Danger, danger, danger.... A Review of Con & Conjure by Lisa Shearin

Caveat: I seldom review books. When I do go public with a review, it will be favorable. 

"Raine Benares is a seeker who finds lost things and people. Ever since the Saghred, a soul-stealing stone that's given her unlimited power, has bonded to her, the goblin king and the elves have wanted to possess its magic themselves. Which means a goblin thief and her ex-fiancé-an elven assassin-are after her. To survive, she'll need the help of her notorious criminal family."

(Official blurb)

It's been about ten days since I read CON & CONJURE by Lisa Shearin. I wanted to see how my impressions mellowed, and which potential title for my review would stand the test (for me) of a short time.

"Danger, danger, danger!"
"Of Glamour and Small Manhood."
"End This Series!"
"Where's The Con?"

Danger comes on thick and fast. Raine Benares and her tall, dark, handsome and charmingly corrupt cousin Mago had a most intriguing con on the front burner. I should have liked to see that con play out.

Unfortunately, their cover was blown, if not blown up. Goblin Prince Chigaru sailed into port a few days early, and he is an assassin-magnet. He's also in love (but not with Raine) and in a committed relationship which I found strangely disappointing... maybe because his name means "hound" in Egyptian. If Tam is off the table as the dark point of a love triangle, a Mal'Salin prince might have made things even more interesting.

The Mal'Salin royal family is mentally unstable, which is convenient, because the Prince isn't utterly consistent in his behavior and in his reactions to Raine. No matter. Here's an example of what I love about Lisa Shearin's world-building and style, snagged from Lisa's website.

".....Goblins thought differently from elves. Hell, goblins thought differently than any other race. To them a threat of murder was simply overprotective and harmless. And if Chigaru’s guards had succeeded in offing me, the prince would have referred to it as an unfortunate misunderstanding. A misunderstanding for him that would be unfortunately permanent for me. As Imala said, murder and intrigue were merely another way to pass the time at the goblin court; neither was met with much if any concern.

And now, Prince Chigaru was pissed at me, or at least regally annoyed. I saved his life and he blamed me for interfering with his plans.

“Did your plan involve getting yourself shot, poisoned, and blown into fish food?” I asked mildly."

http://www.lisashearin.com/2011/01/24/con-conjure-snippet-prince-chigaru-malsalin-hes-baaaack/

Raine spends a goodly portion of CON & CONJURE saving Prince Chigaru's royal backside and other parts from himself, and from others. High elves, even higher and mightier goblins, and low commoners for hire are all doing their best to kill the prince, with no regard for collateral damage.

It's the collateral damage that concerns Raine most. There is also the proverb, which she does not quote, "My enemies' enemy is my friend." Raine's enemies want Prince Chigaru dead. Raine's enemies, of the mortal and also immortal kind, want Raine dead in the worst way.

A death sentence and lawful beheading "for her own protection" is the kindest cut facing her if she  is seen to use the Saghred's powers. Old goblin enemies plot to kill her in unspeakable ways. A gang of elven mages give darker meaning to "bondage" with their plan to share her and her Saghred-given powers.

Raine Benares is in more danger than ever before. Con & Conjure is a page-turning, heart-pounding, absorbing read, with the stakes ever higher --especially around the dangerous goblin embassy,--the long and short-- knives out, and Raine cannot depend upon anyone being who and what they appear to be.

Tamnais Nathrach was my favorite character in the previous books in the series. I knew that I wouldn't see much of him in CON & CONJURE. In fact, knowing that, I seriously considered not buying this episode, but I am glad I did buy the book, even though Tam did very little of his trademark hissing something short and deadly in Old Goblin and killing villains with a black magic word.

Another favorite from the earlier books was the suave and flamboyant Captain Phaelan Benares. His accident-prone role in this book reminded me a little bit of Merry in Lord Of The Rings. He's still good, but his big brother Mago is better, and wittier.

On the other hand, I did not miss the teenage spellsingers in the least. They were mostly motivation, and Raine has other innocents and not-exactly-innocents to protect as the villains up the ante. You wouldn't think it possible to up the ante after Hell opened and man-eating demons invaded Mid in THE TROUBLE WITH DEMONS, but Lisa Shearin achieved it, IMHO. (Not forgetting BEWITCHED AND BETRAYED came between.)

I don't want this series to end. And I do. With a story this good, I want to know how it ends, and waiting for a year or more between books without knowing when the series will end is... well... a drag.

As for the small penis jokes, no matter how good or important they might have been, basing a review on that precious aspect of the book would inevitably have been a spoiler, so I won't go down there... except as a segué to the bottom line.

Bottom line. I recommend that you buy the paperback. Buy all the paperbacks, if you haven't already, and read the series from start to date. If you don't do that, then read every word because everything the new reader needs to know is covered, but economically and only once. Each book does stand alone, but the sum is greater than the parts.

I have one pet peeve, and it is nothing to do with author Lisa Shearin. It's the cover art for the series. Could the art department use the same model for each book? And could each model please have the correct hair color? Raine is consistently described as a redhead. Why, then, is the girl on the cover sometimes blonde?


All the best,
Rowena Cherry

SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/ 

Is Addiction Always Bad?

Here's an article about a new book on the physiological process of addiction, THE COMPASS OF PLEASURE, by a neuroscientist from Johns Hopkins University:

Defining Addiction

I've always found it irritating when people casually toss around the word "addiction" for any habitual behavior they enjoy to excess. If there's no chemical substance being introduced into the body, I think "compulsive" makes more sense than "addictive." Turns out that the scientific criterion for addiction "is defined by the changes that certain activities can make in the brain." Any activities that "short-circuit the medial forebrain pleasure circuit," from taking drugs to compulsive gambling or shopping, fit that definition. So, okay, I guess I have to accept that addiction is a broader category than I used to believe, even if the popular overuse of the terminology annoys me. Some non-chemical stimuli really do hijack the dopamine (pleasure chemical) processing circuits in the brain to produce a "super-potent experience." The brain gets rewired to respond to certain associations with cravings. Some surprising facts:

The majority of people who engage in pleasurable, habit-forming activities don't get physiologically addicted, even those who sample a powerful drug such as heroine once or twice.

Addicts don't get more pleasure from their drug of choice than average people do; they get less. Because of the effect of repeated abuse on the neurons, addicts need constantly higher doses to get the same effect. (Which is one reason I don't drink coffee every day, quite aside from the downside of the diuretic and laxative effects. If I consumed as much of the stuff as dedicated coffee lovers do, I would no longer receive the illusion of a burst of energy from a single cup or one frappuccino.)

Not everything often called "addictive" really is. Alcohol, nicotine, fat and sweet foods, exercise, shopping, gambling, and sex can be; meditation may be. Marijuana and video games aren't.

That list brings up the question of whether addiction can be a good thing. Exercise (if not taken to the point of physical injury) and meditation are good for us. Within a committed, loving relationship, sex is good for us (strengthens emotional bonds, provides exercise, has other physical benefits). I can't see how, in most people's lives, there could be "too much" meditative prayer or loving sex. I've come across comments by alcoholism counselors that there's no cure for an addictive personality; someone whose brain is wired that way generally substitutes one addiction for another—replacing drugs with marathons, for example. But doesn't it make a difference whether the compulsive behavior is harmful or beneficial? If one can't escape "addiction," surely it's better to be a workaholic or exercise-holic than a chain smoker or compulsive gambler. Some people might consider Isaac Asimov addicted to writing. He did it all day, every day, and he wouldn't go on a vacation without taking his work along. Yet even if that behavior signified an addiction, he was apparently happily well-adjusted to his condition, and millions of readers have benefited.

My father once labeled me "addicted to reading" (and he was a book lover himself, not one of those odd folks who dismiss reading as a waste of time), and he had a point, in that I never go anywhere without a book, and if more than a day goes by when I'm too busy for periods of sustained reading, I feel "withdrawal" symptoms. If I weren't a bookaholic, though, I would never have become a writer, and that's an experience I wouldn't want to have missed. For that matter, I suspect writing itself is something of an addictive behavior for me. Although I enjoy the preparation (outlining) and the byproducts (published books and their royalties), I don't usually enjoy the act of writing itself. I feel compelled to do it, though, and if I'm prevented for too long a stretch, I get depressed and irritable.

My fictional vampires, if they feed too often on a single donor, become addicted to that person and can't bear to drink from anyone else. (They get their bulk nourishment from animal blood, so they are not draining their chosen donor.) I frame this outcome as a good thing, though (if the partnership is carefully chosen), because the mutual dependency creates a deep emotional bond, far more satisfying than preying on anonymous victims. Nature actually intends a vampire to bond with a single donor, and those who feed randomly can't get the full satisfaction the experience was meant to provide.

Likewise, in real life, I'd view some "addictions" as benign reinforcements of pleasurable bonds, such as the "addiction" to sex with one's mate.

