And then...another GAMES OF COMMAND scene

Another little GAMES OF COMMAND vignette than ran through my mind (and into the keyboard) after the story "ended" in the book:

Sass was nervous as she stepped into the Regalia’s ready room. Branden Kel-Paten saw that in the way her gaze flicked to his as he rose from his seat behind the room’s long conference table; saw it in the way she was trying not to purse her lips as her mind—-caffeine-fueled, as usual-—worked at light speed. And he saw it in the way she absently fingered the edge of her utility belt, then caught herself and stopped. After three months of living with her on the Regalia, he knew all her little idiosyncrasies and more.

After three months of living with him, he thought she might realize she had nothing to worry about. It wasn’t as if he was going to kill the man following Sass into the ready room. Though the thought did hold a certain appeal…

“Kel-Paten.” Dag Zanorian nodded curtly, the ready room door shutting silently behind him.

Ooh, jealous! Tank’s furry head poked over the table top from where he’d been snoozing on an adjacent chair for the past hour while Kel-Paten went over the latest block of data he snagged from a Concordance cruiser before it escaped into the Void. The furzel’s empathic and telepathic range had expanded in those passing three months and he was never subtle about commenting on what he sensed or heard.

Embarrassing at times in the privacy of the captain’s quarters. But informative right now.

So Dag Zanorian was jealous. Imagine that.

“Zanorian.” Kel-Paten nodded back.

“Sit, Dag,” Sass pointed to a chair opposite his, compscreen already slatted up out of the table top and at the ready. “We’re all on the same side now.” She rounded the end of the table then lifted Tank out of the chair. The black and white furzel thumped down onto the ready room table with a soft sigh. Love Mommy!

Sass swiveled the chair around to sit. Kel-Paten brushed the top of her head with a kiss before she did so, sat when she did, didn’t miss the narrowing of Zanorian’s eyes.

Big jealous!

Sass tapped a white paw in warning. Evidently she heard Tank this time.

Kel-Paten bit back a grin while he shunted data to Zanorian’s screen. “This is the pattern we’ve been picking up in this sector for two weeks now,” he told Zanorian as a private message popped up on his screen: Gloating is unprofessional.

But it feels so damn good, he sent back to her screen with a thought. The Regalia—-being U-Cee-—wasn’t designed with data ports at every comp station for him to spike in. So far he’d only had time to convert two stations in the ready room, one on the bridge and, of course, in the one in the captain’s quarters. The majority of his time was spent bringing the New Alliance fleet up to date with everything he knew about the Triad. It didn’t matter it was now called the Sanctified Concordance. The hardware—ships, station, data systems—were still Triad built. And the personnel—even though they were Ved controlled—were still Triad Fleet crew and officers. The latter pained him. It was bad enough to witness the deaths of some of his key officers. It was worse to watch those still alive, controlled and driven insane by the Ved...

*************************


See, the characters really never shut up. Or go away. I guess that's kind of good. ;-) ~Linnea

Grievous: A human for all seasons

How many favorite recurring characters do you have? Or follow?

In a series, each sequel may have a different hero and heroine but quite often there is a secondary character who continues to play an important secondary role. Maybe she is a pet cat or dog that gets passed around, or a meddlesome matchmaker, or an authority figure --the mysterious older brother, the King of England, a secret society-- or maybe it is a magical artifact, or a robot.

I have the very human Grievous, who gets loaned out to a greater or lesser extent.

In FORCED MATE (my first book), the alien god-Prince Tarrant-Arragon made Grievous a job offer that he couldn't refuse.

He retains his job title of "Earthways Advisor" to god-Prince Tarrant-Arragon in INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL but also acts as congenial jailer.

In my work-in-progress, KNIGHT'S FORK, Grievous is sent along on a quest, and is the first to blurt out a wisecrack when he thinks a plot element is suspect, or when an alien's behavior is out of order.

I drafted the following scene snippet over a year ago when I started thinking about the three books that will follow INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL. At the time, I wasn't sure which book it would work best in (if at all). In my opinion, the trouble with combining a "Quest" story with a Romance is that quests require either a lot of characters (and more than one villain) or a lot of travel.

----

“Are those Earthgirls? They’re adorable, perfectly formed miniatures. Can I have one?”

Rhett translated Prince Thor-Quentin's remark for Grievous's enjoyment. A nod and hand wave from the human informed him that the courtesy was unnecessary.

“And by have you mean…?” he questioned Prince Thor-quentin diplomatically.

“To take home with me.”

“You don’t think that would be cruel?”

“What’s cruel?”

Rhett and Grievous exchanged glances.

“I want to talk to one of them.”

“Any one in particular?” Rhett drawled sarcastically.

Missing the point, Thor-Quentin studied the group of young women, like a tweenager on the wrong side of a pet shop window. “That one. No. All of them.”

“You do realize that Earthgirls don't speak Tigron, nor do they speak High Court?"

“They don’t?”

“No.”

“Can’t we implant something in one of them?”

“Your dick, I dare say,” Grievous growled, under his breath, in English. “Arrogant little snot, isn’t he, Sir?”


“It is you who wishes to converse, Thor-Quentin. Perhaps we should put something in your ear.”

“A flea, I should say, Sir.” Grievous muttered.


“If I want one, I have to learn her barbarian language?” Thor-Quentin said with incredulity. He was catching on. “How?”

“Ask Grievous. Nicely.” Rhett said, bored of the conversation.

----

Until next time....
Rowena Cherry

So many posts, so little time

I've been trying to post a copy of my Star Shadows cover all day. For some reason the site won't pick it up. I've also been trying to get my Meez of Elle, who is the heroine in SS up. But the site is down...Frustration upon Frustration.

I just finished reading my page proofs for Star Shadows. This was probably the most difficult book I've ever written. It took me over a year to do something that usually takes four months. My family was going through a difficult time with the long slow death of a loved one. At one point I had to walk away from it and come back. I discovered halfway through that I had too much plot for the story. I have a six year gap in the story just so it won't be too long. The first half is about the innocence and foolishness of youth and the second half about second chances.

There comes a point in a book when you are too close too it to judge it as a whole. You have to step back, take a break and look at it with fresh eyes. This was good. It gave me an entirely new appreciation of the characters and the story.

Star Shadows will be out in November. Until then I've got Twist to finish and a historical release, Rising Wind to promote. Since I'll be going on the road in my Cindy Holby persona I won't be around to post. So I"m taking a break from Alien Blog until September.

Take care!

Patriotism and Robert A. Heinlein

A version of this was submitted this week to
The Heinlein Centennial Reader A Call for Articles and Essays
about Heinlein's Life & Work
http://www.heinleinsociety.org/

I'll be going to the Robert Heinlein Centennial convention in
Kansas City over the July 7, 2007 weekend. They've put me on 6
panels in two days. So I've been preparing some handouts and
thinking about the topics.

Meanwhile, one of the Sime~Gen fans (Midge Baker) announced
she's a Robert Heinlein fan -- imagine that -- and gave me a URL
I'd like to share with you.

It is ever so gratifying to discover that some of my all time
favorite authors have fans who also like Sime~Gen and my other
work. And that happens quite a lot. Maybe I've done something
right.

You may note that my first novel, a Sime~Gen novel titled House
of Zeor which first came out from Doubleday in hardcover then
had numerous mass market paperback and translation reprints,
plus an Omnibus reprint, was dedicated to Robert Heinlein.

After a lifetime of reading his work, I first met Robert at the
World Science Fiction Convention in Kansas City in 1976 when I
was on an autographing tour for my non-fiction book Star Trek
Lives! about why fans like Star Trek. They held the first
Worldcon Blood Drive at that convention, and donating blood was
the only way to get RAH's autograph.

As it happened, I was disqualified from blood donation at the
time, but he built in a dodge to get around the requirement. If
you stood in line at the Bloodmobile, and were turned down, you
got a heart-pin that was your ticket to stand in line at the
autographing.

So I did both stand-in-lines (long ones) and got my heart-pin
which I still wear, and finally got to the desk where he was
signing books. Instead of asking for his autograph, I gave him
House of Zeor autographed to him by me.

He later called me and made some very encouraging remarks. So I
sent him my second novel, Unto Zeor, Forever and he called me
again asking if I was a medical doctor (which I'm not) because
I'd portrayed the essence of that profession with remarkable
realism.

Later still, he invited me and my family to visit him in his
home, a visit where my children (just the right age) got
autographed copies of his juveniles which they treasure to this
day.

There's a reason for that dedication of my first novel -- and it
wasn't to get an invitation to Robert Heinlein's house.
Sime~Gen and almost all of my work falls into the category I've
named Intimate Adventure
http://www.simegen.com/jl/intimateadventure.html
for more detail.

