Forbidden Relationships

Folks:

There's some kind of spice, a charge (or maybe discharge) of emotional tension in doing the forbidden, the naughty, the unexpected. It's like crossing a line, going on an adventure, taking a dare -- being proved "right" somehow.

There's an expectation that others' opinion of you will change. Why?

Doing something for the first time is a kind of loss of virginity - a loss of "innocence." It doesn't much matter what the thing is. Skiing down a legendary slope, killing someone (on purpose or running them over by accident), or having sex.

When you do something you've never done before, it changes you. So you expect others to change their opinion of you. In fact, one thing that drives people to cross those lines, the taboos, is dissatisfaction with their current reputation.

Some of the things we do change us in good ways, make us stronger, more self-reliant, more capable of handling the world so that we can shelter children. Such things would be oh, maybe your first solo drive in your Dad's car, writing your first check, your first use of a credit card, your first stay in a hotel by yourself, returning merchandise to a store because it's defective.

These are landmarks on the road to self-reliance and dependability.

There are all kinds of things we do for a "first time" -- and later they just seem of no moment.

But each thing we do, each action we take, changes us as well as the world.

Remember, King David, the warrior King of Israel who wrote the Psalms which were sung daily in the Temple (which then was a tent), was forbidden to build the stone Temple because he was a blooded warrior, however righteous. He was a great scholar, a brave and powerful man, an artist of renown -- but that one task was forbidden to him and left for his son, King Solomon.

I've been thinking about that for a long time -- why King David was not given to build the permanent Temple. What quality had he attained that disqualified him from this task?

So this last week I was privileged to read Susan Grant's forthcoming (May 25, 2008) Harlequin SF-Romance, MOONSTRUCK, Book I in her Borderlands Series.

I do hope it'll be a long series!!!

MOONSTRUCK explores the ways in which having sex changes a person -- the first time, and what it means to be the only virgin on a starship full of tough customers -- and a peculiar type of "first time" when a jaded Captain used to "only sex" falls in love for the second time in her life, and discovers the unique experience of making love instead of "just sex" is more disturbing than ever she could imagine -- because it is with her enemy, her nemesis, the symbol of all that's despicable in her world.

Oh, Star Trek fans will love Grant's BORDERLANDS series. It's just what we've all been waiting for.

This starship captain is a woman with a sexual appetite and a lust for definitive action. She's carrying a huge emotional load that leads her to obsessive behavior and has distanced herself from all human contact because of that. Now, all of that has to change - fast - because she's been given a new ship to command and a First Officer (you guessed it) who was her enemy, her nemesis, the symbol of all that's despicable in her world. But that was before the war ended.

The BORDERLANDS universe will be familiar to some of Grant's fans, but MOONSTRUCK is an independent study in the reconstruction of a society fragmented for centuries by war. This novel introduces you gently to the universe that is so fraught with complexity you will live in it for years to come.

In fact, the Borderlands saga may owe as much to the turmoil in the Middle East as it does to Star Trek -- it is Nation Building seen from within. And as I've been saying in almost all the Tarot posts last year, the glue that holds this whole world together is LOVE.

Grant takes us on a love-venture (loventure?) into a relationship forbidden by religious and cultural rules, and forbidden by the common sense rule of the Service that sexual relationships up and down the chain of command do more harm than good, and forbidden by emotional rules about sleeping with the enemy.

This starship captain has few qualms about "just sex" with anything male, enemies included (remind you of James Kirk?). So no harm done? Right? uh-oh.

But after it dawns on her that it ISN'T "just sex" -- what then?

Doing something forbidden may have a certain spice to it -- but afterwards, is it worth it? What are the consequences and upon whom does the toll fall? If the cost is only to yourself, then it's nobody else's business. But if it involves another - that's a problem. If it involves two interstellar civilizations, that's something else entirely.

But if it weren't "forbidden" then there wouldn't be any consequences, right? It's crossing the line of "forbidden" that causes all the trouble -- not the act itself. Hmmm?

Or are things "forbidden" because some ancient ancestors got into trouble doing that thing?

Well, then but that was then and this is now -- rules have to change, right? The "forbidden line" has to move from generation to generation. No?

So we have to figure out what should or should not be forbidden in our own time. From scratch.

Should nothing be forbidden?

Should no action disqualify you for some other opportunity?

Is there some logic or reasoning that can be applied to select what taboos a culture needs?

Grant's first novel in her Borderlands Series could be viewed as a 3 of Swords process where the actions are crossing the lines of the forbidden, thus closing some options (as 3 Swords always does) and opening others.

See my August to December Tuesday posts for the 20 Tarot posts.

Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Shades of Dark—Sneak Peek #1

I know, July seems a long way off to you. Me, too (even if my weather is likely more July-ish than yours right now). However, I'm very excited about my July 29^th release from Bantam,Shades of Dark, which is the sequel to Gabriel's Ghost (2006 RITA Award Winner).

For two fugitive lovers, space has no haven,
no mercy, no light—only...
SHADES OF DARK

Before her court-martial, Captain Chasidah "Chaz" Bergren was the pride of the Sixth Fleet. Now she's a fugitive from the "justice" of a corrupt Empire. Along with her lover, the former monk, mercenary, and telepath Gabriel Ross Sullivan, Chaz hoped to leave the past light-years behind—until the news of her brother Thad's arrest and upcoming execution for treason. It's a ploy by Sully's cousin Hayden Burke to force them out of hiding and it works.

With a killer targeting human females and a renegade gen lab breeding jukor war machines, Chaz and Sully already had their hands full of treachery, betrayal—not to mention each other. Throw in Chaz's ex-husband, Imperial Admiral Philip Guthrie, and a Kyi-Ragkiril mentor out to seduce Sully and not just loyalties but lives are at stake. For when Sully makes a fateful choice changing their relationship forever, Chaz must also choose—between what duty demands and what her heart tells her she must do .

Since the first four chapters are already in the files section of my Yahoo Group(incentive to join, eh?), I'm going to post a peek from deeper in the book (Chapter 16):

The bridge's hatchlock thumped softly closed behind me.

Frowning, I twisted in my seat. We never sealed the bridge except for—

Del. All in black, like Sully always wore. Thermal shirt, dark pants but no long coat. I hadn't seen that coat since the first day he came on board. Except for that time in the Kyi.

He stepped toward me with an easy grace, his long silvery-blue hair pulled back in a braid.

"Problems?" I asked him.

He smiled and rested his hand on the back of my chair. I forced myself not to edge away but I was very aware of the pressure of my Stinger at my thigh. Which meant, very likely, so was he.

"Why do you equate me with problems, Chasidah? Perhaps I just crave the pleasure of your company."

"Where's Sully?"

"Ah, Gabriel is an excellent student. I could boast and say I'm an excellent guri, but the truth is, he is responsible for his success."

The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

Your helping Sully means a lot to him," I said, keeping all traces of emotion out of my voice, keeping my rattling duro-hards as still as I could. The man was reading me, sensing me. I couldn't feel it but I had no doubt.

"We were speaking of his appreciation earlier." His eyes were hooded. He slid his arm around the back of my chair, leaning closer.

This time I did edge away. "If there's something you want to talk to me about, I suggest you take a seat."

A whisper of heat stroked my neck then ran down my breasts.
I unhooked the safety strap with a jerk and pushed myself out of the chair. The Grizni on my wrist tingled. My pistol was one move away. "You're overstepping your bounds, Regarth," I said firmly. "I don't find your company pleasurable."

He leaned both forearms on the back of the chair, clasped his six-fingered hands together and looked at me, his smile wistful. "It's just culture and conditioning, lover. It has no real meaning. Not when I have worlds of delight to show you."

"I'm not interested."

"You love Gabriel. I understand that. And he loves you, angel. Oh, how he does. You're his greatest strength, his consummate addiction. But I can teach you ways to love him more. Make him love you more."

"The answer is no. It will be no tomorrow, no a week from now, and no a month from now. A year from now. The matter is now closed. If you raise it again, I will lock you in the brig."

He arched an eyebrow. "Is the bed in there big enough for two?"

Get off my bridge, Regarth. That's an order."

"Consider this." He unclasped his hands, splaying them apart. "I saved Philip Guthrie's life."

"We all worked to save Philip's life."

"What would you do, Chasidah Bergren Guthrie, to keep him alive?"

Fear shot through me. I couldn't help it. Fear and a rage so deep it burned worse than my hatred for Tage. I knew he felt it.

"I would kill you," I said tightly, "to keep him alive."

Del smiled lazily. "Interesting answer."

He straightened, took two steps slowly back and then turned and strode for the hatchway. It opened—illogically—with a flick of his hand in the air and a slight glittering of silver haze.

I stood by my chair, heart pounding, mouth dry, muscles rigid, hands fisted hard by my side, Grizni tingling with more intensity than it ever had before.

But it wasn't the Grizni I needed.

I rounded the chair quickly and headed for the ready room, slapping the palm pad so hard pain shot up my arm. The double doors opened. I punched my code in to the locked storage compartment recessed in the bulkhead and pulled out the rifle Philip had brought on board. The Kyi-killer.

