Stephanie Meyer - Books->Film

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BUT FIRST -- a public service announcement --

"Bloggers — particularly "mommy bloggers" — must now disclose freebies or money they receive to review products or risk an $11,000 fine per post, the Federal Trade Commission announced today. It's the first attempt to regulate what's known as "blogger payola.""

This ruling takes effect December 1, 2009.

That's from
http://baradell.com/ftc-issues-rules-to-end-blogger-payola

As a reviewer, I often talk here or reference books which have been sent to me by publishers (or authors) to review in my review column which is posted at
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/

And even if it was a free copy, I'll warn you off of a product that does not meet my standards or point out the flaw which might not matter to you. With a little practice, you'll know my standards and how they compare to yours.

I know I won't remember to put this disclaimer on every post, or to cite the source of every book (very often I don't know who sent me a given novel if I've lost the Press Release, which happens a lot)

Some of these books I discuss are freebies; some are not. And who can remember if some 30 year old title I discuss was sent to me free? Even before I was a reviewer, I was a SFWA member and as such got a lot of books free.

This ruling is impossible to comply with because the data is not available.

However, in this particular post -- I actually BOUGHT a copy of TWILIGHT at a Westercon from BOOK UNIVERSE which is a store operating out of Oregon. I don't yet have copies of the sequels or of THE HOST.

aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com is not my personal blog so I can't put a disclaimer in the header saying SOME books discussed here may have been promotional copies.

The article also says:
"While the FTC will obviously have a hard time enforcing these regulations, there can be no doubt that marketers regularly approach independent bloggers (and especially mommy bloggers) with freebies. When bloggers accept these exchanges, they may not always disclose them in the posts that result. So, while bloggers who are involved in these schemes often tend to say that they would have reviewed the product anyway or that their reviews are often critical, there can be little doubt that payments and freebies influence these stories."


Well, folks, nobody has ever approached me with any freebies because of this blog or any other that I write on. I get books via SFWA, The Monthly Aspectarian, Amazon Vine, and personal requests when I hear of them, and I even buy some. DVD's and other such items likewise. And if you read my review column, you'll see I ONLY review books worth reading (5 star level). Lots of what I get does not get reviewed.
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I've just finished reading TWILIGHT by Stephanie Meyer, a trade paperback edition from Megas Tingley Books, an imprint of Little Brown.

On the front it says it will soon be a major motion picture. I've had this book for probably half a year high on my to-read stack, and only now gotten to it. I haven't seen the film yet, but I will.

From several sources, notably
http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/33694/stephenie-meyers-the-host-heading-big-screen ( @dreadcentral on twitter)

I saw the following
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Twilight series author Stephenie Meyer is about to see another one of her projects up on the big screen, and luckily for us, this one's geared toward adults. Rights to Meyer's The Host have been acquired by producers Nick Wechsler and Steve and Paula Mae Schwartz (who also teamed up for John Hillcoat's adaptation of The Road).
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I haven't read The Host (yet). *sigh*

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

you can easily see that I do read a lot of (freebie) books and review only SOME of those. Still, there's more really good stuff out there than I can read.

I've always been a reader, even before I decided to go for publication. So I've acquired a view of the cross-section of the fields I've been discussing under "genres" -- see last week's post.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/genre-root-of-all-evil.html

That may not be a full and clear cross-section, but it's the view I'm working with.

Your view may differ and that doesn't matter because the point of these posts is to demonstrate the workings inside of a writer's mind, how it works, what you do with what you observe. An artform.

Art can't be "taught" but it can be "caught," which is the basis of the apprentice system of teaching.

The point of these posts is not to argue the veracity of the data used to derive conclusions, but rather to grasp the method by which conclusions are derived from data. First you practice with my data. Then you go find some data of your own and use the same method -- the result will be Art, very distinctively different from anything I could (or would) do, but still with the stamp of commercial potential clearly visible.

With that in mind, and Marion Zimmer Bradley's oft quoted admonition "The book the writer writes is not the book the reader reads" let's take a good look at TWILIGHT and the phenomenon of popularity in general (which is the ultimate point here -- how do you make Alien Romance more popular?)

And now I see what Stephanie Meyers did with Twilight (yes, I plan to read the sequels), how she did it, and what people love about it as well as what people have been complaining about.

As I've mentioned before "spoilers" can't spoil a really good book, and nothing I've read about TWILIGHT before I actually read the novel has made a dent in my own enjoyment of the story.

The story is great, but more on that later.

First let me point out there are many technical glitches that should have been fixed in the editorial process.

One glitch that really grated on my nerves was the portrayal of a non-cell-phone; dial-up internet culture, and then 3/4 of the way through the book, a character casually pulls out a cell phone, upon which nobody remarks, and from then on cell phones are everywhere. That's a continuity glitch.

Editorial could easily have fixed it by involving the Sheriff/father in demonstrations around a new cell tower being built nearby. Only out-of-towners would have active cell phones that would suddenly come online the moment they juice up the tower. Only out-of-towners would complain of the lack of cell service. The addition wouldn't have added any words that couldn't be trimmed from excess verbiage elsewhere.

I can't imagine how that slipped through editorial. But I'm used to reading fanzines and book manuscripts and "ARCs" (Advance Reading Copies) so errors like that don't really spoil the enjoyment of the story.

TWILIGHT grabbed me from the first page. I opened it because it's a Vampire story, but I stayed with it because of the locale.

Years ago, I considered moving to Port Arthur, close to the main setting for this story.

I ended up living in Phoenix, where the author lives, and part of the story is set. So I know both settings, and that may color my responses. The coincidence may not be random.

Now, if you've been studying the "expository lump" as discussed in Sexy Information Feed and the posts linked in it
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/sexy-information-feed.html

And this one on Michelle West's THE HIDDEN CITY.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/for-my-review-column-httpwww.html

you will understand this statement about Stephanie Meyer's (first novel!) Twilight.

She has committed (and sold to grand effect) a massively unskilled novel, and the truth is that is a very VERY common thing to have happen.

Future posts on astrology just for writers will show you how that happens and help you see when it will be most likely to happen to you. (No, Astrology can't predict "the" future, but it can show you open doors. You and only you shape the way you use those open doors. And yes, I see Divine Will as a component of how things turn out.)

So reading TWILIGHT is very like reading a really delicious fanzine more than it is like reading a tour de force like HIDDEN CITY by Michelle West which will curl the toes of any expert in writing craft and tickle most readers too.

The massive skill deficit behind TWILIGHT is one we have discussed in detail on this blog -- the expository lump and scene structure.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/6-tricks-of-scene-structure-part-2.html (and it's prequel post linked inside this one)

There is no mastery in Meyer's skill at hiding the lump which is almost the entire middle third or even half of TWILIGHT (I really do LIKE or maybe LOVE TWILIGHT for reasons I'll get to -- I love fanzine writing and I love the "Mary Sue" of which TWILIGHT is a fair example.)

BTW: the title TWILIGHT isn't right for this story. Post your suggestions for a title if you've read this novel or even just seen the film.

I don't know if anyone taught Stephanie Meyer "show don't tell" skills to avoid the expository lump in the sequels, or if all the praise made the editors protect her from learning these skills (I've seen that kind of pressure ruin new writers, and I've seen writers bear up under it and improve in skills despite roaring sales (Katherine Kurtz being an example.)

The expository lump is a tell instead of a show, and the most common cause of lumps is lack of CONFLICT. Without conflict there really is no neat way to SHOW anything. With CONFLICT, "showing" is easy.

Showing is illustrating by actions; or in the parlance of film, staying off the nose. The writer can't illustrate something that doesn't exist. CONFLICT brings things into existence.

In the case of TWILIGHT, the expository lump is disguised as dailogue mostly between just two people, the Vampire Edward and the human Bella.

The ostensible point of all this dialogue (not up to Buffy standards) is "getting to know you." The dialogue consists of asking questions about character, backstory, and worldbuilding facts. Without the appropriate conflicts, there really is no other way to convey this information but "on the nose" dialogue.

When you as a writer find yourself stuck in a dialogue trap, you know you have a missing conflict, and possibly a missing character.

So to get this complex and fascinating "world" across, the plot stops dead in its tracks while two people dance around each other and probe each other but without being at loggerheads, or cross-purposes, or in opposing camps, or misunderstandings, or secrets (think DARK BLUE) or anything that would illustrate a conflict.

But that stopped-plot problem is easily fixable on second draft if you know what caused it.

What really irritates people, even those readers who can't put their finger on it, is that the plot stops dead to progress the Relationship, which contains NO CONFLICT EITHER INTERNAL OR EXTERNAL, and therefore does not progress.

The relationship starts out perfect, without conflict and only a little strangeness which is easily accepted by both. From perfect, there's nowhere to go, so no plot and no plot progress.

During the dialogue scenes, the relationship progress becomes the plot, but there is no conflict to drive that plot, so it just sits there not even qualifying as a sub-plot.

This could have been cured easily by the editor who bought it sending it back with a rewrite note saying "put the werewolves and the killer vampires inside the school with Bella and Edward in Chapter One, and rework it so the threats escalate."

As it is written, both human and Vampire look at each other, storm and fume a bit at the awful problem of being attracted to a soul mate, and then gracefully and without event, they both accept the fact that they're soul-mates and proceed to ask each other questions about the nature of vampirism and relations between vampire and human, their respective childhoods, etc. The question of whether a Vampire even has a soul never comes up.