Romance and Intimacy (which aren't necessarily the same thing)
are both about Relationship -- about me vs. other with the focus
on Other.

Romance and Intimacy both create the binding force that holds
society and civilization together -- the bonds between
individuals which then extend to children, ancestors, extended
family, tribe, city, nation, etc.

It is this fundamental binding force of civilization that Robert
Heinlein writes about with such moving conviction that it became
one of the core drivers of my own fiction.

I became a science fiction writer very much because of Robert A.
Heinlein's vision of what humanity could and should be -- our
highest calling -- the counter entropic force in the universe,
the organizing force.

I first discovered his novels in the library in the early 1950's
-- or more accurately, my mother discovered them for even his
juveniles were shelved not in the children's library but in the
adult library to which I didn't qualify for a card. So my
mother sneaked me books way above my grade level. So I
did learn everything I needed to know about life from those
early juveniles.

One of the most important things I learned was the reason for
Patriotism and for Good Manners in any society containing
humans.

Here's the URL where you can find Robert A. Heinlein's speech on
the nature of Patriotism on Jerry Pournelle's website (which is
worth exploring).

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail212.html#RAH

That reason is survival. Pure and simple. Human societies that
fail to engender patriotism and good manners become extinct.
Heinlein held that "women and children first" = Patriotism.
That no society can survive if it doesn't reproduce. In that
endeavor males are expendable; women and children are not.
It's not that women CAN'T fight -- it's that society can't
afford it. If it comes down to a woman defending her children,
the warriors have failed. (but the attacker is going to be very
very sorry!)

In Sime~Gen, the channels don't fight because the Householding
that doesn't put "channels & Donors first" doesn't survive, even
though the channels are the most powerful combatants.
Heinlein had a reverence and respect for the POWER of womanhood
that went bone marrow deep - beyond words.

Heinlein's vision of the reason why viable human societies
produce Warriors is very deeply ingrained in my concept of
"Intimate Adventure."

Intimate Adventure replaces the "action" in Action/Adventure
with Intimacy -- so it becomes Intimate/Adventure.
In Intimate Adventure the Warrior's courage is needed on the
field of Intimacy, as well as the field of physical battle.
The Warrior's ability to give wholly of himself in service of
the Group -- to hold nothing back -- is rooted in personal bonds
of all kinds. The first personal bond that begins this process
is infant to care-giver (child to mother).

Through life, an individual forms hundreds of such bonds with
varying degrees of Intimacy -- and eventually, finds a mate and
raises children.

Romance is that activated state just prior to forming a mating
bond -- and the process of forming that bond.

What attracts a woman to any man is that man's untapped ability
to form such a bond at the deepest, most intimate level -- the
level where "what does she see in him?" and "what does he see in
her?" are clear and self-evident.

Women seek Men who will put them first in "women and children
first" -- a man who will stand between danger and the survival
of the group.

That ability to stand between danger and the survival of the
group is based on that network of bonds formed with individuals
of the group, the ancestors' sacrifices, and the vision of the
accomplishments of the progeny. So deeply steeped in Heinlein's work,
I wrote House of Zeor to portray a "Group" that would be worthy
of the kind of Patriotic Warrior Heinlein wrote about, the
Householdings that exist to prevent the extinction of the human species.

Robert Heinlein advocated "Pay It Forward" -- so I'm paying his
legacy forward by teaching the Intimate Adventure style of
writing on simegen.com.


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

GAMES OF COMMAND - after the last page...

Authors always write more than the readers read. For any novel, there are pages and pages that end up on the cutting room floor due to word-count limitations (I've posted some here), and then there are the post-book scenes. These are things that flow from the keyboard even after the book has been put to bed.

You see, when you've been living and breathing a character (or several characters) for months (or even years), you can't just shut them up, turn them off with the flick of a light switch. Not surprisingly days after GAMES OF COMMAND was done, edited and outta-my-office, Sass and Kel-Paten still wandered in from time to time and gave me a glimpse of what happened AFTER the book's last page...

Ralland Kel-Tyra caught Sass by the elbow as she threaded her way through the tables in the ship’s mess, and leaned his mouth down to her ear. “He’s about thirty minutes from imploding.”

She angled her face towards him but didn’t look at him. She watched Kel-Paten, instead. Had been watching him since he’d entered the Regalia’s mess hall ten minutes ago. “How long has he been like this?”

“His ‘I’m the only one who can save the universe’ mode? About four months, ever since he headed the mutiny against Psy-Serv.”

“Umm,” Sass said and then sighed. It had been less than an hour since they’d left the Vaxxar—a ghost ship now, secured for tow. Timm Kel-Faray and two other crew were in Monterro’s sick bay. The rest of the thirty-nine survivors were sent to the mess for a hot meal while her crew made some hasty rearrangements for sleeping quarters to accommodate them on the three day trip to Varlow.

Kel-Paten had tailed after her—or sometimes strode ahead of her—as they’d gone from shuttle bay to the bridge to sick bay and now to the mess.

At the moment, he was standing by a table of three former officers from the Vax, whose trays were full of hot food and mugs of cold beer. But a few minutes before that he’d been at a table of four, and minutes before that, another table of three. Had he eaten? No. He hadn’t even had a sip of beer.

“When’s the last time he slept?” she asked Ralland.

“I honestly couldn’t tell you. But I thought when we found the Regalia, found you…did you see what happened when Tank showed up on the bridge?”

She had. The site of the unshakeable admiral dropping to his knees had shaken her. “We had visual of your bridge, just not audio.”

“I thought he was going to implode then. He didn’t. That’s what worries me. He should have. He achieved the objective: he saved everyone he could from the Vax and Dalkerris. He got out of the Void, again. And he found you. That was everything. I thought that was everything. But he won’t stop. He can’t stop,” Ralland corrected himself. He shook his head wearily. “Damn him.”

“When’s the last time you slept, Captain Kel-Tyra?”

Ralland slanted her a quick, challenging glance that was one hundred percent Kel-Paten, even though his eyes were the color of chocolate and Kel-Paten’s were pale ice blue. Brothers. Four, six years apart? She didn’t know. But their stubbornness was just one more thing they had in common. “I’m due,” he admitted after a moment.

“And you’ve been assigned one of the executive guest suites.” The Regalia had two on the deck below the bridge. In an emergency—and this was one—they could sleep three people. “My people will take very good care of your crew,” she added. Five had already left, being guided to their quarters by one of her crew and a furzel, for probably the first decent sleep they’ve had in months.

“It’s him I’m worried about,” Ralland said, jutting his chin in the admiral’s direction. Kel-Paten had moved to another table.

“I will take very good care of your brother,” Sass said softly.

Another glance but no challenge this time. “You’re an amazing woman,” he said with a small smile.

She smiled back. “Then let me do my job.”

He squeezed her arm. “Aye, Captain.”

“Get some sleep. And if you can find your way to my office at 0930, I could use some help processing your people before we hit Varlow.”

A short nod. “I’ll be there.” He moved away, the sound of his footsteps lost in the clatter and clank of the mess hall.

She headed for Kel-Paten, who looked her way at that moment, his mouth curving into that odd, crooked smile of his. She noticed again how much thinner his face was. He wasn’t eating or sleeping, and maintaining his 'cybe systems was draining his body. It was as if he was stuck on Red Alert, all systems at max. If he didn’t implode he would burn up from the inside out.

“Our table’s up there.” She motioned to the command staff dining table on the raised platform along the wall.

“I’m not hungry and there are a few things I—”

She yanked on his arm. “Now, flyboy. Food. Beer. Or wine or Excelsior or whatever’s your poison of choice. But now.”

She saw it then. It was as if—for a moment—things weren’t synching, as if—for a moment—he didn’t know who she was or where he was or what he was doing there. His expression blanked. She felt him tense under her fingers. Fight or flight.

Then he was back. “Tasha—”

She switched tactics, abruptly. “I need your help. My office, now.” Taking care of himself wasn’t on his agenda. But a request for help fit neatly into his ‘save the universe’ mode.

She’d feed him, later. After he imploded...

Not quite a scene, I know. A bit of a vignette. There's one other that occurs a few months past this one. I'll post that next week (if I'm not going too nutso packing for RWA National and forget to do so).

I've been asked if readers will see further adventures of Sass and Kel-Paten. I don't have any formally planned as of right now, no. But you can see from the above that the characters aren't about to go away without a fight. I guess that's a good sign. ~Linnea

Homesick and Flying Under False Colours

I'm writing my fourth, fifth, and sixth alien romances at the moment, with the greatest emphasis on the fourth, but with some awareness for the fact that I can't kill off the alien beefcake.

