4 in almost every sentence. Some words will carry both exposition and narrative in one word.

Mark the PROTAGONIST ANTAGONIST and/or NARRATOR.

Later flipping through those pages, you'll see the proportions of words allotted to each character. It's important to get that proportion right.

Mark the BEGINNING, MIDDLE and END of each scene, and note in the margin the SITUATION CHANGE for PLOT and for STORY.

See my two entries on SCENE STRUCTURE at

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/6-tricks-of-scene-structure-part-2.html

And note that my "definition" of scene is echoed in this web page on stage vocabulary.
http://cla.calpoly.edu/~smarx/courses/Vocabulary.html

Note particularly where it says BLOCK A SCENE because we haven't discussed that yet, here, but we have covered the components of blocking. Blocking a scene is very VERY important in action narrative, and when you read DEATH'S DAUGHTER, you should watch for the techniques so smoothly and subtly applied.

Color code 2 or 3 of your favorite novels in each of the categories

1)very advanced that you want to emulate, and

2)beginner's work that you COULD emulate.

DO THE SAME THING watching television. Take a notepad, note down the scenes and how each changes the situation. Capture the plot outline as you watch. (this is where you wish you knew shorthand).

If you need to know what a "plot outline" is, I gave you a couple of examples in WHAT DOES SHE SEE IN HIM http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-does-she-see-in-him.html

Now, after this intense exercise, never let yourself read anything without mentally coloring in the components as DESCRIPTION, DIALOGUE, EXPOSITION, NARRATIVE, scene blocks etc. After you've done the actual coloring, subconscious will begin to spot them for you, and train your conscious not to miss them! (like the 3 year old who will insert a hand into yours crossing a parking lot)

Once subconscious has started to do that, and you can't read anything without being aware of the components, go to sleep assigning your subconscious the task of having AN IDEA when you wake up.

The first few IDEAS it produces will be like a puppy piddling in the corner. Think of the STRENGTH CARD, and remember how you tame the fractious, spoiled, savage beast of the subconscious with kindness, repetition, firmness, consistency, just as you train a toddler. Reward good behavior. Ignore the bad. Make friends.

When an idea comes pre-formulated to the pattern you are training into your subconscious, write it down (that's the reward for subconscious, getting written down). Do the plot outline for the novel, just as we've covered in these posts such as WHAT DOES SHE SEE IN HIM. With practice it shouldn't take more than half an hour, maybe 20 minutes, to jot down the outline (my examples came out as fast as I could type; it just takes practice) and they don't have to be consecutive minutes.

Let subconscious do the part that's "the same" and you do the part that's "different."

Now, where to start training?

AMBER BENSON!!! I just wrote my January 2010 column (that's another lesson in publishing - it's August and I'm late turning in the January column.) And except for a quick Noel Tyl astrology mention, the January column is all about DEATH'S DAUGHTER and why it's an "important" novel in the guise of just another Urban Fantasy.



But one little 1500 word column couldn't begin to scratch the surface of "all about" Death's Daughter. There's so much more to say. We shouldn't get to that until after you've read it and reverse engineered it.

Amber Benson's novel DEATH'S DAUGHTER is a perfectly structured, breezy-easy read targeting the most primal archetypes, Death, Devil, God, normal human woman who just wants a normal life.

The world Benson has built for this novel is soooo Buffy and sooooo Different from Buffy. The world's mechanisms, the tone, the brightness, the attitudes, the philosophy behind everything is all different from that famous TV show, but awakens soothing echoes of the Buffyverse pattern. And yes, there's the constant thrum of a Romance in there too! "What does she see in him" is handled gorgeously.

If you're familiar with the Buffyverse, you will pick this up right away. And you'll see how Benson's universe is unique. You'll also find a purely cinematic structure articulating the skeleton of this novel. And you'll find the poetry, the art, a musical rhythm to the pacing, and so many tightly and smoothly integrated patterns even I couldn't count them all.

