Constructing The Opening Of Action Romance

Story openings are difficult to construct and even harder to troubleshoot once constructed.

Information must be coded, compact, subtle, "off the nose" and at the same time explain to a totally disinterested reader why they should read (or viewer why they should view) this story.

I've discussed openings and how to construct them in the context of many other posts on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com -- posts on theme, character, plot, and the other working parts of story.

Here's some posts on structure which reference the skills of constructing an opening.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/sexy-information-feed.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/01/worldbuilding-for-science-fiction.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/7-proofing-steps-for-quality-writing.html

And here's one on first chapters by Linnea Sinclair

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/03/first-chapter-foibles.html

And my usage of the words "story" and "plot" just to be clear about that.  Theme is what glues them together.

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


If you've been trying to apply these techniques, I now have a really great example to illustrate them. 

Here is the novel IMMORTAL by Gene Doucette - a writer I met via twitter and #scifichat #scriptchat and others.

Immortal

The structural issues make this a very borderline book, and it may not make it into my professional review column for that reason alone.  However, there is a compelling resonance here that makes this a "can't put it down" read.

The structural issues that are a put-off for me might well be the real source of interest to others.  Structure is not absolute.  There are elements of taste involved.

So I have to say that the structure chosen to tell this story seems unnecessarily involuted to me.  It's too complex for the material.

What is this structure?

The first-person narrative does hold to the POV of first person (an Immortal born so long ago language was only grunts).  So I have no complaints there.

The structure is clever. 

Each chapter is introduced by a few paragraphs set in italics that are happening while the main character is a prisoner (hung hero) in a laboratory setting where they are obviously investigating his immortality and immune system.

If the novel were told starting with his capture and going through his escape attempts until he succeeded, it would be a drag, long, boring hung-hero dealing with distractions rather than advancing the plot.

The plot is not about him escaping prison. 

The actual narrative tells the story of this Immortal discovering that someone is after him.

This "someone" is rich and powerful and hires "demons" as hit men tasked with taking him alive.

Other people, though, die all around him. 

So the straight-through plot is this Immortal being chased by humans, hit-men, demons, (actually some online gamers being used as dupes) and there are vampires, and a female who may be as old as he is (or older) he isn't sure.  There's another woman involved, too, so you have a sort of "triangle" situation which isn't made clear even at the end of this volume.  But the ending leaves us eager to read the next installment in this guy's Relationship problem. 

He's been playing tag with this Immortal woman for millennia.  (I told you this is good stuff.) And in the end of this novel, he learns some things about her, and his Relationship to the woman he meets in this novel changes substantially -- so the plot is advanced and there is a solid "ending" leading to a sequel. 

At JUST THE RIGHT POINT (I told you the structure is well done for what it is) we get to the event where he gets captured at just the point where he hatches a successful escape attempt.

All the elements (characters and tools) to create this escape have been properly introduced in prior scenes.  The possibility that he can die permanently has been made real. 

So what's "wrong" here?  This plot rumbles along like a well oiled machine.  Why is it a chore to read? This is a good writer with a solid track record.  What happened here?

There are 2 very abstract technical problems with this absolutely fascinating novel (don't worry, there's a sequel in the works that'll be better).

#1) The point in time chosen for Chapter One is wrong.

#2) The innate "character" of this character may be either badly presented or actually formulated wrong. 

OK, let's start with #1 because that's easy to fix once you understand why it doesn't work.

------SPOILER ALERT -----

As often stated in this blog, I don't believe a good story can be "spoiled" by knowing what's going to happen in it.  If it can, it's not a good book.  If you understand that, read on fearlessly.  You'll still love reading this book.  In fact you may love it more after reading this discussion.  

The first characters introduced after the main character wakes up out of a drunken stupor end up dead right away. 

It is established that this dissipated and dis-likeable main character telling the story actually holds this pair of unlikeable college men in some affection -- mostly because they enjoy getting drunk and watching ballgames on TV with him.

This is a portrayal of college students that does not "work" for me.

What rule is violated by this portrayal? 

Many 1940's SF novels elevate and laud drunkenness as a means to accessing higher consciousness or even one's innate intellectual skills.  I used to like those novels.  I know too much now to find such an attitude laudable. 

Opening a story with a guy (apparently homeless bum) crashing in a college student's apartment and supplying beer and liquor to keep them drunk just doesn't work for me.  I feel no sense of identification with this main character and couldn't care less what happens to him.

The information fed into the story-line by this opening situation is that this guy is not homeless, not poor, is capable of affection for these young men, and is -- ta-da! Immortal. 

He ended up in the apartment having been brought there to a party by a friend (not-human not-magical iifrit) who also plays dissipated drunk convincingly. That friend later returns to move the plot forward, solidly and convincingly.

So I don't like this immortal character because he gets humans (who can be harmed by drunkeness) drunk while he drinks to a stupor but can't be harmed by it.  He stays drunk for centuries just for the fun of it. 

We see a portrait of an individual blessed with long life, not invulnerable but Immortal (so far). 

I dealt with this problem of being immortal among mortals in my Dushau Trilogy, but my immortals there were aliens (I do vampires in other universes such as Those Of My Blood.)

Dushau (Dushau Trilogy)

My Dushau Immortals studiously avoid close personal relationships with mortals because they have perfect memories and too many bereavements can lead to insanity.

Doucette saw this problem as well, but handles it differently and with some intriguing twists.

In the course of the opening set-up chapters of this novel, we see this Immortal experience affection and friendship for a number of humans.  His heart opens and he bonds easily with all and sundry (even vampires). 

This makes him, to me, an irresistible character.  Could not put this book down.

But at the same time, there's the "gritty realism" that this character has murdered -- over thousands of years, for many reasons, causing death has become no great big deal.  And we see him murder mercilessly.  Maybe with some justice, but with a callous attitude. 

Now here we come to the Information Feed issue.

Go back to SAVE THE CAT! (the 3 books by Blake Snyder on screenwriting).

Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need

What does the title say?

To engage your viewer INTO bonding with the main character whose story you are about to tell, you MUST first reveal something about him that will arouse viewer sympathy, empathy, identification or a yearning to become "like that."

The first thing we learn about the dingiest, dirty-harry character you want to present has to be LAUDABLE, universally laudable.

So Blake Snyder says -- show your hero SAVING THE CAT.  Taking a risk for the helpless, or otherwise revealing an admirable character trait BEFORE you reveal the gritty traits that make the 6 problems the character has to solve.

Nothing in the introduction to Doucette's Immortal is in any way "saving the cat" -- drunkenness itself which is not a real PROBLEM for the Immortal but which harms those humans he associates with is not laudable.  Bumming around among college parties with an Iffrit with dissipated habits is not laudable.  That this is done by choice because he has nothing else to do is cause for reader disinterest.

So, while there are many traits about this Immortal character that are absolute grabbers, what we learn first are put-offs.

The put-offs will eventually become the problems that establishing Relationships will solve.

But as depicted in the opening, this Immortal has no conflict (internal or external) in forming friendships. 

The first real plot event is the news that the college students who hosted him have been murdered by a demon -- and the assumption that the demon had been aiming at the Immortal while the college students just got in the way.

The structural problem with this plot event is simply that the Immortal was not in the apartment when the demon killed the students.  The event happened off stage.

The Immortal actually feels a little sad and maybe miffed that the humans he felt affection for (briefly, in passing, without depth) had been murdered because of his presence in the apartment.

If not for that feeling, he'd have just blown town.  But the murder of the humans made it more personal. He wants to fight back. 

So from there on, the story gets interesting.  The plot advances, and you begin to see where things are going with the bits at the beginning of chapters showing he's going to be captured.

The next structural innovation that is unnecessarily complicated is a shift in the narrative voice at the point where the two narratives (the chapter headings during captivity and the chapters leading up to being captured) come together.  The standard first-person past narrative suddenly becomes first person present.

This is unnecessarily jarring, a real put-off.

In a different sort of story, it wouldn't be a put-off.

In fact, the entire structure could be the best artistic choice for some stories.  Stories that involve say, time-travel, could work this way.  Or stories about known historical events -- a King Arthur legend, The French Revolution, etc. 

But in this particular narrative, the device seems like an erroneous choice because the material itself is strong enough to carry the reader straight through the plot.

So what we seem to have is a story-concept, a very intriguing character, that needed introducing to a readership.

There is a huge over-burden of background to work in.  This character is 10's of thousands of years old and his development as a human being has direct relevance to how he relates to the modern century.  He admits that at first his people were barely self-aware.  He still has long-distance running skills from running down game for days at a time.  He has trouble relating what happened to him in his life to the various calendars that have come and gone. 

There's a lot of background to work in.  A lot of information to feed.

The Immortal's story is being picked up when two women come into his life and that changes things significantly.  But that means the story has to portray how things were for him "before" so that how things become "now" and will be "after" these relationships start to affect him. 

How can you plot that when it's all information feed.

How can you avoid expository lumps? 

The story and the plot are totally stationary in this Immortal's life all through this novel. 