At some point, I'd like to explore homesickness, either as something a human abductee suffers, or else as an issue that an alien has to deal with. It's not something one grows out of... or is it? I'd love to know other bloggers' experiences.

The first time I was away from home, as a schoolgirl, for a sleepover at a friend's home, I remember being miserable. As time went on, I had to be away from home for longer and longer periods: a long weekend camping trip or two and a couple of fortnight-long residential courses for the Duke of Edinburgh's award; university term times; boarding school holidays when I taught in Dorset.

Over the subsequent years, my life became exciting and glamorous. I fell in love and set up a household of my own... and moved house three times within Germany, not counting months in hotels between moves, and a couple of times in the USA. My own final nesting place in an adopted land isn't what I think of as "home".

I'm not going "home" for the summer this year, for several very good reasons, some of them logistical. (The logistics of intergalactic space travel would also be a difficulty in my books... on a much grander scale than my own which have not a little to do with multiple food allergies and current restrictions on the food and drink that one may take through security.)

Suddenly, vague yearnings to make contact with friends I've hardly thought about, except to send a Christmas card to... maybe... have prompted time-consuming mini-quests to get back in touch, and I've realized that I am homesick. I think, but I'm not sure, that part of the problem is that I don't have the choice this year. Either that, or I'm getting sentimental in my second half-century.

I contacted my old college, Homerton, Cambridge, and discovered that I am "a lost sheep" as far as the Keeper of the Rolls is -or was- concerned. Funnily enough, the fund-raisers never lost touch with me.

I've joined Facebook.com . Today someone wondered aloud --because we write on a wall, like twittering at Twitters.com-- how many of the people on the "London" network did not actually live in London at all. I felt like I was flying under false colours by lurking, so I declared myself.

As for my writing, "homesickness" is quite a challenge. For instance, FORCED MATE was (and is) a futuristic take on the classical myth of Persephone who was swept up into Hades's chariot and carried off to his dark world.

Since Forced Mate is a romance, the heroine had to live happily ever after, so I couldn't deal with the pomegranate seeds and her homesickness, and the eventual joint custody ruling by Zeus so Persephone spent half the year with her dh and the other half with her mother.

I think I know which future heroine may end up being homesick.

Kiss Me Deadly trailer

The True Founder of Alien Romance

Folks:

What we're really talking about here this week is what I call "The Fiction Delivery System" (as in "The Healthcare Delivery System" -- fiction is, to me, a required nutrient of life.)

It shouldn't matter what the delivery medium is (print, graphic novel, animation, TV, film, whatever). It delivers fiction.

The true founder of Alien Romance as a genre was among the first to break through the artificial barriers between media and genres. Let's explore this in detail.

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

Rowena Cherry wrote in her Sunday June 24th post here:

The great dilemma is, would alien romance readers today want to buy --in effect-- a traditional Regency romance in outer space? Was the Star Trek movie where Mr. Spock got married the omega and alpha of the genre, or is there room on bookshelves for more sexually continent heroes?

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

Margaret Carter's repost on Wed. June 20th (or Thursday?) also connected the Vampire to Spock and furthered that with a discussion of the Hero of a Paranormal Romance as being "different" from the hero of a regular romance.

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

Susan Kearny, on Wed. June 20th asked for input about how useful book trailers are in selling books -- i.e. a marketing question direct to readers who buy books.

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

Rowena - the Star Trek story you're thinking of was Amok Time, an episode of The Original Series, not one of the movies.

An interesting connection with the Vampire mythos is that, during Pon Farr, a Vulcan male can be a lethal danger to other males -- or DIE himself.

This connects "death" and "sex" with an alien twist on the subject. After all, in evolution as we know it, you can't have a reproductive drive that kills the reproducer BEFORE they reproduce and expect the species to thrive.

However, in many byways of sexual exploration among humans, death (or near-death) is exciting or inciting. Most people consider that extremely "sick".

What's different about an SF-Romance hero (or paranormal romance -- actually Spock qualifies as both since he's a telepath and bonds with his partner telepathically in a bond that can only be broken by death)?

And what has that difference to do with the efficacy of BOOK TRAILERS?

Using Spock as the example, think carefully.

Theodore Sturgeon invented Pon Farr and added it to Vulcans and Spock. Have you read his stories?

I met him several times at cons -- had long conversations with him and I grew up reading his stuff. I've posted a short piece about his influence on me at

http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/welcommittee/TedSturg.html

When I saw the TV Guide blurb for that episode and learned that Theodore Sturgeon had written it, I WROTE that episode's script in my head - I knew exactly what would happen, scene by scene (if my dialogue was off a little) because I knew Ted Sturgeon's work.
He played with alien sexuality incessantly. Poul Anderson just included the biology of reproduction in his worldbuilding -- but Sturgeon got down to the nitty gritty of the "drives" involved.

What makes the PARANORMAL ROMANCE hero "different" from the usual romance hero is very simple -- the writer has the ability and indeed the obligation to "worldbuild" around the "paranormal" attribute.

Since it's a romance, it may have more to do with relationship than actual sexuality, but today's romance usually includes at least some sex, not just hinting and making out.

So what's different about a paranormal romance hero is that HE is different in some aspect of his maleness. That difference can be an impediment (say if he's a ghost and just doesn't connect) or an enhancement (say he's a telepath and can trigger all kinds of wondrous sensations in his partner).

What's different about the paranormal romance hero is that ALL the parameters of personality and physiology taken for granted in a regular guy can be changed.

What's interesting about reading a paranormal romance is the adventure of finding out what's different about him -- and how that difference will re-shape the parameters of the essential Relationship.

What's that to do with a book trailer?

Notice this discussion mixes and matches TV, film (ST had films), and print (ST has print books) with wild abandon.

It wasn't so long ago that mixing media just wasn't allowed. Then publishers made heaps of money off TV spinoffs -- actually though it didn't start with Trek, it really exploded when Trekfen discovered real Trek novels (let's not mention Blish's SPOCK MUST DIE!)

Jean Lorrah, my sometime co-author, has written a list of best selling Trek books. I mean best-selling AMONG Trek books.

So what is the real significance and use of the Book Trailer?

To further blur that gap between film, TV, and print (and e-book).

Publishers have found that advertising books on TV via trailers doesn't work -- it may sell books, but not enough books to cover costs (because air time is expensive and not enough people read books.)

Response to Susan Kearny's question indicates that readers who read blogs like this don't decide to buy a book on the basis of a YouTube trailer.

So what is a book trailer for????

Its audience isn't book-buyers. It's audience is film makers -- producers.

A book trailer shows how the material of the novel would translate to the screen.
Writing a book deliberately including the "set piece" moments that a film has -- visual moments that "say it all" in pictures and thus end up in the trailer -- puts you in the running for selling that book to the film industry.

Creating the trailor for that book proves the book could become a film.

There was a whole long discussion recently on the e-book List at EPIC (the professional e-book writers and publishers org) about the difference between a script and a novel. It's a big difference.

So what goes into a paranormal romance book trailer that would attract readers?

The exact element of sexuality/relationship-bonding that is different in your alien-hero.

If only someone has preserved the TV ads for Amok Time, you'd see what I mean.

Kirk comes backing out of Spock's quarters and hits the wall. Plomeek soup (green soup) follows splat. Spock SCREAMS at Kirk (yes, he uses invective both in Amok Time and in the film about the whales (colorful expletives).)

The bridge scene -- "T'pring - my - wife."

T'Pau being carried into the arena on a litter.

The fight in the Arena with Spock quite clearly trying to kill Kirk.

In other words, Spock behaving in a very un-Spock way -- but the viewers of the show already know what the Spock-way is.

The mental BONDING of the Vulcan wedding is only mentioned briefly in passing in this TV episode, Amok Time. But literally hundreds of millions of words have been fan-generated based on that one hypothesis - what would sex be like for a telepathically bonded pair?

What does it take to break that bond? What can force it to form accidentally (K/S). What does it take to keep it from forming if it's spiritually inevitable?

Yes, that's right -- the Alien Romance genre just about got it's whole start in Star Trek fanfic. And those stories all started with Amok Time and Theodore Sturgeon's addition to Trek of male-heat and telepathic bonding.

So Theodore Sturgeon is the real founder of the whole Alien Romance genre and he never wrote a single romantic word! (horror, yes, literary polemics yes, romance - uh-uh.) Or maybe it's Gene Roddenberry, who gave SF print writers like Sturgeon a chance to write SF for TV -- something just unheard of at the time!

Who do you think is the real founder of Alien Romance?