I closed the storage compartment and slung the strap over my shoulder.

This was my answer. And his…


SHADES OF DARK, the sequel to Gabriel's Ghost, coming July 2008 from RITA award-winning author, Linnea Sinclair, and Bantam Books:
http://www.linneasinclair.com/


Something cascaded lightly through me—a gentling, a suffused glow. If love could be morphed into a physical element, this would be it. It was strength and yet it was vulnerability. It was all-encompassing and yet it was freedom. It was a wall of protection. It was wings of trust and faith.

It was Gabriel Ross Sullivan, answering the questions I couldn't ask. Not that everything would be okay, but that everything in his power would be done, and we'd face whatever outcomes there were together.

Alien romance and Pharmarchy

Pharmarchy. It's not a spelling mistake, it's a new world order.

As a word, Pharmarchy doesn't exist as far as I know --yet-- and I may have some trouble with a copy-editor when KNIGHT'S FORK gets to that stage, which will be very soon.

However, I've been doing world-building around my latest, sexually dysfunctional (by alien Djinn standards) sub-hero of KNIGHT'S FORK. He's the guy with the war-hand that is always on display, and the retractable equipment that isn't, and that isn't necessarily designed for pleasure, and that might or might not require a rub to get it to work.

I haven't been blogging or reading blogs, or comments on blogs until --briefly-- today. I see that "great minds think alike" again, at least as regards "spam". Linnea was the first friend to mention the inspiring value of spam. I think it was in connection with the naming of characters. Now, Jacqueline has commented on spam. I've remarked about what's in my spam, too.

If I were a female hyena, with a pseudo-you-know-what, I might be more interested in the pills, rubs, and creams that I could pop and apply.

And by the way, have you noticed the crafty reverse psychology in the warning about the possibility of four-hour continuous effectiveness? I don't imagine most males would worry until three hours and fifty-eight minutes had elapsed.

When I was at university studying Sociology, I recall that one book we were required to read was a Margaret Mead study from Samoa. (My apologies to Samoa if my memory is at fault.) I think those of us who discussed the primitive sex advice decided that the translator was pulling her leg. It was suggested that young men who wanted impressive packages should insert their privates into a wild bee hive.

It must be obvious that I was forever damaged by reading this ugly hoax at an impressionable age.

It seems to me that recent advertising has caused us to talk --and think-- about conditions that we would once consider too humiliating and embarrassing to mention as if they are normal (which they might be) and socially acceptable. And, of course, to accept pharmaceuticals as the obvious remedy.

I think my late father would have been horrified to see people on television make a song and a dance about diarrhea! I've never mastered the spelling of the word, I've had so little occasion to write about it.

Which brings me to Pharmarchy. Or Pharma-archy. As in mon-archy, olig-archy.

Maybe there is a more elegant word?

Instead of the warriors, or the politicians, or the priests, or the industrialists, or the traders ruling an alien world, I'm putting the pharmaceutical chemists in power. They're not "bound" by a Hippocratic Oath to do no harm, are they?

Hey, if every male in a world becomes dependent on a pill, and cannot enjoy an erection without one, imagine the power the Big Three would have.

Big Three Pharma, that is.

Rowena Cherry
http://www.rowenacherry.com

More About Twist

Another great reveiw from Romance Reader at Heart

Despite being lost in some of the nuances of the time travel plot on occasion, I still managed to devour TWIST in a day. It is action-packed, engaging, and definitely my type of read.

The heroine is kick-butt, but in a Sydney Bristow of Alias way, and her hero's torment makes him nothing short of hot. The plot is, quite frankly, one of the best post apocalyptic I have run across, rivaling the Crimson City series. Now for me, lover off all things Crimson, that is saying something.

There are detailed scenes that have me smelling the hospital antiseptic and shopping in the shack-like tents for provisions right along with the characters. Fabulous details and dialogue written by the author make it so.

So, if you enjoy the following few TV shows and movies—Mad Max, The Matrix, Xena Warrior Princess, and Stargate—then you really ought to love TWIST.

Shannon Johnson

And now a sample of Twist

Prologue


Would I make it?
My feet pounded on the pavement, splashing through the puddles that remained from last night’s rain. Was it just last night that it rained? It seemed as if years had passed. They had passed. Still, the things they held were yet to occur.
Think about it later. Just run.
I had to get there on time. I just had to. I refused to think about what I’d do if I didn’t.
My hand tightened on the hilt of my katana as I ran. The scabbard was laced against my thigh. I didn’t even feel it; it had become so much a part of me in the time just past.
When I started martial arts training I never even considered the possibility that I would use the weapons to actually kill anyone. I think it just turned out to be one of those funny twists of fate. It was just something that happened.
My original life plan was to be an architect. Just like my dad. But in another one of those funny life twists he was killed in a freak accident. The last words he spoke to me were “We’ve got all the time in the world.” Then he stepped off the curb and got hit by a speeding car.
Like I said: Funny twists of fate. And here I was, caught up in another.
One more block. Luckily I was used to running. I ran every morning with Charlie—or used to. Lately my running consisted of “for my life” instead of exercise.
How many mornings had it been since we ran? Two, as far as Charlie was concerned. More for me.
Don’t think about it.
I saw the lights from Java Joe’s up ahead.
Shane had told me it happened when he left. When he got tired of waiting for me. How long had he waited?
The door opened and my heart skipped a beat as the light bounced off golden blonde hair and he stuck his hands in his pockets and moved down the sidewalk.
“Shane!” I yelled as I tried to run faster. She would be waiting for him, just past the coffee shop in the alleyway.
He didn’t hear me. He kept walking, and then he disappeared. He was in the alley. Shane had told me it happened in the alley. I gripped the Katana in both hands as I fronted Joe’s and raced on by. When I reached the alley I skidded to a stop.
“Hey, Lucy,” I called out. My heart pounded wildly in my chest; I took a deep breath and willed it into submission. If I made a wrong move, Shane would be lost to me forever.
Lucinda turned. Her bright red hair settled on her shoulders and she looked down her aristocratic nose at me. Behind her Shane stood as if hypnotized, his bright blue eyes staring off into the night as if he were waiting for something. If he only knew what fate this woman planned for him.
“How do you…” Lucinda stopped suddenly and looked over me appraisingly. “You know,” she said. “You did it. You opened the gate.”
“I did,” I said. I held the katana firmly in my right hand and stood balanced on the soles of my feet with my legs slightly apart. Ready…waiting…willing to do what ever was needed.
“I think I’ll keep him anyway,” she said with a flip of her hair. “It will be fun to watch him fight his nature.”
“He’s mine,” I said. “You told me yourself. He will always be mine, no matter what you do to him.”
“How about if I kill him?” she said.
I twisted the blade of my katana so that light from the streetlight was reflected into Lucy’s face. It also must have awakened Shane from whatever trance she put him in. He blinked and looked over Lucinda’s shoulder at me.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “What are you doing?” He looked in shock at the katana which was so much a part of me now that I barely noticed I was holding it.
“Lucy and I have some unfinished business,” I said.
“You told me you didn’t know her,” Shane said accusingly. My heart lurched at his tone, at the strangeness he felt around me. I would fix that. I had to fix that or I might as well have stayed where I was.
“Oh, Lucy and I go way back,” I said. “Don’t we?”
“Do we?” she asked.
“About a hundred years, give or take a few.”
“I’m out of here,” Shane said.
He took a step and Lucinda slammed him against the wall. With one hand closed around his throat, she lifted him in the air so that his feet dangled over the ground. She kept her eyes on me; even when Shane grabbed her wrist and kicked her in the side, she barely flinched.
“Put him down Lucy,” I said.
“Make me,” she replied.
I looked at Shane whose face was full of confusion. He was desperately gasping for breath. I had to make sure he stayed. If he ran I would lose him forever. So I said the only thing that made any sense at all in the current madness that my life had become.
“Ninjas are way cooler than pirates.”

Terminator on TV

Did any of you watch the 2-part pilot of the new TV series TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES? The plot premise appeals to me: Sarah and her son, John (future liberator of the human race), living on the run while John tries in vain to be a normal teenage boy and undergoes the usual conflicts with an overprotective parent, but in this case with additional layers of urgency. I also like the character of Cameron, the "good" Terminator sent back through time by John Connor to keep his teenage self alive. In comprehension of social customs and the ability to use colloquial speech and mimic human responses, she's much more advanced than Arnold in the second movie (which this series follows in the chronology of the Terminator universe). Almost too much so, because I'd hoped to see more "fish out of water" behavior from her. I expected her to embody the character type of the artificial intelligence caught between a desire to be human, or at least to appear human and interact with us, and her inability ever to quite shed her robot nature (like Data and the holographic Doctor in the Star Trek universe). Well, after only two hours of the series, it's impossible to say whether Cameron will or won't develop in that direction. The most inhuman thing she's done so far is to shoot Sarah's old Hispanic friend because he might "possibly" have lied. (Which brings up one of my pet nitpicks about action programs: Shouldn't our heroes be a bit more cautious about attracting the attention of the authorities by leaving bodies around? And wouldn't an advanced artificial intelligence have been programmed to exercise ordinary caution in that respect?)