Both plot and subplot are at a standstill during this. Not even the third plot-line of Bella's mother following a second husband around a baseball circuit in the Southwest interferes with "getting to know you" conversations. Another set of (possibly werewolf) characters circle the edges and provide a hint of foreshadowing, but they don't matter to the "getting to know you" or to the ultimate threat (killer Vampires) that finally causes some action (meaningless and easily resolved action).

The werewolf premise sticks out like a sore thumb, a "plant" for future books. The plot-action here is created by some other vampires who JUST HAPPEN BY at an awkward moment. This violates a cardinal rule of story-telling which, if violated disqualifies the piece as a "novel."

That rule is simple. Accidents can trigger a plot - right before or just at, or just after the beginning, opening, chapter one, or preface. Accidents can CAUSE plot-problem but only if placed at the beginning of the story. Accident can be the "catalyst" beat of a script.

The theme then becomes something having to do with accidents -- karma, well deserved poetic justice, or an illumination of character that explains why someone deserves the adventure or come-uppance, or how things you don't deserve happen to you anyway.

But the cardinal rule is that ACCIDENT can not resolve a plot conflict. There are other forms of narrative that are popular, and don't even have a plot so don't need conflict, but we don't study them here.

Romance needs conflict. Conflict is sexy.

Well, since TWILIGHT has no conflict, there's nothing to resolve so maybe I shouldn't complain about the lack of plotting.

However, the un-caused, un-summoned, expected only by precognition arrival of killer-vampires is an ACCIDENT, so it's in the wrong place in the narrative. It should be in Chapter One.

The arrival of stranger vampires who just wander into town triggers the run-for-your-life sequence that ends in (off-shot, off-stage) violence, but it's violence without conflict.

That structure is the reason for the expository lump.

The only reason to insert the random band of vampires at that late point, after the "getting to know you" sequence, is to attempt a "show don't tell" that it's dangerous to "get involved in the affairs of wizards" and that this little girl Mary Sue character is tough enough to handle that danger (she thinks).

The flaws in TWILIGHT are legion. I won't enumerate because the point of this discussion is not how bad this novel is, but HOW GOOD IT IS, and why and how it has achieved such fame and glory.

I don't know the real story of how Twilight got to be such a best seller, nor how it got to become a film. But through my unique cross-section of the field of SF/F/Romance I see a clue.

The fact that Twilight has been financially successful in the woeful shape that the narrative work is in (it's as if it got published in 2nd draft when it needed to be 5th) tells me something that you possibly are not interested in.

So if you are not interested in the magickal view of the universe, seeing "reality" through the lens of Tarot and Astrology blended seamlessly with Science and even History, stop reading this post here. The rest of this is really, really boring.

*****

Now, all the rest of you try to grab this idea and hold it while you read on.

I personally am delighted and tickled that Stephanie Meyer and both her novels are so successful and can become films. This may be the break we've been waiting for.

These events, which appear on the surface to be Stephanie Meyer's personal triumphs, just as Harry Potter appears to be J. K. Rowling's personal and individual triumph, are in fact much, much larger than these individuals, and possibly not triumphs at all (I've discussed Pluto transits a bit, but there's more to learn -- Pluto transits don't deliver triumph but rather melodrama).

Gene Roddenberry's success with Star Trek went far beyond his personal life.

He's still being written ABOUT, and I've commented on this recent post which I found through a mention on Twitter

http://scifiwire.com/2009/10/michael-cassutt.php

Michael Cassutt has written about how many other people contributed to the phenomenal success of Star Trek (the success we're looking to repeat for Alien Romance) and mentioned Theodore Sturgeon and Amok Time which I've been talking about in this context on other posts on this blog.

Meyer's, Rowling's and Buffy's creator Joss Whedon's successes can be viewed as due to the confluence of what you might call magical forces.

(BTW Rowling and Joss Whedon are examples of success attained AFTER acquiring skill with conflict generating plot which progresses by show-don't-tell not expository lumps, and resolves at a precisely structured ending).

In the magical view of the universe, everything (people, places, things, artifacts) are all connected by unseen threads of energy, resonances. The Universe and all of us are of one piece. I've explained this in my Tarot posts here on this blog.

Rowling's work paved the way for the Twilight teen novel success.

See:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2009/09/hogwarts-bush-witchcraft-harry-potter.html

Which says:
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"Harry Potter" books have sold more than 400 million copies and been translated into 67 languages -- not to mention the history-making film adaptations, which collectively have gone north of $5.3 billion in worldwide box office."
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We all, as writers, aim for such towering achievement, and pursue that with dogged determination and soaring aspiration.

Our society and civilization are structured around some deeply hidden philosphical ideas (the kind of philosophy that rules your personal life even though you don't know you have a philosophy nevermind this one).

We are embedded in and awash with this philosophy. Like air we don't even know it's there. Or like a fish that doesn't know water is there. It's an unconscious cultural assumption. Transmitted to young children in school, it becomes an incontrovertible fact like gravity.

It is a Hellenistic philosophy, a view of the universe within which the entire "scientific revolution" was incubated.

For more on the residue of Hellenistic philosophy at the root of our culture, the root upon which the scientific view of the universe is grafted see my non-fiction book on the Tarot: Never Cross A Palm With silver.

(The publication of my 5 books on the Tarot is delayed waiting for ARTWORK to show-don't-tell the principles).

The following assumes you've read Never Cross A Palm With Silver (see Amazon, that first volume was published on paper), or that you didn't have to read it because you already understand the history of Philosophy. If you can dissect our world into a conflict between Hellenistic Philosophy and Biblical Philosophy (Kabbalah), then the rest of this discussion will make perfect sense.

We sometimes believe, because we are embedded in a Hellenistic world, that success such as Meyer has achieved is something you do on purpose, and somehow she has just had a little LUCK that we haven't had, due to no particular trait of her own that we don't share. Not only that, but she's not as good a writer as some of those reading this blog who haven't published for money yet.

That assumption can trigger jealousy -- "Why should she have all the luck?" "It's just not FAIR!" -- and jealousy (coveting your neighbor's goods) runs counter to one of the 10 Commandments of the Bible.

The magical view of the universe provides some good reasons for that prohibition on coveting as well as the means to avoid coveting (which the Hellenistic view does not provide because in the Hellenistic view, coveting is the essence of human nature.)

Consider when an "advertising campaign" succeeds, how the success is attributed to WHAT the advertising agency did, or how much they spent.

That's like the Hellenistic/Scientific view where the results of what you do depends entirely on what you do and never on who you ARE.

Advertising execs keep trying to do the same thing that someone else did and expecting similar success. That would work in the Hellenistic view of the universe, but not in the magical view.

Have you any idea how much money was spent advertising Space 1999 specifically to Star Trek fans after Star Trek was canceled? Space 1999 was sold as having an inevitable appeal to Star Trek fans.

Do you realize how much of that money was totally wasted because Star Trek fans just turned up their noses at the shoddy product that bore no recognizable resemblance to Star Trek?

The producers of Space 1999 thought they were doing the same thing Gene Roddenberry did, and that therefore it would succeed.

How much money was spent promoting Chicago for the Olympics only to lose to Rio?

Now I can't recall a recent Presidential campaign that spent less money than the opponent and still ended with the impecunious candidate winning. The most money almost always wins political campaigns.

But in political campaigns in the USA, most of the money spent comes from the very people who will vote & from corporations whose advertising responses have taught them public taste. So the amount of money collected for a political campaign is proportionate to the size of the support base for the candidate (sort of).

Sales campaigns don't work like that. All the ad bucks spent on a promotion come from the purveyer not the customer.

Can you imagine paying money to a Fund to pay for ads for Pepsi at the Olympics?

There's a different dynamic at work when you have a product to sell and need to advertise it.

See my post on Marketing here
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/marketing-via-social-networking.html

And notice this post from an Agent on writers' personalities and "networking"
http://cba-ramblings.blogspot.com/2009/10/dedicated-to-lone-ranger.html

When the product you are selling is entertainment, it gets very complicated because what entertains you is influenced by those invisible "connections" that bind us and our material universe into one. I hope to trace some of them for you in a future post here, another part to Astrology Just For Writers.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/12/astrology-just-for-writers-part-5-high.html

For now, remember my discussion of the Suit of Pentacles in the Tarot and the nature of a "Pentacle" and what it really symbolizes.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/10/ace-of-pentacles-setting-up.html

10 Pentacles can be taken to symbolize the epitome of success in the material world (a type of HEA), and many people would think that Meyer or Rowling have materialized that symbolism. Nothing can destroy the success they've achieved.

Life is never that simple because of all those connections that make us one with the Universe.

Did Meyer's success come only from her own efforts?

Entirely and only from her own efforts, and the efforts of those around her, people she knows, who helped her materialize these novels? (see the Gene Roddenberry post linked above).

Or do we need to examine a much broader cross section of reality to understand what is happening in this world and why, and therefore perhaps understand where it's all going and what it means?

Let's look at a cross section from a different angle and see what turns up.