Jacqueline Lichtenberg

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

New Words For New Worlds

Okay, confession time--prior to this point, I cheated. Because I write Earth-based sci-fi, my world building was limited to an Earth that was almost exactly the same as the one we live in...except there are aliens openly living among us. So, I never really worried about the other differences except as they related to my aliens, the Observers, and the world and society they came from.

Now, with my current WIP, which is set on Earth twenty years in the future, I find myself questioning everything about these future humans. Language, for example. We've always had some kind of word to indicate when something was "cool" or "neat."

Remember "rad" from the mid to late 80s? How about "wicked awesome" or "def"?
But what makes a certain word stick around? Would people in 2027 still be saying "cool" or would they have moved on to some other variation, like "icy" or "chill" maybe? Or, perhaps in a society in which many freedoms have been sacrificed supposedly for the greater good and safety for everyone, "free" might take on the role "cool" plays now as something limited and intangible that everyone wants to have. Everyone wants to be cool (in theory), and in their version of our world, everyone wants to be free. But using that word in this new context, "I love your jacket. It's so free," might be weird or confusing to readers who, living in our world in 2007, have an entirely different understanding of the word "free.'

One of my favorite examples of this language thing done well is "shiny" from the Firefly television series and the movie that followed, Serenity. "Shiny" basically replaced "cool" or "good" in just about every context. When the engine is falling apart, Kaylee tells Mal, "Don't worry, Captain. It's all shiny." It can also be used sarcastically as when Mal is confronted with more bad news, "Oh, shiny." But "shiny" also works in this beat-up world where the Alliance, the bad guys, have all the new technology and Mal's ship is constantly on the verge of breaking down. "Shiny" means new and problem-free, which is something greatly desired by Mal and his intrepid crew.

My heroine in this story is tech-savvy (much to my utter dismay) and a rebel. She refers to herself, tongue in cheek, as an "information liberator," which basically means she'll get you the information you want or need, whether it's the unedited version of the Bible or your local politician's "donation" record at the local house of ill-repute, for a fee. In a world where everything, including the internet, has been sanitized for your protection, unbiased and factual information is a hot commodity. These days, she might be referred to as a hacker, but in her world, she's called a cyber terrorist by the fearful and big-brotherly government almost as often as she's referred to as an "undisclosed source" when it benefits their agenda. This girl loves gadgets and the latest tech. What word would she use for "cool"? What do you guys think? All thoughts welcome.


Stacey Klemstein
(My thanks to Linnea, Rowena and everyone here for letting me fill in!)
Stacey Klemstein is the author of the Zara Mitchell series, a science fiction romance trilogy. THE SILVER SPOON, Book One, is available now, and EYE OF THE BEHOLDER, Book Two, will be released in February 2008. Book Three, as yet untitled, is in progress. Visit www.staceyklemstein.com to read free excerpts!


****

Stacey Klemstein
Author of THE SILVER SPOON (July 2007) and BITTER PILL (May 2008)

Visit www.staceyklemstein.com or myspace.com/staceyklemstein to read an excerpt and more!

"Don't misunderstand, it's not like I enjoyed having this happen to me. I guess it's just some kind of bizarre twist of fate, or maybe a sixth sense that only kicks in when the grim reaper is afoot. It's not like I'd wanted to find the high school swim coach floating face down in the deep end, any more than I'd wanted to find the assistant librarian hanging from the rafters in the library attic with a stack of true crime books kicked over beneath her.

It's just that whenever bodies started floating, swinging or, in this case, dropping, I happened to be there..." --BITTER PILL

Tall, dark, and continent

Am I going to talk about "continents"? Or "continence" as a heroic quality in an alien romance? Continence! Sexual continence, as opposed to sexual incontinence. We all think only of bladder control, because pharmaceutical company advertisements bombard us with solutions --or pills-- for that problem. As far as I know, there is no product to change the habits of the sexually incontinent. Possibly "continent" in the sense of sexual restraint has disappeared from the modern lexicon. I'll have to look!

Why do so many of us swoon over Spock, and scorn Kirk?

Kirk was supposed to be the hero. He was attractive in a short, brown-haired, pudgy/muscular sort of way. He had pecs and his tight top showed them. He scored with a different girl every week. He was impulsive, occasionally outspoken (rude), and he had tantrums. And, he got himself into trouble. He was like the sexually experienced, promiscuous, "rake" type hero that is so popular in romantic fiction.


Mr. Spock was more the traditional Regency romance hero.

He did not sleep around. He was almost invariably polite. He was formal.
I cannot recall him swearing. I cannot imagine him using any of the short, sexually colloquial terms that are a pre-requisite a book to qualify as "erotic romance". His wit was dry, and you had to pay attention to "get" it. Often he expressed devastating criticism just by raising one eyebrow. Jim's ways bewildered him. He was tall, dark, good looking, clean, well groomed. He was in control.

And he did that neat thing with his fingers. (But that's another story entirely.)

Mr. Spock --as a character, I don't mean I have the hots for Leonard Nimoy, bless him-- is the sort of hero that I'd like to write (and have my own happy ever after with!)

I see Rhett as potentially Spock-like.

(Rhett is in Forced Mate, also in Insufficient Mating Material. Get a glimpse of him in the "Insult and Injury" excerpt. Now he's getting his own story.)

The great dilemma is, would alien romance readers today want to buy --in effect-- a traditional Regency romance in outer space? Was the Star Trek movie where Mr. Spock got married the omega and alpha of the genre, or is there room on bookshelves for more sexually continent heroes?


(Games of Command is in my TBR stack.)

Rowena Cherry
alien romance

Twist

Here's the cover to my alien vampire book. Which is really a time travel. It's for a new line by Dorchester Publishing called Shomi and with more of an urban fantasy edge. Thing Underworld, Blade Runner, along that line. All the covers are Manga inspired.

My book will be released in Feb 08. But the first in the line, Wired by Liz Maverick will be out in July, followed by Marianne Mancusi's Moongazer

We're real excited about the line so if you see Wired on the shevles be sure to give it a try. Liz writes awesome action and is an award winning author with her Crimson City series. Moongazer, which I've read, features an alternate universe and you never know which one is real until the very end.

I'm off for a week of writing and relaxation at the beach!

Superior Species

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

What does a vampire have in common with Spock

Margaret L Carter is out of town, and I was looking through my saved Blogspot email folder to check on something and I discovered to my horror that last August I'd offered to add some links and labels to her blog, and I'd forgotten!

So, I thought the least I could do was re-publish her post and insert the labels and links.

------

What does a vampire have in common with Spock on STAR TREK? No, I'm not suggesting that the average vampire has a hyper-rational mind, pointed ears, or green blood. For me, however, the appeal of these two figures is similar. Both epitomize the allure of the Other in a form I find particularly attractive. When I first read DRACULA at the age of twelve, I was fascinated by the vampire because of the sensuality of blood-drinking. The scene in which the Count forces Mina to drink his blood was my favorite from the beginning. Many years later, I figured out that I responded this way because sharing blood represents the ultimate intimacy, and I still find such scenes deeply stirring. But I'm also drawn to vampires because of the same reason I love Spock. In each case, the character occupies the liminal position of "almost human but not quite," a person who looks a lot like us, yet with enough physical differences to appear exotically attractive, and thinks something like us but differently enough to embody a skewed perspective on the human condition.

Another appeal of both Mr. Spock and the typical vampire of fiction springs from his special relationship with the heroine. A Vulcan rigidly controls his emotions, never expressing them in the presence of others except during Pon Farr. The average vampire regards himself, with considerable justification, as superior to "mortals" (a term I don't find quite satisfactory, since vampires CAN be killed, but oh well) and views most of us as prey or, at best, pets. The heroine, whether a fan author's Mary Sue alter ego or a vampire novel's unusually strong woman, becomes, through her unique qualities, the Vulcan's or vampire's exception to the way he treats most of us mere mortals. In Suzy McKee Charnas' incomparable THE VAMPIRE TAPESTRY, psychologist Floria Landauer is the ancient vampire Weyland's "exception," just as, to cite an extreme example, Clarice Starling is Dr. Lecter's "exception." Depending on the behavior and attitudes to which our heroine becomes the exception, this situation may open a deeply troubling can of ethical worms, but that topic holds material for another entire essay. That's my main problem with the misnamed film BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA. Unlike many fans, I find Vlad unattractive (well, aside from his physical appearance, which strikes me as silly, not sexy) because his “love” for Mina constitutes making her an exception to the cruel way he behaves toward most other people, including Lucy, a pattern of evil and cruelty the film apparently expects us not to notice.