As Obi-Wan Kenobi says, sometimes it's all in one's point of view.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Worldbuilding - Building a Fictional, but Historical, World

 The following is a Guest Post by the author of the book I discussed last Tuesday,
Gold Under Ice

I strongly urge you to pay attention to her other novels.  She has mastered the knack of "transporting" you to an "other" world and engaging your emotions with characters whose environment is foreign to modern readers.

The underlying writing craft techniques that produce this are the same for Westerns, Historicals, Romance in another galaxy, or infatuation with demons on the path of reform.  Our ancestors are as "alien" to us as any djinn from outer space.  Read, study, and watch how this is done.


 -------------

Building a Fictional, but Historical, World

by
Carol Buchanan, author, 

God’s Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana 

Gold Under Ice
Website: http://swanrange.com
Blog: http://swanrange.com/blog

Just like humans, fictional characters need ground to walk on and air to breathe – at least most of them do. So we, their creators, have to build them a world, an environment, to function in. Some writers of contemporary fiction may not need to go far to find the materials for their worlds and provide points of reference for readers. A scene in a Starbuck’s is familiar to most of us.

But writers of science fiction (sci/fi) and historical fiction have to provide knowable points of reference into worlds unknown to modern readers.

In sci/fi, the story takes place sometimes very far in the future. It’s often populated with strange creatures and beings whose very substance differs from what we consider flesh and blood. Their means of transport may involve light and molecular transference, and sometimes they have evolved to a stage that does not require feet or other appendages.

In historical fiction, obviously, the story occurs in the past, sometimes very far in the past. (One definition of historical fiction requires a story to be set at least 50 years before publication.)

Unlike sci/fi characters, which writers can make up entirely, it seems, historical characters inhabit worlds that once existed.

It’s a historical writer’s job to reconstruct that world as accurately as possible. The people who populated these past worlds had far different clothing, food, social habits, and transport than we do. And they had different attitudes, too, which were part of their times. 

In writing historical fiction set during the Montana gold rush of 1862-1867, I recreate as best I can the world people lived in: their clothing, the books they read, their politics. I’m a stickler for historical accuracy, so I depend a great deal on research. Both of my novels, God’s Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana (winner of the 2009 Spur award for Best First Novel) and its sequel Gold Under Ice, are full of information few potential readers could know.

This information is necessary if modern readers are to understand who the Vigilantes were and why they hanged 24 men. It’s difficult for readers to suspend their modern understanding of the term “Vigilante” in order to understand what happened during this period of Montana history and why.

I help readers enter into the gold rush world by defining the terms used by gold placer miners, detailing the legal situation in court scenes as my protagonist-lawyer works with the laws in place then, and letting the characters speak out on Civil War politics. To weave local law and national politics seamlessly into the narratives, I created the protagonist, Dan Stark, to be a lawyer from New York who is ignorant of gold mining (in God’s Thunderbolt) and gold trading (in Gold Under Ice). The reader learns as Dan learns. As he comes to understand the legal situation in Alder Gulch (God’s Thunderbolt), so does the reader.

For example, as he helps to bury a murdered friend, he grapples with his frustration in the following paragraph that also explains the situation in a territory without law, where ruffians ruled and murder was tolerated.

“If. If’s loomed in an aggregate as heavy as the stone he carried, staggering a bit, over rocks and pits. If they had a police force. If they had a court capable of dealing with matters more important than boundary lines and claim jumpers and petty theft. If the miners court had a judge who knew anything at all about the law, instead of the popularly elected president of the mining district, a medical man by training and a gold seeker by inclination. If they had a jail in which to incarcerate criminals that a police force caught and arrested. If they had police. If they had more than three punishments: whipping, banishment, hanging. If they had any body of law to go by at all, if Congress had allocated the Constitution to the Territory when they formed it. If the miners court had a formal, twelve-man jury instead of the jury of the whole, made up of anyone – drunk or sober – who happened by when the vote was taken for guilt or innocence. If. If. And if. “ 

Besides establishing the lack of law in Alder Gulch, I researched how the Civil War (1861 – 1865) divided the nation and defined not only politics, but vocabulary. Even the word “free,” as in a “free people” or “free man” primarily meant “not slave.”

Yet even this divide had its nuances within Union and Confederate sympathies. Some fought for the Confederacy though they hated slavery because they considered that the Union had invaded the South and the Federal government was prosecuting an illegal war. Some fought for the Union because they believed that the South had seceded illegally from the Union and they could give a damn about slavery.

To ignore these attitudes or judge them would have been to oversimplify the politics on the one hand and come dangerously close to writing a polemic on the other.

All in all, I researched God’s Thunderbolt for five years before I began writing it, and did more research during the two years I spent in the writing. For the most part, I could piggyback Gold Under Ice onto that research because the two novels occur in close sequence. 

For Gold Under Ice, I had to recreate New York City in the summer of 1864 and the relationship between the tides of war and the fluctuating values of gold futures and the Federal government’s paper money, the “greenback.” Because I had lived in New York for a couple of years, I remember how its sticky summers feel, and I don’t imagine that riding a crowded omnibus was much less comfortable than riding a subway at rush hour.

For how a lawyer acts and thinks in a courtroom and outside, I had the invaluable assistance of a former prosecuting attorney in Montana, a sweet man who said with a beatific smile, “Nasty is no problem. I can do nasty when I have to.” He also told me that frozen corpses do stink.

Oddly enough, some of the research that readers and reviewers have commended me for took no research at all. My rescue horse, Gus, teaches me about equines. Thanks to him, I know what barns smell like, and how different feeds change the color of horse poop. For nearly a year in my childhood my parents and I lived in a boxcar with no running water or indoor plumbing or electricity. I’ve primed a pump and worried about bee stings on my heinie in a privy. I’ve done homework by a kerosene lamp while my mother and father shared the newspaper.

Here are two sentences from God’s Thunderbolt: “Dotty, for once without much to say, set to drying the dishes. Martha poured the dirty wash water into the slop pail, and set the dishpan with clean water on the stove to heat.” Just like Mother did.

All I had to do to portray domestic life was remember that year in the boxcar.
In the next novels, the world I build will be founded as it has been, partly on research and partly on personal experience. After all, don’t people advise us to “write what we know?”
-----------



So now please go look up Carol Buchanan and watch what she does.


Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Danger, danger, danger...

review to follow

New Sime-Gen Books

Exciting news! Here's a glowing example of the benefits of e-books and Print on Demand publishing: The Sime-Gen series by Jacqueline and her co-author, Jean Lorrah, is back in print—and electrons—from Wildside Press. Even more wonderfully, books their fans have been awaiting for years or decades have finally been released.

I just finished reading the long-anticipated TO KISS OR TO KILL, Jean's Sime-Gen romance set in the tumultuous period right after Unity, an excellent demonstration of the fact that the universe of the series can serve as a setting for fiction of any genre. Wildside has also published Jean's THE STORY UNTOLD, a compilation of stories about musical duo Zhag and Tonyo, major secondary characters in TO KISS OR TO KILL. This past Sunday I bought Jacqueline's never-before-published Sime-Gen novel, PERSONAL RECOGNIZANCE.

In addition, other newly published books include a collection of Jacqueline's vampire fiction, THROUGH THE MOON GATE; a collection of her SF and fantasy stories, SCIENCE IS MAGIC SPELLED BACKWARD; and a volume of Jean's fantasy short pieces.

All these books are offered in Kindle format as well as trade paperback. Without e-publishing and POD, we might not have access to any of them.

Jacqueline, please tell us more about these new releases. I'd enjoy reading whatever you feel free to discuss about these works' long journey to publication.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Gold Under Ice by Carol Buchanan

Folks, I met Carol  Buchanan on Twitter (just as I'd met Gene Doucette there), she mentioned she'd written a Historical titled GOLD UNDER ICE, about gold mining during the civil war in Montana.  I think we were talking about "Westerns" which I love on some #chat and so I asked for a review copy.

She sent me the e-book (it's also in paperback). 

I loved this book.  It's a feel-good read that is so smooth and nicely crafted.  I'll be raving about it for a while.

As I mentioned last week, I can't think how to use it in a writing lesson.  This novel is so smooth, so tightly woven, there's just no way to manipulate it the way I showed you that you could manipulate Gene Doucette's IMMORTAL. 

But I think you should try reading it for contrast/compare. 
http://www.amazon.com/Gold-Under-Ice-Carol-Buchanan/dp/0982782217/rereadablebooksr/

So I reviewed GOLD UNDER ICE in my column for The Monthly Aspectarian - it's in the June 2011 issue.  (for print magazines you have to work with a lead time)

I sent Carol Buchanan a copy of my review.

Now consider this magazine is New Age and has a very steep "slant" -- it's readers are conversant with Tarot, Astrology, and dozens of magical systems and neo-pagan practices.  I talk jargon in that column, and readers know what I mean. 