The main SF issue this show brings up, however, is time travel. Cameron transports Sarah and John from 1997 to 2007 because Sarah was destined to die of cancer in 2005. In effect, they skipped over her death. Since there's no suggestion that they jumped sideways into another timeline, does this mean there's a record of Sarah's death (two years previously) in this future to which they've traveled? That could raise interesting complications if they run into any old acquaintances who know she's supposed to be dead. More important, what about the primary purpose of Sarah's crusade, to keep Skynet from ever being built? If this mission succeeds, John will never be in a position to send Terminators back to protect his younger self, and anyway there won't be any robots available to send. So far as I can tell at this point, the TV writers haven't given any thought to the time paradox problems. Which isn't too surprising, I guess; after all, this is TV. :) Wasn't there a series not long ago about a man who mysteriously received copies of the next day's newspaper and used the information to right wrongs? I never watched a single episode of that show, because Anthony Boucher dealt with that premise in a short story several decades ago. Boucher's protagonist summons a demon and asks only for a copy of the next day's newspaper. He tries many different methods of using his knowledge of the near future for his own benefit or to help others (e.g., saving the mayor from getting shot). Each time, his attempt to change the future creates a paradox, and he's caught in a loop that lands him back where he started. The obvious fact that the paradox issue didn't occur to whoever thought up the TV series premise kept me from having any interest in watching it.

Sex and Health

Folks

Here I'm connecting some dots -- maybe eventually they will form a picture.

---------
Margaret Carter wrote in a previous blog entry here:
Almost as wild a fantasy is that sometime the day will come when our entire population will be entitled as a civil right to the kind of excellent and almost-free care I received at the Walter Reed army hospital. But that is politics, and I suppose a no-no for this space. :)
---------

For my June 2008 column, I review Stewards of the Flame, an adult SF novel by the famous SF writer Sylvia Engdahl. Sylvia tackles Margaret's subject with a straight line extrapolation in true SF style -- AND adds a flaming romance laced through the entire discussion of the philosophy of medical practice.

If you're interested, see http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2008/
And scroll down to JUNE. These columns will become available on this page sometime after publication date when they appear in print in The Monthly Aspectarian.

And with all the political noise lately, I have been thinking again about the health care delivery system -- and how we define "health."
----------------
Then Rowena Cherry wrote in her Sunday blog:However, if "sex-driven" were to be officially as important as plot and character, I'd also want to include action-driven, idea-driven, world- driven... and life (and literature) would get complicated. Some will say "action" is "plot".
----------------

And instantly I thought of a thousand things to discuss with regard to sex-driven plots. I learned a LOT about that topic from Marion Zimmer Bradley. I point the student at MZB's novel CATCH TRAP -- the car racing scene is a sex scene but you have to know how the writer constructed it that way to see it. Her Darkover novel, World Wreckers has the BEST alien sex scene I've ever read, and the entire plot of that novel is sex-driven.

She taught me how it can be that sexuality is actually the basis of all Art. Of music and dance, and imaginative story-telling, too.

Poul Anderson taught us how it is that all cultures, even non-human galaxy-spanning cultures, are rooted in the basic biology of sexuality (or at least of reproduction).

Our mores and religious and philosophical notions always take reproductive imperatives into account. How creatures reproduce determines the parameters of the cultures they can build to allow them to live together - even determines how large the groups can be and how much territory they require (population density).

So here we are in a world on the brink of plague (bird flu or otherwise), famine (bee hives dying off mysteriously), war (every direction you look), and death (an aging population). The Four Horsemen ride, and other than antacids, the most popular medication being counterfeited today has to be for various perceived sexual dysfunctions.

With all today's emphasis on pharmacological masking of sexual dysfunction, it's a wonder more romance novels don't tackle that philosophical conundrum.

What is the philosophical connection between physical sex, health, reproduction and love?

Where does the sexual experience come from? If it is primarily physical, of what value would such an experience be with a non-human partner? Or turn it around: what value would a non-human partner get from sex with a human?

Again, if sex is primarily a reproductive act, why mess around with a member of a different species?

It seems to me that the "aliendjinnromance" title of this co-blog implies that romance, as we discuss it here, is at least partly "magical" -- i.e. a thing of the spirit at least as much, if not more, than of the body.

So why is "aliendjinnromance" related to Science Fiction?

Perhaps romance, and its consequential full, ripe love, is primarily of the spirit. The healthy spirit seeks, and often finds, the true mate regardless of the body.

Thus, as soon as travel on earth became possible for large populations and people began mixing, intermarriages among different races became common.

Using a straight line extrapolation, as Sylvia Engdahl did for her medical novel, we definitely see that dispersing humans throughout the galaxy where they would encounter non-human people would produce intermarriages.

The science fiction premises possible in such a galactic civilization could explore issues of health, but most especially sexual health. What if an organ size mismatch could be fixed by medication or surgery? (would he?) What if frequency or volume adjustments had to be made to accommodate -- would he? Would she?

What about a human who was sexually dysfunctional falling for a non-human who didn't notice any impairment? But what if the impairment bothered the human who tried to fix it pharmacologically?

What would the non-human's opinion of pharmacological masking of sexual dysfunction be?

Oh, just think of the inter-galactic spam!

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

Florida? South Carolina? California?

Nope, not talking about election primaries. I'm reminding those of you hither and yon that I'm hitting the road again starting next month. Here's my schedule for the next few months. I love meeting readers so if you're in the area, please do come by!

February 9th--Valentine's Day Multi Author Book Signing, Orlando FL : Barnes & Noble, Colonial Plaza Market Center, Noon to 2pm

February 29th-Mar 2nd--Celebrate RomanceConference, Columbia SC

March 19th–22nd--2008 Popular Culture/American Culture Conference, San Francisco, CA

March 29th-30th--Lake Co. Library Festival of Reading, Mount Dora, FL

April 5th--Naples Press Club Author & Book Festival, Naples FL

April 6th--Pasco/NPR Writers Group 2nd Annual Conference, New Port Richey Library, FL

April 16th-20th--Romantic Times Booklovers Convention, Pittsburgh, PA

Honestly, I'm a really friendly person. Silly, even. Please don't be shy about coming up to me at a book signing or a conference and introducing yourself. Tell me which books of mine you've read, ask me about my characters…whatever you like. I don't bite. Well, I haven't bitten a reader in at least six three months. And they're just little love bites…

Hope to see you!
~Linnea

SHADES OF DARK, the sequel to Gabriel's Ghost, coming July 2008 from RITA award-winning author, Linnea Sinclair, and Bantam Books: http://www.linneasinclair.com/

Something cascaded lightly through me—a gentling, a suffused glow. If love could be morphed into a physical element, this would be it. It was strength and yet it was vulnerability. It was all-encompassing and yet it was freedom. It was a wall of protection. It was wings of trust and faith.

It was Gabriel Ross Sullivan, answering the questions I couldn't ask. Not that everything would be okay, but that everything in his power would be done, and we'd face whatever outcomes there were together.

Plot, character, or something else?

Have you heard it said that all speculative romances, science fiction romances, or alien romances are either plot driven or character driven? Sometimes, I think there is, or should be, a third category: "sex-driven"!

However, if "sex-driven" were to be officially as important as plot and character, I'd also want to include action-driven, idea-driven, world- driven... and life (and literature) would get complicated. Some will say "action" is "plot".

I always start with the character in every sense of the word "character". Personality, morals, virtues, flaws. Everything that happens to my hero --and to my heroine-- happens because of a decision they made, because of who they are and "where they come from".

Does that mean that a character-driven book is like a snowball? Or a comet? Mine don't move that fast, and there are a lot of layers of accumulated dirt rolled up in it, if that is the case, not to mention the other debris, grit, and star road-kill.

Research is like the shark's fin in the surf. You don't need to see the body of it to know whether or not it's there. I love Research, and I do way too much of it, and I have trouble burying it, and sometimes it reveals insuperable difficulties. If my heroine is trapped with an immensely attractive and eligible hunk on a desert island, she might want to look and smell good. This could be a challenge.

Here's a glimpse into my mind.

Take unsightly body hair. It's a Romance. It's a Fantasy. (It's Insufficient Mating Material!) Does she have to have that problem? Can it be ignored? Yes.... but... well, that depends. Let's look into this, because it could be a rich source of comedy or conflict.

What do people do? There's threading. It's a bit like using tweezers, but done with fast moving twisted thread. Hence the name. I could thread my legs, but not my armpits. We can rule out solvents, creams, bleaches, chemical reactions. What is wax made of? Could one raid a wild beehive for the beeswax? Would it work? Would it be worth trying? Would mud do just as well? I think I heard that the Egyptians used mud. I also read somewhere that they used crocodile dung as a contraceptive sponge. (No! Not in a Romance, pause to roll on the floor at the thought of my editor's face.)

OK. Off to some beach to try the proverbial "razor" shell for myself. Maybe it would have been quicker, less painful, and altogether less scabby if I've visited snopes.