The first novel in my key universe, Sime~Gen, "went viral" via the Star Trek fan network connected through my Kraith fanzine universe and my professional non-fiction book STAR TREK LIVES!

http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/ for Kraith for free reading.

Sime~Gen spawned about 6 different fanzine publications started by fans and contributed to by fans, discussing aspects of the Sime~Gen universe.

Most of the Sime~Gen fanzine material is posted online and one of the 'zines, Companion In Zeor, is still publishing online. A totally separate "shared universe" co-operative fiction Sime~Gen story is being created by a number of fan writers and posted online.

The master index page is
http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/

The Rimon's Library section contains most of the fiction and you'll find a separate link to the Co-operative fiction at the bottom of the master index page.

The second Sime~Gen novel, Unto Zeor, Forever, won the Galaxy Award.

For the timeline, see my biography page
http://www.simegen.com/bios/jlbio.html

During and after writing/publishing Unto Zeor, Forever, I brought Jean Lorrah onboard to write the professional novel FIRST CHANNEL in the Sime~Gen Universe. The whole concept of FIRST CHANNEL was entirely Jean's idea.

That was a major first - female-female SF collaboration. Jean had already written some really splendid fan stories which are posted on /sgfandom/ in Rimon's Library.

I don't recall exactly when, but during those initial years a manila envelope appeared in my mailbox with a return address of "Andrea Alton."

As most of you know, Marion Zimmer Bradley had become my writing mentor and really helped sell House of Zeor and Unto Zeor, Forever. She actually wrote one of the paragraphs which survived to the final draft of Unto and taught me how to "sharpen" a sentence by writing my sentence for me. (then I went back and used that technique throughout the novel)

One of the families in Bradley's Darkover series is named Alton (common enough name, but it had never turned up in my mailbox before).

I was active in Darkover fandom, and fans have a habit of taking names from the fiction they be-fan. Bradley had grown up in fandom. So had I.

I looked at the envelope, saw the name, thought it had to do with the fan organizational work I was doing for Darkover fandom (I ran "Keeper's Tower" the group that kept track of official fan groups; I was Fan Guest of Honor at the first Darkover Grand Council Meeting; I grew up on the planet Darkover and eventually sold Marion a Darkover story for an anthology).

With my mind on the Darkover fan activity and the growing Kraith fandom (55 creative artists worked on Kraith at one time or another, and the print run would sell out 1,000 copies within weeks of publication), plus the budding Sime~Gen fandom, I just stared and stared at that name, ALTON on that envelope and mentally screamed FAN HOAX.

Someone was playing a joke on me. For sure.

So I opened the envelope prepared to be the butt of a fannish joke (not the first time).

It was a Sime~Gen fan story titled Belling The Cat by "Andrea Alton."

A rewritten and lengthened version is currently posted here:
http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/cz/cz12/bellcat.html

Here's the editor's notes:
Editorial Note: The following story was originally submitted to A COMPANION IN ZEOR in 1981. After Jacqueline read it, her opinion was that it was a good basis for a professional novel. It was further developed into "ICY NAGER" which at one point had been submitted to Doubleday for publication. Because of that decision, A COMPANION IN ZEOR never printed this piece. What you are reading is the original first draft of "ICY NAGER" which has been available both as a print fanzine and on our Websites. Karen MacLeod

The first draft of the story that landed in my mailbox was PERFECTLY executed, with a firm artistic hand, with a disciplined and full-voiced stylistic cadence, with a deep full throated thematic chord and perfectly reticulated structure. It was better written than anything I could have aspired to write at that time (maybe since, too).

I loved it.

But I loved it because it was MY story.

The quality of the writing freaked me out.

It was a story I had had in my mind for well over 10 years and never told anyone about, that I could remember.

I had dreamed of being able to write and sell that story one day, if the other novels succeeded well enough. But Alton's story didn't have the Action/Adventure genre signature in the foreground as would be required to sell it commercially. It was pure Intimate Adventure.

Alton's story was more like a very well written TWILIGHT.

Alien Romance readers would love it, but there were no Alien Romance readers then, and no real "Vampire As Good Guy" novels either.

My ambition to sell Andrea Alton's Sime~Gen story was realistic since House of Zeor had been mentioned for the Hugo, and Kraith brought me in as a runner-up for the fan Fan Hugo even though the Fan Hugo was never ever awarded for fan fiction and there was a huge anti-Star Trek movement in SF fandom.

I sat there and read the original Belling The Cat story over and over, parsing every sentence, looking for a clue about who was playing a trick on me.

I tried to think who, of all the people I knew which was thousands, who could possibly have heard me mention this story idea, this plot. (every word exactly MINE) I couldn't think of anyone who might have heard me mention it who also had the skill to write like this.

Except Marion Zimmer Bradley.

Apropos of this, many years later when I was a Guest at a Star Trek convention in Great Gorge New Jersey, I met Theodore Sturgeon and told him about how I knew every scene and every plot move and Vulcan detail established in his script Amok Time (but I knew the broadcast version, not the version he wrote) before it was broadcast just from the footnote in David Gerrold's Ballantine paperback THE MAKING OF STAR TREK which noted that in the upcoming Star Trek season, Spock would go home driven by the Vulcan mating drive and the story was written by Theodore Sturgeon. That's all it took, and I KNEW.

Here's my post on Ted Sturgeon.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/theodore-sturgeon-ask-next-question.html

At the time that Andrea Alton's Belling The Cat arrived in my mailbox, I had already had the experience of KNOWING Ted Sturgeon's plot and mating drive details before seeing the episode. But I had not had the experience of telling him about it.

So I knew that I was capable of grabbing a story off the astral plane that someone was working on or planning to write. I knew what it felt like to access such an unwritten work.

This knowledge undermined my ability to simply attribute Belling The Cat to Marion Zimmer Bradley and call her up and accuse her of hoaxing me and sharing a good laugh.

The postmark on the envelope was not where Marion lived at the time, but she could have pulled off a re-mailing.

Belling The Cat had Marion's strength, but not her "style" -- it had my premise and idea, but not my style or skill level.

There was no clue of a cover letter, no note saying this was a submission to this or that S~G 'zine to indicate the author knew of Sime~Gen fandom, no real title or header on the manuscript. It was just what someone would do to play a joke on me.

In this period, I was "editing" (teaching to write) a bunch of fan writers for Kraith and also for Sime~Gen since we'd begun publishing fiction in the S~G fanzines. I knew a lot of people who would have a blast getting my goat.

And I had to answer that author.

So I wrote a very tentative, very cautious letter (yes, snailmail) kind of hinting that I'd like to know the history of this story and pen name.

Andrea Alton wrote back and said that's her real name and that she wanted to submit the story for 'zine publication.

I don't recall right now if she was a Darkover fan at that time, but she became one. She wanted to submit the story for the fanzines but was very afraid it wasn't good (!!!!) enough.

You see, it was just an idea she suddenly had, and sat down and dashed off as a story, WHOOSH like taking dictation. It was the first fiction she'd ever written.

It took quite a while to convince me of that, but it was really true. Eventually I met her. A real person, and NICE too.

Years later, she wrote and sold a truly fabulous, utterly original, completely perfectly crafted SF novel titled DEMON OF UNDOING.
http://www.sfreviews.net/demonundo.html

The company she sold it to (the high prestige, nothing-but-perfectly-crafted novels packager BAEN) published it in 1988 and immediately offered her a contract for a second book. She turned down the contract. She never sold anything else that I know of.

Eventually Demon of Undoing was one of the earliest e-books, posted online for download. That e-publisher is gone now, and I've lost touch with Andrea, though people write to me looking for her.

I was able to believe BELLING THE CAT was her first attempt at fiction and that she had never heard of my intent to write that story (which I now won't ever write because it's been written) because I knew I had KNOWN what Amok Time would be without seeing it.

Only personal experience can convince you of something this impossible.

Well, impossible in the Hellenistic view of the Universe; not in the Biblical view of the universe.

Andrea Algon wrote more Sime~Gen, and you can find all her Sime~Gen posted online in Rimon's Library.

Eventually, we were close to a chance to sell Sime~Gen novels by authors other than Jean and me. The fan novels we had published were professional quality work. They were fan novels only because they lacked backgrounding (what's a Sime; What's a Gen; What's a Channel; What's a Donor; What's the Tecton; Where did it all come from and why?) But they were all prime examples of Intimate Adventure in styles different from mine.

Andrea was one of the writers we tapped, and she turned the hero of BELLING THE CAT (nicknamed Icy Nager) into the hero of a novel titled ICY NAGER (which we couldn't sell; it's posted online too). And that novel has a fair adventure genre signature.

Now why am I telling you about Andrea Alton and Belling the Cat?

Because this is just one of many, many examples of this phenomenon.

This phenomenon (one person writing another person's mentally sketched (or obsessively dreamed) story and selling it) happens so often that Hollywood (which gets more submissions than Manhattan publishers + e-publishers combined) has a phalanx of lawyers who return submitted manuscripts "unopened" with stern notes of legal warnings.

Any writer who originates something thinks it's original because they haven't seen it anywhere else. And yes, it may never have been made visible anywhere -- but it might have been made visible (Pentacles again) somewhere the writer has never had access to.

One originator may think the other originator "stole" something, plagiarized.