For a fascinating treatment of the reasons why the Beauty and the Beast motif appeals so strongly to many women, why we love monsters and feel regretful when the Beast turns into a handsome prince, go to Suzy McKee Charnas' website (www.suzymckeecharnas.com) under the “Byways” category and read her enthralling essay “The Beast's Embrace.” You can find these principles explored fictionally in her VAMPIRE TAPESTRY and her unforgettable Phantom of the Opera novella, narrated by Christine telling the TRUE story, “Beauty and the Opera, or the Phantom Beast” (reprinted in Charnas' collection STAGESTRUCK VAMPIRES AND OTHER PHANTASMS).

Another provocative examination of the allure of the alien monster, the Other, is presented in James Tiptree Jr.'s short story “And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side.” A character in this tale, cautioning the narrator against falling prey to the fascination of meeting his “first real aliens,” theorizes that human beings throughout our existence as a species have been erotically attracted to “the stranger” because exogamous mating “kept the genes circulating.” With aliens from other planets, although mating may sometimes occur, interbreeding can't (unlike in the STAR TREK universe). But many people find aliens irresistibly attractive because of the “supernormal stimulus” effect. If we innately desire the Other, we desire aliens most of all because they're EXTREMELY Other. Tiptree's story presents this compulsion as completely negative. The human species is having its soul bled away by this fruitless yearning for aliens.

Needless to say, I don't find the situation quite so hopeless. Friendship or love between human and nonhuman is the central theme of many of my favorite stories. One reason I was a devoted fan of the TV series BEAUTY AND THE BEAST was that there was absolutely no chance of Vincent's ever becoming “normal” in appearance. Vampires appeal to me on the same level. Therefore, I'm always a bit disappointed when a paranormal romance ends with the “cure” of the vampire, which, to me, negates the very aspect of the character that attracted me. Hence, unlike many vampire fans, I don't respond strongly to the resonance of the “repentant bad boy” theme, in which curing or at least reforming the “evil” or “cursed” undead monster plays an integral part. Having the human partner become a vampire doesn't please me much more, in most cases. (There are exceptions, of course. A talented writer can make either of these scenarios satisfying to me for the duration of a novel.) The ongoing challenge of two unlike characters embracing across the distance between them is what I enjoy reading and writing about. My own vampires are members of a different species who appear human and live secretly among us. Like human beings, they have the capacity for ethical choice and can be either good or evil. I've written an entire book of literary criticism about this kind of vampire fiction, DIFFERENT BLOOD: THE VAMPIRE AS ALIEN, published by Amber Quill (www.amberquill.com). The bibliography contains many titles that would interest fans of alien romance. For my own series, all the stories and novels are listed in internal chronological order at the “Vanishing Breed Vampire Universe” link on my website (www.margaretlcarter.com).

Another series that fascinates me because of its “alien vampire” dimension as well as the search for understanding between people who differ from yet depend upon each other is the Sime~Gen series by Jacqueline Lichtenberg and Jean Lorrah. It takes place in a distant future when humanity has mutated into two halves (“larities”). Gens look like us but produce the essence of life-energy, selyn. Simes, who look like us except for tentacles on their forearms, need selyn to live but don't produce a measurable amount themselves. They have to draw this substance monthly from Gens or die in agony. You can learn about this universe in depth at www.simegen.com. When the first book, HOUSE OF ZEOR, was newly published, I saw Jacqueline on a TV interview in which she said the novel would appeal to fans of vampires and STAR TREK. It sounded like my kind of book, so I read it, and she was right. In fact, on the Sime~Gen website you can also read about how the “Star Trek effect” shaped the writing of HOUSE OF ZEOR. Which brings us back to vampires and Mr. Spock!

Opinions Wanted--book trailers

I used to think that the formula to becoming a successful published author meant:
1) I had to write well.
2) I had to write what other people wanted to read.
3) I had to keep enough product on the shelves so readers wouldn't forget me.

And all that is still true, but there is so much more. I attend conferences and give speeches. i do television and Internet interviews. I keep up a web site. I arrange marketing and promotion and print ads. There's a lot to the business side of writing. And one of the things I do to try and gain interest in my books are trailers. in the beginning, I hired a company to do them for me. They made great trailers but it got rather expensive. So i did one myself. And now I'm looking at doing another one.

And it's not easy. I have to write a script, scout locations, find talent--that's the actors--pick out costumes, hair and makeup. Then after it's all shot, the real work begins. Editing, text, sound, music. It's a lot of work. Then when it's done I have to upload it all over the Internet. Obviously I don't do all this myself, but even coordinating the work is work. :)

So here's my question. How many of you like watching book videos? How many of you have actually bought a book after you've seen one? Is all the effort and expense worth it? If you read this blog, please just give a short response. help us authors out and let us know if we're wasting our advertising dollars and our time.

And if you want to see the trailer for Kiss me Deadly my June release, it's at www.susankearney.com

Best,

Susan Kearney

Aliens Who Give Rise to Vampire Legends

Folks:

Cindy Holby wrote Friday June 15th:
--------------
So after I had a morning meltdown we put our heads together. And what did we come up with?
Aliens. Aliens who are the reason there is a vampire legend. Actually it was pretty cool to come up with a new concept on an old tale. Plus we made up lots of slang and my heroine only lost a few of her really snarky lines.
------
And in the comments Linnea wrote:
Jacqueline Lichtenberg beat you to that, darling. Read her THOSE OF MY BLOOD if you want to learn about aliens and vampires and why they're on this planet. ;-) Then read her DREAM SPY which is awesome. ~Linnea
----------------

Whee! Thank you Linnea and thank you Margaret for mentioning THOSE OF MY BLOOD and DREAMSPY and noting all the decades of history behind the "vampires are aliens from outer space" tradition.

I first got the idea from, Black Destroyer the short story -- A. E. Van Vogt? I remember the story, but I have also heard it described by many people when doing panels and none of them read the story I read! They think it's horror, and I think it's Intimate Adventure.

I do however believe that Black Destroyer was the originator of this vast and fascinating SF/Fantasy cross-genre concept. That story is one of the (many) reasons I became an SF writer.

I'm sure that Cindy originated the idea, too. Just because it's been practically done to death (ahem) doesn't mean that someone can't create it originally.

It is a logical extension of both the vampire myths and SF lore.

Think about Stargate (the movie, and then the series) and Stargate: Atlantis. Stargate (the movie) just extended this 1940's traditional SF approach from some select myths to ALL the gods in Earth's mythologies, and tied them all together in a Ragnarok of the Stars.

So I wanted to point out to those reading my comments on screenwriting something that many beginning writers don't understand.

In Hollywood, this happens all the time -- that an established, working screenwriter faced with a deadline and a monkey wrench such as Cindy describes for us would reach out for a logical extension of a concept and latch onto something a new writer has CREATED ORIGINALLY out of their own imagination.

Perhaps that author has written and even submitted the script -- or just shopped the idea around, possibly on an internet site.

A few years later a TV episode or theatrical release appears based on this new writer's original concept and the writer is absolutely convinced the established pro stole the idea.

But the pro did not steal the idea any more than Cindy and her editor stole MY idea.

(OK not quite the same. Mine has been published and re-published and widely reviewed and discussed -- and I know I was writing in an established sub-genre with its own rules.)

So back to my hypothetical story of the new screenwriter: The pro re-originated the idea. He didn't have to steal it. He just had to be well read enough and artist enough to synthesize the ingredients.

This is why you can't copyright an idea.

But here's where the new writer who thinks his idea is original can get in trouble. And it's where Cindy could get in trouble if she's unfamiliar with this huge and seething sub-genre (one of the first cross-genre genres).

When I wrote THOSE OF MY BLOOD and DREAMSPY, I already knew this SF/Fantasy/Horror hybrid genre like the back of my hand. All of its bits and pieces are part of my Sime~Gen universe premise on the thematic level (in fact Black Destroyer is one of the foundation bits of Sime~Gen).

Before writing THOSE OF MY BLOOD. I also updated my state-of-the-art research into the hybrid genre (cross-genre didn't exist at that time, and it was impossible to sell cross-genre books. THOSE OF MY BLOOD got 22 rejections and finally was published as SF because there was no SF-Romance category at that time, though a few vampire-romances had begun to appear. Rewrites had to tone down the romance and bring the SF to the fore.)

I did the worldbuilding behind THOSE OF MY BLOOD and DREAMSPY to carefully enumerate, point by point, all the thematic statements and details used by other novels (see Margaret Carter's various publications on the Vampire genre -- she's SUCH a scholar!).

I was careful not to copy or infringe or take as my own anything that had been used before. Most writers don't do that. It's too much trouble, too time consuming. And trust me, it is NOT done in Hollywood. They don't care.