So I didn't think Carol would like what I wrote.

She wrote back that she was pleased  to be presented to a readership she had no idea would be interested in this novel, but she had no idea what I'd said.

Hmmm.  Thought about that, and strove to explain what I'd said. 

I'd indicated that GOLD UNDER ICE was a novel of Initiation in the 9's of the Tarot, in Wands, Cups, Swords, Pentacles. 

If you've read my posts here on Tarot, you should be able to see immediately why this would be a grand hook for New Age readers.

And you should see instantly what an accomplishment I thought the novel was.

Maybe not.

Here are two posts listing my posts on Tarot, in case you missed them.

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

Read the 9's. 

I've only posted on Swords and Pentacles on this blog -- the set of chapters on Wands and Cups are in the as yet unpublished books on Tarot I've written.  The holdup is lack of interior artwork - 3 versions of the Tree of Life diagram.

But 9's are 9's - all 4 represent the Astral Plane in some way.

So here's this novel, GOLD UNDER ICE, that is a real treasure of a find for me, and I'm trying to explain to the author why I wrote an offhand reference to the Tarot 9's in the review. 

The Hero, main character, point of view character - the person whose story we live through in this novel, goes through 4 Major Initiation experiences simultaneously.

The whole thing is woven together in a life's biography integral to the Civil War years in both New York and Montana (during the time it became a Territory of it's own).

There's a rich tapestry of historical fact, without a single expository lump -- the facts are all used smoothly the way Andre Norton always wove alien background into her novels.

The author was surprised to hear me liken Historicals to Fantasy Genre, or SF -- but she writes a little bit like Andre Norton, but for adults (yes, GOLD UNDER ICE is a sequel to a prequel that won an award, and it's got an ongoing Romance thread to pant over!)

But the writing technique for building imaginary worlds is identical to that needed for Historical worlds.  After all, Gene Roddenberry sold Star Trek as "Wagon Train To The Stars."

Each of these tidbits of historical fact is related to the overall themes, the 4 Initiations and what it takes to pass through those stages into adulthood.

The main character "arcs" -- changes, and grows in emotional maturity by facing situations that are natural to life in those times.

OK, that's easy, but Buchanan does 4 of them simultaneously without letting the seams bulge!  This is a beautiful novel for the student of the esoteric. 

But she didn't know what I'd called her novel!  How could I explain it?

Here's how I boiled it down for her. Could you do it better?

---------

Yesod is the name of the Sephera of the Tree of Life right "above" our everyday world, the nearest "place" or psychological plane, where Time is not Defined -- it's the "astral plane" of dreams where everything is plastic.

The Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles are the "suits" of the Tarot - each "suit" represents one of the 4 "Worlds" of the Kaballah, Thought, Emotion, Action, Materialization.  Each of the 4 has all 10 Sepheroth.

This readership can be counted on to be familiar with (or learning) all that shorthand.

9 Wands is the state of being all fenced in with defenses - your guy is VERY defensive, all wound up in his own ideas until "she" comes into his heart.

9 Cups is all about fulfillment of emotional potential - getting what you really want out of life (he falls in true Love)

9 Swords is your deepest subconscious nightmares - your guy goes back home and faces down his inner demons

9 Pentacles - wealth - being independently wealthy, being strongly situated in a "house" (or life) with solid foundations.  Independence of wealth - security, and it's also associated with INHERITANCE (in your guy's case, he inherited a debt).  It's about materializing your dreams.  This is where that "Honor" aspect comes in.

Putting all 4 together, those are the life lessons your guy comes through with flying colors.

Any way you slice it, you wrote a good book.
---------------
GOLD UNDER ICE is totally different from Gene Doucette's IMMORTAL, almost the obverse, but only because of Point of View and the nature of the character whose head you ride in. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

On Jacqueline Lichtenberg’s ‘Dushau’ by Diane Dooley - THE GALAXY EXPRESS

Here is a very nice review of my Dushau Trilogy praising my worldbuilding.

On Jacqueline Lichtenberg’s ‘Dushau’ by Diane Dooley - THE GALAXY EXPRESS

Orphan Works

Judge Denny Chin threw out the Google Book Settlement, and commentators write lines such as

"The Dream Is Dead". It wasn't a particularly honorable dream, was it?

Part of the problem is the jingoistic implied assumption about orphan works.

According to Wikipedia, "An orphan work is a copyrighted work for which the copyright owner cannot be contacted."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_works

Outgoing Register of Copyrights, MaryBeth Peters opined in 2008

Some critics believe that the legislation is unfair because it will deprive copyright owners of injunctive relief, statutory damages, and actual damages.  I do not agree.  First, all of these remedies will remain available (to the extent they apply in the first place) if the copyright owner exists and is findable. 

http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/

Well, "being findable" is open to abuse, isn't it? 

The week before last, EBay treated a class of 14,000 mostly American romance authors' e-books, and also a class of 17,000 mostly living American authors e-books as orphan works.

On EBay, iOffer, file-sharing sites, on Googlegroups, Yahoogroups, Facebook, Twitter, Social Go, Picasa, and all around the world, authors' works are treated as orphan works, and are published and distributed for fun and profit. (Usually, EBay at least closes the auctions once authors complain and prove who they are and complain again, but hundreds of sales remain as done deals.)

Are we findable? Are you findable?

Almost everyone is "findable", no thanks to Intellius, Spokeo, Zabasearch and their ilk.... as long as we're

only trying to protect the rights of our countrymen.

Even so, British and Portuguese and Californian Ebayers (and many others) shrug off complaints of copyright infringement in their auctions, with excuses such as "I've never heard of these authors," and "Those books are freely available online, so why shouldn't I burn them onto a CD and sell them?"

The problem is, finding authors is a nuisance. Getting in touch, and getting a response can take precious time.

Another problem for authors is that the "available remedies" are prohibitively expensive. 

Have you ever tried to pursue a lawsuit in a foreign country, even one that is a signatory to Berne? 

Have you tried to hire a copyright lawyer in your own country? If you don't have a professional relationship, it could cost you a $5,000 retainer simply to open a case!

Is a debut ebook author who sells her self-published romances on Amazon for $2.99 going to be able to justify the cost of asserting her rights, knowing that actual damages will cost less than the lawyer, and 

statutory damages, if awarded, will mean bad publicity?

The e-book pirates know that. One of them even wrote a guide about it on EBay,

I'm starting to hear that some perfectly findable authors are seeing their (Not!!) "orphan works" being uploaded on Amazon's DTP program, and sold by strangers.

The rot has spread.

A recent NYT Editorial applauded Judge Denny Chin's decision.

However, the writer suggests "Congress, meanwhile, can resolve the problem of orphan books. In 2008, it almost passed a bill that would allow anybody to digitize orphan works without fear of being sued for copyright infringement as long as they proved that they had tried to find the rights’ holder. This would give all comers similar legal protection to that which Google got in its agreement."

I ask you, How would we (Americans or Britons) feel if Baidu in China --or any other search engine-- did as Google and the Libraries did? How would we feel if the works of any American author who did not follow the news in Chinese were to be legally considered "orphan works"?

If I received an email in Chinese from a scrupulous Chinese digital publisher, would I read and respond to it?
Would it be reasonable to expect every working author to cut and paste every foreign language "spam" filter message to an online Translate site?

I cannot recall if the Google Settlement assumed that all foreign-authored works were "orphan", but digital works can be published worldwide, yet national lawmakers only protect their own author citizens. (Or don't!)

For example, the British Public Lending Right only pays a small royalty on British Library loans to resident British authors, who can produce a street address and a recent utility bill with their own name and address on it. Presumably, books by all other authors in the world are loaned out without any PLR payments made by the British lending libraries.

Judge Denny Chin's "Opt-in" recommendation is the only honorable way to go.

Scott Turow's letter to the NYT is published here:

http://blog.authorsguild.org/2011/04/07/scott-turows-ny-times-letter-on-proposed-settlement/

The New York Times editorial is here.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/opinion/31thu2.html?_r=1

EBay guides
http://reviews.ebay.com/VeRO-Copyright-and-the-e-book-collection_W0QQugidZ10000000019922449


http://reviews.ebay.com/What-to-do-if-you-bought-an-illegal-e-book-collection_W0QQugidZ10000000021207441

All the best,

Rowena Cherry
SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/ 

The Future of Publishing

The phrase above is the title of John Scalzi's contribution to the "SF in the Digital Age" section of the January 2011 LOCUS. (He's president of SFWA.) He was asked how book publishing will look five years from now. His four predictions, quoted verbatim:

1. Publishing will still exist in five years.

2. E-books will be a bigger chunk of sales, but print books will still be about.

3. More authors will be successful self-publishing, but possibly fewer than you might expect.

4. Writers will still engage in magical thinking when it comes to the online world and social media.

I can identify with, and wince at, the last. I often catch myself wondering why my website, e-mail newsletter, blog posts, and excellent online reviews of my books haven't automatically increased my sales.