DEATH'S DAUGHTER is a leap-for-joy FIND for the writer looking for a really tough nut to crack on reverse-engineering.

But it didn't just spring full grown out of nowhere. Here's Benson's bio from the back of the novel.

“Amber Benson cocreated, cowrote and directed the animated supernatural Web series Ghosts of Albion with Christopher Golden, which they followed with a series of novels, including Witchery and Accursed, and the novella Astray. Benson and Golden also coauthored the novella The Seven Whistlers. As an actress, she has appeared in dozens of roles in feature films, TV movies, and television series, including the fan-favorite role of Tara Maclay on three seasons of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Benson wrote, produced, and directed the feature films Chance and Lovers, Liars and Lunatics.”

TV, Web production, feature film, print media. And all that experience is neatly, tightly integrated into DEATH'S DAUGHTER.

Christopher Golden once taught me a lot about this structure stuff, and how the subconscious needs to be disciplined to separate material into distinct stories. I don't know that's where Benson learned it, or if she came to Golden already knowing it. Or maybe she was born knowing it (some people are just talented that way).

I highly recommend making DEATH'S DAUGHTER one of your novels to reverse engineer to see what it's made of and how its moving parts are joined by the theme. Yes, it'll be as hard as if it were written by Andre Norton or A. E. Van Vogt because it's so well integrated. But your subconscious may pick up the patterning for the multi-media creation, which could make your fortune.

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

N3F for fantasy lovers

This is a tip for Fantasy Lovers.

On Facebook, the N3F group is without many fans (could be because of their fiendishly clever and geeky name) but are apparently very receptive to Fantasy readers....as fans.

The url is http://www.facebook.com/pages/N3F/89128934330

It's not my group (btw) I'm merely a fan, but one of the admins asked me to spread the word.

For authors of Fantasy, Futuristic, or Paranormal Romance, you should check out the FFandP website!

Liz Pelletier the webdiva has made it possible for members of the FFandP subgenre chapter to post their book covers, blurbs, widgets, excerpts and much, much more. For the $15 a year membership (in addition to the $85 RWA membership) it is a great showcase, and arguably the best value any RWA chapter offers.

Linnea Sinclair's books are up

Best wishes,

Rowena Cherry
Please vote for my cover/title/blurb (social networking contest for authors) http://tinyurl.com/Award-5-Stars

The proposal, final installment

This is the last chapter in my proposal. This is where the steam punk elements come in. It was a blast coming up with the inventions. I did not plan on Von Swaim being OCD, it just kind of happened. I worked with someone who had the condition and it was not fun, believe me.