Fans have accused Star Trek of "stealing" their fanzine ideas. I know that many in the Star Trek offices had read at least some Kraith. Fans see a lot of Kraith elements turning up in the films -- elements that were heretical when I first wrote them, long before anyone but Gene Roddenberry dreamed of films. I did things such as destroying the Enterprise NCC-1701, or giving Spock a sibling, or placing Spock's family high in Vulcan society.

But any good writer looking at Classic Trek would have done the same, no stealing involved.

The assumption that what you dream inside your own mind is original and belongs only to you is rooted in the Hellenistic view of the universe, the scientific view.

In the magical view of the universe, though, not only is it possible for other creators to envision or create what you have dreamed privately, it's a necessary condition for the complete description of a magical universe.

Thus, if you've internalized a magical view of the universe, you can't ever feel the urge to "covet" another's work, success, or possessions.

Look again at all the Greek Myths and you see the gods constantly attacking each other from jealousy, covetousness, or just to steal to demonstrate power. Coveting is deeply embedded in the Hellenistic philosophy, so deeply that you can't even find it stated, because it's assumed to be an element of human nature that is a reflection of the gods, immortal and unchanging.

Covetousness of one neighbor's position in life is not possible if you hold the Biblical view.

It's not "forbidden" - it's just not possible.

In my way of looking at it, that Commandment forbids the Hellenistic (or Babylonian, Ancient Egyptian etc etc) view of the universe. Why is that philosophy forbidden? Because it's not true and it doesn't work.

This overlapping creation phenomenon is only one small example of how the real world really works. We are all connected, of one piece, even in our dreams -- or perhaps especially in our dreams.

But of course, there are dozens of other explanations that don't require a Biblical philosophy; as I said above use your own data to derive your own conclusions.

The point here is the derivation methodology.

Take an explanation and interpret a fact. Take a fact and find an explanation. MAKE THEM MATCH to make your worldbuilding resonate with verisimilitude.

OK, look back on what you know of the history of technological innovation. Edison wasn't the first to make a lightbulb, and Bell wasn't the first to create a "telephone." Many patents are held by the second, or tenth, person to invent something, just as with TWILIGHT.

''''''''''

IDEAS (Wands) are "up there" somewhere, and they penetrate this plane of existence following whatever channel of least resistence they find. YOU may be standing under one of those penetration points at any time in your life. (To understand that, wrap your mind around what I've said about Tarot and Astrology - they are not two different subjects.)

Just because you "have" the idea does not necessarily mean you can manifest it (as I had been not-writing Belling The Cat).

The individual who can manifest it will have a certain kind of Natal Chart and be under certain types of transits, and have a soul that's due for whatever lesson that they would learn by manifesting that idea.

That may or may not be you, and there's nothing personal in that.

Yes, everything in art, love, and religion is personal! But that's another subject -- one centered on characterization.

IDEAS that are manifested often go nowhere commercially, as far as the world knows.

A book may "bomb" and sell only a few thousand copies (or a few hundred e-book copies). A movie may not make it past the Festivals. An invention may be a dodo before it's manufactured.

But every once in a while, the right person in the right place at the right time of their life, at the right time of the evolution of The World and maybe Humanity, will ALSO receive an IDEA just at that moment, and of their own Free Will they may choose to act on it.

BANG!!!!!

It "goes viral" because a lot of humans are harboring that idea, can "almost hear" that idea rattling around "up there" above their minds where we are all connected, all of one piece.

The public may recognize the thing as their own dream even if they've never remembered dreaming that dream.

That's what happened with TWILIGHT.

It happened with Sime~Gen too, but on a much smaller scale.

Those who have read TWILIGHT can see the hint of a similarity with Sime~Gen. If not, consider that Sime~Gen has been billed as "Vampire In Muddy Boots."

Stephanie Meyer has achieved with TWILIGHT (and sequels) what I set out to achieve with Sime~Gen (best seller to film), and she's used the same dramatic material that I was using.

For similar dialogue expository lump to TWILIGHT see the early draft of UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER posted online at
http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/surgeon/SURGEON1.html

The published version of UNTO that won the award is 5th draft.

The spookiness continues for me with the news that Stephanie Meyer's THE HOST has been optioned for film (from option to theaters is a long complex journey).

The 2008 HC/pb release of THE HOST by Stephanie Meyer.

It's unusual for an author to be allowed to use the same byline for an adult novel as for a teen novel.

THE HOST has the following premise according to Publisher's Weekly:

---------------
In this tantalizing SF thriller, planet-hopping parasites are inserting their silvery centipede selves into human brains, curing cancer, eliminating war and turning Earth into paradise. But some people want Earth back,

-----------

I have no way of proving the following because it's all in my mind.

Way before I started writing Sime~Gen, I developed several SF universes, all more complex and richly backgrounded than Sime~Gen.

Then I chose which one to launch my career with and discarded the others. In order to write HOUSE OF ZEOR, I had to pare the Sime~Gen background as I knew it way, WAY down to the barest hint.

One of the rejected worlds was a complex world I call the Diasite universe.

I found all the pages (hand-scribbled) ever written about the Diasites while thinking about TWILIGHT and THE HOST.

To my utter shock, none of the premise is on those pages. They're chapter-structured PLOT outlines, remarkably well done considering I didn't know then what I know now about plot outlining.

But I remember the premise, crystal clear, and recently have been noodling around with the idea of casting the Diasites into a feature film format. I keep stubbing my mental toe on the knowledge that "the world" would not accept this -- it's just too SF, even though Hal Clement did something similar in NEEDLE.

Then (just a few days ago) I discovered (via Twitter) that Meyer's THE HOST has been optioned, so I went to look up what it is about. I haven't read THE HOST, and have read only the barest sketch of the premise.

It's the Diasite universe, simplified.

And according to Publisher's Weekly on Amazon, Meyer has learned conflict and how it generates show not tell and avoids expository lumps (but who knows? I haven't read the novel yet.)

Meyer could be more successful than Jacqueline Suzanne.

If you're curious, here's part of the Diasite concept.

The Galactic civilization gives up its barricading of Earth because of an interstellar war and Earth has to become prepared to defend itself, galaxy-class weapons and all.

The prerequisite for membership in the Galactic union (whatever it may be called, you couldn't pronounce it), is that the world that wants to join must accept a colony of Diasites onto their world.

Here's the SF hitch that is more "revolting" than tentacles and that would prevent this premise from become big box office.

The Diasites are energy beings -- pure soul. (think Arisians; Hal Clement's aliens were evolved viruses)

The Diasite home planet was destroyed several revolutions of the galaxy ago.

On their home planet Diasites evolved bonded to physical beings, "hosts."

After nearly going extinct when their planet was destroyed (war with the same encroaching enemy that's "now" reappeared), the Diasites developed the ability to use any Intelligent species as Hosts.

The Diasites are very VERY peaceable beings who don't covet. (no exceptions; and yes that viciates the premise)

So the Diasites have basically created this vast galaxy spanning civilization using their species need for hosts and a trait they can give in return for bodies. They are parasites that have made themselves into symbionts.

Diasites contribute communication.

There is no scientific means of communicating across galactic distances.

But the Diasites are (this was invented before Star Trek) like cells in one brain, and they can all communicate "telepathically" with each other. Distance doesn't make a difference because Diasites don't exist in the space-time continuum, but "above" it where there is no such thing as distance. Hence they communicate instantaneously across galactic distances.

But they can't survive without HOSTS.

So it's a trade.

The member planets of the galactic union "pay" for galactic communications and trade etc. by HOSTING a colony of Diasites large enough to handle all the galactic communications for the planet. You have to HOST to join the union.

So one day (shades of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL) out of a clear blue sky, a "mothership" of Diasites appears over the U.N. Building.
And the appeal is presented to Earth -- host a colony of diasites and become well enough armed to fight off the menace coming, or don't and succumb (roll the film of conquered planets).

"Oh, sure. No problem. We'll take some of your Diasites. What do we do?"

Well, all you have to do is find (several hundred) volunteer women who will become pregnant with a Diasite, give birth in the usual way, and raise the (utterly indistinguishable from human) child to be an upstanding citizen of Earth.

That's all.

Shades of several horror genre SF stories -- but the SF premise here is that IT IS NOT HORROR. (it's like the Vampire-As-Good-Guy; it's a twist on horror, a reversal).

And yes, this bears a resemblance to "V" but was created long before that TV series.

So the first novel is about the arrival on Earth with ultimatum, the various lies and half-truths about Diasite non-physiology and lifecycle, the terrible angst of finding enough volunteers, the factioning of Earth for and against the Diasites (let's get conquered; we can make peace with those guys, but not rapists), the birth of the children, and their coming of age (entering High School).

(wrinkle - the Diasites procreating into human form never touch the women).

The second novel is from the POV of a young Diasite in High School at puberty.

The entire first generation colony of Diasites matures at about the same time because their mothers were impregnated at the exact same moment.

The Diasites send another Mother Ship to take the first human Diasites into their first reproductive cycle. (oy, the politics)

And of course, right in the middle of all this, the ENEMY arrives at Earth.

Remember, at the time I created the Diasites, and at the time I discarded them in favor of the Simes, it was basically illegal to have sex figure in an SF novel unless your name was Philip Jose Farmer. Today's SF Romance would be considered porn. (plain brown wrapper, under the counter, no book keeping, go to jail for selling it, porn)

Each Diasite novel is in a different genre, -- that's what I've done with Sime~Gen, too. The point I'm trying to make is that SF is not a genre at all, because you can write every genre in it, including Romance. Well, especially Romance.