My favorite sentence from Scalzi's essay, commenting on the rise of e-books as a significant factor in the book world:

"Publishing is nearly always undergoing wrenching change, distribution and marketing is always getting the rug yanked out from under it, and 'the good old days' are always at some point in the past where older authors can convince younger authors that giants walked the earth and money fell from the sky."

And he goes on to say that the publishing industry "is likely to survive today's wrenching change, so it can freak out about the next wrenching change five years down the line."

(This article doesn't seem to be on the LOCUS website, so I can't supply a link. If you can track down a copy of the issue, read all the essays in the topic section.)

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Gene Doucette's IMMORTAL revisited

In January 2011, I posted an analysis of Gene Doucette's novel IMMORTAL.  At that time, it had gathered a nice sized readership and was still growing in popularity and even controversy. 


At the time I wrote the analysis, some months prior to posting, I asked his permission to dissect his work in public and use it for a writing lesson.  Being a professional, he consented, and I sent him my analysis.  He sent me a response which I then set up to post right after my post on his novel. 

He noted these posts on his own blog and website -- and several of his fans leaped in to add commentary, all of which is absolutely fascinating and worth reading.

Note that I did not, in the body of my post, "review" IMMORTAL.  This is not a review but a nuts-n-bolts analysis that should be taken in the context of my previous writing-lesson posts.  My post was not a criticism of the novel (that would have different content).  My post was an analysis aimed at Romance writing students. 

I could not capture or articulate all the important points about IMMORTAL in this one post, and so recommend all writing students (regardless of genre specialty) read this novel, make marginal notes and come back years later to study it.

Here are the direct URLs.

My analysis of IMMORTAL. 
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/01/constructing-opening-of-action-romance.html


Gene Doucette's response:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/01/gene-doucette-discusses-his-novel.html

Each of these links will take you to a page with the comment-discussion at the bottom.

Note, if the colors make it hard to read, you can highlight everything with your cursor and get black text on white background.  The blog-owner may still have issues with the color scheme.

So, on Gene's post, one of the comments is from Angela who was curious about what I meant by "couldn't put it down."  Another was from Mike, who observed how easy (and interesting) it is to get caught up in a secondary character's story and make it your own. 

I set out to answer as a blog-comment, and well, you all know I don't write short.

So my answer has become this blog post, scheduled for March, and there are several reasons for that.

First, while these 2 posts were being discussed, Gene Doucette mentioned to me that he was still in the process of determining how commercially "successful" IMMORTAL would be.  I think that was after I had noted that I felt it would do wonderfully well as a feature film script, and he answered that he had that in mind. So I wanted to wait a few more weeks to see what might develop.

Second, I did recommend students read the novel, and didn't want to continue the discussion until they'd had a chance to do that.

Third, meanwhile the subject came up on a #scifichat that a "Star Trek-The Love Boat" mashup would be something to avoid at all costs -- which spawned the sequence of 7 posts from Feb 15th to March 29th, 2011.  Oddly, that dovetails with the discussion of IMMORTAL but most specifically with the aspect of commerciality. 

Fourth, on a #scriptchat I think it was, there was a discussion of the 4-quad script and the virtues of the 4-act structure as opposed to the 3-act structure Blake Snyder favors. Taking "4-quad" to refer to the 4 demographics a film must capture to be an "opens everywhere" film, (by age and gender), which speaks directly to this issue of how intensely Gene Doucette's fans respond to the novel IMMORTAL as opposed to how wide the potential market for IMMORTAL might be.  (size of market vs. cost of production). 

Fifth, I do have an example of a self-published book as strongly crafted as IMMORTAL but in a totally different genre.  It is not, however, readily apparent to me how to make a writing lesson out of it -- all I can do is point and say "write like that" Carol Buchanan's GOLD UNDER ICE is on Amazon (read it; we'll talk about it's Tarot underpinnings)

http://www.amazon.com/Gold-Under-Ice-Carol-Buchanan/dp/0982782217/rereadablebooksr/

So I still have a lot more to learn from Immortal.  I want to see the screenplay!

So go read or re-read the posts and comments on IMMORTAL linked above, and here's my answer to Angela and Mike who commented on Gene Doucette's guest post.

---------
 Angela:

As a writer, I enjoy things in a story that are not the same as what a reader enjoys. 

I read and analyze at the same time.  It's a rare book that forces me to suspend analyzing for structure, beats, character motivation, theme, etc etc, the moving parts of storytelling.

IMMORTAL was not of that kind for me.  But it is, precisely, that kind of book FOR OTHER KINDS OF READERS. 

And that's what kept me reading.  I saw this book through the emotions of others, not myself.  That is what it means to be a writer reading to learn the craft.

Reading stories becomes very non-personal, and the reward, the payoff, the zing at the end comes from the craftsmanship used to entertain that readership to which you do not belong. 

It is such a "high" to get outside your own head, to go where you yourself could and would not go, that seeking that high becomes the point of reading stories.

All addicted readers do that.  It's part of what it means to be a reader.  Readers seek to be "transported" into imagination, to places where things are "different."

IMMORTAL has proven, through its loyal readers, to have the level of craftsmanship behind it that I did see upon reading it.  The spirited response to these two posts shows clearly that I was right about this book.  It's special. 

But what kept me turning the pages was the promise that I had in my hands the exact book I'd been seeking for years while writing this blog about Hybrid Romance Writing Craft.

This is the book that illustrates these points - and I read a lot, believe me.  I also get a lot of beginning writer's manuscripts where I have to explain to them why it won't sell (explanations that have been drilled into me over years in the publishing industry).

I know this stuff so well, so subconsciously, that I'm inarticulate on the subject and can't get my point across to students without an example.

IMMORTAL is the perfect example, and I seriously believe that all those aspiring to sell Romance novels of any type, especially ALIEN ROMANCE, need to read and reverse-engineer this book for themselves.

I do not ever mean to imply there is "one and only one" way to write, to do the Art of writing, and by no means am I defending "the publishing industry" and the standards by which working editors at the mass market imprints choose books to publish.

If you have read most of my entries on this blog and the more technical teaching-blog editingcircle.blogspot.com you have to know how I am following and interpreting the changes in publishing due to POD and e-books.

You must have noted how I keep returning to doing futurology on publishing using the tools I'm illustrating in the writing craft posts.

If you've followed these blogs, surely you've browsed through my professional review column and noted that my personal take on the world is that, contrary to the Great Wisdom of true sages, I see the world as complicated, not simple.

As I see it, there are no "simple" answers.  But what I do in these writing craft posts is focus up close on a single strand, or a tiny pixel-sized light, in the overall pattern I'm seeing, and try to give you the "hex-number" for the color of that pixel.

Armed with that information, the writing student can use that color code to enhance the richness of color in his/her own compositions.

Get enough of these color-codes into your toolbox, and you can create images in your reader's mind in three dimensions.

There are thousands.  It's very complicated.  There are more "right answers" than "wrong answers."  In fact, there are only a few "wrong" ways to write a story.  That's why it seems there is no rule that can't be broken.  But there really are some. 

When you can bend and twist the "right ways" to look like something new (a craftsmanship level beyond most working professional writers) you can create something like IMMORTAL.

My students may never be able to duplicate the feat that Gene Doucette pulled off here, but I do want them to understand how he did what he did, and how they can do it too.

Mike: Does what I've said here show you why I didn't "lose myself" in a supporting character, and that's why I found this book fascinating and worth discussing?

By looking at a piece of writing in multi-dimensions, you discover the adage of all stagecraft, "there are no small parts."  There's no such thing as a "supporting player."

Marion Zimmer Bradley also taught me something she'd learned from her teachers: "The Villain Is The Hero Of His Own Story."

When a story is well written, all the characters are Heroes with Stories.

On Star Trek, they introduced "The Holodeck" as an entertainment center, the next step in fiction reading is to step right into the 3-D story and participate, make decisions that direct the plot, act and react.

Why is that such a natural thing to understand?

Because all readers already do that, using cold text! 

The writer's challenge as an artist is to get readers to step into the story and walk a mile in the moccasins of one of the characters (any one of the characters the reader chooses).

Gene has achieved that with IMMORTAL -- for his targeted audience, very specifically, very exactly, very precisely. 

Therefore, this work is worth studying.

We'll talk about Carol Buchanan's novel GOLD UNDER ICE next week.  And I think there will be much more to say about all this. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

The Most Human Human

How do you prove you're human?