He's a "hung hero" on two levels -- being captured and imprisoned to be studied, and being chased down to be captured but he doesn't know by whom or why until the last third of the novel.

So the author cleverly structured the two stories against each other to give the illusion of movement.

Without the headings at the beginnings of chapters, we wouldn't anticipate him being imprisoned or why or how hard it would be to escape.  It's foreshadowing by expository lump, cleverly translated into show-don't-tell (yes the chapter headings read very well, no mistakes there).

Without the story of his being chased down and captured, the story of escaping from prison wouldn't carry the novel.

So given that you have this terrific character with a huge exposition needed to introduce him, and NOTHING HAPPENING in his life to make a story, what do you do?

The solution to clever-up the structure is actually a work of genius. 

But for me it just doesn't "work" because the story there is to tell about this Immortal does not require artsy-craftsy tricks of structure.

This Immortal's story actually begins when he meets the woman who will change his life, his self-concept, cause him to become involved in the modern world, in humanity and humanity's future by using all his past experience in the service of a greater good.

For any man, that change is always caused by a MATE - a SOUL-MATE (for most it's female, but not always). 

The element is LOVE.  The journey is from today's misery to "happily ever after." 

When that story starts to move, the novel begins.  All the rest is throat-clearing. 

The story starts where the two elements that will conflict first come together. 

So for this Immortal, that point is where he meets this human woman who will become significant forevermore.

But the story of his being captured and escaping is an incident, an excuse for action scenes, not the story, not the path to resolving the conflict.

Taking Blake Snyder's advice, the story starts where SHE sees HIM "save the cat" -- i.e. do something that endears him to her, that makes her willing to RISK something to save him.

Do you see where this is headed? 

We have a classic PASSIVE HERO - he fights, he takes action, but his decisions do not actually make a real difference.  This very clever, very skilled author has hidden this salient fact under some virtuoso writing, but the fact itself spoils everything in this novel.

What do you do to solve a PASSIVE HERO problem?  What do you do to avoid expository lumps?  What do you do to find a new opening for the novel that does not focus on a hung-hero who can't do anything about his problems and about whom the only important facts are odious to the very readers who would most enjoy the novel? 

The solution is excrutiatingly simple. Think hard. It is a tried and true classic any seasoned editor would toss at a writer who sent in a chapter and outline like this.  Why is this writer fumbling to tell this story when he obviously knows how to write novels?

See my 7 part series here on editing -- here's the 7th which has a list of links to the previous parts:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-exactly-is-editing-part-vii-how-do.html

Now, think-think-think. 

If you've read the novel now, you may see the obvious solution. 

This whole thing is not the Immortal's story.

The expository lumps cleverly avoided by having the first person narrative allude to events in past millennia (a literary device that works) are filled with information we don't need to be TOLD -- on the nose. 

And though these allusions are cleverly phrased to appear incidental, they are "on the nose" data-dumps.  The data is mostly irrelevant to the Immortal's story.

How do you avoid that?  What do you change? 

I loved reading this Immortal's "voice" -- but that didn't change the fact that the expository lumps disguised as clever narrative that carried characterization just don't "work."

Why don't they "work?"  Because the information in each memory is not something I wanted to know before I read it.  No suspense.  No revelation.  I didn't have to work for it.  I wasn't asking the question "what happened to this guy in Egypt?"  I didn't NEED TO KNOW in order to solve the mystery of who's after him. 

Because of that I didn't care who was after him or why.  He felt it was ho-hum, being chased another time -- yawn.  So it bored me.

At the opening, in the college student's apartment, this Immortal wakes up from a drunken stupor. 

If ever you are tempted to start a story (and yes, I've done it!) with the main character "waking up" in some improbable circumstance or confused -- STOP WRITING and go back to the drawing board.  Something is wrong conceptually with the structure or the character. 

The story opens where the two elements that will conflict to generate the conflict which will be resolved in the last chapter first come together.

What happens in the last chapter of this novel?

The woman the Immortal meets pretty well into this novel finally gets what she wants, positions herself where she wants to be. 

The Immortal succeeds in achieving NOT ONE THING that he SET OUT TO ACHIEVE in the opening.  He wasn't either setting out or achieving.  He was stationary in his life when SOMETHING HAPPENS TO HIM. 

The two types of plot that go with this kind of material are:

1) Johnny gets his fanny caught in a bear trap and has his adventures getting it out

2) A likeable hero struggles against seemingly overwhelming odds toward a worthwhile goal.

In the opening to this novel, the Immortal does not DO ANYTHING, decide anything, take any action, learn anything, or even pray for anything that CAUSES anything else to happen.

Thus the Immortal (Johnny) does not GET his own fanny caught.  That is he does not take an action that initiates a because-line. 
In this novel the Immortal is not introduced by any trait that is even remotely likeable by any substantial audience-demographic.  He is by any measure no hero and most importantly, he has no goal. 

All of these fatal flaws are totally hidden by the superb writing craftsmanship. 

And hereby hangs a cautionary tale.

When you are writing a story that has hold of you by the guts, a story you just have to get others to read, a compelling story -- and you find that you have to HIDE THE FLAWS, then STOP RIGHT THERE and go back to the drawing board.

Readers may not know how to tell you what's wrong, but they will sense something wrong and many of the very readers who should read the book just won't finish it.

Don't use your skills to hide flaws.  Use them to eliminate the flaws.

The flaw in the novel IMMORTAL by Gene Doucette is the very most common flaw I see in manuscripts (and even published novels in Mass Market), and I see the very readers who would enjoy the novel most putting it aside.

It's a simple flaw and it's easy to fix.  You know it's there when you face pages of utterly essential expository lumps. 

YOU ARE TELLING THE STORY FROM THE WRONG POINT OF VIEW.

Now re-imagine this novel, IMMORTAL, from the woman's point of view.

She is the online gamer.  She has an eclectic education, a vast imagination, an embracing nature.  Her story starts when she gets the first inkling that such a thing as "an Immortal male" exists.

Her goal, which she pursues as relentlessly as the Immortal once ran down game animals, is to meet a living Immortal man. 

When she meets him, her GOAL shifts to getting him into bed. 

Her goal shifts when her heart opens to embrace this Immortal as a person, not just an icon. 

Her goal shifts again when she realizes she wants this guy, she wants to be with him. 

And that final goal, at the end of this novel, seems to have been achieved.

She is the one whose life changes, by her own actions, by her own determination, by her own will, by her own heroism.  And that change is a WORTHWHILE GOAL that can be achieved only over SEEMINGLY OVERWHELMING ODDS. 

She is the likeable hero who struggles against seemingly overwhelming odds toward a worthwhile goal - one she only sees dimly when she takes that first, fateful, step. 

This novel is her story.

Here is a marvelous post by Linnea Sinclair on Point of View.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/heading-into-danger-choosing-point-of.html
Now from within her point of view, FINDING OUT, or discovering, or unfolding, or digging up the information about how The Immortal interacted with the ancient past, what his opinion of it is, and any relevant detail of his past experiences, becomes the main story-imperative.

As we sink into her point of view, we adopt her urgent need to know, and feel sparks of triumph every time we worm some new tidbit out of the Immortal.

All the expository lumps disappear and we learn his story through her eyes.  What we don't know becomes spice, incense, and erotic triggers. 

Saving him from the laboratory (which she does very cleverly) becomes the plot which culminates in conflict resolved and if not an HEA at least an "off into the sunset" ending leading to a sequel where we chase the HEA which is now suddenly possible - but maybe not going to happen.

So this opening novel, the introduction to the Immortal as a character, is not his story because his life is static at that point. 

Yet through her eyes, we can enter into his life, understand what makes him tick better than he does himself, and see what he needs to do to learn what he must learn in order to change and grow, i.e. to be alive in a real sense, not just immortal.

Sometimes a character's story can be more compelling, more dramatic, easier to write and easier to read when that character's story is seen from outside.  Remember Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. 

Always turn your material around and around, looking at it through the eyes of various characters before writing. 

Notice here the power of THE OUTLINE.  Given an outline of the plot, it would be immediately clear that the ending does not match the beginning and the middle doesn't hit the right "mid-point" tension note.

Once you see that the ending happens where one character achieves a goal, and the other character acquires a goal, you will know where the story starts.

Maybe you'll read this book and totally disagree because the character revealed in the smart-ass inner dialogue is just too interesting to lose by switching points of view.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com  

ps: in a few weeks we'll walk through the step-by-step process of stitching all these disparate techniques together and invent a world bursting with story-potential. That'll be at least a 7-part series of posts.

The best and the brightest

Avatar was interesting because humans were the aliens. The aliens wanted minerals. They didn't care about the natives one way or another, as long as the natives didn't interfere with the mining operations.

In Jules Verne's The Time Machine, humanity had become two species: the hunters and the hunted. They could interbreed, but one group were the brutal predators and the others were flower children/cattle.

On Facebook, a friend wrote: "The good Lord was good to me. He gave me a strong body, a good right arm, and a weak mind." ~Dizzy Dean

There is a beer advertisement on TV which appears to make everyone happy....