They don't care because they aren't legally bound to avoid using ideas others have pioneered.
And there's a very good reason that you can't copyright AN IDEA (vampire legends originate with aliens from outer-space is an IDEA; all the little gods people have worshipped through the ages were just Go'auld mining Earth for hosts is an IDEA (and not an original one).)

The most incredibly commercial ideas in Hollywood are commercial because they aren't original -- even if the scriptwriter originates the idea without direct exposure to the literature where it's been pioneered.

What makes a concept commercial in Hollywood is that the audience is already familiar with it.
After nearly thirty years of developing the "vampires can be accounted for as visiting aliens" concept, it became a Hollywood original in Stargate where "all gods were just aliens".

(note how Stargate stays away from Christian, Moslem and Jewish beliefs -- haven't done Buddha or any LIVING religion but just pick on "old superstitions.")

(also note Stargate is being cancelled, but Atlantis will continue a while.)

So if you set out to write a script that will make you a Name in Hollywood, and you come up with something truly original that's never been done before, or a twist such as the Vampire-Alien combo, don't think that you can copyright that idea. You can't even Register it with the Guild's script-registration service. They only take completed screenplays.

An IDEA somehow exists "out there" external to our minds, and when the time is right, that IDEA inserts itself into dozens and dozens of minds (maybe millions) at about the same time. It isn't a race between you and all other originators, either.

Remember Thomas Edison wasn't the first to invent the lightbulb. But he got the historical credit because he had the commercialization machinery behind him.

After an idea has come out a few times, and failed -- THEN the big commercial success happens. So let others go ahead of you -- but to maintain your artistic integrity, if you get a chance to write the book out of the screenplay, be sure to note their names in your acknowledgements and that you walk in their footsteps.

If you think someone has stolen YOUR idea -- just remember that you stole it from the same place they got it from.

It's not the idea that becomes successful -- it's the commercial machinery behind the idea that makes the idea successful.

So it's entirely possible that because of THOSE OF MY BLOOD and DREAMSPY winnowing the ground first, Cindy's book may become the hottest commercial success of this very old idea and she may get the credit for originating it just as Thomas Edison got credit for the lightbulb.


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

I'm a meez-ing

[warning: rampant silliness]

I was all set to do something writerly and genre-ly about aliens and legends and our books and how our characters and ourselves perceive it all (and how run-on sentences suck...). Then I went to author Tori 'Sofie Metropolis' Carrington's site (because the writing team of Lori and Tony were of great help in teaching me, or rather Theo Petrakos, to swear in Greek in THE DOWN HOME ZOMBIE BLUES) and there was a Meez on their site.

I was hooked. Okay, I've been on Neopets for several years. I've seen Zwinkys but they didn't grab me. Meez grabbed me. I'm a meez now.

Yep, that me as a Meez and Daq-cat. On a starship bridge. What could be better? You can also find me in the Bar on my site: http://www.linneasinclair.com/bar.htm

If this amuses you, here's the official spiel and link:

You can make your own at Meez.com
When you sign up, enter my username: linnea1015 as the referral (yeah, we get some kind of points for doing so).

Yes, silliness. But it does somewhat relate our desire to escape who we are, and explore "other" (and we've had some great blogs here on "other-ness"). Books were for the longest while, the epitome of "escape" and "explore other." Then came radio (The Shadow Knows!) and television (Star Trek).

Now we can actually BE an other. There I am, with my beloved cat. On the bridge of my starship.

Is that too cool, or what? (And yes, I do own and am at this moment wearing lime green Crocs, just like my Meez.)

If you become a-meez-ed, post and let me know. Maybe I'll start a link to all my a-Meez-ing friends and readers on my site.

Off to Ohio early Wednesday morning, so if you live in Buckeye-ville, come see me at:

June 22nd-- WALDENBOOKS Tuttle Crossing Mall, Columbus OHBook signing 1130am – 1pm

June 23rd--ELYRIA, OH, PUBLIC LIBRARY, West River Branch, 1194 West River Road NorthMeet and Greet with the Teen Advisory BoardPublic Workshop & Public Book signing hosted by Waldenbooks/Borders Express12:30 pm until 4:30 pm

June 24th-- WALDENBOOKS The Mall at Fairfield Commons, Beavercreek OHBook signing and Meet and Greet with the Romance Readers Group2pm – 4:30pm+

~Linnea

Battling Backyard Aliens

You think I don't have any?
I do!

I've been battling some of them for four years at great personal cost! Not in terms of my own limbs... have you guessed where I'm going with this? Poison and fertiliser and strategically applied water are my weapons of choice against the alien invader.

My alien invader is green, with very large, dark almond shaped eyes, and a sinister mien. His brow ridge make him appear to frown menacingly at me. His body is long, and green. He has a body-armored thorax, an well defined abodomen (not a six-pack, though). He has wings. His glistening "body" --you know some mealy-mouthed editors favor calling a certain masculine body part "his body", right? I don't-- is an unimpressive inch or two.

Of course, an anticlimax follows.

My garden of delights has been penetrated by...
The Emerald Ash Borer

Moreover, the lake at the bottom of my garden (I own 80 feet of frontage, and I pay the same as a neighbor with 500 feet) has also been colonized by aliens, brought in on the feet and in the poop of giant Canada geese.

We wallet-warriors have had to call in the Government, local government, to help us fight alien vegetable matter. There is no other way to compel everyone to pay their "fair share" in the fight against this sprawling, weedy alien who will kill our lake if we don't fight with every weapon at our disposal, including waterborne weed-whackers that look like gamblers' riverboats.

Yes, I know aliens. I could write horror stories, if I were to exaggerate. Imagine if the Emerald Ash Borer didn't want to put his reproductive tackle inside my tree, and implant his offspring there, to eat me from the inside out. (How Alien!)

Imagine if the Thing in my lake had tentacles. (How LOTR!) Or a that it could walk. The Ents weren't the only ones. Did you read Day of the Triffids at school?

But I write alien romances... I don't "do" alien horror.

What's in your back yard?

Best wishes,
Rowena
(From whom not even a credit card commercial is safe from spoofing)

Monkey Wrenches and stuff like that

My current wip is an unban fantasy called Twist that I'm writing for Dorchester's new Shomi line. The covers are really cool, Manga style and its our hope that we'll pick up a bunch of new readers with the concept.

So yes there were guidelines for this line. And apparentlly when I pitched it to the aquiring editor he got so excited about my concept that he forgot one part of the guidelines.

No vampires.

So I'm halfway through the book which is due Sept one and scheduled to be released Feb 08 and I get a really sweet and apologetic email from my editor.

"uh, Colby, I forgot...we're not using vampires or werewolves in this line."

"uh, (insert editors name here). Did you forget that the vampires are my badguys?"

"Nope. But still, we got to do something. Make them nonvampire vampires or something like that." (thats a generalization of what he said.)

So after I had a morning meltdown we put our heads together. And what did we come up with?

Aliens. Aliens who are the reason there is a vampire legend. Actually it was pretty cool to come up with a new concept on an old tale. Plus we made up lots of slang and my heroine only lost a few of her really snarky lines.

So I lost the past two weeks to rewriting my nonvampires into existence. And I"m pretty excited about Twist. In spite of the monkey wrench.

Population Imbalances

It's well known that China's "one child" policy has led to a shortage of girls, leaving many young men unable to find wives. This week, though, I read in the paper that male birth rates are falling in some first-world countries, possibly because of environmental pollution, among other causes. All along, despite the higher number of boys conceived, fewer boys than girls have been born because prenatal loss of male babies tends to be higher. After birth, boys continue to succumb to death at higher rates than girls; males truly are the "weaker sex." Now, however, it seems that fewer boys are being conceived. So we could end up with a shortage of men in the developed world. Another demographic imbalance revolves around age. As an unintended consequence of population control, highly technological societies are ending up with "too many" older people in proportion to the young people needed to keep the economy functioning, especially in Japan and parts of Europe.

It's obvious that a society with too few women is in deep trouble, reproductively speaking. What are the likely sociological effects upon the status of women? Would they become highly valued and respected? Or would they be "valued" only in the sense of property to hoard and fight over? In the chilling theocratic society of Margaret Atwood's HANDMAID'S TALE, fertile women have become so scarce that they're forced to serve as breeding vessels (Handmaids) for a few wealthy, infertile couples. Another side effect of an excess of males, of course, is usually an increase in violent crime and other reckless behavior. A shortage of males, on the other hand, needn't pose a problem from a reproductive perspective. Given the necessary adjustment in sexual and/or parenting customs, one man can supply enough sperm to fertilized many women. From the perspective of women who want to marry and establish families, however, it's naturally a big problem. An extreme imbalance could lead to SF scenarios of men being held as pets or property by women rich and powerful enough to afford them. Or might the culture move in a retro direction and end up with a few powerful men possessing harems?