Here's a article by a man who participated in an annual contest based on the Turing Test. Live contestants and computers carry on conversations with judges who try to identify which dialogue partners are people and which are machines:

Mind vs. Machine

One thing he discovered was that longer, looser conversations favor the human conversationalist, while a computer can put on a convincing show of sentience during a short, tightly structured dialogue but will eventually break down into nonsense if you keep it "talking" long enough.

This author harps a bit too much on the "there are some things machines will never be able to do" theme for my taste, but it's an interesting article anyway. Yet another illustration of how tasks hard for our brains are easy for computers and vice versa.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Star Trek / Loveboat Mashup And Soulmates Part VII

This series of posts illustrates the thinking process inside the writer's mind. The exercise here is to target an audience and develop a jaw-dropping TV Series premise from a very vague concept.

I recommend reading previous Parts first.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/02/star-trek-loveboat-mashup-and-soulmates.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/02/star-trek-loveboat-mashup-and-soulmates_22.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/03/star-trek-loveboat-mashup-and-soulmates.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/03/star-trek-loveboat-mashup-and-soulmates_08.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/03/star-trek-loveboat-mashup-and-soulmates_15.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/03/star-trek-loveboat-mashup-and-soulmates_22.html
As requested by some readers of this blog, I'm breaking this very long post into parts to make short posts. If you don't like this approach, do please let me know.

This is an exercise, like a pianist practicing scales to prepare for a concert. Writing is a performing art. This is the exercise that makes the performance smooth. 

------Part VII-------------

Last time we ended off mulling over the form of Romance that we could use for a hard-SF-TV series.

To get beyond the concept of a Star Trek / The Loveboat mashup to an actual premise, we have to pick one.

To complete this exercise, you should run it through with every choice.

So I'm going to "think big" and run this through for a long-running TV series. 

Let's choose an ensemble cast structure of 2 interlaced love-triangle Situations.

For an HEA to deliver a real gut-punch, the seeds of the solution must be planted right at the beginning of the story.  The solution must be inherent but invisible to the characters.  Suspense is developed by letting the viewer/reader see what the characters can't see, and the punch is delivered when the reader/viewer doesn't see the "real" solution coming but recognizes it as valid once it does arrive.

What really happens with a TV show during production is that decisions made before get changed on the fly, actors come and go by contract or happenstance, ratings and network executives make decisions that affect story direction. 

The less you establish, the better chance it has of materializing in development. 

So we need to ask why hard-SF folks would be averse to a Star Trek / Loveboat mashup.  Because they don't want their "hard" science view of the universe muddied up?  Because they're still adolescent boys who can't face their own emotions?  They want "girlz" not a Soul Mate?

OK, then we need a playboy character, a Kirk who can always "get the girl" -- someone all the girlz still swoon over.

He is determined not to get caught by one girl. 

So we know what happens to him.

Two girlz he is absolutely smitten with (but does not consciously know it) arrive in his life during the pilot episode. The "Bible" for this show will delineate how these characters mature into women of power and drag him into maturity too. 

OK, then the second triangle is two boyz and a girl, likewise being hammered into men and a woman. 

Notice when talking about creating an SF world in Part VI, we talked about physics.  Now we're talking about characters.

SF generated the plot parameters -- interstellar civilization where Earth didn't invent the space drive.

Romance is generating the story parameters -- 6 PEOPLE in a tangled Relationship. 

To be a genuine Romance, the love-element has to generate the plot. But that's what the Science element has to do.

So we need LOVE to become a SCIENCE.

THE SOUL IS REAL is the unthinkable concept I'll use here.

IF THIS GOES ON... -- the "this" might well be the computerized dating services matching people up by "compatibility" or other parameters, applying cold equations to creating couples.

WHAT IF... after Eath's ecology has been fine-tuned by aliens, NEW ALIENS turn up in this galactic association.

What if the NEW ALIENS run "The Loveboat" -- an interstellar Cruise Ship where, for a consideration, you board to find your Soul Mate (for real, not a scam, but of course everyone thinks it's a scam).

Remember the X-Files? 

One Character-triangle believes (all 3 for different reasons) that the New Aliens are running a scam and have been set to prove that, to uncover the truth.

The other Character-triangle is totally committed (all for different reasons) to believing (regardless of evidence) that the New Aliens are actually matching Soul Mates into couples. 

"The Enterprise" is a ship built by Earth humans but not necessarily near here; run by an Alien who runs the engines (think FARSCAPE without the multitude of aliens). 

Our "The Enterprise" is a law-enforcement vehicle not an exploration vehicle.

The ship is assigned (by Earth's authority) to investigate and resolve all kinds of mysteries and crimes here and there around the galaxy, each week a different problem.

Our Ensemble of 6 are assigned to our Enterprise by various Law Enforcement agencies on Earth, and their job is to police Earth citizens (some of which may not be human) operating in the galaxy.

But like Sherlock Holmes, Our Investigators deal with a "Scotland Yard" - a central law enforcement organization among the member Worlds, so we have permanent ongoing recurring characters. 

OK, The Pilot Episode has Our Interstellar Scotland Yard begging the services of Our Investigators to determine if a crime is being committed out-back-of-nowhere at the edge of organized space.

They are following a money trail, or more likely a movement of some commodity (or say high-explosives capable of destroying a star?). Something HUGE is draining the economy, and it just can't be legal.

They find, in the opening 2-parter, that a human/alien colonized world is being visited by this New Alien ship that charges impossible fees for a couple-month long Cruise out beyond the backwater.  People return to the colony in couples and REALLY DO live happily ever after (not drugged, not brain-washed, not tricked -- for real.)

People elsewhere are selling all their possessions and moving to this colony to buy passage on that Cruise.

Of COURSE some human criminals will exploit this new thing, keep it secret, charge huge fees to agent passage on this ship - pump up the rumors, and fake some "happy ever after" couples. (kind of like a snuff-fight ring)

But the New Aliens are for real, and when Our Six get done with the opening episode, diplomatic relations have been established with the New Aliens who now can send Cruise Ships into organized space and exploit other planets.

The series is generated as 3 of our 6 take one side of the matter, and the other 3 take the opposite view.  As our "Enterprise" is sent here and there over the next episodes, the New Aliens keep turning up -- never a crime to be pinned on them.

Our "Enterprise" carries a forensic section like the TV Show "Bones."  Only this one has some alien science to draw on. Maybe a research-sickbay operation like the TV show House.  These folks plus our 6 investigators are 'cargo'. There might be a detachment of Marines aboard from time to time - have to allow for some action scenes.

The forensics specialists from Earth are of course there to try to "steal" (figure out) the science behind the alien space drive that Earth is not allowed to know. 

Our "Enterprise" has a Captain and Crew - but not a big crew.  Possibly only 4 people, plus robots and AI -- Captain, Astrogation, Engineering, Communications. These guys are "Navy" -- Marines are cargo until they're needed.

As the Vulcan civilization (or Dr. Who's Gallifrey) was never revealed early on (and a disappointment once revealed), our New Aliens and their Soul-centered technology view of the universe remains a total mystery, and largely irrelevant except where the 6 square off to "prove" one view or other other (it's a scam vs it's not). 

We never establish whether the Soul or any particular view of God is "real." If we deal with ghosts etc., it is as in our everyday reality -- there it is, but you'll never know if it's "real." 

The final episode will sort the 6 out into Soul Mated couples -- perhaps not with each other.  That would depend on the "chemistry" among the actors.

So there's one exercise -- not digested and presented as a "pitch" at all, just some inchoate notes such as a writer would make just to remember "an idea." 

Now, do that for yourself with other choices. 

Be sure to JOIN the "SF" and the "Romance" to the "Plot." 

That takes a philosophical QUESTION (such as "Is The Soul Real?") that forms the lynchpin joining science to romance.

Remember, "Love Conquers All" has the inherent conflict of Love vs. SOMETHING PREVENTING IT - love has to have something to conquer or you don't have a Romance.  The way I've set this one up, Love is conquering Skepticism. Pick something you like better. 

Oh, this mashup thing needs a title.  What would you call it? 

Mobile Lab

Soul Slingers

Business As Usual

Gone a-Conquering

The Schadchen

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com 

ps: BEWARE. there are so many writers who aspire to sell a TV Series that there are any number of "schools" to teach the "secrets" of selling to TV. The following one might actually be legit, but think about what the roaring crowd looks like from a producer's point of view.
http://www.sellyourtvconceptnow.com/seminar-adora.html

ICFA

Last week, as usual in the middle of March each year, I attended the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in Orlando. What a treat to leave Maryland for several days of sunny weather in the 70s and 80s. The hotel's buffet luncheons for us were noticeably better than in the past two years, as many people commented. I hope that trend continues. For the first time, the Saturday banquet consisted of plated dinners instead of a buffet, about which I felt very dubious. Fortunately, the meal was pretty good (except for the dessert, the most boring imaginable, bread pudding). In a more welcome innovation. the online program included abstracts of the papers to be delivered, a big help in deciding what sessions to attend.