If aliens were to annex Earth, they would probably prefer to preserve the weak minded among us, either as slaves or for a food source. The best and the brightest would have to be eliminated, because they are the ones who would make a nuisance of themselves.

Based on that assumption, what would be the best way to go about a successful annexation?

Why I think Yahoo and Borders should join forces

http://rowenacherry.blogspot.com/2011/01/perfect-mating.html

What Are Books For?

The Winter 2010 Phi Beta Kappa newsletter includes an article called "What Are Books Good For?" by William Germano. The author starts by listing the four great "epochal events" in the evolution of the book: The invention of writing; the codex (book as we know it, with pages and a cover) as a replacement for the scroll; printing with movable type; and of course the e-book.

It's interesting, by the way, that digital texts take a step backwards in one sense. They revert from the codex to the scroll, and there are good reasons why the former has dominated the field for so many centuries. A book with pages you can flip through at will is simply easier to find a particular passage in; the electronic search function tries hard to make up for this problem but is far from perfect.

Germano also discusses two "great dreams" of scholarship that are currently coming true: "universal access to knowledge" and "knowledge building as a self-correcting, collective exercise" (e.g., Wikipedia). Both of which, of course, depend on the Internet. I'm reminded of another Asimov prediction I noticed while scanning some of his essays last week, the dream of a worldwide encyclopedia anyone could access. Well, we're there!

Germano asks whether the "book" is the physical object the holds the text or "the knowledge that the hidden text is always prepared to reveal"? He answers that the book is both, and he commendably points out that a book can exist in any binding or in an electronic reading device.

His answer to what books are good for—they encase knowledge. "Books take ideas and set them down, transforming them through the limitations of space into thinking usable by others." Not only ideas, I'd point out, but emotions and sheer entertainment. He maintains, however, that even argument is a form of narrative; storytelling is central to writing. Well said!

Another interesting point, which I think might be problematic. He says, "Narrative is rarely collective" and is not "infinitely expandable." It has a "shape and temporality" and, like human lives, an ending. True, one way to look at genre is in terms of what slice of life a given story presents and where it chooses to declare an end. Cut off the narrative in one place, and you have comedy; in another, tragedy. Yet in the realm of fan fiction we often encounter shared worlds that go on indefinitely. Not to mention the older narrative form of the soap opera, where the story spins on from week to week and year to year without ever reaching an end.

Germano concludes by declaring that ideally "books are luminous versions of our ideas, bound by narrative structure so that others can encounter those better, smarter versions of us." I'd love to believe my readers see a "better, smarter" version of me.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Ancient Egypt & Blood-Suckin’ Dead Guys

Here below is a Guest post by the commenter you've seen on this blog many times, KimberAn.

As she has mentioned, she has been writing novels, pondering all the advice given by the various professional writers on this blog -- and Lo! now she is a published fiction writer too.

It occurred to me that you might want to hear directly from her about what reading all these posts on this blog has done to help her.  When you read her first novel (and many to follow I'm sure) you may be able to see how, when "advice" is incorporated into a creative work, it really doesn't exactly resemble the advice any more.

So the "advice" KimberAn will be giving her students won't look the same.  But it will no doubt be the same.

Listen to her now.

------------KimberAn-------------
Guest Post By KimberAn
Ancient Egypt & Blood-Suckin’ Dead Guys


First, a big ‘thank you’ to Jacqueline Lichtenberg for inviting me to guest post for her!

Jacqueline has been talking a lot about world-building lately and thank goodness too, because I have a lot of it to

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/10/worldbuilding-with-fire-and-ice-part-i.html

Part II was posted on November 2, 2010 and Part III on November 9, 2010

After I first created my alien/human hybrids, the Newbloods, for Sugar Rush and made them vampire-like, I realized I had to bring in the mythic vampire, the Oldbloods, too or my blood-suckers wouldn’t make sense.  The trouble is I’ve never been into mythic vampires.  I had to, um, look ‘em up on Wikipedia.

Oh, sure, I liked Jacqueline’s blood-suckers in Those of My Blood and Peeps is my favorite Scott Westerfeld novel.  But, those guys are Science Fiction, you know, aliens and parasites and stuff like that.  Very cool. 

Those of My Blood


Peeps


Fortunately, I really didn’t have to go into the Oldbloods much in Sugar Rush, except to say they originated the vampire myth and they think the heroine would make an excellent operative for them.  Oh, okay, Brandon, Ophelia’s friend, was an Oldblood too, but he’s not a very good one.  He loves the smell of Twinkies, plays Nintendo DS, and always looks both ways before he crosses the road.  It just didn’t make sense to me that a newly created being wouldn’t go through a childhood and rebel against his society’s norm in an adolescence.  The whole idea of instant-vampire, powerful and sophisticated, didn’t make sense to me.

The point is I didn’t have to do much world-building for the Oldbloods in the first book.

In the next book, Sugar Baby, which I hope to have out by April or so, I really need to get into the Oldbloods because the next book after that is heavy on the Newbloods and, again, the Newbloods won’t make sense if I don’t lay the Oldblood foundation first.  I probably learned that here on Alien Romances a long time ago, but I can’t remember the exact post.

Anyway, I dug into my history books and discovered that you can find the vampire myth in just about every culture on Earth.  The earliest records are in Ancient Babylon, Ancient China, and Ancient Egypt.  When I learned this, I was like, “Cool!  I love those dead guys!”  I can do this.  Yeah, yeah, sure I can.

Oh, yeah, fiction writers have to do their homework.

I read through Jacqueline’s series of posts, World-Building with Fire and Ice.  It’s going to take a while to digest all the wisdom imparted in them, but a couple of things struck me right off.

From the November 11th post World-Building with Fire and Ice, Part II

One is the common belief that there is no Happily Ever After in real life.

The other is that audiences and readers only want to be entertained.

Interestingly, I thought, the same people who hold to these beliefs are the same ones who are baffled by the success of the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer (out in Kindle omnibus edition November 11, 2010) and the movies based on them.  My daughter just got me into those stories, so I’m not really an authority on them.

The Twilight Saga (Boxed Set w/four Collectable prints)


I know more about Harry Potter. 

All Things Harry Potter

Although I can’t pinpoint where all the type-ohs and kissing scenes are like she can, I adore the series and all the movies too.

Well, I learned a few things as a book reviewer for four years and a mom observing the Harry Potter phenomena, as well as other successful Middle Grade and Young Adult novels.  If you know anything about child development, for example, you will know that J.K. Rowling totally nailed the emotional needs and perceptions of the average eleven-year old child in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.  She didn’t simply play to the child, she *validated* and even *fulfilled* some of the child’s emotional needs.  I watched her interview with Oprah Winfrey a while back and she said that a young person walked up to her in the street one day and said,

“You were my childhood.”

Do you realize what that means?  I mean, okay, this is my opinion based on my Early Childhood education and experience and reading the Harry Potter novels.  But, I believe it illustrates the secret of Rowling’s success.

She didn’t merely entertain the child.  She engaged the child.  And she gave him a Happily Ever After.

And she’s raked in billions of dollars worldwide and now has her own theme park in Florida.

This flies in the face of the belief in entertainment only and no such thing as HEA.

And it proves what Jacqueline has been saying all along.  Check out

Worldbuilding With Fire And Ice posted on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com on November 2, 2010 for these quotes:


-------QUOTE JACQUELINE LICHTENBERG--------

A:
Today, projects which would reach vast audiences have to be shaped to exemplify that now institutionalized philosophy.

Audiences are just looking to be entertained, value for a buck. They don't care about philosophy.  It's abstract and irrelevant to the thrill, kick, payoff of the "ending." But when everything you entertain yourself with conforms to a certain philosophy, it becomes an unquestionable truth within the unconscious part of your mind.  It becomes your philosophy by which you make judgments and behave, regardless of what you think you believe or want or prefer to believe.

It's the steady diet that does that.

B:
We "know" the HEA is real and true, it's our unconscious assumption, but not shared by everyone.  The artist, the performing artist, the writer must be able to see the world through the eyes of people who have unconscious assumptions (Philosophies) different from the writer's and explain one reader's assumptions to another reader who does not share those assumptions.

I've said this before.  The artist's subconscious communicates with the art-customer's subconscious directly, and does that best when the conscious mind is directed elsewhere (as a magician points at something to prevent you from noticing something he's doing on the other side).

Philosophy resides in the subconscious and over-rides the conscious mind's decisions (that's why it's so hard to stick to a diet unless your subconscious has decided to do it).  That's why married folk have affairs against their conscious will and desire.  The subconscious rules, and so the philosophy programmed into the subconscious is the deciding factor in the HEA problem and argument.

The method we have to figure out how to employ is the method the publicity and advertising folks who work for politicians are using against us -- our unexamined, unquestioned, unknown-to-us ASSUMPTIONS. A philosophy that lurks within the subconscious, unknown to us, can command our life-decisions -- and determine what fiction we enjoy.