Chapter Four

The big clock in the foyer chimed seven times as Dr. Edmond Von Swaim, who also held the title of Baron, walked into his breakfast room. The room was located on the second floor of his manse and overlooked the street. He preferred to eat in the smaller room instead of using the expansive table located in the formal dining room on the first floor.
There were those who would say it made more work for his servants, as they would have to carry things from the first floor kitchen located on the back of the house, to the second floor. Those who would say such things did not know of the steam powered lift that was installed off the kitchen just for this very purpose. His servants merely had to enter the small room; turn the wheel and they were carried up to the floors above. It worked in warehouses and hotels, why not put the same technology to use in homes? It made for less waste and more efficiency upon the part of his servants.
Von Swaim had his breakfast in the room upstairs because it was smaller and therefore less wasteful. If there was anything the Doctor could not tolerate it was waste of anything. Time, money, resources and inventions; all were things that should be used to their utmost potential. Even his title was carefully chosen. He much preferred to be called Doctor, since it was something he had earned, than Baron, which was something that had been passed down generation after generation, because of something one of his ancestors had done. Just as the Queen was Queen because of something her ancestors had done. She was Queen because the royal blood ran in her veins. The same royal blood that was in Von Swaim's
A maid wearing white gloves placed his meal on the table as he waited by the window. The street below was just springing to life. The vendor carts were in place along the way and young boys held up newspapers on the corner, their cries of headlines lost against the panes of glass.
Von Swaim noticed a bright array of flowers at the cart on the corner. Roses, lilies, carnations and daisies swirled in a kaleidoscope of color against the grays and browns of the cobblestones. They would have to be from a greenhouse since spring was just upon them. The snow from a few days past was gone now and there was a definite feel of warmth to the air. Perhaps he should invest in a bouquet and have it sent around to the girl. It would not hurt to extend some sort of token to Pemberton after the near disaster of their visit.
Von Swaim turned when he heard the teapot placed and examined the table as the maid curtseyed her way from the room. Everything was placed to his exact specifications; still his practiced eyes scanned the table, just to make sure. His utensils were placed exactly one inch apart, his glass containing his special health mixture was precisely five inches above his spoon and at the correct angle from his plate. His meal, which was the same meal that he had every morning, was arranged exactly as he desired it on the plate and cooked to his taste. The teapot emitted enough steam to let him know that it would be the appropriate temperature when he poured his first cup. The only thing left was the morning newspaper and it lay beside his plate, folded once in the middle.
His staff worked hard to please him. They had learned what happened when he was not pleased. Heinz, his butler, was an excellent and demanding instructor and Mrs. Shultz, his head housekeeper, had a sharp eye. Their ways produced results, one of which was a secure position in the Von Swaim household. For the most part, his staff was grateful to be employed during these trying times. While life was pleasant for the titled and rich, it was not so for the common folk. Whitechapel was full of people who would give anything to have steady employment, even if it meant dealing with the strange idiosyncrasies of Dr. Von Swaim.
Satisfied that all was at is should be, Von Swaim sat down and ate his meal, cutting each morsel into the same size and eating it in the same order. Eggs, sausage, toast. Eggs, sausage, toast. He treated himself to a spoonful of orange marmalade on his last bite of toast and then quickly drank his special mixture in one long steady gulp. He poured his tea, added lemon and a half-teaspoon of sugar and stirred it five times, counting as he stirred. He took one sip and picked up the paper.
As was his custom, he started on page one and read each article, working his way from left to right across and down the page. If an article was continued on another page he did not turn to it, instead, he finished page one, then went on to page two and so on until he had read everything worthy of his notice. Despite the ineptitude of Parliament and the Queen's frustrating retreat from society, it wasn't until he got to the social pages and read about the reception for the entertainers from the Wild West show that his temper flared.