The guest of honor was Connie Willis, whose time travel fiction I love. Since the conference had the theme of "The Fantastic Ridiculous," she gave a very witty talk at one of the luncheons. Unfortunately, I missed hearing her in Wednesday's opening panel on romantic comedy, because the airline switched my flight from 12:30 to 5 in the afternoon! (What's up with THAT? Easy to guess—they deleted the midday flights to save money on airplanes and staff. But, still, it feels like getting cheated out of what one has paid for.)

I listened to Jean Lorrah (Jacqueline's co-author) read a twenty-minute film script and heard thrilling news from her about the release of new Sime-Gen fiction in the near future (from Wildside Press), including her novel TO KISS OR TO KILL. In the session I participated in, I presented an essay on BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER compared to the vampire anime series BLOOD+.

The scholar guest of honor delivered a luncheon talk about racial issues in the movie DISTRICT 9 but first discussed customs of women among the Igbo people of Nigeria. In Igbo traditional society women had little or no power as individuals but considerable collective power as a group. If a man committed some transgression such as beating his wife or men as a group abused their authority, the women would refuse to cook, clean, etc.; if the men didn't shape up, the women progressed to following them around, taunting and satirizing them or sometimes threatening mock violence. This practice was called "sitting on the men." During the period of British colonialism, a "women's war" occurred when a rumor started that the English were planning to tax women, contrary to traditional Igbo custom. The English mistook the women's ritual attacks for real ones and retaliated with lethal violence. Which inspires speculation about what might happen if human colonists on another planet similarly misunderstood the behavior of aliens.

Sunday morning I had a nice conversation with a woman from the University of Hawaii, where I got my M.A. in English back in 1974. You never know whom you'll meet at a conference.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Star Trek / Loveboat Mashup And Soulmates Part VI

This series of posts illustrates the thinking process inside the writer's mind. The exercise here is to target an audience and develop a jaw-dropping TV Series premise from a very vague concept.

I recommend reading previous Parts first.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/02/star-trek-loveboat-mashup-and-soulmates.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/02/star-trek-loveboat-mashup-and-soulmates_22.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/03/star-trek-loveboat-mashup-and-soulmates.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/03/star-trek-loveboat-mashup-and-soulmates_08.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/03/star-trek-loveboat-mashup-and-soulmates_15.html

As requested by some readers of this blog, I'm breaking this very long (abstract) post into parts to make short posts. If you don't like this approach, do please let me know.

Follow this thinking, argue against it, find the flaws, find different data, concoct your own Concept, and generate your own premise as we work through this. This is an exercise, like a pianist practicing scales to prepare for a concert. Writing is a performing art. This is the exercise that makes the performance smooth. 

--------Part VI-----------

So we ended off Part V with the question:

What is it today's audience is AFRAID TO THINK OUT LOUD?

What concept freaks people out? What parental stricture is being rebelled against?

The answer to those questions, regardless of what era you ask them of, produces a "concept" which is what Hollywood calls "edgy" -- right at the edge of "too much pain" comes laughter.

Since this is an exercise, you don't need to find "the right answer" or even a plausible one.  Any answer will work to strengthen your imagining process.

Look at the list of data in Part V on Worldbuilding premises that a large number of popular books have in common. 

For this iteration of this exercise I'm going to pick "The Soul Is Real" as the thought a generation is subconsciously afraid to think out loud.

"Soul" of course implies that all those hard-science folks we started out inspired by in Part I of this series are wrong about the structure of "reality." 

Since we're looking to entertain (and get paid for it) those hard-SF folks, we'll build a world out of the best that hard-science has to offer today.  Since this is a TV show, we'll expect the deep-pocketed producers to pay for some high-powered consultants to work all that out and then dumb it down for general audiences.

To build a Science Fiction novel world, you need 3 elements operating:

1. "What if ...?" 

2. "If only ...?"

3. "If this goes on ...?" 

So for our "What if?" we'll choose a galaxy-spanning civilization with space/time travel and say, a FEW alien species, not necessarily a lot. 

We now know there are a lot of stars with big planets, implying there have to be many Earth-size planets, some of which are in the liquid-water zone of their stars.  So there are probably a lot of non-human civilizations that have existed, but probability favors only a few at any given "time."

Theory has it (Hawkings) that there's no such thing as simultaneity.

2011 may see the hunt for the Higgs Boson (key to understanding gravity) abandoned for lack of funding, but lots of data has been collected and theory will be advanced over the next few years. 

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/01/scienceshot-thunderstorms-make-a.html?rss=1

That web posting says in part:
---------

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON—Thunderstorms produce beams of antimatter. That's the surprising finding reported here yesterday at the 217th meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Scientists already knew about flashes of high-energy gamma-rays from Earth, which are associated with large thunderstorms. Every day, about 500 of these terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs) are produced worldwide by accelerated electrons interacting with air molecules.
----------

You all remember that Star Trek's space drive uses "dilithium crystals" (magic) to mix matter and anti-matter just exactly so.  At that time, "anti-matter" was something only theoretical physicists and writers like Isaac Asimov (positronic robots; positrons are anti-matter electrons) talked about, even more mythic than the Higgs Boson. Roddenberry made anti-matter famous, only at that time it was still a joke.

Well, here we are - anti-matter has always been a part of our world, coming out of bursts of lightning.

So for this mashup, we'll assume there are aliens out there who have found and mastered the Higgs Boson and other arcane structures of the physical reality and know all about anti-matter and how to handle it. 

For our "If only ..." we'll pick the existence of a space-drive that can let humans dart around the galaxy in weeks or months, not lifetimes, and turn up at destination within a time-frame such that all their friends haven't died of old age.  That is - this is a space/time drive as facile and fantasy-based as Star Trek's. 

For our "If this goes on ..." we'll pick Earth's Ecology collapsing.  For backstory -- some wild-eyed independent college kids send out a distress signal into the galaxy using some crazy-new invention of their own (without even asking any government permission to attract alien attention).  Make that High School kids with a college friend they convince to hook their device up to some university power-generating system.  Maybe the Fermi Collider's power source? 

So "The Aliens" (our version of The Arrival Of The Vulcans) come along and "adjust" Earth's ecology whether we-all like it or not, and bring Earth into the galactic economy. 

Our story is set about a hundred years later, maybe two hundred - it pays to be vague about it.

Now, as I've discussed previously The Romance Story has certain fixed parameters, and remember we're writing a Romance here.  This is Star Trek / The Loveboat mashup, so we need a Romance Premise.

In the following post I sliced&diced the Romance formula and drilled down into the HEA - the Happily Ever After ending.  (remember a TV Series can't have "an ending.")

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

In that post I noted:
-----------
Romance Genre is distinguished by specific choices for the elements that a novelist can fill in with a number of different choices when writing other genres.

Those choices for a Romance are:

A)In a Romance the Relationships IS the plot, and all else is commentary on that relationship.

B)The conflict is the Relationship, what creates the attraction and what blocks the attraction.

C)The story is all about how each person is changed by the need for the Relationship.

D)The beginning is where the couple first become conscious of each other.

E)The ending is where the Relationship roadblocks are removed and it's full speed ahead into a Happily Ever After life for the couple.
----------

The "all light up" point of the Romance is that HEA - that moment is the blow-off of all the tension, the release, the climax.  No other moment can substitute for it, and that moment is the defining element of "Romance." 

So to create a Science Fiction Romance for television, we have a problem.

We could choose a Soap Opera structure like the TV show Dallas.  That show was the first to put the story-arc on Prime Time TV, though it had little "romance" (lots of relationship, not much real romance) it had lots of Relationship, and varieties of social-combat disguised as Business.

We could choose a closed-end story-arc like Babylon 5 which took the Dallas breakthrough and added SF to it.

We could do a Hung Hero situation like Beauty And The Beast where if the romance plot moves at all, the premise is destroyed and the show peters out.  That happened with Lois And Clark also.

We could do musical partners as they did with Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

We could do the eternal tension between philosophical adversaries, like X-Files.

Think about it and make your choice, and we'll continue next time.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

EPICCon

My husband and I just got back from this year's EPICCon, put on by the Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition. My erotic paranormal romance novella "Foxfire" made the list of award finalists in its category. It didn't win, but that wasn't much of a surprise. That category had 14 finalists! I had a great time anyway.

The conference took place in Williamsburg, our home for over three and a half years while we attended the College of William and Mary (and had our second child there). After a chilly, rainy Thursday for the drive down, we had mild, sunny weather the rest of the weekend. Thursday evening, we went to dinner at one of our old favorite restaurants, the King's Arms. As you'd expect for an establishment founded more than two centuries ago, it hasn't changed much since the 1970s.