The third Diasite novel would be the galactic war (think my Daniel R. Kerns novels, Hero and Border Dispute.)

The fourth would involve Earth's Diasites reaching out to free a conquered world and bring that world into the galactic union. (Humans are much better at freeing and bringing-in than most of the rest of the galactics at least in our spiral arm.)

Along the way you'd learn what Diasites really are (human Diasites aren't given to know this until several generations into the colony, but being human they don't want to wait to be told). You'd learn what the existence of Diasites means about the structure of the universe.

Mostly you'd learn about the human Soul and what happens when a Diasite body is conceived by a human mother without a "father."

The Diasite universe is all about religion and sex, forbidden topics in SF of that time.

None of what I've written here is in the "outlines" I found in my files.

I think Stephanie Meyer has probably already written this universe and sold it to Hollywood as THE HOST and anything I might do with the Diasites would be seen as imitating her.

Know what? I hope THE HOST really is Diasites simplified. Look at all that work I don't have to do and the world gets the benefit anyway!

REMEMBER THIS:
Even things you write that don't ever get read by anyone else, even things you think or feel that you never let anyone else see, affect the whole universe and perhaps beyond. Somewhere up there we are all connected. What one of us does in solitude enables another to do in public and neither could do anything at all without the other whether they know it or not.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://twitter.com/jlichtenberg

Near-future science fiction stories (and smoothies)

Q: What do teachers, writers, and cocktail-bar-tenders have in common?

A: They all take the best ingredients available to them, blend them, shake them up or stir them, and deliver something fresh, palatable, refreshing and stimulating.

What does that very bad Q & A (that I just made up) have to do with Near-future science fiction stories? It's a matter of inspiration. Last night, I was wondering what to write about today.

I've been meaning for the last three weeks to share some research I've been doing into an ancient religion, but the last couple of weeks have been other religions' holy days, so I haven't. Last night, I decided that I'd do something else today, too.

So, I snatched up a variety of science and science fiction periodicals, and retired to bed to metaphorically throw ideas against the wall and see what stuck. That's my "smoothie" method of conquering writers' block, and it sounds a great deal more exotic than the "potage" method of making a tasty soup out of leftovers.

I've joined the National Fantasy Fan Federation. It found me on Facebook, you can find it at http://www.n3f.org  Also at http://tightbeam.net and http://www.fandominion.com

By the way, for aspiring science fiction writers who have sold no more than two stories to professional science fiction or fantasy publications, the deadline to get your short story into the 2009 N3F Amateur Short Story Contest is December 31st.

What stuck to my wall was a comment by Jon D. Schwarz in his reviews of three books by Dan Brown which was in the Reviews section of the September issue of The National Fantasy Fan.  "The publishers call them techno-thrillers, suspense thrillers, or suspense mysteries, but science fiction fans know them for what they really are: near-future science fiction stories."

Jon D. Schwarz's remarks remind me of an analysis that I think I remember was written by Orson Scott Card in How To Write Science Fiction and Fantasy.... (only I cannot find it!). I recall being surprised and pleased at the variety of stories that Orson Scott Card suggested were science fiction, or even "science fiction romances" (with a lower case "r"): She; The Time Machine; Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea; The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen...

Jon D. Schwarz suggests that when Tom Clancy, Michael Crichton, and Dan Brown write about artificial intelligence, supercomputers, cryptography, anti-matter, spaceships and so forth, they are writing science fiction.

Now, in my opinion, that is something to think about!

FLASH FORWARD

Did you see the pilot episode of FLASH FORWARD last week? The scenes of devastation were stunning, with obviously deliberate echoes of the first few hours after the 9-11 attacks. As you’ve probably heard even if you didn’t watch the show, the premise is that everyone on Earth blacks out for a little over two minutes. During this time, they all have brief visions of events on a single day six months in the future. A little girl says she “dreamt there were no more good days,” an ominous summary of what this future looks like. I’m excited about the possibilities of this series, clearly designed (as has repeatedly been said in the media) to take the place of LOST as the mystery to follow on prime-time TV. Will FLASH FORWARD develop into an intelligent SF story or devolve—as a review on the Innsmouth Free Press (www.innsmouthfreepress.com) site predicts—into a “soap opera” with sloppy treatment of the speculative fiction aspects? The series has two potentially interesting topics to explore, (1) how people adjust to what should be a radical upheaval in their world-view, and (2) what caused the blackout and why. I hope the answer to the latter question turns out to be more interesting than it apparently is in the novel (I peeked at the Amazon.com summary); there’s hope in that respect, since one major change has already been made—in the book the flash-forward goes to twenty years in the future, not six months. As for how public agencies and individuals deal with the destructive byproducts of the blackout and the implications of the visions, the first week is too soon to tell. Will FLASH FORWARD become a true SF serial or a just suspense story with an SF MacGuffin?

Whichever way it goes, the show gives a striking illustration of one of the themes in EVERYTHING BAD IS GOOD FOR YOU, by Steven Johnson. He discusses at length how the ability to record and re-watch programs has changed the nature of television. Now that fans can analyze dialogue and dissect action scene by scene (even frame by frame if desired), TV writers can construct plots that develop over several years and plant clues that might have been missed completely in the old-fashioned era of watching a show only once (or maybe twice if it’s caught as a rerun). Viewers can tolerate—and have come to expect—complicated character and story arcs. As Johnson puts it, today’s audience has to do more “cognitive work” to absorb the entertainment offered to it. The phenomenon is a prime example of how technology contributes to shaping art.

By the way, what do you think of EASTWICK? I like the three women protagonists more than I expected, but Daryl Van Horn is still annoying. Sure, he’s dark and ravishingly handsome, but he has little else to recommend him except generosity with his wealth, which he frequently undercuts with barbs that accompany the gifts. His seduction technique comes across to me as simply arrogant, not alluring. As far as I can remember from the novel, that aspect of his character is faithful to the book, but, then, I didn’t like him in the book either. If he’s supposed to be tempting the novice witches rather than coercing them, I can’t see why they would find him attractive for longer than it takes to have a conversation with him. The mystery of his past is intriguing, but that plot thread can’t support the series over the long term, especially since the audience (unlike the characters) already knows he’s a demon. Did he bestow powers on the women or merely act as a catalyst to awaken the magic, if that? My impression is that their powers are innate, so once they learn to control their gifts, they won’t need Van Horn for anything. Well, maybe they will eventually figure that out. (And on a side issue, if the office worker is so upset by thinking the man she had a crush on is now attracted to her only because she magically compelled him to be, all she has to do is give him an order along the line of, "You don't have to be interested in me unless you really want to." How hard is that to think of?) Anyway, I won’t give up on the series yet.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Genre: the Root of All Evil?

I've just finished reading P. N. Elrod's latest installment in the VAMPIRE FILES, DARK ROAD RISING.

Dark Road Rising (Vampire Files)

It's a vampire series with a little bit of a love-interest on the side but not as a major focus.

So it's not Vampire Romance, but that doesn't keep me from loving the series! It is Intimate Adventure with a good-guy vampire.

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

Jack Flemming is a Reporter who had an affair with a female vampire, then got killed by the Chicago Mob (in the 1930's), and tossed into the lake, to wake up on the shore cold and hungry and unexpectedly a vampire.

He was befriended by a human Private Eye (British living in Chicago) and went to work being a detective for the Private Eye. He made some money fighting the mob with his self-discovered vampire powers, and bought a (haunted) nightclub. He's been successful ever since, but his life just gets more and more complicated because of the mob connection.

As he has mastered his Talents and used them (for good), he has been pulled deeper and deeper into the dark mists of vampirism, fighting to stay himself.

So what is this novel? It is so criss-cross-crossed genre it couldn't have been published before the Vampire Romance became distinct. It's the Vampire-As-Good-Guy, with no real HORROR genre in it, but most of the plot isn't directly about the problem with being a vampire. It's about the Chicago Mob circa 1933.

It's a historical gumshoe/chicago-mob story.

It's a hard-boiled mystery story (Flemming was a NY Reporter, and that means TOUGH).

It's a Mob Politics story.

It's a deep, complex character study via pure drama using themes about human nature.

It's an Intimate Adventure, where the plot is driven entirely by the Relationships, and the main character learns and changes because of the people he (or she) knows and cares for. You can't do that in an action novel because it's against genre rules (or used to be!)

It's an Hard Boiled Action story with lots of explicit blood and gore, but no horror. A little sex but not too explicit by modern standards.

It's Fantasy.

It's Urban Fantasy in the modern vein.

In other words, this series is my FAVORITE kind of reading because it has no category, no genre, or it's a genre of its own.

DARK ROAD RISING is lightly and artistically laced with anachronisms appropriate to Chicago in the 1930's and a little maybe from Hollywood. Every once in a while, Elrod drops in a perfect bit of archaic slang that makes you feel you're THERE in the 1930's. And she avoids modern slang, and even 1950's slang.

But like really great writers, she uses this slang sparsely, for flavor, and never to confuse or confound the reader, nor to impress everyone with her scholarship. The word meanings are clear from context, and of course many readers remember anyway. All that is the ART of this word-usage thing.