The girl had been there. Merritt Chadwyke. Lord Pemberton's daughter. He assumed that after the incident in his study that they would go into hiding or at least spirit her away to a sanatorium. He never expected them to take her to a party or that she would be a willing participant in part of the exhibition. Or course he must take into account the columnist's need to embellish things. He had been the subject of such embellishments himself after performing some of his “party tricks” for English society. The buffoons did not realize that most of what he did with hypnotism was trickery. It was easy to lead the willing down such a path. But the girl…Merritt…she was the real thing.
Unlike other mornings, Von Swaim dropped the paper onto the table and walked to the window. He'd been strangely unsettled since the incident. She had surprised him. It was not often than he was surprised.
The canary's release had been most bewildering. He knew the mind was a powerful instrument but in his studies the most he'd ever seen done was spoon bending and a saucer moved across a table. His pet's cage was utterly destroyed and it wasn't even the center of her concentration. What could she do if she really focused on something? What was she capable of? It was a question that he desperately needed the answer too.
He studied the sky as he stood at the window, hoping that perchance he would see a flash of yellow against the pale cloudless blue of the morning. Von Swaim was quite annoyed at the canary's escape. It seemed ungrateful to him. It appeared disrespectful and that was something else he had no patience for. Did he not care for it? Feed it? Give it plenty of water and a safe secure place to live along with a view of the sky from its gilded cage? The creature should have been grateful to him instead of flying away in haste.
“Your loss my little friend. I am certain you missed your warm cage the past few nights when you were out in the cold air.” He drew some satisfaction from thinking of the tiny bird, shivering upon a barren tree branch or perhaps becoming the breakfast of a cat or a hawk. It was nothing more than the traitorous bird deserved.
He would think upon it no more. The girl however, deserved more thought. If she thought she could prance about London and go to parties as if nothing had happened then she was wrong. Something had happened. Something strange and wonderful. Something that was totally unexpected.
She was the one. She was something that he'd hoped to find but wasn't sure of its existence. Logic dictated that she could exist and that she should exist but his hopes of finding it…her…
Von Swaim turned from the window. Merritt Chadwyke did not know it yet, but she was the culmination of his life's work. She was the instrument that would lead to his greatest victory. She was the embodiment of a powerful weapon that he intended to use.
He would be the next King of England and she was the means by which he would achieve it.
His breakfast was over. The maid, who always waited in the hallway just in case something was amiss, nearly fell in her haste to curtsey when he burst from the room.
“Sir? Should I keep your tea warm?” she asked. Her fear of making a mistake was greater than her fear of speaking to her employer directly.
Von Swaim stopped and looked the young woman over as if seeing her for the first time. “No. I am done.” He went to the back staircase instead of his office. “See that I am not disturbed.”
“Did he say anything about the noonday meal?” the cook asked when the maid carried in the tray and told the cook and housekeeper, Mrs. Shultz, about the strange happenings of the morning.
“He did not,” she confessed. They both looked in confusion at Mrs. Shultz. She, along with Heinz and Simon, the mysterious Englishman with the strange hands were the only ones on the staff who had come to England with Von Swaim. The cook, maids, and footmen had all been hired on as staff after he purchased the houses that backed up to each other.
“Proceed as you would normally,” she instructed in her strange accent and left them to figure out the mysterious ways of the Doctor on their own. She went to the window that faced the courtyard behind the house and watched as Von Swaim went into the building behind. Something was troubling him and she was certain it had something to do with the visit from the English Lord and his daughter. He had offered no explanation beyond asking her to dispose of the twisted and ruined remnants of the cage and procure another one for the tiny yellow canary's return. The new cage still sat empty on the balcony outside his office with its door open and food and water inside. Was it just the missing bird that upset him or did it have something to do with the Lord's daughter and the tests he'd performed on her?
She felt his strange disquiet as if it were eddies beneath the surface of the river. To everyone else he appeared calm and serene as always, but to one who knew him as she did…Mrs. Shultz turned from the window and went back to her work. She needed to make sure nothing disturbed the Doctor when he was troubled or they would all suffer for it.