My favorite session at the con was a fascinating two-hour talk on hostage negotiation by a veteran crisis negotiator. I also heard part of an excellent workshop by Angela Knight on writing erotic love scenes. Wish I could have caught more of it. I was inspired enough to order her book on writing erotica, PASSIONATE INK.

The awards banquet included entertainment by a troupe of belly dancers. Something truly different! Another innovation was an ice cream bar offered on Friday during the morning break (a touch of decadence there). Les and I sold a few copies of our fantasy novels, met some very nice people, and generally had a fun weekend.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Star Trek / Loveboat Mashup And Soulmates Part V

This series of posts illustrates the thinking process inside the writer's mind. The exercise here is to target an audience and develop a jaw-dropping TV Series premise from a very vague concept.

Again I recommend reading previous Parts first.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/02/star-trek-loveboat-mashup-and-soulmates.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/02/star-trek-loveboat-mashup-and-soulmates_22.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/03/star-trek-loveboat-mashup-and-soulmates.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/03/star-trek-loveboat-mashup-and-soulmates_08.html


Here we're looking to define an overall generational CONFLICT on a massive philosophical level, as the core engine to drive a new TV show concept, a Star Trek / Loveboat mashup.

--------Part V--------

So in Part IV we ended off mentioning Mary Tyler Moore.

I learned something watching that show, and I don't know how to teach it.  You may not learn it from that show, but from say, Saturday Night Live, or something similar.

The essence of humor is pain.  Laughter is a faint scream of pain.

If you can stand far enough away from the herd of elephants (metaphor discussed in early parts of this series), you can find the point where pain and sexuality meet, where they are back to back manifestations of something.

Heinlein had his computer-intelligence say it in MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS -- "orgasm is when they all light up."

It's a total nerve-load response.

But humans can get that nerve-load response without being touched.  Imagination can supply the load and the trigger.

We can look at something beautiful - a sunrise, a flower, a painting - and gasp in paralyzed delight, all lit up.

A woman on a (rather awful) television screen can say a few words, strike a pose, and have millions of viewers in stitches without laying a finger on them.

MEANING gets transmitted by words.

Something in a human being resonates to those words, creates within themselves a meaning all their own, and REACTS to their own personal experience, their subjective experience.

Back to our audience of Hard-SF folks who would run screaming from a Star Trek / Loveboat mashup.  People trained in the scientific view of the universe, who are studying their part of "the elephant" (do please read the previous posts) don't want to mess with subjective reality.

A lot of such folks don't acknowledge psychology or sociology or cultural anthropology etc as "real" science, and thus in the survey of "what is the most fundamental branch of science" those sciences were discarded. 

In subjective reality, anything goes, anything might be real, whatever you think is fine and facts don't matter.  Those who've attempted to parse our subjective realities into some kind of sense still haven't gained the respect of the hard-science audience.

In the objective reality science works in, only facts matter.

Very often in these posts on writing craft, I've mentioned that I learned from my first mentor, Alma Hill, the first professional writer I ever knew personally, that writing is a peforming art.

WRITNG IS A PERFORMING ART - and is therefore an ART.

In the realm of human knowledge there are the arts - and the sciences.

The hard-SF crowd I'm aiming for with this mashup concept won't mess with "the arts" -- there's nothing real there because it's all subjective.

So we won't tell them. Mary Tyler Moore didn't tell them, so why should we?

So let's look for the conflict embedded so deep in the subconscious of a generation (a 20-year span of new kids).

To get a clue, look at any cross section of fantasy novels from 2010, 2009.

We see Vampire novels - (yeah, and Twilight) - and Romances of various sorts.  The universe building is intricate, detailed and draws on an astonishing breadth and depth of classical mythology.

With notable exceptions, a trend emerges if you look at these novels just from the Universe Building point of view.

Here's a list of premises, (the data in my non-scientific observation) I see repeated:

a) the universe is fragile
b) human activity can destroy the integrity of the universe
c) human inactivity (i.e. not performing a ritual) can destroy the universe
d) The universe as we know it, our World, sits atop a thin crust below which seethes with immense Evil totally dedicated to breaking through that crust.
e) ONLY one person or one kind of people, (think Buffy The Vampire Slayer and/or Supernatural ) can prevent Evil from breaking out into our world
f) Only a small (sometimes chosen) group knows the truth about Reality, that things that go bump in the night are real.
g) Evil is REAL and must be FOUGHT, but can't be destroyed
h) The Devil is Real
i) Some Evil Beings are not so bad as friends go (shades of gray rather than absolutes) The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
j) God is not real. Good is relative. There is no action that can't be justified in fighting Evil. No punishment.
k) Anything you and I would recognize as Good Enough is losing the battle against Evil - there's nothing to do but accept Evil into our ranks. (Laurell K. Hamilton started this with legal rights for Vampires, Werewolves etc.)

OK, like I said, lots of notable exceptions, but enough novel series (large books, large numbers of titles per series) to indicate sales levels for Worldbuilding including at least half the elements from that list are solid enough to support mass market production and distribution.

Something in this view of the universe is fascinating to a generation of readers.  Endlessly fascinating.

Fascination on that order indicates a submerged philosophical conflict.

This age-group has an innate human need to GET OUTSIDE OF the strictures the parental generation is trying to impose.

What are those strictures?

Your answer to that question will guide you into creating your own mashup/concept, and you just might sell the thing if you can nail it as accurately as Marion Zimmer Bradley and Gene Roddenberry did.

Here's one idea for SUBJECTIVELY interpreting that data.

The parental generation (baby boomers & X-ers who had their kids in the 1990's - kids born in 1990 (there was a baby-boom that peaked in 1996) are now 21, right at the top of our target demographic) grew up in the 1970's when the Women's Lib movement turned the world inside out.

In the 1980's High Schools and Universities changed curricula drastically, political correctness became vogue.

The central Event for that parental generation is the VALUE SHIFT, a total devastating earthquake of a value shift.

It resulted in restructuring of the family, a skyrocking divorce rate and lots of couples not marrying because of the tax penalty.

The current teens have been raised by a generation which has no "blinders" (as I discussed in previous posts)

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/06/where-expert-romance-writers-fail.html

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/01/failure-of-imagination-part-4-teasing.html

"Blinders" can be either a good thing or a bad thing, as the blinders on a race horse protect from flying mud and help keep the horse from being distracted, keep the horse on course.

Humans being Humans - ethical blinders can likewise be either good or bad.  They can keep you pointed in "the right" direction - (the direction chosen by your parents?) - or they can keep you from noticing the right direction is "over there."

So what happened in the 1980's as the Women's Movement took hold was a dissolution of values that had been the only way to live -- the only ethics and morals visible right in front of us.

The whole culture plunged into formless mists and trackless wastelands of values -- no other culture that I know of in human history bestowed real equality on women.  Science freed women from unwanted pregnancy.  Marriage is now considered irrelevant by a substantial fraction (there was a survey) in America.

So we had to make new values because humans do that obsessively.  Political Correctness has become a value.

The children of the Value-melt-down generation are now describing the world as without a "beacon" (God) up high on a Hill somewhere above dictating Values of right and wrong, but a world under siege and losing to a mishmosh of destruction seething up from below.

Perhaps this generation sees itself as fighting a rear guard action against value melt-down?

I think there's a major dividing chasm in our culture.

Mass Market paperback Fantasy doesn't sell to a very wide market at all.  It's not just the number of "readers" that has declined under impact of videogames, but the percent of readers who read SF/F has also appeared to decline (I don't have a survey to prove that; it's just a feel for the market and anecdotal evidence from other writers.)

But the SF/F readership is a bell weather, or always has been, for the future direction of a generation.

So looking at the data, I see a generation fighting to define the Values that matter, to create a system they can agree on to determine good from bad, right from wrong.

And apparently what feels plausible to them is the feeling of losing that fight.

Values are not firming up in this culture.

So one way to look at the conflict generator for this TV Series Mashup would be as Firm Values vs. Adjustable Values.

Remember X-Files.  Aliens Abduct People vs. No They Don't because They don't exist.

So think about it. Do you have to know what you're doing to find your Soul Mate and have kids? Does it matter whether you have your kids with your Soul Mate (do the kids turn out differently if you marry the wrong guy? Or don't bother to marry?) Values: is it about kids or about having fun?

Now remember Mary Tyler Moore. Acting out on the stage the UNSPOKEN AND UNSPEAKABLE dialogue the audience would be thinking in that situation makes people laugh. Saturday Night Live does about the same thing - so did I Love Lucy. Comedy is about the unthinkable, and so is SF/F.

Laughter, sex, and pain all have something in common - Heinlein said it, "orgasm is when they all light up" - nerve overload.

What is it today's audience is AFRAID TO THINK OUT LOUD?

What concept freaks people out? What parental stricture is being rebelled against?

We'll have to work on that in Part VI.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com 

5 fascinating factoids

Quoted by William Lehr, MIT in DISCOVER, March 2011
"I might have an insulin pump that's controlled over the internet, and some guy halfway around
the world can hack into it and change my drug dosage."