There's an artistic hand behind this word usage as well as a scholar, and the blend tickles me and makes me laugh, hoot, and giggle my way through the book searching for the next word.

When a writer begins to get advice on writing, the one thing that comes up again and again is DO YOUR RESEARCH. But the truth is, the story comes out better if you don't do so much research. Writers often try to cram in ALL the neat stuff they've learned doing research, instead of carefully choosing just a bit here and a bit there to spice up the narrative but not display their scholarship.

P. N. Elrod has gotten the spice just right!

In this entire novel, I found only ONE word out of place.

On page 371 of 389 in the trade paperback, a cigarette is smoked 'down to the filter' -- after so many pages of perfect-perfect-perfect anachronisms, I almost leaped out of my chair over that one. I "knew" there were no filter cigarettes until the mid-1950's.

BUT GUESS WHAT??? She's right!

By my memory, the FIRST filter cigarette came in the 1950's.

But Wikipedia says the first filter cigarette was invented in 1927 (but uptake was slow).

Google also produced the factoid that R. J. Reynolds Tobacco produced the first filter tipped menthol cigarette (Salem) in 1958, which is what I remember.

That this character would go for this experimental and obscure type of cigarette actually reinforces his character portrait.

My problem then is the blase acceptance of the onlooker, who likely had never seen a filter cigarette (people used ivory HOLDERS back then, not a paper filter attached to the cigarette and designed to be thrown away after use.)

But I learned something, and it was only in that one spot that the factoid or anachronistic language stopped the smooth flow of the narrative for me. I rather doubt anyone else would even notice if they don't remember the 1950's.

So THE VAMPIRE FILES by P. N. Elrod is an exceptionally smooth blend of genres that reads with an easy, natural rhythm for modern readers.

If you have read anything written in the 1940s, you know the difference.

Dashle Hammet's Sam Spade is a case in point. You should try to find some of Hammet's work and read it for the flavor and style remembering it was for an audience that had NEVER HEARD any of this invective or slang. The readers and their friends just didn't talk like that, and people who talked like that didn't read novels.

Here is a neat website with loads of information about the evolution of genre.

http://www.vintagelibrary.com/fiction/genres/hardboiled.php

I've written a number of posts on genre for this blog and have more to write. But recently, a connection on LinkedIn asked me to define genre, and for quite a while I drew a blank on that. Then I came up with this sketch.

Genre is a term which focuses on the reader's taste as seen by the editor, and creates a trope the writer dares not break because readers want it unbroken and editors know that.

But ideas don't come to writers (usually) in genre format.

In my previous post here,
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/targeting-readership-part-one.html

I began to discuss finding the readership, and writing for a readership which is the key to the perennial success of the Romance genre.

I intend to take a very close look at readerships and their composition, plus the reasons why certain types of stories become popular with certain demographic segments.

If you look at that Vintagelibrary.com site about pulp fiction and think about it, you may get ahead of me in sorting readerships out.

But let's look again at the differences between genres -- this is not absolute, but just one way I have of looking at it.

To understand the explanation of differences among genres, you have to be able to distinguish what I call "plot" from what I call "story" -- nomenclature varies among writers and the reason for that is in one of my writing posts.

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

With that in mind, we can think about genre ingredients.

"Action Adventure" has a plot driven by "Adventure" (which is defined as the main POV character moving from inside a comfort zone (such as home) to outside that zone, (such as a foreign country).

One example is Bilbo Baggins by his fireplace; then climbing through a wilderness scared to death but brave in a good cause.

"Action" genre signature is also plot defined. The plot's basic problem has to be solved by PHYSICAL (not psychological) action (shooting people, rescuing dangling people, RISKING LIFE AND LIMB to TAKE CHARGE).

Typically the blurb for Action/Adventure (A/A) says something like "only XYZ can save ABC from WQ"

And the hero must rise to the occasion by going outside the comfort zone of home and risking "everything" to do whatever.

Vigilantes (Batman) are a perfect example -- the law says you can't touch this criminal. OK, we'll do it ourselves and risk getting caught, or we'll just defy the lazy Sheriff and get the criminal and nevermind "rules of evidence" in court. Courts fail, the argument goes, because they let real criminals go free. So it's up to the citizens to keep the neighborhood clean.

CRIME FICTION has the plot driven by the crime and the need to either prevent the crime or punish it.

Like SF, CRIME has a huge plethora of sub-divisions. The Detective and the Private Eye are only two. And there are novels that show the crime from the criminal's point of view with the criminal being the sympathetic hero.

But the thing to remember is the genre is defined by the nature of the plot.

Now you can do CRIME SF too -- Asimov's Black Widow series is a perfect example.

Gumshoe fiction. Private Eye fiction. Detective. Mystery (Murder She Wrote). Police Procedural (where the plot is driven by the need to keep the evidence trail clean and make a court case that will stick because it's better to let a real criminal go than to convict an innocent).

Each genre is named for the single most prominent plot element.

HORROR is defined by the Hero or main POV character being an innocent victim of something huge, overwhelming, unstoppable, unbeatable. The key plot element is that the Hero can NOT WIN (which is the exact nuance that turns a dream into a nightmare). It's not that the Hero is not capable or brave or strong. It's that the Evil stalking the Hero is a part of Nature and by definition can't be destroyed. At the most, it can be immobilized for centuries, (silver chains, sigils, incantations, magic jewels, djinn bottles) but never destroyed. The Hero can not win but only put off defeat to future generations.

Take a regular Action/Adventure story, but make the adversary an Elemental that can not be destroyed, and the Hero can not win. Leave out "winning" and that turns A/A into Horror.

My personal sorting definition is that genre is not defined by what you put in, but by what you LEAVE OUT.

By selectively leaving out many obvious issues, you create a genre that is focused cleanly and clearly on one thing.

Now the genre lines are changing as cross-genre like THE VAMPIRE FILES is (finally) coming into prominence. (YAY!!!)

But take Romance for example. It has to have a certain Neptune driven "mood" and an HEA ending. You break the "romance" mood if you sprinkle in a lot of really ugly issues that people feel strongly about in real life. (politics; religion; Death; Failure; Depression; Suicide).

Neptune is also the main driver of "Horror Genre" -- where "the unknown" is "unknowable" and "unconquerable" and creepy.

The feeling of falling in Love is very similar to falling into Hell. The plot dynamics of the story are also very similar which is why you get things like Jurassic Park with a love story, a scientific based puzzle, and the genie breaks out of the bottle and you have UNSTOPPABLE wild animals. The couple might escape the wild animals THIS time, but Science is still out there ready to spring another uncontrollable surprise on us.

There is a whole sub-genre of tech-phobe fiction that is essentially horror turned into SF. Star Trek: The Original Series episode CAPTAIN DUNSEL is a case in point. Technology replaces people ruthlessly. Science or Technology becomes the root of all evil.

The difference between Horror and Romance is that in Romance you can win, and you have Love on your side which conquers all evil. In Horror, you can't win because the force that conquers all good is on the OTHER side. It is exactly the same plot, from a different point of view.

It used to be that if it had a Vampire in it, a story was automatically Horror genre. Today very dark Vampire characters are Romance heroes because there is a sexy attraction to the "other."

Look again at the Pulp Fiction site. See how the sheltered and protected public embraced a sanitized depiction of some distant part of their world.

-----------
The hard boiled detective was a character who had to live on the mean streets of the city where fighting, drinking, swearing, poverty and death were all part of life. This new type of detective had to balance the day to day needs of survival against the desire to uphold the law and assist justice.
-------------

And part of the trope was the detective's ability to turn vigilante and see justice done with his own independent hands.

Since I've been talking about how we can change the world's attitude toward the Romance genre, possibly with a TV show or a film, let's note here that Dashle Hamit had the exact effect on his world that we want to have on ours, just with a different subject matter. What we're trying to do would rewrite that quoted paragraph like so:

-----------rewrite-----------
The Soul Mates are characters who have to live on the clean suburban streets of the suburbs where consideration, folk dancing, careful speech, razor-thin financial margins and home-hospice care are all a part of life. This new type of Soul Mate couple has to balance the day to day needs of their family and neighbors against the desire to uphold the law and assist justice.
----------------------------

What do you think? Try a rewrite of that paragraph for yourself and see if you can invent the Romance genre anew.

Don't forget there's a genre called Action Romance that's well recognized, and often blended into Futuristic Romance.

Note how "Futuristic Romance" is not SF Romance.

SF Romance plots are driven by a scientific puzzle or scientific fact that turns the plot, and that you must understand the science of in order to understand the story.

"Futuristic Romance" can be based on any silly vision of the future with or without any scientific understanding. It's just romance set in some future. For me, these novels succeed to the exact degree that the futurology does, and so J. D. Robb's future doesn't work well for me, even though I like the In Death series.

So genre names are all about the plot driving mechanism, and what you must exclude in order to keep the mood and focus on that driving mechanism.

CRIME can be ugly as sin (True Crime) or sterile and intellectual (Sherlock Holmes).

Rarely is an author allowed to challenge the very premise of the genre within a story in that genre. Genre is based on ASSUMPTIONS that are not challenged. That's my definition. Things you leave OUT define the genre, and one of those things is the same in all genres -- don't challenge the genre premise in the plot.