The door was locked from the inside as he knew it would be. No trouble there. He possessed a key. He found Simon coming toward him in the dim light of the long hallway.
“Sir?” It was obvious that his man was surprised to see him here at this strange hour. He usually did not make his rounds until the late afternoon. “Is something amiss?”
He held his hands behind his back as if he were afraid to show them.
Von Swaim looked pointedly at Simon's arms and raised an eyebrow. “Why don't you tell me,” he said. “Is something amiss?”
Simon brought his hands around and held the clenched fists before Von Swaim.
“They have locked up sir,” he said. “Dr. Macmillan was examining them when we saw your approach.”
“Have you been keeping them lubricated as I instructed?” Von Swaim held his hand out to indicate Simon should precede him down the hallway to the Doctor's Office.
“Yes sir.” Simon said. “Macmillan seems to think it is the dampness that is having an affect on them.”
Von Swaim saw the strain around Simon's eyes and mouth, still he voiced no complaint. Simon had lost his hands with the swing of a blade in the Boer War. If not for Von Swaim's generosity he would be dead, or worse, a beggar. Fortunately Von Swaim had discovered him during his travels in South Africa before it was too late to help him. He'd recognized the brilliance and desperation in his pain filled eyes, but something more, he'd seen a man who would do anything to be made whole again. The trip had been most satisfactory. He'd returned with the diamonds he needed and as a bonus he was able to enlist Simon into his cause.
Macmillan barely looked up when the two men entered. He simply motioned for Simon to sit upon a stool and place his two fists upon the table beneath a powerful magnifying class.
The hands were larger than normal but that was to be expected since they were made of brass with each finger joint made up of intricate gears. The wrists were hinged so that they moved up and down and rotated side to side. Both appendages were attached by heavy cuffs that were screwed into the actual bone of the arm. It was quite painful, of course, since the bones had to be drilled and the gears attached to the muscles and tendons of the forearms with thick strands of catgut. In addition, Simon's upper arms and shoulders were thick with muscle because of the weight of the brass hands. He functioned quite well and kept the pain at bay with small doses of opium that was carefully doled out by Macmillan.
Von Swaim watched patiently as Macmillan carefully lubricated each joint with small drops of oil after taking out the miniature screws and reinserting them. It would be quite painful to remove the bands that attached the hands to Simon's body so both men endured the tedious nature of the intricate work.
Macmillan was another discovery that he'd come across quite be accident. The man was a genius and had studied extensively the anatomy of the human body. Unfortunately his quest for knowledge had led him to engage in the crime of grave robbing, and that, in addition to his great love of whiskey led to him barely escaping the shores of England with his life. Both men were great admirers of DaVinci and thus a partnership was born in the Lourve when they realized that between the two of them it was quite possible to bring some of DaVinci's ideas into existence.
“Release the fist,” Macmillan instructed.
Simon looked intently at his hand. For it to function, he had to move the muscles in his forearms. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he concentrated upon the task. Finally, the fingers relaxed and the hand lay, palm up upon the table.
“Keep moving it.”
Simon flexed the fingers, back and forth, fisting his hand, and then relaxing it until he was able to do so with ease. There was a distinct release of tension as all three men realized that the problem was now solved.
“I suggest two more treatments with oil each day,” Macmillan said. “I will see if I can concoct a lighter mixture since this damp weather seems to be leading to coagulation.” He went to work on the other fist while Simon exercised the first.
“That sounds like a responsible explanation and treatment,” Von Swaim agreed.
“What brings you to visit this hour of the day?” Macmillan asked. Unlike the rest of his staff, Macmillan held no fear of Von Swaim. Both men were geniuses in their own fields and both had no problems with using any means possible to come to the end they desired. Von Swaim had no doubt in his mind that Macmillan stayed with him because Von Swaim turned a blind eye to his experiments and had an unlimited source of funds and a well stocked bar. In return Von Swaim kept him on because the man did not hesitate, no matter how outlandish his requests.
“It appears that things may be happening quicker than I anticipated.”
Both men stopped what they were doing and looked intently at Von Swaim. It pleased him to see that they were waiting for his next words.
“I believe I have found what we were hoping for.”
“You found the Prism?” Simon's voice held a hint of disbelief.
“Further testing will be required,” Von Swaim said. “But I have high hopes that I have indeed found her.”
“Her?” Macmillan asked. A sly grin spread over his face. “That's a bonus we did not plan on.”
The man's tastes were perverse, another reason why he'd been run out of England. His crimes, besides grave robbing and desecrating the dead also included several acts of sexual perversion and whether or not the participant was agreeable or breathing did not matter to him in the least.
Simon looked nervously between the two men.
“As I said, further testing is required.” Von Swaim looked around the laboratory. In one corner a completed suit of armor stood, made completely of brass and steel with hinges and joints. Various weapons were scattered about on tables along with a collection of large gems cut to exact specifications. Another table held several large sheets of paper, all covered with detailed drawings. Von Swaim lifted the top sheet to look at a sketch beneath it.
“Should we step up the manufacturing?” Simon asked.
“Yes.” Von Swaim's finger trailed over the notes made on the page. “The warehouse is secure?”
“Yes sir,” Simon replied. “The adaptations you asked for have been put into place and are ready for your inspection.”
“We can have the weapons ready,” Macmillan said. “But the army. That's another thing entirely. The men you have are not ready and Whitechapel has been picked over for viable candidates.”
Von Swaim looked at Simon. “Go to Ireland,” he said. “I am certain you can find several worthy recruits there.”
“Shall I take the airship?”
“Yes. Take it. I want things in place as soon as possible.” He walked to the window that overlooked the courtyard. Bars covered it as it did all the windows. The recruits needed to know that compliance was their only recourse. That there was no chance of escape. Unless they turn into a canary…His eyes darted back and forth, hoping to see the flash of yellow that would say his pet had come home.
“The Wild West show has come to town gentlemen. I believe it might be just the thing to get the queen out of hiding. We must be ready when and if the time comes.”
He left without another word.