Too many old people? Might we (because I'm rapidly moving into that demographic) rule the world or at any rate the economy of developed nations, as we boomers supposedly do in the U.S. already? Or could the situation become so desperate that people past a certain advanced age—as in a little-read section of Swift's GULLIVER'S TRAVELS—would be effectively declared dead and stripped of their property rights to make room for the rising generations?

Optimistic SF writers such as Heinlein have often proposed fictional scenarios in which population pressures on Earth are relieved by extraterrestrial colonization. Would space travel ever become easy and cheap enough to remove any significant number of "excess" people from this planet? Historically, did the New World actually relieve population pressures in Europe? Or did the mere existence of an alternative for some people provide a symbolic "safety valve" that changed the balance in the Old World? I don't know enough history to have a legitimate opinion on that question, except that I know Ireland was severely depopulated by emigration in the wake of the potato famine in the 1840s.

Title Help--calling all would be title experts

Hi All,
I could really use some title help. My next books is a romantic suspense and is not tied to my June 26th release, Kiss Me Deadly. The book is a stand alone. It's about a secret formula my heroine inherits--along with her father's business partner--the hero. And someone is after the formula. My heroine is a classical dance teacher with a yen for tribal belly dance. The hero is a businessman. The book is set in Florida outside of Tampa.

All suggestions welcome.

Thanks,
Susan Kearney

"Mr. Ed" and Writing the Great American Novel

Please see my long comment on Linnea's post that went up yesterday. She's right, it takes longer to write shorter.

Well now! Isn't The Great American Novel what we all feel we're doing when we write?
Of course, we know it isn't so. Problems of genre-prejudice aside, you don't write "the great American novel" on purpose. Perhaps someone else on this co-blog will examine the concept "great" and the concept "American" in depth, and "novel" is a whole subject on its own, but today I wanted to examine what makes an Icon of a culture.

What is the function of an Icon and why do cultures elevate some trivial bit to become an icon to future generations?

Where do Icons come from?

I saw a segment on the PBS News Hour last week that's been bugging me with this question, and in truth it has a lot to do with Alien Romance and Intimate Adventure and Genre-Prejudice and Iconography.

"Mr. Ed" the 1960's TV show was billed and named in the News Hour segment several times as An American Icon. I think the publicist for the book written by the star of the show whom they were interviewing must have coined the phrase and succeeded in convincing the reporter to use it.

"Mr. Ed" preceded Star Trek and was an SF-ish parody crossed with kiddy-fare and came out immensely popular with adults because it was interlaced with complex relationships (like I Love Lucy and The Lucy Show).

http://www.tv.com/mister-ed/show/769/summary.html for more information (episode guides are there if anyone posted them -- tv.com is only as good as the contributors).

Mr. Ed was followed by "My Favorite Martian" -- and later by Star Trek which turned everything topsy turvey.

You see, Star Trek was actual adult drama -- not even really SF's traditional "Action/Adventure For Teen Boys" though it had that element prominent on the surface. ST posed serious questions about morality, ethics, world politics and religion.

SF on TV was revolutionized by Star Trek -- but the thin edge of the wedge, the ground-breaker, the true entry point into the general consciousness for science fiction (and adult stories about non-human intelligence) was via COMEDY.

And so Mr. Ed (about a deep buddy-friendship between an ordinary man and a talking horse who wanted to keep his verbal skills secret) became an American Icon (nearly 50 years later, when the star of the show writes a book about it!).

So maybe "an icon" is the tip of the root of change -- the point where a seed breaks open and starts to grow, but isn't quite recognizable yet.

Yes, I noted Rowena's post about Ginger Root and its shape. You see the impression humor makes.

So an Icon may be the first not-quite-recognizable appearance of a thing, or the next growth stage where it becomes recognizable (Spock has been named "an Icon") -- or some further inflection point in a growth curve.

Why do we appoint some things as "icons" and other things not? Well, that's another discussion having to do with popularity, publicity, journalistic choices, feedback between audience and profit-driven journalism, and group mind building.

But before we discuss any of that, and get bogged down in the related topic of "what is Art, really?" I think here on Alien Romance, we should study the 1960's a little deeper and learn.

Try this link:
http://www.tv.com/comedy/genre/4/topshows.html?g=4&era=1960&l=A&pop=&tag=gen_subtabs;era;4

Romance has been as derided as Science Fiction.
Science Fiction has begun to lose that stigma (still has a way to go, but frankly SF fandom WON the battle).

Romance is still considered "girly" fare, kid-lit, or the opiate of the useless drudge of the household.

But The Romance Genre really is an in-depth, far ranging and far reaching, highly philosophical, blatantly critical study of a single astrological phenomenon long known as The Neptune Transit -- which is famous for its spiritual effects.

The Alien Romance exposes that buried philosophical depth to the eye of the un-educated and perhaps innocent reader just as Star Trek exposed the philosophical importance of Science Fiction buried inside Mr. Ed, My Favorite Martian, Bewitched, and The Adams Family. (I'm not even mentioning Superman and other "kiddie" items, just general comedy.)

As Alien Romance adds an adult dimension to Romance, so Comedy added an adult dimension to SF.

Our next step must be a TV SHOW -- maybe made from a feature film -- which will become an American Icon like Mr. Ed -- a lighthearted romantic comedy with an alien point of view.

Now, maybe that's already happened and we're too close to it to see. I could nominate Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel as the Alien Romance Icon, maybe Lois and Clark -- maybe Forever Knight? Today we have Tanya Huff's Blood Files on TV along with a chance for The Dresden Files to make it on the Sci Fi channel. Maybe we're already there?

Anyone else have a nomination for the 2000's decade American Icon that will change viewing habits and make Alien Romance highly respectable general audience fare recognized on its artistic and philosophical merits?

What exactly is an icon and how do you recognize it before the media names it so?
Or maybe more to the point, how do you get to be "the media" that gets to choose what to select as "an Icon?"

Note this media piece on the last episode of The Sopranos:

--------------Were 'Sopranos' fans whacked or blessed? By JOCELYN NOVECK, AP National Writer
NEW YORK - And so on the first day of Year One A.T. — After Tony, that is — the "Sopranos"-viewing world was split in two camps.
One was muttering bitterly into its morning coffee at the open-ended conclusion of the epic series, a banal family moment over onion rings that would have delighted existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, author of "Being and Nothingness."
The other was lavishly praising the iconic HBO drama for capturing life's essential ambiguity and disorderliness.
See the full article:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070611/ap_en_tv/tv_sopranos_ending;_ylt=AnWtrKSlaxXnNWYMMX9RZueuGL8C
---------------------

Is "iconic" a buzzword being cheapened by overuse? Or does this really point the way forward into the general consciousness?

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

Authors and Writers and Readers, Oh My!

I'm too slammed with work--writing CHASIDAH'S CHOICE and deep in the final, final copy edits on THE DOWN HOME ZOMBIE BLUES--to be particularly witty today. So I'm going to ramble...

I spent this weekend north of Tampa, FL, giving two workshops at the New Port Richey library for the Florida Writers Association. I had a terrific time and my thanks go to Dahris Clair and the FWA, as well as the lovely people at the library who kindly made extra copies of my handouts. FWA is a multi-genre writers' organization so it appeared to me that you don't get the kind of genre-bonding that you do when you're part of a solo-genre group, like MWA (Mystery Writers of America), RWA (Romance) or SFWA (Science Fiction). Hence, there were a fair amount of authors-to-be in the audience who were attacking the goal of being published via the more difficult path: alone.

I mentioned at in my opening--and it's something I've commented on before--that I have the greatest respect for writers who became authors in the pre-Internet days. Before information was literally dripping off the walls. Before professional advice was a mere mouse-click away. Jacqueline Lichtenberg's writerly advice on her Sime~Gen site saved my pre-published patootie more than once years ago. Her advice still keeps my published patootie in line.

So it surprises me when I speak before a fiction writing group and they not only don't know the difference between external and internal conflict, but they have no idea where to find a sample of a query letter. (And I'm not stating everyone in my workshop fell into that category, but there were more who did than I'd expected.)

The truth is not only out there, folks, but so are the answers. In addition to Jacqueline's WorldCrafters Guild, there are sites like my agent's blog, PubRants, where she fully and often humorously demystifies the process of getting an agent. And Miss Snark ::genuflects:: may have recently retired, but her blog archives--and spot-0n advice--is still there.