-------END QUOTE OF JACQUELINE LICHTENBERG -----

How does that take me to Ancient Egypt and vampires?

Well, in order to engage your reader, you must understand human nature.  Don’t get hung up on what people say.  Watch what they do.  See how they live.  Get behind their eyes.  Keep your mouth shut and listen.

A big chunk of this learning can be found in anthropology, the study of humankind.  Besides my nanny training, my anthropology class in college has been the most useful aspect of my formal education.  I really must look up my professor and thank her.

So, I read Jacqueline’s post, Ancient Egypt & Steampunk ...

Posted on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com on December 21, 2010

...with interest.  I’ve always enjoyed exploring ancient mysteries.  I’ve read all about Atlantis, including Atlantis: The Antediluvian World by Ignatius Donnelly.

Atlantis: The Antediluvian World and Other Works by Ignatius Donnelly (Halcyon Classics)


I loved the original Stargate movie. 

Stargate (Ultimate Edition)


I probably would’ve loved the TV series too, but I just didn’t have time to watch it.  I was enthralled by ancient machines on the History Channel (history.com).

History Channel Store on Amazon

It all got me thinking about the origins of my Oldbloods, but also of the other not-completely-human characters in the Sugar Rush stories.  The Newbloods are recent arrivals in my fictional universe, but there are other humanoid species trying to make their way on planet Earth too.

Now, if I had any pride, I’d say I can’t tell you anymore about my world-building for the Ophelia Dawson Chronicles, because it would give away too much of the story.  The pathetic truth is I still have a lot to learn and a lot of research to do and a lot of figuring out of what is what and who is who.  I have a big posterboard tacked to my wall and I jot down family trees and species intermingling criss-crossing time and continents and such.  I jot them down in pencil and I have a big eraser and lots of Advil.  (Note to Self: Buy Post-It Notes)

‘Cause readers are smart.  You may be busy and you may be tired, but you’re really smart.  And I know no matter how hard I try, I won’t get everything past you.

I promise to do my best though.
;)
Kimber An
http://www.kimberan.com/
------------End KimberAn's Post-------------

And you may want to read the Guest Post I submitted to her own blog:

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Science, Fiction and the Public Domain (comma intended)

If one includes Vampires and The Occult as "science fiction", I count 5 instances this week where "Sellers" on EBay have mistakenly announced that multiple works of science fiction are "in the public domain" and that therefore they (the sellers) assert that they either own the copyright or have the legal right to flog these e-book collections on CDs.

Example

Not so!

Another example

Please note the small print "NOTE TO EBAY".

These two examples of EBay listings are themselves works of fiction. Please note, it is quite possible that the Sellers honestly do not understand the words they are using. My rant is against ignorance and disinformation.

The so-called "freely distributable" eBooks are in fact snagged from well known file-sharing sites. They are not "in the public domain".

The fact that some ignorant/unscrupulous/malicious/greedy person has upped copyright-protected works to a file-sharing site, and is "sharing" them with the general public does NOT put the works into the public domain.

The works are only "freely distributable" because technology makes it possible for the works to be distributed easily by copyright infringers. That does not mean that it is legal to distribute them, copy them, "share" them, encourage others to "share" them, or to sell them.

I apologize for posting two weeks in a row about copyright infringement. Authors of all genres ought to be aware of what is going on, but most of all, of the damage being done owing to the apparently widespread ignorance or disregard for what "the public domain" means.

There is a natural perception that "If 1,000 EBayers are doing it, it must be legal", which is really difficult to combat, especially when the EBay feedback system touts alleged mega-copyright infringers (who might be illegally sharing multiple copies of 8,000 or more copyrighted works per auction) as 100% positive.

The problem may be even worse on other auction sites, depending upon one's focus. Mine is on what happens when people are told that e-books are in the public domain, when they are not.

Population Apocalypse?

The January issue of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC begins a series of articles about global population issues with a recap of historical warnings about overpopulation, beginning with Malthus, and an assessment of where we are now. The number of people on Earth will soon reach seven billion. Even with the current falling birth rates, population will continue to increase for some time because of falling death rates. The article predicts a world inhabited by nine billion people in the year 2045. This writer points out, however, that the immediate problem isn't raw population in itself, but the use of resources. How can the worldwide standard of living be raised? Pick up this magazine and read the article; it contains some fascinating and provocative thoughts.

Around forty years ago, Isaac Asimov wrote several essays on the approaching population crisis, illustrating the maxim that prediction is hard, especially about the future. In "Freedom at Last" (1970), he mused on the probable future of a girl who would turn twenty-one in 1990. He correctly foresaw that marriage and motherhood would no longer be considered women's only essential role and that women would hold economic and political positions formerly restricted to men. However, he thought by 1990 the threat of overpopulation would become so obvious that all objections (including religious) to birth control would have evaporated.

In "The End" (1971), he ran the numbers and estimated that at the then-current rate of our numerical growth, the mass of humanity would equal the total quantity of mass in the known universe by the year 6826. For a more "realistic" projection, he calculated the date when the mass of human flesh would equal that of all animal life on Earth (as a corollary, all other animals would have become extinct, replaced by us): 2346!

At that point, the entire world would be inhabited at twice the present density of Manhattan at noon. That situation would theoretically be sustainable, if human beings were spread evenly over the globe in a planet-wide city of high-rise buildings with algae farms on the roofs. Who would want to live that way? And Asimov, of course, acknowledges that this scenario will never happen. Long before then, either a more humane solution will be found or a catastrophic collapse will occur.

Turning to more immediate concerns, he discusses energy needs (he estimates that if no new energy sources were found, we would run out by 2070) and finally the social and political effects of overcrowding. On the basis of the latter consideration, here's what he concludes: "It seems to me, then, that by A.D. 2000 or possibly earlier, man's social structure will have utterly collapsed, and that in the chaos that will result as many as three billion people will die." (Since he lived into the 1990s, he must have been pleasantly surprised.)

Soon afterward, Asimov wrote an essay titled "The End, Unless..." (1971), offering potential solutions. The cure involves birth control, of course, and a society restructured in terms of "ecology management" and "education for leisure," with the implication of worldwide government. Particularly bittersweet in terms of our present plight is Asimov's assumption that a heavily populated (if well-managed) future will entail unprecedented amounts of leisure with the prosperity to work at one's own passions rather than toil for survival.

On the other hand, in 1974 he delivered a more optimistic lecture on the future of our species:

Future of Humanity

Some of the predictions turned out to be accurate; however, the declaration that war was becoming obsolete makes one almost glad Asimov didn't live to see 2001.

Among the many SF works that have imagined the future consequences of Earth's overcrowding, BRAVE NEW WORLD strikes me as actually one of the most benign. For the vast majority who don't mind being infantilized by genetic engineering and lifelong conditioning, it's a pleasant world to live in. Population, of course, is completely controlled (aside from a few pockets of "savages" such as the tribe from which the outsider John comes) by having all babies grown in vitro. Then there are less pleasant scenarios, such as Charles Beaumont's "The Crooked Man" (1955), a short story of a future in which homosexuality is the norm and heterosexual relationships illegal. I suspect that long before the world or a large portion of it reaches the point of accepting such draconian measures, the Four Horsemen would intervene. Any nonviolent solution, if there is one, will likely be more gradual and piecemeal.

Anyway, Happy New Year!

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Failure of Imagination Part 4 - Teasing Off The Blinders

Back in October 2010, Heather Massey, posted on The Galaxy Express, a discussion of my blog post Failure of Imagination Part 3 - Education.

Here's my post:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/09/failure-of-imagination-part-iii.html

And here's what Heather said, telling a story about how she "discovered" Martial Arts films can be about something. She notes that she was wearing the kind of blinders I described in my post Part 3, and wonders if people who shun Romance or SF are in the same pickle.

http://www.thegalaxyexpress.net/2010/10/jackie-chan-and-science-fiction-romance.html

In short, my answer is yes, it's exactly the same phenomenon, and it's purely human.

Our brains work on a kind of analog model of the universe, and we have to understand everything as "like" something else.

When someone comes home from vacation bubbling over with stories to tell, people ask (irritatingly) "what was it like to meet this celebrity?" etc.

Well, the WHOLE POINT of the "experiential" education is that it's NOT LIKE anything.

It's a new thing that later things can be likened to.

It's a new benchmark.  A new internal referent. 

Discovering that Martial Arts films are in fact "art" (oh, yes, I have a deep appreciation of Martial Arts films, and once studied them carefully) is a gigantic epiphany for Romance readers.

That is the kind of epiphany that happens when those mental blinders discussed in Part 3 of Failure of Imagination are ripped off.

Martial Arts films can have a lot to say about the human condition, the realities of magic, the use and abuse of power, the objective of becoming powerful, etc etc.

Just as the Romance Genre is built around a set of themes derived from the abstract philosophical premise Love Conquers All, so the Martial Arts films are built around a single, very abstract philosophical premise.

Finding and articulating that premise may give you a better understanding of Science Fiction, and I would suppose each of us would have a different assessment of what the ultimate theme of all Martial Arts films are.