In Romance, it's Love Conquers All that must not be challenged.

In SF it's Science Conquers All that must not be challenged.

In Crime it's Crime is Wrong that must not be challenged.

In Adventure, it's "the solution is not here but somewhere else" that can't be challenged. (home is not a fun place to be).

In Action, it's "There Is No Other Possible Solution Than To Kill The Bad Guys." You can't make friends with the bad guys and turn them into good guys in an Action genre story. (all the rules are changing, remember?)

I'm an Amazon Vine Voice (a pre-release reviewer) and they send out a newsletter listing books reviewers can choose from. One thing I've noticed lately is that many of the books just labeled fiction, not SF or Fantasy, have strong SF elements or Fantasy settings. SF/F has actually become recognized as MAINSTREAM. You can get away with putting a vampire, or a supernatural creature such as a djinn, into a plain fiction story and it won't be labeled Horror or Fantasy by publishing.

Since Star Trek and Buffy, the general reader/viewer has become more accepting of the supernatural. Genre barriers are breaking down. They will reform in a different configuration.

This is the biggest chance Romance has had to redefine itself as legitimate, respectable literature in decades. To pull that off, Romance writers (and readers) need to understand what is happening in genre and publishing, and not just let it happen but take charge of the direction of change. Romance needs a Gene Roddenberry.

Here's more on genre you can find on this blog. Not all these posts are by me.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/01/request-for-discussion-of-genre.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/01/genre-beginning.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/01/my-genre-tini-dash-of-adventure-drop.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/01/my-genre-tini-dash-of-adventure-drop.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/01/so-which-genre-is-not-even-genre.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/02/more-on-genre.html

Genre is a lot like style. It's very hard to explain because it's always changing. Identifying it is more art than science.

And every once in a while, a book or series becomes VERY popular, so that publishers run around trying to get authors to imitate the elements in that popular series. When the editors succeed, a genre is born, and publishers vie for the privilege of naming it.

Today new criss-crossing mixtures of genres are breeding new genres faster than they can be named, and because of the Web and social networking, publishers no longer have the sole power to identify and name a new genre.

It's vitally important that new writers (even those writing "best sellers" and general fiction) understand genre.

Only at the moment, there may be nothing to understand.

Readers create genres by popularizing certain titles, and editors create genres by trying to figure out why this title sold so much better than that title.  What do readers like about a particular story?  Why is it popular?

By letting genre definitions become so rigid, publishers have fooled themselves into thinking they're making more money than they could without genre requirements.  Publishers have only now begun to consider (with a sense of horror) publishing books like P. N. Elrod's Vampire Files.  Note her track record though with other books.  That's why she gets the chance to do this series. 

As a result of genre rigidification, many really magnificent books used to go unpublished.  Today there are e-books, but that industry is still in its infancy (and thus an opportunity).  Readers aren't accessing it well enough yet, and much of what is produced is not well written enough to be satisfying and worth the money and effort. 

So Genre has been the eclectic reader's horror nightmare.  "What great stories am I missing?" 

Requiring writers to produce within marketable genre categories, yet being wholly unable to define those fluid categories, may make genre into any writer's root of all evil, the unconquerable adversary that can only be stuffed into a bottle for future generations to deal with.

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

Good twin, bad twin

I'm stuck.
It's guy trouble. 
Would you mind if I brainstorm a little?

Working my problem through in public might help clear my mind, though it hasn't worked in a .doc

I've put my heroine between a rock and a hard place before, in Mating Net. I like the idea of look-alike hunks as the personification of the rock (the solid, worthy twin) and the hard place (the bad, dangerous, sexually ready twin).

Now we come to a story that I will probably NOT be permitted to call "Family Fork"! (It is another chess term, but it sounds grossly unhygienic in these days of H1N1 when we're being urged not to share.)

Devoron and Deverill are identical twins, and while they may not be inseparable, they do most things together. In my first alien romance, Forced Mate, they were banished from Earth after they both simultaneously showed signs of being rut-raged over Djinni-vera. Before any harm was done, 'Rhett intervened, and with his characteristic, elegantly brutal efficiency, put their lights out.

In Insufficient Mating Material, Devoron begins acting a little bit strangely, mostly off stage.

In Knight's Fork, suspicions surface that Devoron has a mild but chronic case of the rut-rage, and his behavior is like a juvenile delinquent elephant in musth. Happily for my gentler reader, most of his misbehavior is off stage.

While Devoron is hurling insults and picking (and losing) sword fights, no one is watching Deverill, whom the reader would be pardoned for taking as the good twin. Thus, Deverill has the opportunity to be presented with a cure for the "rut-rage".

Devoron is otherwise occupied. Deverill has to be the one that gets the "cure". I do need a "cure". Under the rules of the rut-rage that I set up in Forced Mate, Devoron and Deverill both ought to be fixated on Djinni. Still. Even eight years after they identified her as their scent love.

Yet, surly Devoron is the one who appears to have the frustrated hots for an undiscovered scent love back on Earth. (He has been to Earth recently.)

It is possible for males to be permanently fixated on their scent love and ready to fight to the death for mating rights, yet aware that another female is in heat. I've established that. I've also hinted that there must be a cure, but what it is has not occurred to any POV character so far.

At the end of Knight's Fork both Devoron and Deverill could be in the vicinity of Earth. They're not both supposed to be there, one of them is supposed to be on the Shadow Asgaard, and the other is on the Nirvanah. One of them is saddled with an inconvenient assignment.

So, which twin is going to locate (presumably by her scent) the new heroine? The cured-of-Djinni twin? Or the twin-in-musth who smelled her first, but who shouldn't be cured-of-Djinni ?

Does the good twin abduct Demetra by force? Or does the bad twin?
Which presents the greater danger to the heroine?

Which twin (good one or bad one) ought to come roaring to the rescue like an avenging .... djinn, furious that his brother has abducted his scent love.

(The ambiguity with the masculine possessive pronoun was deliberate.)

Maybe they should both be bad?

By the way, this is envisaged as a LoveSpell.  It's not "Justine".

All the best,
Rowena Cherry

Mating Net is now available as a Kindle (for $2 )

http://www.amazon.com/Mating-Net/dp/B002MQYO98/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253970411&sr=1-5

HOPE'S FOLLY

I’ve just finished reading Linnea’s recent novel HOPE’S FOLLY, and it’s a treat you shouldn’t miss. It’s a companion work (technically a sequel, in fact) to GABRIEL’S GHOST but stands on its own. The story kept me engrossed from start to finish; my attention didn’t even drift much during the battle scenes—unusual for me. Linnea has a gift for creating the illusion of a fully realized, complex universe of places, events, and people surrounding her onstage characters. For a STAR TREK fan, the action of this book will have a delightfully familiar feel in some ways, for instance in the scenes with the ship’s engineer, who pulls off miracles in the face of looming disaster. The hero and heroine, Admiral Philip Guthrie and former Imperial Security officer Rya Bennton, stand together as equally strong, likable characters. I fervently rooted for them to survive the threats menacing them and their ship and to overcome the emotional traumas obstructing their union—not to mention military taboos on intimacy within the chain of command. I like the fact that Philip is a mature man, not a barely grown boy, and his concern about the difference in their ages as well as their unequal rank comes across as realistic. Rya’s passion for fine weapons is an appealing trait that forges a special bond between her and Philip right from the scene where they meet again for the first time since he was a junior officer and she was his captain’s preteen daughter. (And since I’m not one bit of a gun buff myself, it’s amazing that the author entices me into feeling that this enthusiasm is sort of cute.) Another great bonus feature of the story is the ship’s cat, Folly, who plays a believably feline role in saving the mission. All SF fans who enjoy lovable characters of strength and integrity in emotionally gripping relationships, rush out and get this book!

By the way, Michele Hauf's Vamp Chix blog posted a guest essay by me yesterday, on "The Vampire as Alien."

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Targeting a Readership - PART ONE

Readers often watch TV or go to the movies. Today, movie-goers and TV/DVD watchers are less inclined to read books, unless they're spinnoffs.

Now, many TV shows have fan games and actor-blogs on their websites along with recent episodes to watch on your computer or handheld.

On the other hand, Amazon's Kindle seems to be attracting readers who shunned other e-book readers, even though the Kindle version can't do animation, full color, 3-D (which is growing big time now), and sound.

Still, a single title in text does not reach nearly as many as a TV show, and if you want to change the general attitude toward a genre such as Romance, you need to reach a very wide audience.

There is a new movie being advertised as a Romance, LOVE HAPPENS, which on imdb.com has (at this writing) garnered only 5.5 stars out of 10 -- half the audience doesn't like it. And the people who do, think it's mediocre, possibly because the trailers I've seen on TV sizzle with ROMANCE, but I'll bet the movie itself doesn't. But it is getting some big buck advertising.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0899106/

That's a theater release, and it will eventually be on DVD and TV, reaching even more people. But will it change their minds about Romance? Chances are good, the film is actually a "love story" more than it is a Romance.

Maybe Theater to broadcast TV is not the venue for a writer to aim at to get the largest possible audience?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090921/media_nm/us_emmys_demise_4

Is a report on the Emmy's broadcast drawing about 12.3 million viewers, and the presenters joking about the paltry numbers.