Rebecca Coffey, in DISCOVER, March 2011
"...the A. aperta male (spider) can disable the female from 4.5 centimeters... suggesting he may
be deploying a gas to knock out the femme fatale."

I cannot help wondering if his gas is silent and deadly. But, that's just me.

Also, there's a Brazilian wandering spider, Phoneutria nigriventer, whose venom causes
painful penile erections that may last for many hours.

Reported by Kirstin Weir in DISCOVER, April 2011
"Scientists at Osaka University recently developed mice that are especially susceptible to DNA
copying errors, seeking to increase the rate of mutations and see what new traits appear.

Medical researchers in Japan report that a trained dog sniffing human stool samples can detect
colorectal cancer about as well as a colonoscopy.

Good dog! Imagine how much we could save if Obamacare sent a dog like that to every nursing home,
and every factory, and every office building... and every airport.

Or maybe, it would be more efficient if we submitted a sample with our tax returns.

Planet Midnight

Last March at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, one of the guests of honor, Nalo Hopkinson, gave a speech titled "A Reluctant Ambassador from the Planet of Midnight." I've been waiting for the transcript to appear in the JOURNAL OF THE FANTASTIC IN THE ARTS, so I could quote from it for you, and it's printed in the latest issue (with photos).

Jacqueline often says "writing is a performing art." Well, in this talk Hopkinson put on a terrific piece of performance art. A few sentences into her speech, she became possessed by an alien entity from the Planet Midnight, using her voice to address the people of Earth. In that role she wore a T-shirt labeled "Speaker to White Folks." She introduced her companion who did the videotaping as "Dances with White People." When the alien ambassador lost its grip on her mind and body, Hopkinson removed the T-shirt to reveal a dress underneath and became herself again. In her own persona, she discussed the theme of the 2010 conference, Race and the Fantastic, and said quite a bit about the Internet conversation known as RaceFail 2009. (Much too complicated to explain here; I googled it and found many pages of summaries, excerpts, etc.)

The Ambassador from Planet Midnight professed puzzlement at certain broadcasts her people had intercepted from our planet because "we, as a different race of beings than you are, are very interested in the stories you tell each other about interracial relations." She wanted to check the accuracy of their translations of our messages. Samples from her "translations":

"I'm not racist."
Translation: "I can wade through feces without getting any of it on me."

"This story is a universal one."
Translation: "This story is very specifically about us, and after all, we're the only ones who matter.

"That thing you made doesn't belong to you. It's universal."
Translation: "I like that thing you made, so I'm going to claim it's mine."

"Ethnic."
Translation: "Those quaint and somewhat primitive people over there."

"I don't see race."
Translation: "If I keep very quiet, maybe you won't see me and ask me to do any work."

Et cetera.

This speech was riveting and, at many points, very funny. At the same time, as a white, middle-class woman, I couldn't avoid a bit of mental squirming. Wish you all could have been there.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Star Trek / Loveboat Mashup And Soulmates Part IV

This series of posts illustrates the thinking process inside the writer's mind. The exercise here is to target an audience and develop a jaw-dropping TV Series premise from a very vague concept.

I recommend reading previous Parts first.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/02/star-trek-loveboat-mashup-and-soulmates.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/02/star-trek-loveboat-mashup-and-soulmates_22.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/03/star-trek-loveboat-mashup-and-soulmates.html

As requested by some readers of this blog, I'm breaking this very long (abstract) post into parts to make short posts. If you don't like this approach, do please let me know.

I do want to tell a story in Parts VI & VII a story that could become a TV show. But first, follow this thinking, argue against it, find the flaws, find different data, concoct your own Concept, and generate your own premise as we work through this. This is an exercise, like a pianist practicing scales to prepare for a concert. Writing is a performing art. This is the exercise that makes the performance smooth.


-----Part IV--------

So our objective is to "mashup" or combine to the point where they can't be separated, two elements, Star Trek and The Loveboat -- both old TV Series that just can't make it in today's market.

And we have a target audience described in Part I of this series of posts -- hard SF readers and writers for whom "Philosophy" is not a science.

As I've discussed previously, writing is one thing, selling something else entirely.

When you first draft, you write for yourself, you write what you want, and maybe you include a lot of side-bar scenes that don't advance the plot but that let you sink into the characters and just wallow.

Some of that material can be trimmed off, then added back on the plot-line to add depth.  Some writers do all that in their minds before ever putting hands to keyboard.  Others have to rewrite and restructure until they create something sellable from their fully fleshed out universe.

The process is vitally important only to those learning to do it, finding their own method (no 2 writers do it the same way.) It's the end result that matters.

But here we're going to fix one eye on the intended (or hoped for) audience, or part of it, and the other on what it takes to generate a "concept" -- hopefully "high" enough to make into a TV Series.

So what does the intended audience look like?

We need a wide demographic that is defined enough for advertisers to salivate over.  Typically that's going to be teens old enough to have disposable income, up to and maybe including college age people up to buying a car, conducting a serious romance, possibly traveling.

Young people yearn to "be older" and the twenty-somethings haven't yet become afraid of aging, but may be considering it.

To hit that demographic, this product has to be marketable both on air/cable and online -- and then by DVD with extras.  It has to have game-potential, especially for the online game base such as run by USA Network for Burn Notice (be a spy) or White Collar (be a thief). And hopefully, producers looking at it would see the feature film potential, 3-D potential, etc.

OK, so what's the story in one sentence?  What's the pitch?

We're looking for a "concept" that would not put off the hard-SF crowd, would engage their scientific curiosity but still at the same time tell a whopping good Romance story to those who are absolutely convinced that Soul Mates don't exist because there is no Soul and anyone who thinks Love Conquers All hasn't read The Cold Equations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cold_Equations

Remember "The X-Files" -- it didn't really start out looking like a Romance but oh-boy.

The producers discovered which episodes got the best ratings and started playing the Relationship until there was no place for it to go but up.

One Agent is convinced there's a scientific explanation for everything that does not include crackpot notions like aliens from outer space, the other is determined to catch the aliens who abducted his sister (i.e. he fits her definition of crackpot).

That's called CONFLICT, and it's the essence of story.

Look carefully at Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels.

The Terran Empire controls a galaxy spanning civilization, worlds upon worlds.  It treats its employees somewhat as the British Empire did - sending them here and there, assigning them to backwaters if they don't perform.  To the Terrans only science is real.  Magic, godesses such as Shara a Darkovan deity, and even ESP is nonsense.

Darkover is the backwater, the cultural nut the Terran Empire can't crack.

Why is that?  On Darkover, ESP is the everyday science that they use instead of technology, for everything from mining the scarce minerals of the planet to running a telegraph system.  But not everyone can do these things.  The Talent is genetic and dying out.

So the novel series conflict is the clash of civilizations with different definitions of reality. Those definitions generate personal ethical and moral behaviors which likewise clash.

For Terrans, nobody is responsible.  Everything is done by committee. The government enforces order, even by major warfare -- personal weaponry includes guns and bombs.

For Darkovans, who once polluted their planet with a nuclear war conducted by magic alone, the Compact rules their personal ethics.  They allow no weapon that can do harm without putting the user within reach of the victim (i.e. guns and even bows and arrows are disallowed). Everyone must take PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY for the results of their own actions - each and every one, but most especially those Gifted with ESP, the power of the gods.

The novels tell the story of the collapse of Darkover under the crush of the Terran Empire, and how that collapse changes the Empire. It is a sad story, an inspiring story, a story of real people you can never forget even though none of them ever lived even though all of them are you.

So what do we see studying all this?

To formulate a popular, gripping story that speaks the language of a target audience you need to plumb the depths of the teen-angst and new-adult angst that arises from a clash of philosophies the audience is living in.

Your story, your Star Trek / Loveboat mashup, must arise from the problems your young demographic is wrestling with, and every crop of young folks wrestles with exactly the same thing -- breaking away from the inconvenient misconceptions their parents demand they adopt as the touchstones of their lives.

So we need to look at 2 generations at least, 40 years of philosophical history at the very least, to discover what the next current crop of advertiser-targets will have roiling in their subconscious minds.

I'll leave off there until Part V of this series. But meanwhile, study the TV Series titled Mary Tyler Moore.

It's comedy -- but illustrates what a TV show must do in order to touch a nerve.

http://www.amazon.com/Mary-Tyler-Moore-Show-Complete/dp/B00005JLIC/rereadablebooksr/
Think about Mary Tyler Moore in conjunction with any cross section of 2010's most popular fantasy novels.  As you know, I review the field and have read a very wide cross section of 2010's fantasy and SF too.

Manhattan publishing has hit a stride with mass market fantasy and that tells you a lot about the market if you know how to reverse-engineer the data.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com