But let me take a quick, preliminary stab at it and you can poke holes in my theory.

Let's Try: The basic theme of the Martial Arts films is the ultimate Wisdom one may acquire by studying and practicing the Martial Arts.

Now in the study of this Art, the first thing you are blasted with is that your MIND (intellect, deliberate thinking and decision-making) has to be cut out of the circuit in order to learn.

How many times have I said in these blog posts that WRITING IS A PERFORMING ART? I learned that from my first writing teacher, Alma Hill.

The Martial Arts are a PERFORMING ART too. Not necessarily for an audience, but the process is the same for winning a fight on a real life-or-death battleground as it is for playing the piano on stage at Carnegie Hall.

And the learning process is the same for writing and for Martial Arts.

One difference is that writing is a performance of the intellect while Martial Arts is a performance of the muscular system - skeleton etc.

There's more autonomic system involvement in Martial Arts just as in dance or acting or playing an instrument. But writing requires the same kind of smooth coordination among the integrated levels of the mind.

In other words, Martial Artists TRAIN, and writers TRAIN. You don't learn to write. You TRAIN yourself to write. That's why I give you all these boring exercises.  Everyone is born with the ability to write, to tell stories, to express emotion (starting with a birth-cry).  But it takes training to raise the ability to throw a punch into an Art, and the ability to wail loudly into words. 

I just did a post on The Flintstones and The Lone Ranger posted on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com on 12/28/2010.  It gives you a training exercise on creating an icon. 

One of the ways you train yourself to write is to intellectualize about the thematic, symbolic and philosophical substance transmitted by every artform until you understand what Art is on a level that your audience does not.

That's what professionals in all areas do. They acquire some skill that those they serve don't have the time, talent or inclination for, and then put that skill at the service of those they serve.

A Martial Artist spends life acquiring reactions to situations, perfecting the smoothness of choosing the reaction and executing it, perfecting the ability to scale the force of the reaction to the size of the real problem, and so on.

The Martial Artist trains to react, not to think.

How do they attain that reaction?

MEDITATION.

How does a writer attain the understanding of the symbolism of their culture?

MEDITATION.

A lot of thematic substance of Martial Arts films is there to put the polish on the training of a Martial Artist, and thus does not "speak" to general audiences.

But I submit every human being lives a life which is in fact a replication of the best kind of Martial Arts films, a thematic replication.

There is a reason that the Male/Female Relationship has been called The Battle of the Sexes. And there is a reason that the flipside of sexuality, even alien sexuality, is violence. Sex and Violence are thought of as two sides of a coin for a reason (I happen to disagree, so I spent a good many years working through understanding those reasons so I could comment on them graphically in stories.)

Just as Romance Novels have a lot to say about the theme Love Conquers All and how one can tread a path to Happily Ever After in reality, so too Martial Arts movies have a lot to say about The Battle Of The Sexes.

Writers can learn a lot by studying Martial Arts movies (also by actually taking self defense courses, Tai Chi, and Judo, Karate, and today Pilates seems to be gaining popularity). But you don't learn it with your MIND. You learn it with your nerves and muscles, with the part of your brain that can NOT access language.

Our artform is words. It's all about language for us. We are the kind of folks who read dictionaries for fun, encyclopedias for entertainment. We are made of words. And I have ever so much to say about the place of "words" in a life well lived. That's not another topic, but it will have to wait for another time.

Here I'm looking at the thematic dimensions a study of Martial Arts films can add to a Romance Writer's arsenal of Blinder Removers.

Heather Massey's discovery of Martial Arts films was more of a revelation or epiphany than most people are willing to undergo for the sake of enjoying fiction.

So writers who want to remove the blinders from Romance readers' eyes, or from Science Fiction readers eyes, and let them into the world of Alien Sexuality have to find a gentler way of melting those blinders away, dissolving them, paring them away a layer at a time, teasing them off.  Here you should re-read my post on The Overton Window,  October 19, 2010 on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com  It's about the gradual epiphany, so gradual it doesn't hurt. 

Ridding oneself of "blinders" in fiction or reality widens one's world.

When you finally "see" a new thing, that discovery ADDS A REFERENT to the inventory of internal referents to which one likens subsequent new things that come along.

That's how we think. We are analog creatures. Everything is like something else.

In youth we acquire a set of things, compartments, categories, into which we MUST squeeze everything that happens later in life in order to "feel" that we understand it.

Adding a new reference point to our internal worlds later on can be painful.

It is the stuff of which religious conversion is made.

You add this new reference point, then take things you'd filed under other reference points out of those compartments, and slide them into the new compartment.   It rearranges your whole worldview.

If it works, you feel that NOW I UNDERSTAND. Oh, I was lost but now I'm found. Oh, I was soooo wrong, but NOW I SEE!

That moment of EPIPHANY is what writers work a lifetime to be able to create in their main characters, and thus awaken in their readers.  So the study of blinders is important to writers. 

The reason there's a word for "epiphany" is simple. It's a common human experience in adulthood. It doesn't happen in childhood, where we are in the process of acquiring new reference points and sorting all experiences into these little boxes we're building. Epiphany is the acquisition of a new internal, mental box into which to sort our experiences, after we have already installed a complete array of little boxes.

Education systems, especially centrally run or government controlled education systems, but also "apprentice system" Guild-run systems, assemble the world into an array of little boxes, then carve young folks' minds into that exact array of boxes, filling the boxes with pre-determined "facts" or skills, thus replacing elderly workers with new ones who are the same. 

If the array of mental boxes matches the world's actual shape well enough, the person succeeds in life.

If the world changes, and the person's array of boxes no longer matches the world, we say that person is "old" or "out of touch" or obsolete in skills. The person gradually, or suddenly, fails to cope.(think of techphobes, or people who won't touch social networking.  Think of publishers who think paper is enough.)

That mis-match happens because we are analog creatures, and analog is hard to edit. Digital is easy to edit. We can't change ourselves to digital.

We understand our world in SYMBOLISM.

Symbols are analog devices for parsing the experiences of the world, the truths we hold self-evident.

With the Romance genre, as with Science Fiction, we are asking readers to suspend disbelief and enter a world where the self-evident truths (the array of mental boxes) is different, and contains some new boxes (like a human-alien Relationship, and very strange alien sexuality).

We are asking readers to stipulate that Love Conquers All.

What are Martial Arts films asking us to stipulate?

Might Conquers All? That is FORCE or power conquers all?

And once all is conquered, then you are SAFE -- nothing can harm you?

Is Martial Arts all about the theme, "Make Life Safe?" Isn't that Love Conquers All?

Or maybe "Live Dangerously?" SF and Romance tackle that.

Or "Be Impervious?" Vampire novels emphasizing Immortality have that element.

My study of the Martial Arts films and novels yielded a different take on it all.

I think Martial Arts is about PEACE.

And the particular kind of peace it's about is Inner Peace, the kind that is achieved by the highest spiritually developed souls.

It's about curing your inner neuroses to the point where you function smoothly inside yourself, to where power, force of any kind, moves through you frictionlessly.

And that is what the study of Magic, the Occult, Tarot, Astrology, Alchemy, is designed to achieve. Think of The Magician card.  The Magician is a Martial Artist. 

To create Peace in the world - we must first create Peace within.

See my post on Tarot,
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/09/six-of-swords-love-conquers-all-as.html
All the Martial Arts I've discovered so far focus on aligning the person's inner workings to where POWER moves smoothly into the muscles and skeleton, allowing that power to manifest in the material world as a harmonious force.

And it's not about HITTING, or enemies or opponents. It's about operating within the matrix of force in the world to still the furious turbulence that deeply disturbed people leave in their wake.

What we SEE in a Martial Arts film is a person landing blows.

What is really happening is a spiritual reallignment of the world's greater forces, a wave of PEACE emanating from the hands and feet of the Artist as he/she moves.

So the Martial Arts films could be looked at, as a genre, the same way that Romance is looked at, from a far perspective.

In Romance we see Love Conquers All.

In Martial Arts we see Peace Conquers All and creates a situation where Love dominates.

So we might conclude that Romance genre is about War, the War of the Sexes, about dominance ("I am going to get me that MAN!") about competing for a mate, "He's MINE," and other vicious attitudes.

But Martial Arts film genre is about Peace, Defending the Helpless, becoming One with the Higher Power.

Remember the TV show, Kung Fu, and Kung Fu The Legend Continues both with David Caradine (who died tragically much later)?

A Shaolin Priest travels the Old West in search of his (caucasian) father and protects the innocent much as The Lone Ranger did, continuing his spiritual journey until in meditation, he finally achieves levitation. (we actually see him in lotus position, floating).  Of course, The Lone Ranger never did that, but he left peace in his wake. 

Here's the complete first series of Kung Fu on TV (check out the fanfic - whew!) 

Kung Fu: The Complete Series Collection

Kung Fu - The Legend Continues

Remember the trilogy of films Karate Kid?

The Karate Kid Collection (Four Film Set)

Slice and dice these on the thematic level, then add your results to your creation of a new Icon exercise.