Are there people whom nature blessed with naturally smooth legs? Yes. OK. We will gloss over what is going on in her armpits, and bless her legs. Next...?

Broken jaws are quite a challenge. I talked to a lot of nay sayers who said I couldn't possibly write a Romantic hero with a broken jaw because of all the problems, and what it would do to his appearance (short term) and the dire problem if he were to break it a second time.

Cool. The hero has a strong motivation not to be a gentleman if the heroine has a penchant for slapping faces at the drop of a slur.

Wicked. The heroine is expecting a long haired, tanned, muscular, gorgeous hunk to swagger up the aisle on her royal shotgun wedding day. How will she react when some bald, starved, pale, weedy guy limps towards her? He looks like he's been starved and torturing into marrying her!

So, she refuses to marry him. Duh! That doesn't make them any less embarrassing and inconvenient. Royal "face" has been lost all round. So they have to be marooned somewhere until they go with the flow. Shall we give them all the mod cons? I think not. No buried cache of smugglers' rum. No fully loaded airplane full of supplies. Life is not a picnic!

Shoot them down in the sea. Wet her one and only dress. Make it shrink so she can't get out of it without help. Have it rain to keep her dress wet. Do like Mythbusters and the story of the shrinking jeans. Get in a cold bath in a tight dress, and discover the difficulties of undressing afterwards.

And then, there's the "Survivorman" stuff of day-to-day living... (If you have very good eyes, you can see that Survivorman, Les Stroud gave me the cover quote on Insufficient Mating Material). And that's not all by a long shot.

I haven't begun (in this particular blog) to get serious about the twin paradox, collapsing wormholes, unstable systems, scram jets, and governmental red tape.

Research can snowball, and I haven't even scratched the surface.

Rowena Cherry
Insufficient Mating Material

Twist

I'd like to apologize to my fellow bloggers for not posting lately. My father has cancer and it seems like every week has brought another disaster. However he's doing better now and I feel like I can take a deep breath and concentrate once more on my books. And I am excited about my next book, Twist

Twist is a time-travel romance, and as the title implies there’s more to this story than the usual jaunt through time. Abbey knows little of her family history, but the time-twister she activates will open a doorway that not only leads to a devastating future, but enables her to learn her role as a Guardian. Shane’s life has been ripped apart and he blames Abbey, but no matter the outcome he’ll be by her side all of the way. Colby Hodge has done a fabulous job detailing this fictional world. There’s a delicious frustration factor that enhances the tension between Abbey and Shane, and it helps to give them a very realistic quality in both the present and the paranormal laced future. Twist has an imaginative storyline, vivid characterization and non-stop action that makes it impossible to set down.

Kimberly Swan, Darque Reviews

Thank you Kimberly. I'll be posting exerts through the next few weeks until the Jan 29 release date. See you next week.

Futuristic Medicine

Since I had surgery a little over a week ago, my brain is still mushy. So I don't really have a discussion topic to write about. In spite of the private room, strong pain meds, pretty good food (patients order off a menu nowadays), and very nice staff, I was glad to stay in the hospital only one night. Once the catheter and IV were taken out, there was nothing the hospital could do for me that couldn't be done at home. I've been thinking, though, about how medicine of the future might handle surgery and post-op recovery. Wouldn't it be nice if we could just be put into stasis right before the procedure and stay that way until recovery is complete? Just wake up weeks to months later, completely normal, without having to live through the discomfort and fatigue in between? I can visualize being placed in a suspended-animation capsule (well, it couldn't be literally suspended, or healing couldn't occur, but something like that) from which we'd emerge with no change in weight (unless that was the object of the treatment), plenty of energy, no pain, no loss of muscle tone. Beats those diagnostic beds in the STAR TREK sick bay, which always looked a bit uncomfortable to me. And I was lucky enough to be able to have major organs removed in the least invasive way possible, but wouldn't it be great if there were an even less invasive method? To indulge in a flight of fantasy, maybe having the diseased tissue teleported out of the body and the resultant internal bleeding stopped instantly?

Almost as wild a fantasy is that sometime the day will come when our entire population will be entitled as a civil right to the kind of excellent and almost-free care I received at the Walter Reed army hospital. But that is politics, and I suppose a no-no for this space. :)

One advantage in not being put into stasis for a month: I have plenty of time to read. My TBR stack includes over twenty books I've been waiting to get around to, including Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's latest Saint-Germain novel, BORNE IN BLOOD. Lately I've read Linnea Sinclair's GAMES OF COMMAND, the anthology MY BIG FAT SUPERNATURAL HONEYMOON, and Scott Westerfeld's UGLIES and THE LAST DAYS, among others, and reread parts of Jared Diamond's COLLAPSE (about why some societies survive while others crash and vanish). COLLAPSE and Diamond's classic GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL are superb sources of worldbuilding material.

Falling in Love

Folks:

We call it "falling" in love because to be in love is to be at a lower potential energy state than we are as individuals.

What "falls" is your tension level that holds your psychological defenses up.

When those psychological barriers around your identity "fall" you are able to make contact with another in a deep and (ahem) penetrating way that binds two entities into one.

This is ordinarily signified by a Neptune transit. Neptune is famous for "dissolving" barriers or inhibitions.

Now consider the global political situation.

For a writer there is nothing more explosive dramatically than sex and politics.

Today we live in a world of "security" -- where even your identity can be stolen!

How much harder will it be for someone raised in this world to lower those barriers around identity and be able to really REALLY "fall" into love? (correlate with divorce rates?)

In physics, when two particles combine into an atom or atomic structure, they lose energy.

During the formation, energy is emitted in a packet, a spark, called a "packing fraction". The "packing fraction" is the energy a system does NOT have because it is a system, not individual particles.

It's the same with a couple in love. Together, they are bound by the absense of that packing fraction of energy. (thus a third person hitting that atom can disrupt the bond of the relationship by adding energy to it, blowing it apart).

The well known sensation of "security" that a woman feels in the arms of her strong lover obviously a universal experience, an important signal that you are "falling" in love.

What exactly is "security?"

The word has been so misused today, to apply to unusual search and seizure (having your hair spray confiscated at airline checking "security." )

Today "security" means being constantly on guard against intrusion, theft, and sneak attack.

But "security" is really the sensation of not having to be on guard. The sensation of knowing for certain that there exists NOTHING "out there" that might consider harming you or that would do so by accident.

This high contrast (i.e. conflict) between biological and psychological needs and our constructed civilization is fodder for thousands of romance novels (just as the Regency period is for novels about feminine independence).

Tell me what titles you've read lately that exploit that conundrum -- that "security" means today "on high defense" instead of "undefended."

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

Judged by Your Peers: Contests & Writers

It's the start of the silly season again. What that means for many RWA members who are yet to be published is that the first three or so chapters of their novels-in-progress have found their way to the desks of published authors for judging in contests like the prestigious Golden Heart, HOLT Medallion, Touch of Magic, Daphne du Maurier and others. I've judged the major RWA contests and several of the local chapters for four years or more now (time blurs when you're on deadline). Because I'm published in SFR, I tend to get paranormal manuscripts to judge (though I have judge historicals and mysteries as well, lately). I've read some incredibly good unpublished manuscripts. I've seen some horrors.

I take time—a lot of time—grading each submission. These days, the chance for judge's comments are becoming rare so all you can do is plop a score down. I wrestle over the low ones because I know the printed matter sitting in my grubby little hands is someone's baby, someone's heart and soul, someone's sweat and blood and tears. But I have given low scores because the reality is, giving a high mark to a work that is simply not "there" yet is doing no favor to the writer. Sure, a high score will get you to the finals and read by a NY editor or major agent, but if your writing is sub-par, you're going to go down in serious flames at that point.

The sad thing is, I've yet to see a manuscript where someone actually Could Not Write. What I see are manuscripts where the flaws outnumber the plusses, where a writer is so anxious to get his or her story on paper that style and craft go flying out the window.

Some of the worst are honestly in the paranormal realm (though it may be that I simply see more of those because of my published specialty). But I think the paranormal (science fiction romance, futuristics, vampire/werewolf romance, fae, elves, etc.) has additional problems because, for the most part, setting isn't a given, a shoe-in, a throw-away. Setting and world-building are as important as character and pacing in the pages of a PNR/SFR.

So let's talk about some of the things NOT to do in your next contest submission in that genre:

1. The character doesn't fit the world. You've constructed a society where people lives in unheated castles with no plumbing, but they have starships. They wear loin cloths but have laser pistols. Granted, you could explain that by creating some serious cultural schisms (ie: the Amish in today's society) but I'm not seeing that. I'm seeing a costume drama where the writer decided that being outer space would also be a Cool Thing to have in the story. It's jarring, it makes no sense and I have a hard time, as a reader, understanding how your character got to be where he is with no access to technology. Yet when he's kidnapped by The Bad Guys he automatically knows how to pilot an X-3 Razor Fightercraft and take it into hyperspace. Correspondence courses, maybe?
   