Spectral Affairs

In July Ellora’s Cave published my erotic paranormal romance novelette "Sweeter Than Wine", with a ghost hero from the early nineteenth century haunting a bed-and-breakfast. A sexual affair with a disembodied spirit presents logistical problems that require decisions to be made—mainly, how do they make love, and how can we arrange a happy ending? Ghosts, by common assumption, can pass through solid objects. So how can a ghost touch a living person? In what circumstances can spirits influence the material world? Poltergeists supply a precedent for physical effects, but how does the process work? We need rules to bolster suspension of disbelief.

In my earlier Ellora’s Cave ghost romance "Heart Diamond", I decided the ghost could have a phantom effect on the world around him anytime but would become more nearly corporeal the more he was infused with psychic energy. He absorbs energy from his mortal lover’s sexual excitement, and the more he arouses her, the more solid he becomes; each of her climaxes makes him more "present." In "Sweeter Than Wine," the ghost gets the power to become solid and feel physical sensations by tasting a drop of the heroine’s blood. (There’s a precedent in classical Greek mythology—shades in the underworld gaining the temporary ability to speak when allowed to drink blood.) There’s a romantic comedy film in which ghosts get the privilege of interacting physically with their human lovers one night a year and are incorporeal the rest of the time. (I can’t remember the title.) Charles de Lint’s recent novel THE MYSTERY OF GRACE uses a similar concept; the dead can return to the mortal plane in physical bodies on the nights of Beltane and Samhain.

Next comes the problem of how to arrange a permanent happy ending for a ghost and a living woman. Three possibilities: (1) give him a body so they’re both mortal; (2) postpone their union until she dies, so they’re both spirits (this happens at the end of THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR); (3) let them carry on their romance indefinitely as ghost and mortal, which is how I ended "Sweeter Than Wine."

In "Heart Diamond," in which the hero “haunts” a diamond ring made from his cremated remains (there’s actually a company that makes these), I decided the method of becoming solid by draining his lover’s psychic energy could be only temporary, because drawing on her too often might harm her. So the status quo couldn’t go on forever, as I allowed to happen in "Sweeter Than Wine," which is intended to be much lighter in tone. In "Heart Diamond" waiting for possible reincarnation—one way of embodying a ghost—wasn’t an option. The source of a "new" body and the ethics of taking over a body pose problems for an author and the characters. It’s not unusual for a ghost to slip into a recently vacated corpse, as happened in the TV series GHOST WHISPERER. This was the solution I chose in "Heart Diamond." For ethical reasons, I tried to make it very clear that the body’s original soul was gone and not coming back.

Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches series features a disembodied spirit that becomes an embryo in the heroine’s womb, develops abnormally fast, and after birth grows into an adult male in a supernaturally short time. Yet another solution to the need for a physical body would be to create a robot, android, or golem for the ghost to possess (depending on whether you’re writing SF or fantasy). I haven’t used either of these devices yet.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Dragoncon

It's almost that time of year again. Over Labor Day weekend 40,ooo fans of science fiction and fantasy will descend on Atlanta for Dragoncon--a conference that goes 24/7. This year I'll be doing seminars and autographing my new release Lucan at the booth where a group of authors will be giving away fabulous prizes. (And if you'd like to help out at the booth we are looking for volunteers--who we thank with autograpghed goodies-- so contact me through my web site. I can't post the addy here or the bots pick it up and I get spammed)

And to whet your appetite, I thought I'd post some pictures from last year. If you get a chance come and say hello.