You may find the effort will erode away your own blinders -- or possibly just rip them off.

In working to get symbols (icons) to say something about blinders to those clinging to their narrow and mis-configured world-view, remember what you learned about The Overton Window by following the links in my post on October 19, 2010 on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com

The Overton Window is the technique for creating symbols that become icons that actually change the world but do it gradually.  

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

How Long Is An Age? And other paradoxes

My mind is a grab-bag. I suspect that most writers/creators are highly observant people, and many of us have grasshopper minds.

"Grasshopper minds" doesn't sound terribly felicious. Does "butterfly mind" sound better? It certainly sounds prettier, but does not convey the same speed, and occasional blade-bending weightiness of our transitions. Nor our opportunistic and sometimes cannibalistic tendencies.

I did not watch "The Book Of Eli" last night. I prefer happy endings, and the synopsis did not lead me to anticipate a HEA in that post-apocalyptic world. Also, I do not buy into the premise that a Bible could be used for world --or even regional-- domination. Not post-apocalypse, anyway. (I'll come back to that, later.)

Instead, I watched "Rock Star." My plan was merely to watch until the tribute band singer was discovered, but I got hooked. The members of the hair band were gorgeous, fascinating and dreadful. History repeated itself like Groundhog Day for rockers.

The groupies seemed to feel entitled to "do" the band member of their choice, almost as if they had paid (maybe they had... maybe they do... but that's not the way I thought it worked.)

The paradox was that the high-living, decadent, conspicuously wealthy, wasted rock stars in the band were forced into a sort of prostitution because of the warped imperative that --to sell records-- they had to be seen to enjoy themselves, and to be envied by record-buying guys.


This next observation is out of order. My mental hops will be linear.

Writers, thank goodness, are able to entertain their audience in bed... remotely, as it were. There are people who feel entitled to "use" some of us for their own profit and pleasure without our permission or consent, and --unfortunately-- we're about as trapped as the Rock Stars in the movie (but most of us don't get to drive around in Batmobiles, or live in gated mansions).

Quoting from one of many listings on EBay

These books are from VERY popular current authors - there aren't any "no-name" authors in this collection!!
These E-Books aren't missing a single page from any of the books and are guaranteed to
be WELL worth your money spent.

Why buy this eBook collection?
-Big name, current authors
- 4,000 books at a FRACTION of the cost
- Comes with an index file to quickly and easily search for your favorite book
______________________________________________________________________________

WITH MY 1,100+ POSITIVE FEEDBACK, I WON'T REST UNTIL YOU ARE HAPPY!
I AM VERY DEVOTED TO SATISFYING MY CUSTOMERS WITH THE PRODUCTS
THAT I SELL! I, NOR THESE PRODUCTS, WON'T DISAPPOINT YOU!
___________________________________________________________________________________

PLEASE NOTE:

These are not the actual hard-copy books!
They are in EPUB format, to be used with any computer or eBook reading device!
Apple iPad/iPhone/Sony Reader NOT INCLUDED!

This listing complies with all eBay rules and regulations. I hold resell rights to these eBooks. I will send this item by postal mail. Sending this item by email or by any other digital delivery
method is not allowed and violates eBay policy.
* eBooks in EPUB format require conversion to be read on Amazon Kindle units

End of Quote.

Question for you.
How is it possible that "very popular", "big name", "current" authors can be "in the public domain"? Seriously. If an author is alive, which most "current" authors are, their works are in-copyright.

Why would a "current" author give away her copyright to someone who cannot handle a double negative?

If publishers' contracts with Amazon guarantee that e-books will not be sold for less anywhere else, how is it possible for an EBayer to reproduce and distribute at "a fraction of the cost", unless EBay is being used as a fence, of course.

I suppose someone somewhere does grant legitimate "Resell Rights" to their own works, but that's not the way Creative Commons works, for instance.

For authors and other creators, parts of the Internet are already much like a lawless, post-apocalyptic world where those with the power run amok, and the authorities turn a blind eye.

Regrettably, I don't stop thinking during Sunday services. This morning, one of the readings was from Matthew 28:18-20 (New International Version, ©2010)

18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Others have commented extensively on this passage, but I had never noticed before that there is a time limit. That's not what my pastor preaches. So, when I got home, I looked up how long an "age" is thought to be.

And, I came upon another disclaimer...

Matthew 28:19-20 (KJV)

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:

Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

The problem could all be the fault of the translators, like those well-intentioned scholars who either don't know the difference between "catholic" and "Catholic", or who think it makes no difference if they substitute a near-synonym.... while also claiming that it would be unthinkable, impossible to change a word of the Bible.

An "Age" is thought to be 2,000 years.

Apparently, the world --or, at least, the human race-- may end on May 21st 2011, October 21st 2011, or in 2012, 2030, or 2060 (by which time it is thought that human beings will have more than a little in common with a plague of locusts).


http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/11/091106-2012-end-of-world-myths.html

http://www.bible.ca/pre-date-setters.htm

Those links are quite interesting for world-building, and --IMHO-- a striking resource for speculative writers, especially for steam-punk or cyber-punk, I should have thought. Anyway, if Hollywood is okay with "The Book Of Eli", and "2012", there's probably a bandwagon... if not a tour bus.

Always assuming that there's time to write something worthwhile before May 21st 2011.

Administrative post for tired eyes

I've received some comments about how difficult it is to discern the fascinating links we post, because they are showing up dark blue, and our background is black.

Nothing I can do has fixed that. But.... if you click on each post at the subject line instead of reading the blog as one long streamer, you can enjoy all headings in hot fuchsia, and all links in hot fuchsia, also.

For any helpful, tecchie among our readers, we do not have a superfluous {
Advice would be very welcome.

SFR Holiday Blitz winners for this blog

With profuse thanks to everyone who supported The Galaxy Express's "SFR Holiday Blitz" and who visited this blog, I should like to formally and belatedly announce the winners.

Of course, the winners were informed fairly promptly.

The winner for the pre-Blitz post here, on the 19th December was Ann Ardeur.

Guest blogger, Marcella Burnard offered a copy of Enemy Within to two winners from the 26th.

One was "Anonymous Brenda" who said...

Enemy Within looks GREAT! I'm going give it a read asap. Thanks also for the laughs on your blog entry. I always wondered how authors keep from borrowing other authors' ideas/voice/thoughts. And all the time it was a simple answer: avoidance. *alughing*

Here's my must read for (hopefully Q1) of 2011

1. Rebels and Lovers by Linnea Sinclair. (yes, I'm behind. oy...)
2. Midnight Crystal by Jayne Castle--whenever it arrives in print
3. The-Next_Lara-Leigh-Breed book, whose title I've forgotten
4. Forgotten Sea by Virginia Kantra
5. In the Dark of Dreams by Marjorie Liu.

so many titles; so little time

Keep up the good work, Rowena! We Wuvs You!

The other was BloggerBratty, who said:

My 2010 favorite reads, which also weren't all SFR, are:

1. Hope's Folly by Linnea Sinclair (SFR)
2. Eternity Road by Jack McDevitt (post-apocalyptic)
3. Moonstruck by Susan Grant (SFR)
4. Simply Sinful by Kat Pearce (Erotica)
5. Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey (urban fantasy)
6. Don't Look Back by Josh Lanyon (M/M romance)
7. Feed by M.T. Anderson (YA futuristic sci-fi)
8. Angels & Demons by Dan Brown (contemporary)
9. Day of the Vipers, Terok Nor book 1 by James Swallow (ST sci-fi)
10. The Double by Jose Saramago (contemporary)

If this list makes me look like I'm all over the place, well, I am! You could say I'm well-rounded I guess LOL.

 The drawings were random, so what they said or what they've read made absolutely no difference to their chances of winning.

The winner from LoveRomancePassions of two of my books is Helen from Australia, and I am kicking myself for not venturing out in the blizzard last week, because the USPS is putting up the cost of mailing Priority Mail packages as of tomorrow.... or so a posting on EBay informs me.

Congratulations, everyone.

Video Christmas Gifts

My favorite Christmas presents are the first two seasons of Rod Serling's NIGHT GALLERY on DVD. Of course, I'm a fan of THE TWILIGHT ZONE, especially the under-appreciated season of one-hour episodes. NIGHT GALLERY, however, surpassed the earlier series in one way by including so many adaptations of classic and pulp-era horror stories: "Silent Snow, Secret Snow"; H. P. Lovecraft's "Cool Air" and "Pickman's Model"; Manly Wade Wellman's vampire tale "The Devil Is Not Mocked" among others (in seasons one and two alone). I can't fathom why the other seasons haven't been offered on DVD but only in VHS tape "collector's editions" not arranged by season (none of those being sold new anymore, naturally). Still, I'm thrilled to have these first two boxed sets. How different from the days when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, before home video, when all fans could do was wait and hope for reruns of their favorite shows. Now we can have most of them for the asking. Almost magic!