   
2. The entire planet has the same weather, landscape, language and customs. Okay, maybe on a really small moon. Or, of course, if the planet's been colonized and/or terraformed and/or colonists lives in domes. The whole colonist-populated world has a different dynamic than indigenous. If you don't know how to build the societies and cultures on a planet, for Pete's sake, look under your feet. You're standing on one. Look at our cultural diversity, our weather patterns, our polar caps, our deserts, our rain forests. Yes, this is based on our position from our solar system's star (and other criteria related to that) but if you're positing a naturally populated world then it will be (if we're talking humans), in a similar set-up. But even Jupiter has weather. And Mars has polar caps. As an aside, I'm perfectly fine with the possibility that a political region (solar system, sector, quadrant or whatever) would have a "legalized" common language in addition to regional languages. English has become the common language of pilots on this planet. So a "standard" language over a sector or system is plausible as along as—AGAIN—you give a nod to the fact that there are regional languages, or at some point have been regional languages. I have a really hard time with manuscripts where everyone speaks ONLY English or ONLY whatever the outer space language is called. If nothing else, slang will differ by regions (what some of you call "soda" is called "pop" in other regions of the USA.)
   
   
3. Things happen because you want them to: This is actually a common flaw that transcends genres. I've seen this problem in so many unpublished manuscripts. The writer forces an 'event' because that kind of event is needed. Yes, all writers make up the things that happen. But you have to set them up so they are logical to the plot, the characters, and the world. It's the logic and integration to the plot that are missing. I call it the "Just Happens To" syndrome. It's where coincidence and not conflict are fueling the plot. The heroine just happens to be walking down a crowded city street and a little girl just happens to drop her book bag and the heroine just happens to notice that (and no one else does) and pick it up and just happens then to go into a luncheonette where the waitress just happens to recognize the book bag as belonging to the hero's daughter (and the heroine just happens to be evasive when questioned about it) and just happens to call the hero on her cell phone who just happens to be across the street and he grabs a cop who just happens to be there so they can arrest the heroine for theft. Of course, it just happens that the hero is an attorney and he realizes the error and it just happens he needs a new secretary and it just happens the heroine just got her paralegal certification and so he offers her job to make up for his shabby treatment of her…and so on. It's a series of forced coincidences that stretch credibility after the third or fourth "just happens." Why would the attorney ASSUME theft? What kind of police officer would ASSUME a crime has been committed? Why wouldn't the heroine just say "I saw a little girl drop this, perhaps she lives around here?" Why in hell didn't she run after the kid and give her the book bag back? It's one big misunderstanding (also called the BM in writerly lingo) and flimsy coincidence after another, just because the writer wants the heroine to be in the same office as the hero. Or on the same starship. Or in the same castle.
   
   
4. Nothing happens (as opposed to "Just Happens To" above). I judged a nicely written fantasy piece recently that had lavish settings and a possibly interesting set up in a otherworldly kingdom—and NOT medieval, which was a very nice change!—but nothing happened to make me care to continue reading. I met the princess, who was the female protagonist. We see her tutor, her boredom with same, we meet some of her father's royal advisors, we meet the king. We get a glimpse of some medieval/typical European types coming to speak to this king, but what we've really gotten is a very boring day in this young woman's life and a Home-and-Gardens tour of her castle. I guessed the fact that she's bored is the impetus to the piece, but I was bored, too. Although the castle and surroundings were really lovely. But I kept waiting for something to happen. I kept waiting for the writer to give me a reason to care about the princess. Other than she was bored and prone not to listen to her elders, there was nothing interesting about her. Being a princess isn't interesting enough. Granted, in real life, very few of us are on first name basis with a princess (a few drama queens, definitely. But a princess…). In fantasy, however, princesses are dripping off the castle walls. We have a plethora of princesses. Especially late teenaged ones who are bored with their tutors. Writing guru Dwight Swain advises to start your novel at the point of no return, at the point where something happens to your main character to force him on a path from which there is only one direction: into more trouble. Noted SF author Jacqueline Lichtenberg tells you that conflict is the essence of a novel's story. Listen to those wise words. Start your novel with (logical) trouble. Save the tour of the castle for later.
   

I have a feeling that those manuscripts I see that fall prey to these common and very fixable errors are because the writers don't have crit partners in place vetting their words. I can't stress the importance of crit partners. You, writer, know what you meant to say. But you may not have said so, and your brain—submerged and bloated by the writing process—isn't always capable of telling you that. You need to have "fresh eyes" vet your writing, especially before you send it out to be judged. And those "fresh eyes" should not be your mother or your best friend, unless your mother is Nora Roberts and your best friend is Jacqueline Lichtenberg. I'm not seeing bad writing out there in contest-land. I'm seeing common, fixable errors.

So BIC HOK! (Butt In Chair, Hands on Keyboard) And get thee to a good crit partner. And you'll win the next contest you enter. ~Linnea

SHADES OF DARK, the sequel to Gabriel's Ghost, coming July 2008 from RITA award-winning author, Linnea Sinclair, and Bantam Books: http://www.linneasinclair.com/

…and suddenly I love you beyond all measure is not just words but a heart, a soul bursting open, a stripping raw of all pretense. It is Sully, it is Gabriel, it is his tears on my face, his body in mine, our minds seamless. It is hopes and dreams and failures. It is apologies and a prayer for redemption. It is heaven and damnation.

All that I am is yours pales beside it.

It is everything.

It is love.

Alien Romance -- and a question of sub-genre

Do labels help or muddy the waters?
Do labels matter?

To some authors, labels, subgenres and categories matter very much, especially at this time of year with so many contests and polls taking place.

Should aliens, faeries, genie and dragonslayers (or dragon lovers) be split off from the demons, vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters and other denizens of the paranormal?

Where should the psychics be? Did it make more sense when the genre was FFandP for everyone? Or, should we have newer, narrower labels.. for instance to keep the fairies out of the space ships? I'm not suggesting, just asking.

Labels don't fit my idea of what I write! Judging by the vigorous discussion taking place on the paranormalromance yahoo group --which I did not start-- a number of writers feel strongly that they don't fit in.

I thought it was interesting enough to blog about.

Linnea's zombies are alien, aren't they? Cool. Margaret's vampires are of alien origin. My aliens have extra senses, and they use the Tarot (and runes, and playing cards) and they think about sex a lot.

Some of us stretch our legs, metaphorically speaking, as we straddle genres.

Sometimes, within a series, different books veer over different imaginary lines of demarcation, at least, I think mine do.






With Insufficient Mating Material, the space ships aren't very important (IMHO) but they are there. The survival skills that Djetth (Jeth) and Princess Marsh need when they are shot down and marooned on a desert island are the same techniques that "Survivorman" Les Stroud might use. In fact, Survivorman was my consultant for the facts in the book... and he gave me the cover quote!


So, I'm quite contented for Insufficient Mating Material to be called almost anything. I'm even comfortable with "Fantasy" though the only "dragon" is a title, and the Djinncraft is supposed to be almost as explicable as any of the physics in Star Trek. It is a sexy book... but IMHO it's not Erotica because the hero and heroine (stuck on their desert island) are entirely monogamous once they get around to it, and there is a happy ending.

As long as a label seems helpful to the person recommending a book to someone else, I no longer fret about it. I'm not so cool when a critic denounces my book for being Erotica, when it isn't ... but my feelings are only slightly hurt with it being called Space Porn.


Best wishes

Rowena Cherry
Chess-inspired ("mating") titles. Gods from outer space. Sexy SFR. Poking fun, (pun intended). Shameless word-play.

"Racy, wildly entertaining futuristic romance,"~ Writers Write


LASR Award nomineehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
http://www.longandshortreviews.com/poll.htm


CAPA Award nominee

http://www.theromancestudio.com/capa.php


Mating Net in Trailer Awards
http://thenewcoveytrailerawards.blogspot.com


First Chapter Sampler (Susan Grant, Nina Bangs, Joy Nash, Rowena Cherry, Deborah Macgillivray, Jade Lee, Colby Hodge, Catherine Spangler, Kathleen Nance, Robin T Popp)

http://www.rowenacherry.com/downloads/FFP_Authors_Sampler.pdf

Hot Mamas In Outer Space

HOT MAMAS IN OUTER SPACE
By Kimber An

I’d like to thank Rowena Cherry for inviting me to guest blog today. She inspired today’s topic with her post a couple of weeks ago about the various backgrounds Science Fiction Romance authors bring to the table. I’m not yet published, but my life certainly impacted this column. I’m a former Certified Professional Nanny. Currently, I stay home and educate our children after the Classical Method. I majored in English first in college, and then switched to history. Yes, Linnea, I’m going to blog about babies!

Science Fiction Romance is a character-driven subgenre. As far as we know, all the readers are human. I think we all know this means there must be enough humanity in the characters for the readers to relate to. The readership is almost entirely female. According to the RWA, most Romance readers are mature and well-educated. Nearly all of the women readers I know are happily married mommies.