Authors like Holly Lisle and Orson Scott Card have long maintained wonderful "How To Write Your Novel" pages on their sites. And when you're burned out from crafting your words, go hang out with RITA-award winning author, Robin D. Owens, and revive your muse.

And that's only the tip of the iceberg. I'm sure many of you have your favorite Writing Help/How To site. Share, okay? And when I get time [Linnea falls off her chair, laughing], I'll do up a page on my site, listing them all.

So the plain fact is, educating yourself on the craft of writing AND (and this is a big, whopping, important AND) the business of being a published author is not an impossible task. It's out there, kidlings. Click, scroll, learn.

Which brings me to the other half of this blog: readers.

I was absolutely blessed (and surprised) to have GAMES OF COMMAND make All About Romance's "Desert Isle Keeper" list recently. The DIK designation means this is a book the reviewer would want with him/her on a desert island. It's a honor. I'm truly honored. Because writing a book that makes people happy is a lot of hard, hard, hard (did I say it was hard?) work.

I'm not sure readers realize that. Sometimes I think readers pictures authors as lounging on the chaise, dictacting their next novel whilst being hand-fed chocolate-covered blueberries. Or some such thing. Every word we dictate is then accepted without question by the editors and copy-editors who adore us, and we go on to our next novel, and our next bowl of chocolate-covered blueberries.

Trust me, it's not remotely anything like that. Writing a novel is slightly less painful then going through back-to-back root canal operations. Don't get me wrong. I love writing. I'm addicted to writing. But what I write, what I present to my editor and what comes out as the final book is a long, often frustrating, always crazy process. So in case any readers were wondering:

1. Yes, I have to write to a specific word count. I cannot just ramble on like I am here. Yes, there is some leeway in the word count but when my editor says CUT I have to CUT. That may mean a fairly important scene never makes it into the final book because there are more important scenes than that one. It's like packing for a week's vacation. You have a suitcase of a certain size. You have airline weight limits for that suitcase. You have fifteen outfits you want to bring along but only room for eight. What goes? What stays behind? That's what writing and EDITING a book is like.

2. I have to balance both the speculative fiction aspect (science fiction/fantasy) and the romance aspect. And often, some mystery or political intrigue that has to be cleared up by book's end. I have to keep both my science fiction readers and my romance readers happy. That means, yes, it's a balancing act and no one, ever, is going to be one-hundred per cent happy. Not even me. That's why I have to groan when I read a blogger's or reviewer's comment that a) Linnea Sinclair had too much romance in [fill in novel title] for me and, from another blogger or reviewer about the identical book b) Linnea Sinclair had too much science fiction in [fill in novel title] for me.

Please see item #1 above. I have a finite amount of space in which to produce a novel. I do absolutely the best I can at the time to keep everyone happy but (see item #1 above) I also have to listen to my editor and copy-editor. Things get cut, and understand I may not always agree with the things I'm told to cut. But I cut. That's my job, as much as writing the book is.

Writing cross-genre fiction is--again--like packing a suitcase for a week's vacation where the climate will vary greatly: a snowy ski resort at the top of the mountain and a balmy beach below. Bikini. Down-filled parka. Flip-flops. Ski boots. What goes, what stays behind?

3. I write to deadline. That means I not only have to make all these decisions and changes and adjustments to the novel, I have to do it before X date. While at the same time--and this may shock you--trying to spend some small amount of time with my husband. And remembering to clean the kitty-litter pans. And feed the duck. And yes, travel up-state to teach two workshops. In between that, I have to update my website. Design and print my bookmarks. Answer fan mail (love doing that!). Fold laundry. Life eats away at writing time. Unfair but factual.

And this isn't just me, kidlings. Every published author faces these kinds of problems. Did you all notice the first sentence of this blog? I'm WRITING one book while stil EDITING another.

Which brings me back to writers' organizations, like RWA, SFWA and the Florida group (FWA) that I visited this weekend. Get used to hobnobbing with your fellow and sister writers and authors now--even before you're published. Because once you get published, life quickly morphs from crazy to insanely outta control. You're going to need your author buddies, not just for critique reads or cover quotes or characterization questions, but just as someone to laugh with. Someone who has a shoulder to cry on. Someone who can help you celebrate when your book is designated a 'Desert Isle Keeper.' And someone who can help you pound your head on your monitor in frustration when one reviewer notes that the romance in GAMES OF COMMAND between Sass and Branden was a waste of time, and another blogger pens that the romance in GAMES OF COMMAND between Sass and Branden was the only thing worth reading.

Authors and writers and readers, oh my! ~Linnea
www.linneasinclair.com

Worldbuilding in the grocery aisles

Hybrids aren't just cars that run on more than one fuel source.

There are hybrid animals, and hybrid plants which occur either naturally or with the assistance of mankind, also hybrids in Greek and Roman mythology. Some hybrids are sterile, and some are not. Some hybrids are called after a combination of the father's name and the mother's (father's name first). The mythological creatures do not appear to follow this convention... and in fact, now I understand the convention, my mind boggles over the Manticore (man-lion-scorpion).

wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid


The etymology is delightful. According to wikipedia, hybrid comes from the ancient Greek for "son of outrageous conduct."

I could have called my Tigron world's black sabre-toothed tigers ... pangers, or tigthers, but I think that would have complicated matters.

This week, I'm more interested in plant hybrids. For world-building in a hurry --not that I recommend taking a short cut, but sometimes one has to-- a few hours in the grocery aisles can be quite inspiring.

There are some astonishing hybrids available, as well as exotic fruits and vegetables that might or might not have been hybridized. I look at the Ugly Fruit, and I wonder whether it evolved to be visually appealing to anything (assuming that its fruit is "designed" to be dispersed with the assistance of creatures that eat the fleshy parts and eject the pits).

There's something spiny and orange that looks like a cross between a sea urchin and a sea slug, and I'm fascinated by those waxy green globes that come inside a pale green papery looking flower. If you were to change their colors, rename them, and describe them carefully as if you'd never seen them before, you'd hardly need to dream up your own fruits and vegetables for your alien romance's world. And, then there are the roots. You have to be careful what you do with your root vegetables, in my opinion.

How did we ever start to eat root veg? Did we observe a primate and copy them? Did our earliest ancestors' curious gaze fall upon something intriguingly orange, or pleasantly white, pushing up through loose soil? I suppose we do have an instinct (as children) to pull things out of the ground and bite them as an experiment. I'm told that I ate a worm once when I was a toddler! Would your aliens have similar instincts?

Your human heroine has to eat in outer space, so not all her food can be unrecognizable (or she'd have to have major allergy testing) or her gut would not be adapted to handle it. We're accustomed to stories about our domestic pets eating human delicacies which are not natural for them... which their guts are not adapted to handle. I've been thinking about what natural carnivores can and cannot eat, because I want my tigers to play a larger role in my next story.

In fact, having spent several hours reading the ingredients on dry pet food for research purposes, I do have to wonder under what circumstances a dog in the wild would eat corn on the cob. Or rice!

There are some schools of alternative healing thought that claim some of our painful ailments (such as arthritis) are a consequence of us eating fruits or vegetables that we are not adapted for, or to which some of us are allergic. My mother cured very painful arthritic swelling in her hands by giving up all produce in the tomato families. Other people have a problem with potatoes. (Some have a problem but don't know it.)

In Insufficient Mating Material, the hero and heroine are marooned on an island on an alien world, and they have to test food and deal with the possibility that the heroine might not have a tolerance for some of the fruits and vegetables growing there.

Why do I think roots are a problem? Carrots are easy, and you can eat them raw if you want to. Parsnips look like big carrots only white... but you really do have to cook them. Watch out for onions and shallots, because they look like tulip bulbs. There are different roots that look alike. Take ginger root and Jerusalem artichoke. They are both about the shape and size of a small, pudgy hand, with gnarly, stub-tipped fingers, root filaments like fleshy hairs, and are beige-gray.

On our world, some plants do not want to be eaten, especially by the roots (!) so they evolve to be poisonous. What happens in your alien world?

For those interested in research, or obsessed with plausible alien anatomy --and possibly inspired by the fact that a carrot fresh from the ground does not necessarily look "carrot shaped"-- M.I.T. (an eminently respectable place of scholarship) sells --or used to sell-- a to-scale, and anatomically correct poster called "Penises of the Animal Kingdom".

I thought the plural was Penes, but I suppose a few people wouldn't get the point.

And having Googled that, because none of the three of my dictionaries within easy reach gives any guidance on what a proper person should call multiple schlongs, I'm off to pursue other lines of romantic alien research.

Best wishes,

Rowena Cherry
Insufficient Mating Material
"racy, wildly entertaining futuristic romance" ~Writers Write