Also on the subject of holiday movie treats, I saw the film of VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER, which I found much more satisfactory, from the viewpoint of a Narnia devotee, than PRINCE CASPIAN. In brief, the visual effects in DAWN TREADER are dazzling, as in all the movies, and I didn't mind the shuffling around of the order of the incidents too much, since the original novel is episodic to begin with. The BBC home video adaptation from many years ago, however, follows the book much more faithfully. It also includes much of the novel's dialogue that the movie omits, although the film does include Aslan's comment to Lucy and Edmund about his having "another name" in our world, unaccountably left out of the BBC version. Yes, I know movies and books are different media, etc., etc., but I'm a book person at heart; my ideal Narnia movie would have the big-screen effects combined with the plot fidelity of the older videos.

Happy New Year! (And, as Col. Potter says in one episode of MASH, "may she be a durn sight better than the last one.")

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

The Flintstones Vs. The Lone Ranger

I've discussed the massive shift in the Romance Relationship Icon in this post about the novel TOUCHED BY AN ALIEN, contrasted with the film FACE OFF and the TV show Scarecrow and Mrs. King:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/04/turning-action-into-romance.html

Now we get down to creating the next new universal icon of this era we're in now.

Screenwriting courses discuss methods for creating "catch phrases" (like, "Make My Day" and "You and what army?" or "Oh, boy!")

Creating icons likewise is half random inspiration (subconscious digestion of myriads of details) and half perspiration.

Part of the trick is just having the right Natal Chart relative to the natal chart positions of the broader audience you're targeting, as I've discussed in my series on Astrology Just For Writers (which doesn't require you to learn much astrology):

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/11/astrology-just-for-writers-part-6.html

And this one where I list the Pluto positions by "generation."

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html

Practice is how you get to Carnegie Hall (a joke punch-line that's become a catch phrase and then a cliche!)

So to create a new icon that will speak to your target audience in subconscious symbolism as the cover of TOUCHED BY AN ALIEN contrasted with the poster from the film FACE OFF shows, you must practice. You must do your "scales" like any musician.

Writing is a performing art, as I was taught by Alma Hill. Practice, practice, practice does not mean write whole stories for the trash can. It means do what musicians do, limber up the mind by doing your scales, THEN tackle whole pieces, but in sections. For a story, that means you do worldbuilding, characterization, plot, story, all the elements SEPARATELY until you can do it smoothly, then start blending one with the other, with the other etc. until you are doing whole stories.

Here is such an exercise on creating an icon taken as a separate skill.

http://editingcircle.blogspot.com/2010/10/kelly-why-flintstones-is-evil-and-happy.html

That blog post is a challenge to get you to create your own cultural icon like The Flintstones by using this critical bullet-pointed breakdown of the philosophy behind the show:

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/867804--kelly-why-the-flintstones-is-evil

You also need to read the comments on that article about The Flintstones where readers note the origins of the parody and take-offs. Not that you don't already know the ingredients in The Flintstons, but that you need to understand what the commenters knew and didn't know in the context of how they liked (or didn't like) The Flintstones. Then ponder that even those who hated the show, or never watched, have an opinion all these years later. That's the result of the ICONIZATION of a cultural principle, or abstraction, in a cartoon character.

Now, after you've doodled up a new icon of your own based on The Flintstones analysis, you can't stop. You're doing scales, remember?

So you might want to consider some even older examples of such an iconic creation to add to your source-material mix, and then add a more modern incarnation, then shake don't stir.

By contrasting and comparing at least 3 cultural icons, reverse engineering them, and spicing your result up with SFR or PNR, you may just hit it lucky. But you will certainly increase your skill, and perhaps add a 4th or 5th to your mix, and eventually meld it all into a vivid image that will work.

I've been incessantly and obsessively exploring the question of why the "general public" shuns Romance as if it reeks of old socks and rotten dog food. The objective of the exploration is to get around that dislike in order to explain why the Happily Ever After ending and the Love Conquers All theme are not only plausible but the inevitable outcome of life.

Heather Massey contributed to that discussion here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/09/do-your-lovers-live-hea.html

In this exercise of creating icons, writers should reach deep into the past -- maybe as far back as 39,000 BCE as in my post here on December 21, 2010
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/12/ancient-egypt-steampunk.html
about the book, Ancient Egypt 39,000 BCE. And then extrapolate into the far future.

Also remember that to write about the future for a current audience, you have to translate the icons of that future into the iconic language (subconscious symbolism) of the current audience.

So let's look at the anatomy of an icon: the comic strip, radio show, TV show, feature film, franchise known as THE LONE RANGER.

http://weirdscifi.ratiosemper.com/loneranger/creed.html

http://weirdscifi.ratiosemper.com/loneranger/index.html (click the graphics at the top of the page for more details if you're unfamiliar with the Lone Ranger story).

The link above to the Creed of the Lone Ranger is interesting not so much for the content of the Creed (though I have many thoughts about the content), but for the EXISTENCE of such a formal document -- it was a foundation document created by the originator of the show to guide the many writers. There was also a set of Guidelines for the writers which you can find laid out neatly on Wikipedia.

The Lone Ranger was a KIDDIE SHOW -- why did it have a formal philosophy?

Kids have no formal training in the artistic cohesiveness necessary to elevate a story to classic status. Do they? Why-why-why????

Also note another old radio kiddie show exploiting this philosophical popularity, a show I loved to bits and pieces.

http://www.old-time.com/sights/s_arrow.html -- read the opening oration to the radio show Straight Arrow in the white box on this page.

The Lone Ranger and Superman (also include a study of Superman among your icons) were great favorites of the adults who became Star Trek Fans, and that's no accident.

Gene Roddenberry built the foundation of the Star Trek franchise from the cutting edge of cultural philosophy of the 1960's, but it was rooted in 1930's radio shows of adventure. I don't recall The Lone Ranger being among Gene Roddenberry's favorites, but I don't know any Star Trek fan who was old enough to remember The Lone Ranger who wasn't already a Lone Ranger fan long before Star Trek.

These iconic fictional figures all hit the same cultural chord, harmonizing with either the idealism or wish-fulfillment fantasy of the times. Or perhaps they reach beyond the troubles of their times to archetypal solutions to those troubles.

We live in such troubled times now. There's a niche in our fictional universe for such icons. Superheros abound and scientific explanations for their transcendent abilities are now being used in graphic novels, on TV and film.

Do you need to invent another superhero to be the Hunk in your PNR or SFR universe?

I don't think so. I think the "superhero" is an artifact of the cultural ambiance that gave rise these kiddie shows. It's all about the audience. You have to pull your material out of the audience's subconscious.

I think the next, huge, iconic success will be created by someone who goes to where the "superhero" came from and generates something that the people of today desperately need and want, but can't name or identify for themselves.

It's not "superhero" but something new. Spock has been named a new archetype because he was the heroic egghead (a term considered an oxymoron prior to Star Trek), the smart guy who was respected for his intelligence not despised for it (because before Star Trek intelligence made you different and different was shunned).

Spock became the Alienated Hero who was really alien. He made intelligence "cool" because he wasn't human. Today TV shows always have a resident geek who can hack any computer or solve any science problem. That's the Spock archetype manifesting into subsequent fiction. (and yes there's a reason most Spock fans were originally Sherlock Holmes fans. One of the first Star Trek fanzines, T-Negative named after Spock's blood type, was published by a Baker Street Irregular.)

This next icon we are seeking will have to pull off another reversal like that, only this time in Relationships.

That's the secret to becoming a popular writer. Lay your talent at the feet of people who need to say something about their problems, but just don't have the words. Create words that express their hearts, but not "on the nose" as they say in screenwriting. Express their hearts in subtext, in theme and symbolism, in philosophy and Creed.

I covered the issue of "What Does She See In Him" (the core question in any Romance) here:

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

If this new Icon image constructed from The Flintstones and The Lone Ranger, perhaps with a dash of Star Trek thrown in, is going to elevate Romance Genre to the kind of "cool" that Spock gave to smarts, it's going to take the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle trick I pulled off with my first novel, House of Zeor.

In House of Zeor, now called Book I in the "Sime~Gen Series" (it's not a series, but a Universe, however the publisher's terminology rules, and Sime~Gen now has a new publisher.  Here's the newest edition of this novel, which will be in e-book forms (Kindle, Nook, etc) in 2011

House of Zeor: Sime~Gen, Book One (Sime Gen)       )


 the point of view character, the person whose story is being told, is not the Hero. In fact the real story being told is what's going on inside the other person, not the point of view person. It's all seen from the outside and deduced by guesses, then by a series of tangible experiences. By the end of the book, the reader knows the POV character's story (Hugh's story), but FEELS the story of the other character (Klyd).


Where did I get the technique other than from Marion Zimmer Bradley and Andre Norton?

House of Zeor's Hugh and Klyd pair predates Star Trek by a decade.

I got the literary technique from the Lone Ranger and Tonto, Superman and Lois Lane, The Cisco Kid and Poncho, -- all these singular icons come in character-pairs. (all of which have classical ancestry hundreds if not thousands of years old.)