The population of the USA has gone up and up -- new census this year may turn up 330 million in the USA. I think it was about 9 or 8 years ago that the population hit 300 million, right after the last census.

For a broadcast TV show to draw a comparable audience to what TV shows of the 1960's drew, they would have to pull in about 100 million people to sit and watch the box for an hour.

Yeah, people used to sit through the commercials and not move for one whole hour. They wouldn't answer the phone, and that was before recorders and voice mail.

Can you imagine anyone doing that today? Not even answering their cell phone because the TV was on?

Today DVR's let you answer the phone, then roll back the show and catch what you missed even if you're not recording it, and fast-forward through commercials (though Congress wants to prevent the FF through commercials part).

People used to pay attention.

Imagine 100 million Americans (nevermind the rest of the world which might also see a show by satellite) all paying close attention to the same thing for one hour once a week. 100 million is about half all adults in the USA. It's not a lot of people, actually.

Then the next day they'd discuss it at work, in elevators, on twitter.

What if you hadn't seen it? Imagine the discussions you would be shut out of. Do you think you'd watch it next week?

Who cares what 12 million people are watching? That's 4% of the USA not 33% or 50% of adults.

The gist of the article on the Emmy's broadcast is that broadcast TV is losing to cable and the internet. The audience has become dispersed, so that today we have NOTHING to discuss in elevators.

Twitter and other social networks though are gathering the paltry few million with something in common to talk about, almost like fandom once was.  Today it's not called "fandom."  It's called a "niche." 

Jay Leno was pulling a whopping 7.7 million viewers in the 18-49 age group last week.

The Guiding Light has been canceled. That soap was on longer than I've been alive!

The 2009-10 season is expected to decline another 10%. (this is from Nielsen Ratings online at
http://tvbythenumbers.com/
It's a handy site for finding the numbers)

What are people doing? And why are they doing it? How can we capture their attention and hold it for an hour a week? If we could do that, would we have the ability to change an attitude?

OK, with DVR, DVD, and Web distribution too, it may not be the SAME hour that everyone pays attention to one thing.

Mystically, that simultaneity counts big time in creating change in what people think, or what they spend time thinking about.

Right now, however, we've lost simultaneity (which started to go away when they deployed kinescope to record shows broadcast in New York then rebroadcast them 3 hours later in California).
http://www.kinescope.tv/kinehistory.html gives a quick history and this picture of a kinescope recorder -- something I've never seen in person even though it revolutionized my life because I grew up in California!  Go to the website for a larger image where you can see the mechanism.  Wow.    

So we as writers have to go for subject matter.

The idea is to rivet your audience in place, hold them spellbound and deliver entertainment that fertilizes the subconscious, and makes people talk to each other (relationships is our business, remember) and think about what they've seen.

Have you watched any eps of DARK BLUE? It's about undercover cops, with lots of shooting and and ugly emotions, but it has a very high percentage of people-story woven into it. The undercover cops are emerging as real people with real angst and family ambitions -- and some of the perps they're trying to nail are deep enough as people to have recognizable life ambitions even if they are criminals and worse. It's an action series with complex heart.

Remember, we learned from Blake Snyder, May He Rest In Peace, that you put the real story you want to tell, your real theme, your heart, into the B story while the A story is the High Concept. DARK BLUE is a good example.

But any Romance in Dark Blue will turn up in the B story. We, however, are trying to figure out how to get the Romance into the A story, hitting a wide enough audience to convince the commercial interests that Romance is a respectable vehicle.

The only place (so far) that the writer can make that choice herself is text narrative. Webisodes, web-strips of still graphic novels, animations like machinima, are usually beyond the content creator such as a writer. And they cost too much, so far.

Google's project of putting POD machines into bookstores so you can print on demand some ancient public domain book you really want was discussed in Wired Magazine recently

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/09/google-books-publish-on-demand/

And the article has a NICE picture of a POD machine that costs about $100,000 (half the price of a house) and makes a 300 page book for about $3 in about 4 minutes, (the bookstore and google get paid on top of that expense so it costs you about $10.)

The article said:
---------------
Dane Neller, On Demand Books CEO, says the announcement flips book distribution on its head.

“We believe this is a revolution,” Neller said. “Content retrieval is now centralized and production is decentralized.”
--------------

And Dane Neller is correct that this absolutely inverts the fiction business model, just as Kinescope decentralized broadcast.  Change like this shifts whole civilizations, slowly but inexorably. 

Publishers, warehousers, distributors, all had to centralize to produce physical objects economically (huge printing presses doing print-run after print-run of books), organize them and put them before the eyes of potential (only potential) customers. Hit or miss, you never know if you'll sell what you make.

Writers all learn early the term "sell-through" and what that means for a career.

Now publishers only have to organize the information in a central place, and potential customers will browse through and find what they want, instead of going to see what's on the shelves and available.

Then the customer, no matter where she is, only has to wave her credit card and CLUNK a book falls out of the slot at her feet, or downloads onto her e-reader.

Just imagine all those old-old Romance novels that every author and publisher thought were read-and-toss, never to be reprinted trash will now be available in every bookstore. How will they find the writers to pay us? Will they even bother to try? The Google project issue is still in litigation and settlement status. Who knows what they'll do next.

"Home Entertainment" is undergoing the same kind of decentralizing revolution with "On Demand" programming that Google is bringing to publishing.

That revolution is basically the adoption of the internet model -- index it and let people pick what they want when they want.

As a society, we no longer march in lockstep, captive to the schedule devised by commercial interests. (that lockstep started with Radio and early moving-pictures)

Broadcast TV, Cable, Satellite, Internet, reality shows, "news" and "news commentary" shows, documentaries, travel, the food channel, scripted stuff like HEROS or HOUSE, M.D., drama or comedy, dramedy, and talk shows that let the audience have a podium, or talk shows with celebrities posturing, has fragmented "the audience."

Not even a third of the country watched the Presidential campaign, and that was home entertainment too. I think I remember the ratings indicated maybe 60 million or so at the peak, out of more than 200 million adults.

Home entertainment delivery is a huge industry becoming more diverse by the day. It includes video games you buy on disc, and access via the Web, play alone or against living opponents in real-time. Home entertainment includes anything people do for fun at home (with or without viagra).

Fiction, our kind of Alien Romance and oddball futuristic romance, or paranormal romance, is only a tiny fraction of a percent of that Home Entertainment industry.

But consider. "Novels" (not books; they may be gone for good already) may Novels, however, may not be HOME ENTERTAINMENT at all, because they're portable.

We already have a category of novel called a "Beach Read" -- and you all know what that is. It's not home entertainment. It's a mood for getting away from home. (of course, nobody will sue you for reading it in your backyard.)

A whole publisher's imprint called 'POCKET BOOKS' was founded in 1939 (and has passed through several owner's hands), with the concept of a book that would fit in your pocket. Bantam likewise aimed to make SMALL books to carry around with you.

Here's some history of publishing gathered neatly on the web.
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Pocket_Books#encyclopedia

Can anyone figure out why a site called absoluteastronomy.com would host a topic on publishing? I only found that through google.

To succeed at this strategy both Pocket and Bantam aimed for the MASS MARKET -- to publish nothing but best sellers. They wanted every book they published to be something everyone would want to read. The mid-list came later, but genres started as mass market (the Dime Novel western).

Nearly a hundred years ago there were still so few books being published that almost everyone could read almost every book, so people had something in common to discuss. In 1935 not everyone even had RADIO -- nevermind TV which was more a laboratory toy than a practical device.

The e-book was on the way to fitting in your pocket when suddenly Amazon and Sony and others made readers that not only don't fit in your pocket (or even in my purse), but they don't bend so you can force them in.

People carry DVD players around, too, to watch movies on the commuter train for example, and that's not even touching on ipods.

I think the entire field labeled by marketers as HOME ENTERTAINMENT needs to be re-labeld PERSONAL ENTERTAINMENT.

When you start thinking about it as PERSONAL entertainment, you can begin to solve the problem of where everyone went.

And the answer is simple. Everywhere. Everywhere but home.

Why don't these broadcast TV shows, cable shows, shows on the web etc, pull in at least a third of the adults (or a third of the kids, for that matter). Why are audiences so small?

Why do ebooks sell a few HUNDRED copies (unless they have huge advertising behind them) instead of at least 10's of thousands?

And given this fragmentation trend, how do you as a writer find an audience to target?

What do we all have in common?

If we don't have commonality, can we be a community? And if we're not a community, where does Romance fit into things?

Rowena Cherry has been talking about dominance games in galactic politics, the clashing of civilizations or at least societies on a giant scale, and how the resulting fragmentation is giving rise to individuals who are drawn to conquer in order to re-create order. We've seen that scenario playing out in the Balkans and now in what had once been Persia, was conquered by Constantine, and sub-divided with a ruler by Britain, leaving the resulting tribal feuds for you and me to sort out.

We've seen civilizations crumble in History, and on CNN. Rowena and a host of others are writing about interstellar civilizations crumbling. Is that because our own civilization is crumbling about us?

My theory is that love and romance are what hold civilizations together. How do we tell a story that will hold this civilization together?

There are some big questions to think about here, so do some thinking and eventually I'll take up this topic of audience cohesiveness and Readership identification again.

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