A long time ago, it seems to me both the Science Fiction and Romance genres suffered from the Old Madonna/Whore Syndrome (unable to think of mothers as hot lovers.) As the genres evolved, the heroines evolved into worldly wise and, ahem, experienced women. But, they were still childless. Considering my fanaticism for babies, you can imagine how often I groaned and tossed a book over my shoulder. Fantasy is nice, but I have got to be able to relate, yanno. I now know there was good stuff, but I couldn’t get past the anti-baby crap back then.

The fact is I’m extremely picky about my Science Fiction. More than that, I went on strike against the Romance genre for about a decade and a half. When I first started pursuing publication, I was instructed to read widely. One of the first authors to drag me kicking and screaming back into the Romance genre was Susan Grant. Well, okay, maybe I wasn’t exactly kicking, but I did scream. I didn’t know there was such a bird as Science Fiction Romance. I started reading THE STAR KING and I was, like, “Holy tribble poo, Batman! She’s a mom!” Needless to say, I was Hoover-fodder after that.





So, we’ve gone from the Old Madonna/Whore Complex to a woman admiral who’s had a brush with motherhood in Susan’s next novel, MOONSTRUCK, in just a few decades. How did we get here?

The role of American women changed dramatically over the course of the 20th century, getting a huge boost from World War II. We went from having our wedding day as our highest aspiration to having a myriad of life choices. Nowadays, women can choose not to marry or to marry but not have children. We can have children and choose to stay home with them, even if we’re doctors or lawyers as a couple of my friends are. We now know children are worthy of intelligent mothers. We can choose to work outside the home. Men are expected to be active parents, as well. Demi Moore showed the world in 1991 that mommies are sexy when she posed nude and seven months pregnant. Did you know she nursed her babies over a year? I think it was closer to two. Nowadays, she’s married to a man fifteen years younger. Yes, we’ve learned mommies are sexy and crying babies are romantic. Oh, yes, crying babies are romantic! They cultivate *selfless* love in their parents. Selfless love transforms ordinary couples into fabulous lovers.

I’m being idealistic, of course. Not everyone is so evolved. There are still parents who shake their babies to death.


So, you see, it’s only the natural course of evolution and I think Science Fiction Romance is the ideal flagship.


Bring it on, Susan! We’re ready.


Guest blog by Kimber An

Happy New Year and Solar Heat Video

Hi Everyone,
I hope you had a great holiday. I did, visiting with family and eating too much. But I've also been working on my new book video for SOLAR HEAT. In this book--coming to stores around Feb 5th, I go back into space. It was fun imagining what the spaceship would look like and you can watch the video right here.

Happy 2008!!!

Now that I've finished the huge, long posts on the Tarot I've been doing for the last 20 weeks, every Tuesday, I hope to get back to shorter entries.

I'd like to invite you all to attend the Annual New Year's Chat at simegen.com New Year's Day afternoon. If you can't make it today -- maybe you can next year.

For those that don't have the mIRC (or equivalent) software, there is an entry point for you via the web page of: http://www.simegen.com/techtools/chat/

Log in to #sgtalk which we use for "side talk." Introduce yourself as a reader of this blog. The monitor will direct you to also log into another chat room or give you instructions on how to log in using IRC chatware.

The chats are posted in html fairly soon afterwards and left available online on simegen.com. Anything you type into a chat may be posted.

At the end of the business meeting and voting for awards for those who've worked so hard on simegen.com during the year, we will have a free discussion period when you may ask any questions of Jean Lorrah or Jacqueline Lichtenberg -- or just chat (politely) with the others in attendance.

The New Year's Chat will be 4pm EST, 3pm CST, 2pm MST, 1pm PST. For those not in North America, please use the Worldclock website http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/ to calculate the time that is right for you.

You may come late just for the party and free discussion.

Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

Seduced by a Secondary Character

I’ve been seduced by a secondary character.

Okay, years ago when Gabriel’s Ghost first exploded out of my brain (I was living in Coral Springs, FL, at the time and can very distinctly remember waking at 5 am because Sully Would Not Let Me Sleep!)…anyway, when Gabriel’s exploded and was finished, I’d always thought I’d do Ren’s story. For those of you who’ve read my 2006 RITA-winning novel (shameless plug, but hey, if I don’t, who will?), you’ll remember Ren as the 6’7” blue-skinned sexy-as-hell young monk-turned-mercenary. Long-time friend to the hero, Gabriel Ross Sullivan. New friend and confident to the heroine, Chaz Bergren.

It’s not Ren’s story I’m writing. It’s Philip’s.

Huh? You all go.

Yeah, huh.

Let me backtrack and explain something here. About a month ago, The Down Home Zombie Blues was released by Bantam. So hopefully you all are buying that book now, and are reading it and are anxious to talk about Jorie and Theo. But understand, Jorie and Theo, to me, are last year’s news. In authorland, we live in a time warp, one set by our publishers who deem we produce books in one year and then have them appear in the next. So while you’re just now devouring Jorie and Theo and their Men In Black Meets CSI:Miami story, I’m just finishing another book in my contract with Bantam. And this book—Shades of Dark—was the sequel to Gabriel’s Ghost. But it wasn’t Philip’s story. Not yet.

But Philip—who had a minor part in Gabriel’s—as Chaz’s ex-husband and a bit of a nemesis to Sully, appears in Shades of Dark a lot more. And in so doing, demanded his own story.

And who am I to argue with an admiral? Moreover, who am I to argue with an admiral who so unexpectedly seduced me with his heroism and his charm?

You all are going, but…but…we want to talk about Theo and Jorie! Kip and the zombies! Aunt Tootie!

I know. But my heart belongs to Philip. And all along, I thought it would be Ren. It’s not. It’s Philip.

But if you want to talk about Theo, my homicide cop hero in Zombie Blues, then I can at least tell you he’s a bit like Philip. They’re both “good boy” heroes . I know the trend has long been for bad boys. Alpha males. I like alphas. I’ve been accused of being an alpha female (like there’s something wrong with that?). But Theo and Philip are both betas, or maybe even gammas. (Though I’m not really all that hip on those kinds of pigeon-holes.) Zombies’ Theo is a nice guy in all meanings of the word. Hard-working, loyal, patriotic, loves his elderly aunt and uncle, keeps his nose clean and has recently has his heart trashed. He doesn’t swagger (well, any more than the average cop with a Glock on his hip), doesn’t do stupid shhhhhtuff in relation to the women in his life. He doesn’t view falling in love as a disease or life-sentence in prison.

Philip—even though he’s Chaz’s ex and yeah, I know a number of you didn’t like him because of that—is pretty much the same way. He’s honorable, loyal and capable of love. Maybe a bit more afraid of it than Theo is, but he wants it. Yeah, he does.

He just didn’t, at age forty-five, think he was going to find it with his dead best-friend’s daughter. Who’s twenty-nine.

But that’s really all I can say about that at this point, because the book that’s exploding out of me in the same way Gabriel’s Ghost did several years ago, is only 21,000 words in (think: five chapters) and not even yet sold. Not even yet seen by my agent.

But I had to write it because Philip would not shut up.

So watch for Shades of Dark in July 2008 from me and Bantam. You’ll see Philip in there, eventually. It’s still Chaz’s and Sully’s story, and a very intense one at that. I was actually pretty shocked at what happens to Sully. And what Chaz has to face. But hey, I only type the words as they’re told to me.

Philip does come into the story mid-point on, and a lot of things I’d wondered about him in Gabriel’s are suddenly answered. Not all nicely, either. But it opened a dialogue between Philip and me…and from that Hope’s Folly (working title) was born.

So for those of you waiting for Ren’s story, sorry. Not this year. But he has time, you know. Stolorths have longer life spans. He’s only, what, about twenty-one years old in our terms? He has time. Philip’s forty-five and very willing to accept that time is running out, and that love is not for him, ever.

Surprise.
~Linnea

http://www.linneasinclair.com/
RITA-award winning Science Fiction Romance

Monsters (and alien romance)

Good morning, alien romancers!

I'm wrestling with a monster list of revisions to be done this month on KNIGHT'S FORK which is the next love story in the god-Princes of Tigron series (informally dubbed by some, The "Mating" books).


Of Men and Monsters

One editorial request I did not receive was to make my villain more monstrous. In fact, I am to give him more scenes (because he is urbane, witty, funny) but simplify why he wants the heroine dead.

Writing monsters of the villainous kind is tricky. It has to be done, I suppose. Even though few bad guys see themselves as the villains in their own life stories, many wiser persons than I would tell you that the hero seems more heroic if the villain is evil.

Personally, I like shades of grey, and I enjoy an ambiguous, dark relationship with an attractive villain. I must be twisted. Am I the only one who saw the first Darth Vader breathing heavily and striding through the ruins of a rebel stronghold, and wondered what he'd be like in bed?

Of course, that was before I knew that everything below his waist had been chopped off. I suppose it is not a spoiler to say that.


I think I've mentioned in a previous post that my personal taste is for the generic Bond movie villain. That is, someone very powerful in the worldly sense, well groomed, well educated, fiendishly clever, exquisitely polite.

Sigh. They can't always be "exquisitely polite". In fact, a bit of bad language adds a certain "shock and awe" especially when it's obvious that the villain has deliberately chosen to offend both the reader and the hero.


Here be Dragons and other Monsters

Dragons, dinosaurs, trifids, architeuthis (which you can find by googling phonetically for "archetoothus", I've just discovered), The Kraken, Alien, the Blob and others are monsters because they are big and scary, and it's their nature to eat a conveniently slow moving food source (us).

Since I am a contrarian, I once amused myself by writing the story of Polyphemus's encounter with Ulysses (The Odyssey) from the Cyclops' point of view. Mostly, stories aren't told with excursions into the minds of Monsters.

For those interested, here are a few resources being discussed elsewhere on the net:


THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF VAMPIRES, WEREWOLVES, AND OTHER MONSTERS, by Rosemary Ellen Guiley.


http://paranormalromance.org/Paraphernalia.htm
The new Paraphernalia feature, “If There Be Dragons” is now online featuring dragon themed romance.


http://marilynnbyerly.com

Marilynn Byerly will be teaching a course on worldbuilding for paranormal romance in
February for the RWA Outreach chapter. Topics include building a better monster and how to give your own a unique touch.


Charlee Boyett-Compo has a huge list of monsters at
http://www.windlegends.org/WritersResearchPages.html

Look under Creatures, Spirits, and Monsters. There is also an occult
dictionary, supernatural glossary, ghosts, dragons, and fairies.


Happy New Year!

Rowena Cherry

Chess-inspired ("mating") titles. Gods from outer space. Sexy SFR. Poking fun, (pun intended). Shameless word-play.


INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL
Award-Winning Finalist in the Fiction and Literature: Romance category of the National Best Books 2007 Awards

Winner of the Spring N.O.R. Awards, Best Fantasy/Sci-Fi Romance:
Second Place winner, Fall N.O.R. Awards

CAPA Award nominee
LASR Award nominee

http://www.internetvoicesradio.com/CrazyTuesday.htm


http://www.rowenacherry.com/downloads/FFP_Authors_Sampler.pdf

DOWN HOME ZOMBIE BLUES

Here's the review of Linnea's latest book that will appear in the January issue of my newsletter. (Visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/margaretlcartersnewsfromthecrypt to subscribe.) I felt empathy with the characters right away and could hardly put it down. I was so excited that I immediately ordered a couple of her earlier novels. Linnea, might there be a sequel to DOWN HOME ZOMBIE BLUES someday? I want to see how Jorie and Theo handle the challenges facing them in the future.

THE DOWN HOME ZOMBIE BLUES, by Linnea Sinclair, definitely lives up to the anticipation! Zombies (oddly named, since they aren't undead of any kind, but the term makes for an irresistibly attention-getting title) originated as an artificial life form designed purely for defense and the detection and destruction of dangerous infections. Having gone rogue, they now mindlessly prey upon warm-blooded organisms, especially higher species of mammals. Small-town Florida homicide detective Theo gets called to a case centering on a mysteriously mummified body. Meantime, extraterrestrial Guardian Jorie arrives on Earth to investigate that same death, the zombie killing of one of her people's covert agents. (By a fortunate chance, English has a remarkable similarity to Vekran, an ET language Jorie speaks fairly well. Although this resemblance isn't explained, I had little problem suspending disbelief in it—maybe there's an "ancient astronaut" visit in the background somewhere?—and the premise obviates the usual translation problems of alien contact.) Theo has seized as evidence the dead agent's computer, which would cause catastrophic repercussions if the local authorities discovered its alien origin. In the process of recovering the device, Jorie has to beam Theo up to her ship. Now that he knows about the extraterrestrial presence, the only way he can avoid a benign but lifelong exile from Earth is to convince her people that they vitally need his help to deal with local conditions. So he and Jorie become temporary partners in hunting for the remaining zombies and discovering why they have suddenly begun to breed on this "nil-tech" world. The crisis is complicated by possible involvement of the Tresh, a hostile species among whom Jorie was once a prisoner of war, and the suspicion and jealousy of one of her fellow officers, who's secretly attracted to her. Jorie, who has to overcome her own prejudice against "nils" such as Theo, gradually comes to respect his skills and his sense of honor. Tense action scenes alternate with deeply emotional dialogues between the hero and heroine. Secondary characters come across as engagingly lifelike, too. Humorous incidents of Jorie's attempts to navigate American technology and culture made me laugh without diminishing the seriousness of the danger at hand, and conversely I almost cried a few times, too, at emotional moments between Theo and Jorie. The problem of how they can hope to stay together, given their literally worlds-apart backgrounds and their devotion to their respective careers, is not trivialized or evaded. Sinclair has a marvelous talent for instantly involving us in the minds and hearts of her characters and making us care for them. I didn't want the book to end. I'd love to see a sequel; although the immediate zombie threat is neutralized, there is still plenty of work to be done.

10 Pentacles - The cake comes out of the oven.

As noted previously, this is a chapter in a book about the Tarot aimed at Intermediate students of Tarot, not beginners or advanced students. It is particularly aimed at writers looking to learn World Building and Alien Character building.

Updated and expanded compilation of all these Tarot Just For Writers entries is now available on Kindle:

The Wands and Cups Volumes and  the Swords and Pentacles Volumes, are now all available separately on Kindle.  The 5 Volumes combined are also available on Kindle as one book, cheaper than buying them individually.

The Not So Minor Arcana: Never Cross A Palm With Silver Aug 30, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0108MC26O

The Not So Minor Arcana: Wands Sept. 1, 2015  99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106RVPKU

The Not So Minor Arcana: Cups Sept. 11, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106SATX8

The Not So Minor Arcana: Swords  Sept. 17, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0100RSPM2

The Not So Minor Arcana: Pentacles  Sept. 21, 2015 99 cents
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0106RVKF0

The Not So Minor Arcana: Books 1-5 combined Sept. 24, 2015 $3.25
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010E4WAOU

This series is designed not for the beginner or the advanced student, but for the intermediate student and specifically for writers doing worldbuilding..
---------------

And Remember: The meaning of a Tarot Minor Arcanum resides in the placement on the Tree of Life (i.e. the number on the card) integrated with the "World" or Suit of the card.

For the Tree of Life and the Jacob's Ladder diagrams see:

http://web.onetel.net.uk/~maggyw/treeladder.html

I don't really go with the way this page explains the Tree, but it is worth thinking about. There are many other ways. For now, ponder the diagrams on this page or Google up some others.

I have been posting here since August 14th, 2007, every Tuesday, the 10 minor Arcana of the suit of Swords. The Ace of Pentacles was posted Oct 23, 2007. The 3 of Pentacles was accidentally posted dated Monday November 5th.

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

10 Pentacles

So here we are at the bottom circle on the middle column (the 3 columns are actually called "Pillars") of the Jacob's Ladder diagram. And this is the last one we have to discuss here.

Note that this 10 dangles down below all the others. The previous 10's all connected to the 6 of the next level down and were colored by that Love. So we can expect the character of this Ten to be a little different.

This one receives all the energy spilling down through all the others. That energy arrives here from 7, 8 and 9 by direct routes as well as the one we've followed. It all collects, crystallizes and fills up this "vessel." Naturally, this creates a complex content for this particular 10.

Or put another way, 10 Pentacles is the end result of that excruciating moment of commitment made in 3 Swords, the moment when THIS project was chosen to be done and therefore all the other ideas and projects and possibilities were sacrificed, discarded, lost. You put all your eggs in one basket, and now they've hatched (or not.)

One way to think of that bottom circle is as all of manifest reality. It is our concrete, everyday world, defined by 3 spacial dimensions and Time. It is where the laws of Physics apply rigorously. It is our normal waking consciousness plus the physical reality around us.

Every project we complete contributes some little something to shaping our personal reality.

But everyone is doing projects. "Reality" is the resultant of all our efforts.

All the other 39 Sepheroth are abstract principles, states of mind, levels of consciousness, subjective or hypothetical -- all parts of a "reality" nobody can prove is "real." Access to these mystical realms is only for mystics.

Except that whether you know it or not, you are embedded in the most mystical realm of all - Reality, the result of all 39 above us. All the projects you've completed have gone through most all these processes even if not in so orderly a fashion and with concrete manifestations.

10 Pentacles manifests the end, sum total, result of all the other 39 Sepheroth, their lessons and their processes.

Thus every manifestation of reality contains and perhaps clearly expresses all 39 processes from above. For example, taking a novel you've written to a critique group can often be a 5 Swords process - the reality clearly illustrates the principles of the 5 Swords process. But that reality also contains all the other processes above. Reality is "messy."

10 Pentacles is how the story comes out, how the mess manifests. This is The End. This is the climax of the novel. This is the purpose of all that activity fulfilled -- or not.

Here all the suspense is gone. It's all over. And so it can represent the end of life, or just retirement from a particular career to start yet another.

It is the life you have built, and the only way to change it now is to give up some part of it -- 10 Pentacles Reversed -- to break it up. One example might be a child building a castle out of building blocks or sand. Once completed and photographed with the proud child, it has no destiny other than being dismantled (or lacquered and kept forever).

Take for example, the ambitious businessman who gets an MBA from a top University, works 12 hours a day all his life, cashes out his business and retires wealthy. Now in 10 Pentacles, he can enjoy his wealth.

From here, there is nowhere for the descending energy to go but UP!

Yes, souls descend this ladder and turn around and climb back taking with them all the experiences and lessons gathered.

What is the Tree of Life? It is the method the Creator of the Universe used to generate this thing we call "reality." These Sephirot represented by the circles on the diagram are all the stages of Creation.

We spend our whole life in 10 Pentacles, but are not deprived at all the others because 10 Pentacles contains all the rest. Every project we do starts with an Ace of Wands, an Idea and ends with a finished product, a 10 Pentacles (or not).

At the end of life we contemplate death as the completion, the journey of return to the Creator. And we evaluate all we've accomplished in terms of the outcome, the 10 Pentacles.

Now we come to something really mystical.

The Pentacles are all about concrete reality, and that is the most mystical concept there is. Existence. Being. Is reality real? I think, therefore I am?

Humans can become afflicted with a sense of futility because it's so hard to see the result of what you've done, of what you've worked for, sacrificed for because everything is mixed up with everything else. All of one whole life's efforts can amount to nothing tangible at all. And one can be fooled into thinking a life was wasted because it had no discernible effect on the world.

But the 10 Pentacles lesson is that, no matter what you think you see looking back on your life, the true fact of the matter is that your existence has changed Reality permanently, indelibly, and irrevocably.

As we discussed in Swords, (which is contained inside Pentacles, remember), every thought, word and deed has an effect on the world around you.

A thought, word or deed, even just an emotion, an opinion kept to yourself, an observation, a hope, a dream, focused by kavana (intention) -- that is a "deliberate act" -- etches itself indelibly on the continuum, or Akashic Record.

If your thinking or feelings are messy, muddy, imprecise, or conflicted, you will leave a messy, muddy spot in the world when you leave. Someone has to clean it up; most likely you.

Our material reality has been given a receptivity to us. We are empowered to mold and change reality, and in fact if we don't take hold and do that with kavana, we do it by accident, carelessly. Because of our nature, we can't not-do it.

We have also been given Free Will. Thus we must choose what to do with our ability to change the world.

We have been given the power to "elevate" material things, to expose the divine sparks of spiritual energy within things by doing good deeds with them.

In 9 Pentacles, at the intersection between Things and Self, we organized our world around our Need. At 10 Pentacles, the Self that re-organized and coalesced in 9 Pentacles now projects into material reality.

There is a congruence between the Identity and the world that surrounds that Identity. It can be seen through astrology. It can be seen through Tarot. But we are all "works in progress," eternal web pages under construction.

Our external realities don't exactly match our internal reality. We resist (sometimes successfully for a while) the lessons pounded in by a material reality trying to reshape us, and sometimes we successfully pound back and reshape reality to our needs.

The mis-match is an area of conflict. Life is the process of resolving those conflicts, pounding back, smoothing it all out, and getting our personal reality to match our self-image or vice-versa.
But what do we do with it once we've gotten it done? What's it for?

Some traditions say that we can get off the Wheel of Birth and Death once the soul has learned these essential lessons about how material reality works. They say that some very advanced souls may voluntarily risk their perfected state by taking another incarnation in order to teach, to bring more souls to perfection.

The tradition behind the Tarot structure we've been studying looks at it the other way around. Instead of an objective of freeing ourselves from material reality, our objective is to prepare material reality so that the Creator can dwell here with us.

We touched on this in the description of material reality in 10 Swords: Your Chickens Come Home To Roost, (adjacent to 6 Pentacles, remember) where we modeled the world as a seething plasma of divine sparks swimming amidst a sea of dross.

Our job, done by all that pounding to get inside and outside worlds to match, is to free the Divine sparks and elevate as much of the dross as possible, letting the rest fall away. Once that is all completed, the world will be able to withstand the full force of the Divine presence and life here will become much nicer.

So how do you get a handle on "the world" in order to accomplish some part of this job? Where can you get hold of "reality" and change it?

Many people try to fix the world by teaching other people the right way to do things, and what never to do. They try to affect the behavior of others by disapproving of how they dress or what they eat. This is like the "misdirected problem solving energy" of 8 Pentacles Reversed -- you can work very hard for thousands of years and not make a dent in the real problem because you aren't addressing the real problem but only its reflection.

What is the real problem?

You, yourself.

Remember, in 9 Pentacles we found how reorganizing our Self, our Identity around all the lessons learned in previous processes would affect how things turn out in 10 Pentacles.

How well we learn our lessons, how we resolve our internal conflicts, identify our true needs, wants, and desires and organize our whole Self into a team effort determines how things turn out in 10 Pentacles.

The smoother we cooperate inside our-Self, the smoother the parts of our external world will work together.

That external reality comes from our internal reality -- not the other way around. Remember the 9's are the "Foundation" of the World. It's not the World that generates the 9's. It's the 9's (astral plane) that generates the World.

Thus to change the world, we change our-Self.

We change what we think, feel, believe, dream, want, desire, imagine, enjoy, and do.

If you see someone behaving badly, look into yourself and find where that flaw has its counterpart within you. It won't be identical - that would be too easy. No, you'll have to search for the counterpart.

For example, if you see a shoplifter, you know you would never - ever - just take something from a store. Now watch inside yourself for a while (could take a couple of years of vigilance) and perhaps you will find a moment when you steal the limelight from someone and get a real charge out of it, or perhaps you might incorporate more of someone else's novel into your own novel than is wise.

Change the world by fixing yourself.

And when you've got it all done, you'll come to the 10 of Pentacles process and look around to see that's it's Good.

Let's see what's happened to our writer at the end of her career.

Well, the movie was a flop she doesn't even note on her bibliography. But they paid her a bunch of money. She paid the taxes and invested the rest in mutual funds and let it sit on re-invest for all those years.

It was a struggle to pay the taxes on the dividends and capital gains from her writing income to keep the earnings reinvested, and still put her kids through school but she managed.

Now she's writing her memoirs, showing how writing each of her novels resulted in learning a seminal lesson about life. She's not expecting to publish her memoirs. This book is for her grandchildren, of which she has six.

She expects to finish by the time her husband retires. The income from investing the film proceeds will let them travel as much as they want.

She's glad she signed the contract, and in a way very glad the movie was a flop and her career merely solid, not stellar. Now she can bask in anonymity.

If she were experiencing a 10 Pentacles Reversed process, a serious mis-match between her material reality and her inner Self, you might find a number of scenarios in her life:

a) the film would have been wildly successful and, intimidated by that success, she might have been unable to write any more novels and learn the lessons from them, and thus she would be rich but her husband would have left her because she turned into a shrew, the children abandoned her, and she might be too ill to enjoy retirement.

b) the film may have been moderately successful, but she lost all the money in the dot-com boom and bust investing in stocks instead of diversified mutual funds. Her writing income never made up the difference, her husband is invalided out of work, and now they face living on social security or sponging off the kids.

c) the film may have been a flop, but that so depressed her that she was never able to write well again, so she used up all the money putting her kids through school. Now she's buried her husband and her kids are unmarried -- and who knows if they have any kids!

d) the film may have been a flop, but she learned from it all and went on to write four or five more novels that were made into good films. She's rich and famous, but not so famous she needs security guards when she travels. However, the kids don't want any part of her, her husband divorced her and got alimony, and she can't see what she's done wrong.

Frankly, I think this writer's first film was a flop, but she went on to write books and her own original screenplays, has made a good living, learned all her lessons with a full heart, and her family still loves her (but usually that's apparent only on Mother's Day).

So how can a writer use these Tarot Card processes to build a World and construct a novel?

If you think this is a useful model of reality, then try to construct a character from the inside, and then generate their world to match. Leave a piece of the character in conflict, and see how that alters the world the character creates around him/herself.

Pick one of these processes to become the whole plot. Each one is a whole story in itself, an Initiation, an eye-opener, a life-changing event. Go through a 3's process and toss away everything but one single thing to focus on.

If you're building an Alien World, it needs a Philosophy and possibly a Religion. If you study comparative religion on Earth, you will find various versions, sub-sets, and derivatives of this master pattern called the Tree of Life buried within most of them.

If there exits an "objective reality" out there somewhere, other species will be probing it too, and will find some echo of this basic pattern -- it just may not be all that easy for humans to recognize their version of it.

If you start with this Pattern, and your alien's biology, look at the Pattern through their eyes, you will see how the religions of their world would likely interpret this Pattern, or some sub-set of the Pattern.

Because the Tree of Life is so familiar on Earth, human readers will recognize enough in your aliens to accept them as "real."

You'll find an example of this in two of my mass market paperback SF novels, Molt Brother and City of a Million Legends.

Molt Brother

City of a Million Legends

The more far out the fantasy you are writing, the more necessary it is to provide the reader with a sense of reality. Using this very old, very standard model of reality which has been commonly adopted by many schools of philosophy and psychology can make your alien civilization seem real to the reader.

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

Best Wishes for the Holidays!

www.linneasinclair.com