Every philosophical "creed" can be illustrated by such icons. The icons are composed of a matched-set, pair-bonded by some force currently being disrupted in the society that elevates that icon to immortality.

That is the icon itself is ONE thing. That thing is the PAIR.

The Lone Ranger is not an icon. The Lone Ranger and Tonto is an icon.

Spock is not an icon. Spock and Kirk is an icon.

Romance is all about that pair bonding, or at least the potential for pair bonding.

Now why is that?

Lots of theological systems will talk about the dichotomies of the fundamental universe, and even the divine or eternal triumvirates or quadruplicities.

The universe around us is factored into elements set into dynamic tensions that (we hope) balance out. But at any given time in human history, the dynamism dominates because the elements are jigged out of balance.

Here is a list of posts where I discuss that fundamental philosophy in terms of Tarot and Astrology, but you can use whatever esoterica you know to generate your new icon.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_23.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/04/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me.html

Each of those posts contains links to previous posts all on philosophy presented in a form that writers can use immediately to create icons such as I'm describing here with The Flintstones and The Lone Ranger Creed.

You see, you didn't waste your time reading them as I posted them. Now you have a use for all that knowledge.

Note that I've made the point elsewhere that applying the maxim "Write What You Know" means do your research today for whatever you may be writing years from now.

To be able to create smoothly with any material, you need to learn it, forget it (that is, sink it into the subconscious), and then create with it without consciously knowing where you got the material or what you're saying with it. That's called "art" and writing is a performing art.

That's where the new icon will come from: the subconscious of a writer whose subconscious is connected to the deepest currents of society at this time.

Practice-practice-practice.

Remember what I learned from Alma Hill, "Writing is a performing art."  That means the objective is not to produce one perfect iconic performance, but to produce PERFORMANCES to order, on demand with apparent effortlessness. (apparent, mind you)  That takes practice.  

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

SFR Holiday Blitz: Marcella Burnard's 2010 Book List

I’m Marcella Burnard and as part of the Holiday Blitz over at The Galaxy Express, I’m stepping in to bribe you into giving up your 2010 top pick SFR reads. No taking without giving, however!

This is the bribe for two winners.

Below you’ll find my 2010 reading list and the few books I consider the top options. When I ran through my list, I realized the number of books I’d read was pathetic. I’ll attribute it to the fact that I was desperately trying to get my own book finished and to the editor in something resembling a timely fashion. E-books are noticeably absent from my reading list. There’s not a one. Yes. Even though I claim to be a geek, I resisted buying into the e-reader market because I wanted access to loads and loads of nonfiction science books. The first e-reader incarnations didn’t have much of a nonfiction list. That’s changed and I did finally buy a Kindle recently. Granted, I have yet to download a single book – danged deadlines.

The real shocker? There are exactly three actual scifi romance novels on my list. Maybe four. Depends on how you classify Steampunk. I hope that doesn’t mean I have to turn in my SFR fangirl card…

Here, in no particular order is my 2010 book list:
• Iron Duke by Meljean Brook (Steampunk)
• Old Man’s War by John Scalzi (Hugo winner)
• Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny (Hugo winner)
• Soulless by Gail Carriger (Steampunk)   
• The Dragon Factory by Jonathan Maberry (Thriller)
• Sparks by Laura Bickle (Urban Fantasy)
• Rebels and Lovers by Linnea Sinclair (SFR)
• Touched by an Alien by Gini Koch (SFR)
• Dauntless by Jack Campbell (Military SF)
• Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides (Nonfiction, WWII History)
• After Dark by Jayne Castle (SFR)
• Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (Hugo winner)
• The Rising Sea by Orrin H. Pilkey (Nonfiction, Environmental Science)
• Extreme Fear: The Science of Your Mind in Danger by Jeff Wise (Nonfiction, Psychology, Physiology)

Turns out, I’m one of those authors who cannot read in my genre while working on a book of my own. It’s too easy for me to pick up someone else’s voice. If I read scifi romance while I’m writing, I end up sounding like whoever I’m reading. So I read books outside the genre. That’s where the nonfiction books, the thriller, and the urban fantasy stories come in. Of those, I can enthusiastically recommend Laura Bickle’s book, Sparks. Of the nonfiction, my favorite was Extreme Fear: The Science of Your Mind in Danger by Jeff Wise.

A friend loaned my husband her copy of Old Man’s War by John Scalzi. I saw the book, spotted “Hugo Award Winner” emblazoned on the front and, curious as to what sort of stories the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America thought were the best examples of the genre, I picked up the book to read the back cover copy. Several hours later, I’d finished reading the book. It was that good. I began wondering if I could read my way through the complete list of Hugo winners. It seemed like the sort of thing a fledgling science fiction writer ought to do – learn from the award winners. Scalzi’s book was definitely my favorite of the three I read this year. Roger Zelazny’s book, Lord of Light, was fascinating and compelling. It didn’t feel at all like a science fiction novel – no one ever talked about the science. Yet the story being told wasn’t possible without the technology placed in the background of the world. I read the book, closed it, blinked, and shook my head. No way could I have conceived of that story, much less written anything like it. But I certainly could (and did) enjoy it.

This brings us around to the steampunk and SFR novels I managed to consume in the latter half of the year. (After I’d turned in book two of my SFR series and before the first book, Enemy Within, hit shelves in early November.) Soulless by Gail Carrington was a fun read. The book qualifies more as paranormal than as science fiction, in my opinion, because what science is present isn’t integral to the story. The paranormal elements are stronger – vampires, werewolves and zombies, oh my. I’d even argue that the book is set in a steampunk-like world, but that the book is a comedy of manners more than anything – a *very* good comedy of manners, mind you, but if you prefer to read SFR and SFR only, this one won’t do. The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook, on the other hand, is very much an alternate history science fiction romance story and a pretty spectacular one, at that. The world has been thought through in detail. The blend of science and adventure is a kick. It’s another I strongly recommend. Touched by an Alien by Gini Koch was another fast, fun read. The only caution I issue is that if you object to religion in your fiction, this book may annoy you. I found it relatively unobtrusive and the humor showed through it all, but I have run into a few readers who stumbled on that one point. Jayne Castle’s book, After Dark, while technically a futuristic romance, read more like a paranormal to me. Sure, it’s another planet and the species is adapting in strange ways to living on this world, but science was light on the ground in this story. (I should mention, too, that this book was published some years ago in 2000 – I just happened to have picked it up and read it this year when someone put it on the book trading shelf at the marina where we live.) This brings us around to one of my all time favorite authors: Linnea Sinclair and her book Rebels and Lovers. First, can I say I love the cover of that book? A geek hero in glasses? This book was definitely another of my favorites.

What about you? What did you read this year that stands out? After all, I have to build a reading list for 2011 and I don’t want to miss out.

I have two signed copies of Enemy Within to give away.

Leave your favorite reads of 2010 in comments and on 12/21, I’ll draw names and ask your lovely Alien Romance hostesses to post the winners!

Marcella

*****
Owning up from Rowena Cherry.
If there are any errors with the links, the blame is mine. I had a bit of fun looking up the authors and the books that Marcella mentioned, and discovered some exceptionally cool stuff.

I also avoided providing a buy-the-book link to Amazon, if another one made more sense to me.... for instance if no one has posted a review on Powells, or Barnes and Noble. Or if the Google book site seemed cooler.

Rowena
PS  Via Love Romance Passion in connection with the global SFR Holiday Blitz, Rowena Cherry is giving away one mailer containing one print copy each of Insufficient Mating Material and Knight's Fork . The one winner chosen by Love Romance Passion can be anywhere in the world.

Linnea Sinclair has donated Rebels and Lovers

REBELS AND LOVERS will go to one winner on the Geek Mom blog 

Gini Koch's TOUCHED BY AN ALIEN will go to the winner on : Lisa Paitz Spindler's Blog

Christmas Songs

Some holiday music recommendations:

Two of my favorite Yuletide albums are WINTER'S DANCE and CHRISTMAS IN A CELTIC LAND, by Golden Bough. They combine traditional and original songs, with a blend of Christian, pagan, and simply festive (such as wassailing):

Golden Bough

Another is Peter, Paul, and Mary's holiday album, which includes traditional Christmas carols, two rousing Hanukkah songs, and "Blowin' in the Wind":

Peter, Paul, and Mary

Also Seamus Kennedy's Christmas CD, GOODWILL TO MEN:

Seamus Kennedy

Christmas filk: Here's Suzette Haden Elgin's SF holiday carol list:

Ozarque's Journal

And for something completely different, a Lovecraftian Solstice carol:

Carol of the Old Ones

We had snow last week, luckily not enough to make the roads hazardous for long. Temperatures have been abnormally cold for this part of Maryland; I shiver, not only with the chill, but with nightmare visions of electric bills as the heat runs almost continuously. Maybe after getting January weather throughout December, we'll get a break in January! As long as it's not a rerun of last year's three record blizzards. A white Christmas is lovely to look at, but not to drive in.

What's it like where you are?

Merry holiday season to all!

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt