Targeting A Readership Part 12 - What If Your Fans Strike Back by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Targeting A Readership
Part 12
What If Your Fans Strike Back
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts in this series on Targeting a Readership (writing specifically for certain markets) are indexed here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/index-to-targeting-readership-series-by.html

So today we look ahead in your writing career to the point where you have hooked a large number of fans, and then somehow disappointed them.

There is a very well written, tightly reasoned blog article that has made an online splash that you should read and think about.  I flatly disagree with the premise, yet can easily see how it might be considered plausible.  I adore the title, Fandom Is Broken.  And I must admit that if you target a readership, expect them to target you back.

So read this essay By DEVIN FARACI May. 30, 2016.
http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2016/05/30/fandom-is-broken

This article on Fandom Is Broken came to my attention when a fan of my novels and non-fiction posted a link to it on the Sime~Gen Group on Facebook, where I replied I had to write a whole blog about this topic because I flat out disagree with the premise that fandom has changed in any way at all.  The "national character" of fans is to be loudly, inconsolably acrimonious, utterly possessive, and completely proprietary where fictional characters are involved.  That's the way it is supposed to be.  It is the nature of who we are within the matrix of mundane society. Our ferocity knows no bounds.

My credentials for disagreeing with the premise that "fandom is broken" are rooted in being part of active fandom since 7th Grade, and continuing to be involved in the online fan community as well as fans of my own work (a hair raising experience as you can imagine having someone else write your characters or re-cast your themes.)

Just pause a moment and visualize what will happen after you've got your science fiction or paranormal Romance published.  People will read it.  People will react. What will they say to you or to each other behind your back?

Depending on the Readership you have been Targeting, your fans may react in a number of ways, very likely a few will gravitate toward each of these reactions, while most will come back at you with one or another of them.

A) Just find another writer to follow
B) Vociferously denounce you in Amazon reader comments etc.
C) Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Tumblr, etc etc tirades (example)
D) Personal threats and attacks to "force" you (and/or your publisher, producer, editor, etc - the whole commercial fiction delivery system which your work must please before it can reach that targeted readership) to re-plot the direction of the story (make one character gay, make another go from hero to villain, or villain to hero)
E) To H*** with you, and post fanfic demonstrating that you wrote it all wrong, and THIS is how the story must go!

Obviously, I am of the Part E) attitude.

Possibly the author of the essay FANDOM IS BROKEN thinks attitude E) is un-fannish, or a sign that fandom is broken. But the truth is, insisting the story go your way, even if that differs markedly from the author's way, is fannish.

He should have been a fly on the wall while I was talking to Andre Norton about her writing a sequel to STAR RANGERS (telling her the plot for her novel) and she told me that I should write it, whereupon I did and sold it as the Dushau Trilogy (and won the first Romantic Times Award for Science Fiction!)  It took a trilogy because I didn't use her universe, but recreated the salient parts in an original universe.

Or maybe he should have listened to me telling Gene Roddenberry why he was "doing it all wrong." Of course, being who I am, I didn't vilify or threaten either great writer, (just not my style), but extreme vehemence ladled on thick over an adamant attitude is my style.  As a double-dyed Fan, I will have it my way!  (with Romance!!!)

When "they" (NBC and Paramount) cancelled Star Trek, I and hundreds (actually thousands) of others just wrote more and published on paper, in fanzines, sold to each other at conventions at which Gene Roddenberry was often a Guest.

I engineered the Kraith Series
http://simegen.com/fandom/startrek/
to invite people to contribute to this alternate Star Trek Universe and over time, 50 other very creative people did that -- and several fanzines appeared carrying my alternate universe into yet another variant. Kraith was the subject of an article in the New York Times Book Review.

Kraith was designed to prove the theories I presented in the Bantam paperback STAR TREK LIVES! which blew the lid on fandom and fanzines -- garnering the attention of the New York Times and arousing vast public interest (both in deriding fandom and in becoming a creative, active fan).

In April 2016, France 4, a public station in France, aired a documentary on fan fiction partly based on a book I have an essay in, titled Fic: Why Fan Fiction Is Taking Over The World.  It shows the Professor who compiled this book teaching Kraith to a University class, then clips of an interview with me, and then some French fanfic fans.  Trust me, fandom is not now broken.  We've only barely begun!








My first novel in my own series, Sime~Gen, titled House of Zeor,

was cited in STAR TREK LIVES! in a footnote, offering further proof that I understood why fans loved Star Trek (faults and all). I sold House of Zeor with a money-back guarantee to Star Trek fans who loved Spock.  60 hardcover copies went out on that guarantee, none were returned.

To show that Kraith was not an accident, just popular because it used a TV Series as a platform, I created more novels in the Sime~Gen Series to appeal to that same "Part E" segment of Star Trek fandom.  The proof appeared as paper fanzines (at one time there were 5 Sime~Gen fanzines), and later made the transition to the Web where printed stories are now posted for free reading alongside millions of words of never-printed-on-paper fan fiction.

Now, several contributors to Sime~Gen, some professional writers, have created a professionally published anthology of Sime~Gen stories, and one writer is expanding her posted fan fiction into a professionally published novel trilogy.

So, you can see I am well acquainted with how fandom started (having known those we call First Fandom, who started science fiction fandom in the 1930's), with how it morphed into TV/Media online fandom, and with many fan-feuds and bitter controversies lasting decades.

I know "fandom" from two sides -- having been a lifelong active fan, then grown up to be a professionally published writer whose fans have written in my universes, both with and without my permission or knowledge.

And I have been studying the dynamics driving the massive shift in the Fiction Delivery System under the impact of the Web, Print On Demand, Self Publishing (via smashwords.com and Amazon Kindle, etc).

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/05/index-to-marketing-fiction-in-changing.html

It is not just the business model being morphed by the new communications media, social and anti-social as they may be, but also the content, form and function of fiction in general -- genre fiction in particular.

We are looking at a feedback loop phenomenon -- where there is no chicken/egg problem, no actual origin (storytelling goes back to the beginning of language; bees dance their stories of where to find pollen!).  Fandom is part of a dynamic process.

It did not have the name "fandom" until the 1930's, but I am certain this feedback loop between story-consumer and story-producer has been revving up since shamans inspired audience around camp fires.

The term "fandom" has its origin in a word-creation process much used by science fiction fans.  It blends the word "fanatic" which is the derogatory for "enthusiast" with the word "domain" or "kingdom" which is the place you live and defend with your life.

Fandom created the first "cyberspace" using the old purple gel spirit duplicator invented for offices, restaurant menus, and school tests to make quick but perishable copies.

Fans wrote essays like blogs do today, discussing (lauding or excoriating) books, their authors, as well as editors and publishers. They mailed their essays to a "publisher" who mailed copies to other fans.  The price was money to cover paper and ink (or sometimes just free out of the editor's pocket) or a contribution to be printed for which the writer would get a copy.  In other words, the face-to-face "bookclub" experience was extended nation-wide via the U.S. Postal Service because nobody knew anyone in their neighborhood who read "that stuff," too.  

This bookclub discussion group type "fanzine" publishing grabbed onto each advance in publishing technology and expanded its reach -- via hand-cranked mimeograph, electric motor driven mimeograph, and then with the much larger readerships gathered by Star Trek Fandom, on into offset press, and today fanfic.net etc etc.

Today, even full live-actor productions of fan-written/acted/produced unauthorized episodes of Star Trek are thriving.

Huge amounts of current fanfic are uncritical of the original material, approving, or wallowing in a romantic sea of unmitigated adulation for the original.

But as extreme as approval has gone, there is likewise an extreme of disapproval, a critical attitude that rips the original to shreds and/or injects incompatible ideas into the basic theme of the original.

Fandom has spanned that whole spectrum of responses as far back as I can remember, and as far back as those who founded science fiction fandom have told me they can remember.

The article FANDOM IS BROKEN acknowledges the tension between creator and consumer, between writer and customer, but glosses over the innate rancor, and fiery temper which is the signature of the science fiction the fannish personality:

---------quote--------------
There's always been a push and a pull between creator and fan, and while it can sometimes be negative it was, historically, generally positive.
----------end quote----------

No, historically, the reason fans grow up to become professional writers is that the Relationship with the writers they first read was not generally positive.

The proto-writer personality reacts generally with, "No!  No! THAT IS ALL WRONG!" and then proceeds to do it their own way, which is "right" in their way of looking at things.

------------quote--------
Fans used to raise their voices to save canceled TV shows or to support niche comic books, but now that we live in a world where every canceled show comes to Netflix or gets a comic book tie-in or lives on as a series of novels the fans have stopped defending the stuff they love and gotten more and more involved in trying to shape it. And not through writing or creating but by yelling and brigading and, more and more, threatening death.
----------end quote--------------

Well, the writing and creating part does come later, true.  First comes the screaming in anguish, and today that is magnified in the Twitter echo chamber.

Yes, STAR TREK fandom is traced back to Bjo Trimble's famous write-in campaign (which failed to get the show revived and earned nothing but contempt from Paramount until the Conventions swelled into national news events).

Other groups have tried to recreate that, and in fact "Hollywood" now pays some attention to fans (if not out of respect for their taste in story material at least out of greed for their money.)

One thing Bjo Trimble's "how to write to Paramount" mailings emphasized was that calm, reasoned statements were more effective than threats and insults, and that 'defense' of what we love in Star Trek was not going to convince a network to pick up the show again.

The reason for that is simple.  Network TV does not select or shape TV Series around "content" -- fiction is just there to glue eyeballs to the screen during commercials.

Today, that's changing as the subscription-model replaces the advertising model -- Netflix, Hulu, even YouTube and Amazon are dabbling in the subscription model delivering fiction uninterrupted by commercials.

The subscription model can foster more emphasis on content - but only popular content because video production is still expensive (way more than purple spirit duplicator copies).  To make a profit, they need large numbers to subscribe, so the content of the fiction will conform to the "lowest common denominator" taste.

Read this quote from later in the "Fandom Is Broken" article siting other instances of current fan outrage:

---------quote------------
It's all about demanding what you want out of the story, believing that the story should be tailored to your individual needs, not the expression of the creators. These fans are treating stories like ordering at a restaurant - hold the pickles, please, and can I substitute kale for the lettuce? But that isn't how art works, and that shouldn't be how art lovers react to art. They shouldn't be bringing a bucket of paint to the museum to take out some of the blue from those Picassos, you know?

The AV Club's piece ran a day too early, it turns out. The same day the piece hit the internet exploded in another fan outrage, this time coming as a result of Steve Rogers: Captain America #1, a new Marvel comic that revealed - dun dun dunnnn! - that Captain America had actually been a Hydra double agent his whole life.
--------------end quote----------

The Fandom Is Broken article seems based on the assumption that "the internet exploded in another fan outrage" is a new, or "broken fandom", phenomenon.

The assumption seems to be that fan-outrage is somehow "non-fannish" or a new characteristic that has appeared because something changed, something broke.

The opposite is true.

The nature of those who become "fans" -- not FANATICS mind you, but FANS -- includes an ensemble of characteristics that pretty much define the difference between fans and "the lowest common denominator" central market film makers must aim for -- the market large enough to support a video production at broadcast quality, nevermind theater quality.

1) Sharp Intelligence
2) Vivid Imagination
3) Strong Sense of Personal Identity
4) Unswerving Determination
5) Clearly Reasoned Opinions
6) Independent Minded
7) Collector of trivial facts by the thousands

Any two or three of these traits can be found at peak values in vast numbers of mundane people.

Fans call non-fans, mundane.  Mundane is the previous jargon term for muggle.  There's nothing wrong with being a mundane -- they just don't understand you when you talk about what matters to you, especially if you're "exploding in outrage" over a story-development.

I derived that list of traits from people I know.  I know a lot of people, writers and readers, who have all 7 of those traits at the maximum strength any human can have.  They're fans -- not necessarily of science fiction per se.  Fans of Romance or Mystery genre have the same profile.  Even fans of God -- people who are into Religion or Mysticism -- max out all 7-traits in that profile.

So if you, as a writer of science fiction and/or paranormal Romance, or any mixed genre, have that 7-trait profile all to the maximum degree, chances are you will write for others who have that profile.

Here's the problem.

That profile is rare.

As I noted above, any 2 or 3 of those traits are maxed out in huge numbers of people.  People who have all 7 maxed out are very rare.

TV or even online Video fiction Series are expensive to produce.

Self-publishing a book is much less expensive today, but still a big capital investment: A) time to write, rewrite, polish, edit, lay out, book design, B) buying cover graphic, C) crafting promotional campaign that can involve buying ads, D) fixing mistakes.  If you only sell a few hundred copies, you won't make even $0.50/hour on that investment.  Even selling to a publisher who does most of the work, you still won't make more than $10/hour unless you sell hundreds of thousands of copies.

If the Readership you are Targeting is rare, you will sell a few hundred copies, and that's all, over years.  So to be a professional writer, you must broaden your "reach" -- how many people will find your work satisfying.  That's what editors do to "almost" manuscripts:

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

So there is a financial barrier to fan-made fiction Series for the online video audience, but as the cost of video equipment goes down, and the knowledge and skills to get the most out of the cheapest equipment (a cell phone for example) becomes more prevalent, online video fiction or fan-fiction will proliferate.

Even so, to break even or make a profit, the audience targeted has to be larger than the "rare" market of fandom.

And that is the view from the Traditional Publishers skyscraper offices, or from Hollywood.  Fan outrage simply does not register, not because the outrage is not real or well expressed or legitimately based, but because that "rare" personality is RARE -- it is just too small a market segment to MATTER.

Fandom is not broken.  Fandom has always operated this way -- taking personal possession of the fictional material doled out by Publishing (or now Production), taking proprietorship of that which has been created by others, and insisting that the fictional material conform to personal expectations.

In the 1930's and 1940's the "outrage" against professional science fiction writers was aroused by errors in scientific fact -- or a failure to imagine (imagination being one of those 7 traits) far enough out or failure to incorporate the very latest discovery.

Even through the 1950's and 1960's any professionally published science fiction or fantasy writer who displayed ignorance of the then-current scientific facts (or in the case of Fantasy, the pantheons of dead civilizations, or the "rules" of magick) would get heaps of letters complaining about the mistakes (on a par with making Captain America a Hydra double agent his whole life - an error of fact in the audience's reality on a par with not knowing the difference between the Solar System and the Galaxy.)

If a science fiction story with an error of science was published in the magazines, the editors would get heaps of letters and publish some of them, sparking long, arcane and heated arguments about how to extrapolate current scientific fact to account for the story's premise.

Note that one of those 7 traits is the propensity to collect trivia -- the geek who is a nerd with an eidetic memory at least for certain stories.  As a writer in any sub-genre of science fiction, you must understand that the target readership will notice every single mistake you make.  They collect trivia. Collectively, they know everything.

Many professional writers talk to each other about their fans who know their universes better than they do.  I have quite a few of those!

The FANDOM IS BROKEN essay makes the point that the modern, online fan has a new attitude developing: because they buy the story, pay money for it, they are therefore "entitled" to satisfaction, as the consumer of any product would be.

Think, for example, of a car owner with Takata Airbags -- after all the recalls and so forth, news broke this past Spring that brand new cars are still being built with the defective design airbags. Having paid so very much for a car, wouldn't you feel entitled to an air bag replacement that is NOT defective enough to kill you?

So, after paying such an unconscionable amount for a theater ticket or to a cable TV/internet provider, don't you feel entitled to fiction that satisfies?

As a writer, you must keep putting yourself into that mindset every time you drift out of it. You are writing to satisfy the reader - not yourself.  "The Reader" includes people like you, with all 7 fan traits maxed out, but most of them only have a few of those traits, and they pay the bills, so satisfy them, too.

What satisfies those who have all 7 of those traits maxed out would bore or distress the more ordinary folks. So learn to keep scenes very short - 700 words maximum.

Another thesis in the FANDOM IS BROKEN (really, you must read this long essay, including the quoted death threat) is the following:

---------quote-------------
I don't want to pretend that this is some sort of generational shift; if that death threat above is to be believed the guy who made it is either in his 40s or fast approaching his 40s. This underbelly has always been there in fandom, going back to Doyle and beyond. There are new wrinkles for younger fans, a group that seems uninterested in conflict or personal difficulty in their narratives (look at the popularity of fan fics set in coffee shops or bakeries, which posit the characters of a comic or TV show or movie they love as co-workers having sub-sitcom level interactions. I had an argument with a younger fan on Twitter recently and she told me that what she wants out of a Captain America story is to see Steve Rogers be happy and get whatever he wants - i.e, the exact opposite of what you want from good drama), but while the details change the general attitude is the same: this is what I want out of these stories, and if you don't give it to me you're anti-Semitic/ripping off the consumer/a dead man.
---------end quote---------

Do you realize what the writer of this essay is saying?

Read that quote above again.

"what she wants out of a Captain America story is to see Steve Rogers be happy and get whatever he wants - i.e, the exact opposite of what you want from good drama) "

THINK ABOUT THAT!!!

What she wants is ROMANCE and an HEA for an Action Character.

For me (and likely you, too) real drama is in becoming and in being happy - especially ever after!

Isn't that what we write?  Isn't that what we seek out to read?  What do you mean, Romance is not dramatic????

Romance is what life is all about, bonding, children, family!  I can think of any number of great TV Series and films that embody the Action Hero happy amidst FAMILY LIFE (after a hot-steamy strife-ridden romance, of course).

Think of a few of your own.  Here's the beginning of a list:

1) Little House On The Prairie
2) The Waltons
3) Daniel Boon
4) Ponderosa
5) Babylon-5
6) Star Trek -- especially DS-9 - any of the ensemble shows where the ensemble becomes family
7) Murder She Wrote (Perry Mason, or almost any Police Drama with ensemble cast).
8) Lois And Clark
9) Beauty And The Beast (TV Series)

Science Fiction, Action, Mystery, and Romance genres mix and match very well.  That was proven beyond a doubt by the way science fiction fandom gobbled up Star Trek and produced endless millions of words of "Get Spock" stories and then generated "Slash" which has since proliferated to almost every other TV show.  Keep in mind that before Star Trek fanfic, all science fiction 'fanzines' contained nothing but non-fiction about the books people were reader, cons they went to, other fans they knew.

If you don't think Action Genre goes with Romance Genre perfectly, go watch the very old movie, African Queen.

https://www.amazon.com/African-Queen-Humphrey-Bogart/dp/B003F3KKCW/

Fans love adventure, love the lone-wolf, the unattached hero (Kirk, Spock, McCoy), but the reason they love them is that these action-hero types are in the process of pursuing the Happily Ever After ending - the goal of adventure is to get home, and live a quiet and secure life raising children!  To get home, one must leave home.  The stranger who comes home makes home strange.  Or better yet, pioneering to make a new home.  Right now, N.A.S.A. is rumbling on about a Mars or Moon colony.

The author of Fandom is Broken apparently does not see Romance as Drama.  But as I've noted many times in these blog entries, every story needs a Love Story.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/07/why-every-novel-needs-love-story-part-2.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/10/depiction-part-12-depicting-rational.html

Take the Fan Profile of 7 traits and manifest that identity as a Romance Reader, the very strong personality (male or female) who understands that Home is the destination of every Adventure, that peace is the destination of Action, and then you can see why this one woman on Twitter was in a passionate fury to see Captain America finally get what he deserves -- His H.E.A. ending.  And we want the whole story of what happens during that ending.  Remember BEWITCHED?  Peace and happiness are not the opposite of good drama.

Remember how Superman "grew up" when they finally let him get together with Lois?  Lois & Clark is THE TV Series Superman for me.

The growing fury of media fans, fueled by the fast-cheap communications on social media, is going to produce a radical change in the Fiction Delivery System, and perhaps in all reality.

After all, it was college Gamer folks who pushed the networking of computers between campuses, and someone from the other side of the Atlantic created HTTP ( the markup language concept that lets your browser translate computer code into stories you can read.)

The fury and rage pointed out by FANDOM IS BROKEN is not a sign that fandom is broken, but rather fandom shows a gathering determination to change the world (again).

This is the way fandom always functions.  The energy gathers, becomes defined, gets targeted, and manifests as a sudden shift in the reality the mundanes live in (Star Trek in animated for kids, in films, on the air again (and now yet again!).  The first orbital flight. The International Space Station. Orbital telescopes. Maybe "hyper-loop" travel NY to CA in a couple hours.

Robert Heinlein opened a kid's novel with a guy riding a horse, and his phone rang, so he opened the pommel of the saddle and answered a call from Mars.  That was decades before cell phones.  Now iPhones! It took 70 years, but look at the change!  Fans of Robert Heinlein prevailed in changing the reality mundanes live in.  That's what fan fury accomplishes.

If the quote -- "what she wants out of a Captain America story is to see Steve Rogers be happy and get whatever he wants - i.e, the exact opposite of what you want from good drama) " -- is a good definition of the target this time, then Science Fiction Romance is the genre that will prevail.

Love and Romance and the extreme-drama-HEA will become the warp-and-woof of the fabric of mundane reality.  We might even have Peace in the Middle East!

So if you disappoint your fans and they try a hostile takeover of your Work, that is as it should be (as long as you get paid if only in publicity and homage -- I'm a big fan of copyright, but as a fan I know that homage is coin-of-the-realm) Just consider whether you want to disappoint your fans on purpose or by accident.  Then think carefully about which segment of your audience you are willing to disappoint -- the ones with all 7 traits maxed out, or some of the others?

Fandom is not broken. Fandom is functioning perfectly. Fandom is revving up to change muggle-dom. Again. I want to see the change be toward increased respect for Romance Fandom.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

On Privacy, Your Rights, Others' Rights (and a Rant)

YOUR PRIVACY

September  25th 2016 is the last day to change your privacy settings to prevent What's App from sharing your phone numbers, contact lists, usage data, with Facebook. After Sept 25th, users will not be able to stop What's App sharing info with Facebook.

Facebook will use the info to "serve" advertisements to you and suggest friends.

What's App makes it a little complicated to find the mechanisms to opt out. The Electronic Freedom Foundation url walks you through the steps.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/08/how-keep-your-whatsapp-data-whatsapp

In another blog, EFF explains why you might mind

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/08/what-facebook-and-whatsapps-data-sharing-plans-really-mean-user-privacy-0

Kudos to EFF. On this occasion. Mostly, I follow them because IMHO they are no friend to copyright owners.

YOUR RIGHTS

Are you a rightsholder? If you ever posted an original photo that you took... posted it on Facebook or Twitter, you are a rightsholder.

There are interests that would like to deny you your rights, and exploit your image/words/creation for their own exclusive benefit, if interested, read more here.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/09/google_us_government_copyright/

The Trichordist.com (a go-to site for information relating to songwriters, who may be the canary in the coal mine for other writers) publishes a revealing article about copyright-threatening corruption within the current administration. 

https://thetrichordist.com/2016/09/10/like-a-meth-and-vodka-fueled-low-grade-stripper-google-doesnt-give-a-shit-and-goes-hog-wild-in-last-days-of-obama-administration/

(warning.... strong language! That is the Rant.)

OTHER PEOPLE'S RIGHTS AND YOU

Are you a Social Media influencer? If so, you may want to check out this article by Klein Moynihan Turco LLP about your legal liability.  If you are paid for your blogs and posts, you may be wealthy enough to sue

http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=6d45ba18-b953-4ae4-999c-2e8241cbfcd0&utm_source=lexology+daily+newsfeed&utm_medium=html+email+-+body+-+general+section&utm_campaign=lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=lexology+daily+newsfeed+2016-09-08&utm_term=

 Biggest take away, watch out when re-posting/sharing/retweeting photos and names of real people. They have Right of Publicity.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

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Writing About Sex

Diana Gabaldon has released a new e-book (a little over 100 pages) titled "I GIVE YOU MY BODY": HOW I WRITE SEX SCENES. If you're a fan of the Outlander series, you may have read this advice book already; if not, you'll want to rush to Amazon and buy it. For those unfamiliar with the series, all you need to know in advance is that Gabaldon has a gift for creating sensual, emotional love scenes. This e-book is packed with detailed, specific advice about writing effective sex scenes that won't turn off readers or make them laugh (unintentionally). With extensive examples from her own novels' love scenes, which she dissects paragraph by paragraph, the author discusses topics such as using all the senses, taking advantage of settings, conveying emotion, presenting different character viewpoints, evoking atmosphere, the "non-sex sex scene," etc.

One element posing special difficulty in the writing of sex scenes is language. Do you use the closest thing to neutral terms available in English, which are actually (as C. S. Lewis puts it) the language of an anatomy textbook? Slang words along a sliding scale of explicitness? Metaphorical descriptions that avoid the problem altogether but maybe at the cost of seeming too "flowery"? In my own experience of writing erotic romance, I found that the publisher sometimes wanted more "four-letter words" than I was comfortable with, on the grounds that their readership expected and liked that language in erotic scenes. To complicate the problem, slang terms that I considered rather amusing or sexy were sometimes rejected as crude by the editor—and vice versa. Everybody has an individual level of tolerance and a unique opinion on what's exciting rather than gross! Gabaldon's book includes a chapter on "Terminology." In general, her fiction doesn't feature many explicit mentions of the sexual parts of the body, on the grounds that the reader already knows what's what. For fun, however, she does provide a long list of words for various parts, ranging from euphemistic to porn level.

If you ever have occasion to describe intimate encounters between your characters, don't miss this little book. Or even if you just like to read such scenes, you'll enjoy Gabaldon's witty analysis of how she writes them.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 15 - What Is At Stake

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration
Part 15
What Is At Stake
by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous entries in this series can be found here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/04/index-to-theme-worldbuilding.html

Most writers would assume that "What Is At Stake?" is a PLOT question.

And yes, it actually is a plot question.  The two plot forms that demand the stakes be clear in the writer's mind are:

A) Johnny Gets His Fanny Caught In A Beartrap And Has His Adventures Getting It Out.

B) A Likeable Hero Surmounts Overwhelming Odds Toward A Worthwhile Goal.

Writers generally think of these as "the beartrap story" and the "Quest story."

Many teach this as

There are only two plots in all of literature:
1) A person goes on a journey.
2) A stranger comes to town.
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/05/06/two-plots/
Or as the classic set of 7 Plots outlined in Wikipedia:

• 1.1.1Overcoming the Monster
• 1.1.2Rags to Riches
• 1.1.3The Quest
• 1.1.4Voyage and Return
• 1.1.5Comedy
• 1.1.6Tragedy
• 1.1.7Rebirth

The division into a person goes vs a person comes is not PLOT at all, but SITUATION - a component of plot, as I use the term plot.

The list of 7 is a mixture of genre/mood and Goals (not always worthwhile).

The difference between these two lists and what I'm talking about in these blogs is point of view.

Those lists are concocted by reading what has been written.  Looking in from the outside of the writer's mind leaves the writing student without a clue about HOW to do it - how to plot, how to take the story boiling over inside the mind and lay it out in a narrative with one thing after another, thus engrossing the reader.

I'm talking about the mechanics of doing the writing salable in a commercially driven marketplace. Those lists are talking about the nature of humanity that makes us want to consume stories.

Thus the classic Science Fiction plots - Beartrap and Quest - are helpful to the writer of Science Fiction Romance.

For Romance genre the two classic Science Fiction plot-forms can be transformed into "Love At First Sight" (the beartrap) and "Me! Me! Me! Pick Me, Not Him!" (the Quest to Win The Heart)

Love at First Sight usually strikes when you can least afford to be diverted from a career path.  That creates natural conflict.

Romance where the main character's goal is to "win the heart" of a particular person qualifies as a Quest plot.

In the Beartrap plot, the stakes are whatever has been prevented by stepping into the Beartrap (a career, acceptance at a particular college, maybe even your Religion.)

In the Quest plot, the stakes are the goal of the quest, which in Romance are the coveted words, "I do."

Note that in either plot form, the key to making the story interesting to a specific readership is the choice of the Stakes.  What does the main character stand to lose, and what does the main character stand to win?  What is at stake in the game of life?

So it is not just a plot question -- but also a commercial marketing question.  Who would read this story?

How do you figure out what the stakes in the story you want to tell must be to attract the reader you want to attract?

Sometimes the story idea comes to you as the stakes, as the objective or the potential loss.

If you start with a knowledge of the stakes, chances are your subconscious has already built the entire world around your characters, and your job is to tease that integrated conception apart into a sequence of information to feed the reader in a way that makes sense and builds suspense.

But sometimes "the stakes" is the very last decision a writer has to make.  Everything else is clear in your mind's eye, so you start to write and discover you have no idea what the stakes are, or what audience would be fascinated by playing for those stakes.

When that happens, it helps to rephrase the question from "What is at stake?" to "What is this story about?"

The "stakes" should symbolize the theme (theme is what the story is about).  The stakes would be a concrete, visualizable representation of the epistemological statement your theme makes.

That statement is your theme, and everything (every detail and every functioning part) of a novel is derived from the theme.  (Or vice-versa, the theme is derived from the details that popped into your head.)

The Theme is evident in the "world" you build behind your characters.

You can write Contemporary Romance that is Science Fiction, as Gini Koch's Alien Series clearly demonstrates (yes, you must read that series).

So to discover what is at stake, what might be lost or what might be gained at what price, the writer has to examine what this romance novel is to say about life, the universe and everything.

For this exercise, let's focus on a common, pervasive thematic issue in our world today, Risk.

Risk Management is a core issue in everyone's life today.  No matter what readership you are going for, those readers are in angst over RISK.

Writers consider the abstracts, pick a thematic statement, and make that abstract concept into a concrete but distantly "other" world for the reader.

Fiction, as I've said in the books on Tarot,

is the alphabet of the left hand -- of the non-linear part of the brain that deals in gestalt imaging.

"The Stakes" is the concrete representation of an abstract concept.  "The Stakes" are a symbol of the Main Character's subconscious values, or possibly only fears.

You can choose "the stakes" by fleshing out your character in a character sketch.  If your subconscious has already completed the worldbuilding behind that character, you will stumble upon the stakes he/she is gambling.

But what do you do if you are asked for a story, or have a novel under contract with a deadline, and your subconscious has not done the work to concoct The Stakes?

One remarkably effective ploy is to go scan the day's headlines looking for a major issue of deep concern to your intended audience.  What matters in your reader's everyday life?

We examined ripping fictional material from factual (and not necessarily so factual) Headlines in many previous posts, notably:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/02/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-6.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-7.html

Tabloids are great for this exercise.

If you can find a set of Headlines apparently on different topics, but all about problems stemming from a single cultural, legal, or Values issue, you may have found the Theme you can derive Stakes from.

A look at the headlines from May 2016 gives a good set of examples.

Just on The Hill website, we have a whole set of articles on the TSA and long wait lines, congressional hearings, and what to do about it all.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/281499-dhs-head-we-wont-compromise-aviation-security-over-tsa-delays

http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/281574-how-airport-security-lines-got-so-bad

http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/281405-funding-boost-for-tsa-sails-through-committee

And on May 31, 2016, a heightened threat level for all Europe was announced, especially large public gatherings such as sports matches. Just going on vacation can be accepting a Risk.

Obviously, voters are upset with the flight delays by the TSA wait lines, so law makers do what they were hired to do -- spend money.  It is the only tool they have, so they use it on all problems. Spending more money than you have income creates a Risk - it is a gamble that income will appear before the debt is due.  The Stakes is all about The Risk.

Each of the air travelers caught in the massive delays has something uniquely their own at stake, and more to lose beyond that one thing.

For example, being late for a vacation reservation may mean forfeiting a night's lodging costs, but it might also mean disappointing a treasured child by not turning up at their graduation, and that might mean the kid went off and got drunk partying, got into a car crash, and is responsible for a death for the rest of their life.

An incident like that could make wonderful "backstory" for a Main Character.  The same might happen if the hapless passenger misses his plane because of a sudden Love At First Sight -- whereupon he stops to rescue damsel in distress who may not want rescuing.

The ostensible 'stakes' can be just catching a plane, train or bus "in time."  The ramifications of winning or losing those stakes can support an entire series of novels.

The clever writer will look at the TSA mess, and try to find what it has in common with other headlined boondoggles plaguing the target readership.

Take the current Presidential Election, for example. We have the usual 3 Parties fielding candidates -- Libertarian, Democrat, and Republican.  After a year of jockeying for position, we have 3 sets of President-Vice President contenders.  None of them suit anything like the electorate's concept of an ideal person for the job in these times.

So what is a Character you have invented to be your voter to do?  How does the Character make this decision?  What themes would fit such a novel, set in the "world" of "reality."

Think of a Contemporary Romance.  As a writer, you know you must do just as much worldbuilding to create a Contemporary Romance as you do to write a space-adventure Fantasy or Science Fiction novel.  The "reality" you create for your characters resembles the reader's everyday reality but it is not reality.

Just as dialogue is not the way real people really speak, but must have verisimilitude (must resemble the way people talk, but still advance the plot and story apace), so too does your worldbuilding require a resemblance to reality.  Here is the index to posts on dialogue.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/10/dialogue-parts-1-4-listed.html

Real-reality just does not work in text based fiction because the reader has to "visualize" that world, injecting their own artistic twist on your work, using your work as a template to create their own story.

Therefore a Contemporary Science Fiction Romance writer has to create a "Reality Template" against which to tell the story.

So you take a pair of Characters and depict them against the backdrop of your selective representation of the reader's Reality -- your Japanese Brush painting that merely suggests so they can imagine.  We covered that process in the series on Depicting.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

You have created a pair of Characters embedded in a semblance of the reader's Reality, and this new pairing is living through a period of Political Hot Potatoe Games -- where politicians are jockeying for position, slinging mud, creating "straw man" opponents and using the names (or lurid nicknames) of the real nominees of the opposition parties.  Be sure not to depict something too "real" as lawsuits can happen to writers and publishing contracts hang the entire liability on the writer.

Now each of your pair of Characters have decisions to make.  "Do I know enough to form an opinion?"  "If I don't know enough, should I vote anyway?"  "Which bozo clown should I vote for, or against?"  And what about down-ballot?  Can I offset the impossible choice by picking opposition candidates for House and Senate?  What if I'm wrong?

Suppose both your Characters are comitted to voting "responsibly" -- maybe they are even working for this or that Campaign going door to door (and that's how they meet?).  Each is completely wound up in the details of their choices-- but of course, if this is a genuine romance novel, they will start out supporting different Candidates.

So, with "reality" as your template, you do not have much worldbuilding to do, and with a political campaign as the plot framework, you have a focus for your Theme, which is dictated somewhat by the Romance Genre theme -- Love Conquers All.

The "All" that gets conquered here would be a Political Disagreement.  Since this blog is about science fiction/fantasy/paranormal Romance, we can assume the two Candidates the new lovers are supporting have an "issue" difference that hinges on something scientific and/or paranormal.

For example, one Candidate might support the Space Program, but not support N.A.S.A. (say, for example the private company that wants to put a colony on Mars).  The opposition might support N.A.S.A. but leash it with appropriations earmarks such that it can never launch a colonizing attempt, or support N.A.S.A. in such a way as to destroy civilian entreprenuership in space because Space must controlled by the government.

Neither of your Lovers would have all the facts at the beginning of your novel, and neither would be prominent enough at the beginning for their influence to sway large numbers of voters.  At the beginning of the story and the plot, the Stakes are just personal, a matter of personal integrity and honor, possibly just opinion.

To do this novel as a Fantasy Genre, the argument might be over government funding for cross-dimensional exploration -- sending an explorer into a parallel universe.

To do this novel as a Paranormal, perhaps one of the Candidates has a lurid past as a Ghost Hunter, or maybe he or she is a telepath or empath with great power to sway the opinions of huge crowds (who then stay swayed).

The Reality Matrix is Contemporary Political Campaign, and the Romance sub-genre is chosen by the issue -- science fiction, fantasy, or paranormal.

So ostensibly, at the opening of the novel, "the stakes" for each of your Lovers Stories would be "Who Becomes President?" If the wrong person wins, the Passionate Personal Project will be put off for a generation or more.

In science fiction and fantasy genres, long series are the norm, so you don't have to resolve all the conflicts in Book I.

Notice how The Theme, Love Conquers All, suggests that the writer has to reach for an "All" that is ostensibly un-conquerable, then show how it could happen that Love could conquer that particular "All."

Personally, I have seen marriages break up over politics.  The arguments become too fundamentally passionate.  But such novels are hard to write as Romances because Love spurs Characters to want to discovery "why" the "other" thinks so stupidly and "correct" that errant behavior by "informing" them.

Note how, in developing this approach to finding "the stakes" for this novel here, we have sifted and focused down to a handful of possible themes.

Having chosen the LOVE CONQUERS ALL theme with its underlying premise of HAPPILY EVER AFTER IS REALISTIC, and cast that against the Contemporary Romance genre, added in "Ripped From The Headlines" politics, we now have a very specific novel series emerging.

Yes, it resembles Gini Koch's ALIEN Series, but is distinctively different.

Note how the political positions of the candidates the Characters are supporting define "the stakes."  Maybe one of the young Lovers has set heart on being a member of the Mars Colony team?  "The Stakes" then become very personal, the future career of that Character.  Maybe the other Character chooses to support the opposing Candidate because Humankind has virtually ruined this world and has no right to go ruin Mars, too.  "The Stakes" for that character is the future of Earth's Ecology.

If people think they can easily escape Earth's ecological crash by just moving into space, they won't spend the resources and focus genius on fixing Earth, so all routes of escape must be cut off.  The Stakes Are Too High.

If people think Humanity can survive the current Species Die-Off we are in, and we can't, it will be too late to establish colonies in space and Humanity dies.  The Stakes Are Too High.

And there is your core theme for this type of Contemporary Science Fiction Romance-Politics: THE STAKES ARE TOO HIGH.

Thematically, The Stakes Are Too High is based on a bundle of assumptions, each of which needs a Character in the novel to live out an illustration of what if that assumption is correct or what if it is not correct.   The single classic short story everyone remembers that pulls this trick off exceptionally well is titled The Cold Equations.

Note how much this story is studied, and what a classic piece it is (non-Romance).

http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/topic/the-cold-equations

Here it is on wikipedia.

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

I could argue each and every point academics and even fans make about this story, but one point is not arguable.  It is exactly what a short story should be -- memorable, and full of unanswerable questions posed in a way that seems clear, but isn't.

Pull off a thematic trick like that with a series of Romance novels about Politics, and you could generate a Black Swan Event, an Overton Window Event in World Politics -- some 30 or 60 years after publication. We now have a space station, so this story's scenario which was not possible when it was written (except as a lost-at-sea-story) is actually possible today.

One of the rules of screenwriting is "Raise The Stakes" on the correct "beat" -- that is along the plot line, you come to a point (located by which structure you are using, 3 or 4 Act) when the writer "reveals" what more is at stake -- what happens if the Hero fails?  What happens if the villain wins? What can be lost and what would that loss mean?

You, the writer, must "draw the reader" into the story by making it clear what the loss would mean.  That imagining of the Character's possible future creates suspense, and is in fact the very definition of "suspense."

What Will Happen Next?

That's what "the stakes" are all about.  In Romance, the stakes are "Happily Ever After" -- who gets to be Happy?  How do the Characters go from the Beginning to the Happily Ever After end?  What has to CHANGE?

Plot is the sequence of Events that Change of Situation.

Story is the reason why the Characters feel this or that way about the Events of the Plot -- and therefore, the reason why (motive) the Character acts in response to the Event in a particular way.

The STAKES are the symbolism ...
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/01/theme-symbolism-integration-part-4-how.html
has a list of previous posts on Symbolism including "Why Do We Cry At Weddings?"...

...by which the writer explains to the reader what exactly is motivating the Character -- explains by depicting the subconscious motive that the Character does not even know is driving him/her.  This creates suspense in the story-line because the Reader is rooting for the Character to "see" what the reader "sees" inside the Character.  At some point in the story-arc, the writer must create the "epiphany" where the Character sees what the reader has seen.  In Romance, that shock usually results in the "I Love You" statement.

Character Motivation is subconscious to the Character. Story takes place in the Character's Subconscious, running parallel and tandem with the physical real-world Events on the Plot Line.

As emotional responses in the subconscious change, the character "arcs" changing their opinion and ideas, their evaluations of given concrete realities, and Values.  Values are the hierarchy by which people sort out The Stakes into more important and less important all the way down to discarding as Unimportant.  We throw away everything for Love.

So, if you've chosen to do a Contemporary Science Fiction Romance set amidst a Political Campaign where the Issue of the Day is either Space Travel or just "How To Fund And Thus Control Space Travel?" the plot driving Conflict will be the disagreement between your Lovers over which course, and thus which Candidate, is the better choice.

If The Wedding takes place in Chapter One, and then they discover they disagree as the Campaigns get rolling - you have one kind of novel.  The middle could be filing for Divorce, and the Ending could be getting re-married.

If The Wedding takes place in the Middle, where they have decided their Love is more important than politics, the Ending is at the filing for Divorce -- and the sequel developes their new Romance (likely via two triangle Relationships).

If The Wedding takes place at the End of volume 1, Volume 2 begins with one or both climbing the political campaign ladder, maybe becoming delegates to the State Conventions, maybe the National Convention, maybe the Electoral College.  Maybe running for Congress or Senate themselves, both winning, and opposing each other across the House and/or Senate Floors -- and more sequels where they run against each other for President and/or Vice President (though Gini Koch pre-empted that scenario, so you should think of something different).

You could go international intrigue and stage a fight over planting flags of Nations on various planets and moons in our solar system -- claiming possession in the name of a Nation.  Or you could do the same with, say, the United Nations Flag and a joint effort to plant it everywhere.

Maybe one of your Lovers is devoted to the United Nations and one world government, and the other is a Nationalist, Protectionist type, who sees such large and diverse masses of humans as un-governable.

Which path you choose will depend on The Stakes.

Since we are positing science fiction romance as the genre, note that in Science Fiction the Main Character is generally The Hero, usually on The Hero's Journey (look that book up if you don't know it).  Star Wars began with Luke Skywalker embarking on a typical Hero's Journey which is why it played to such a broad audience, not just space-adventure fans.

The Likable Hero surmounts overwhelming odds toward a worthwhile goal.

The worthwhile goal is The Stakes.  What if you don't make it?

You don't make it to the goal, you lose The Stakes.  What then?

In solving any problem, particularly High Stakes Adventure, every choice the Character makes has to be in consideration of THE RISK.

That's what "The Stakes" means -- what if you lose?  What can be lost? What do you do then?

For example, suppose you open the story with your Female Lead Character being kidnapped by a rapist, held at knife-point and assaulted.  She has to figure out what The Stakes really are.  The classic advice is to just lie still and enjoy it because rapists rarely actually murder the victim afterwards.  So thinking the Stakes are just your virginity, you might decide not to fight.

But thinking the Stakes are your actual life, you might decide to fight which shows the reader she is one kind of person, or she might decide to cower, which shows she is another sort of person.  In either case, more choices have to be made.  What move can you make that might succeed?  What are the odds of pulling it off?  What happens if you strike out and fail to frighten him off?  What if you cower, and that just invites more cruelty?

What if you get pregnant by this bozo?  More decisions. The Stakes Are Raised.

Calculating the odds, taking The Risk, is what the Hero (male or female) does.  The Hero Acts.

Classic wisdom says that the one who just "reacts" is always the loser.

Initiating Action is the signature of the Winner (not necessarily of The Good Guy).

Science Fiction is about heroic action in the Highest Stakes Games -- life or death, the survival of an entire species, -- using weapons such as star-killers or planet busters -- or simply about solving problems by disrupting the assumptions of the adversary with something like a new scientific discovery.

One historic example is the use of the Atomic Bomb to end World War II.  That was an Overton Window Event.  It was done at enormous risk.  The horror of it could have caused the world to destroy the United States.  Or the bombs might not have actually exploded as planned.  The plane carrying them might have crashed at sea (lots of planes crashed at sea in those days; planes weren't as dependable as they are now.)

Writing engrossing fiction requires making the Character's attitude toward The Stakes and the Risk (both upside and downside Risk -- sometimes a Win is a Pyrrhic Victory) very clear to the reader.

That does not mean spelling out in excruciating detail all the Character's thoughts during this Calculation of Risk.

Good writing is all about Show Don't Tell.  Make the reader figure out what the Character is thinking, and the Reader will easily believe it and become engrossed.  So the Character's calculation about Risk is shown-not-told to the Reader by Symbolism.

The Symbolism chosen by the writer is derived from the Theme and the Reader derives the panorama of the world behind the story from the Symbol chosen.

Thus an heirloom Ruby necklace might be the symbol of a Throne at Risk, or a Heritage to be discovered (such as finding an ancestor who died at Treblinka.

In the case of a Political Campaign, or Lovers working on different campaigns, a slogan placard might be the Symbol of The Stakes.  Or it might be a YouTube video depicting what will happen to Earth if this or that Candidate does not win.  Are You Willing To Risk This?  Scare-tactics, it is usually called.  Fear mongering is used because it works.

Then of course there is the temptation of manufacture evidence to "prove" that fear of this, or risk of that is "real."  That can "thicken" a plot, especially where the rivals are on different political sides.

The thematic choices for political science fiction might include:

1) Government exists for the purpose of keeping everyone inside its borders safe.  Life should be lived without risk. (see above mentioned TSA articles)

2) Government exists for the purpose of keeping everyone inside its borders well informed of  risks.  Life should be lived for the sake of personally choosen risks and accepting consequences of one's own choices.

The Stakes are Life -- a lifetime, or at least decades, of predictability or unpredictability.

Science Fiction adventure heroes usually choose to take Risks, as do Fantasy Heroes.  Consider Bilbo Baggins.

Adventure means living on the edge, calculating risk and plunging toward a goal, like Captain Kirk in ST:ToS.

For one theme, the Worthwhile Goal is Safety -- what makes the goal worthwhile is the achievement of a NO RISK situation.

For the other theme, the Worthwhile Goal is Moving the Overton Window, creating the Black Swan Event, the event that changes the way everyone thinks about everything.  What makes that goal Worthwhile is the Risk Itself -- the idea that everything depends on you, yourself, all by yourself, and if you fail you have nobody to blame but yourself.

There is one school that believes that Life=Change.  That is, if you take no risks, you are not alive.  Or put another way, Life can not be lived without risk, and pain and suffering are just part of the process of change.

There is another school that believes that a risk free life is a human right.  Safety is the only worthwhile goal.

These two basic views each form the basis of political definitions of The Stakes in an election.

Exploration of Space or another Dimension would be taking a risk, and The Stakes would be human survival, just as in the Kidnap-Rape scenario it is the survival of an individual.

Calculate whether action or inaction has the lesser Risk.  Then choose.  One school chooses the greater Risk because of the greater reward; the other school chooses the lesser Risk because "A Bird In The Hand Is Worth Two In The Bush."

You see these two attitudes toward Life in child rearing (to let Johnny go swimming or not), in Investing (get out of the Market because it's going to crash), in starting a business (to buy a Franchise or go Indie), or schooling (drop out of college to start Microsoft in a garage), or deciding whether to hold the Olympics in a Zika infested country.

What risks are you willing to take for The Stakes of Happily Ever After?

When you choose The Stakes your protagonists are playing for, be sure the Stakes symbolize your thematic statement about the place of Risk Taking in your reader's world.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Happy Labor Day

This author wishes all our readers a very pleasant Labor Day weekend.

The best news for those whose copyrights have been repeatedly infringed may be the judgement against Cox Communications.  Thanks to the law firm Dorsey & Whitney for their reporting that ISPs can be held liable if they fail to terminate repeat infringers... or terminate them but allow them to reactivate their accounts or open a new account.
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=d6d80bba-f364-4291-b96f-984af21094c9

Watch out, EBay.

For those who really want to get into the weeds, AWS is now on my radar. They appear to have a lot of users in Singapore who are posting .pdf documents which appear to be lists of links to ebooks that they allege are available for free download. If anyone does download those ebooks, they are most likely infringing copyright.

AWS seems to deactivate links, but from watching them via Blasty (a copyright takedown service) for the last 3 months, they do not appear to be terminating accounts. I will be looking into this a bit more.

Happy Labor Day.

Rowena Cherry

Human Hybridization

It's now widely believed that early Homo sapiens crossbred with Neanderthals. Here's an article speculating on why interbreeding may have happened:

Human Hybridization

Offspring from mates of two different species often display "hybrid vigor." This author also suggests (using the example of mules) that a hybrid may have higher intelligence than either ancestral species.

These factors show that interbreeding may bestow advantages on the offspring; however, they don't explain why individuals would be motivated to mate with other-species partners. Mistaken identity? As a last resort when members of their own species aren't available? From positive attraction?

In one of my favorite novels, CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR, Cro-Magnon (Homo sapiens) child Ayla, adopted by Neanderthals, grows up to bear a Cro-Magnon-Neanderthal baby. Her pregnancy results from rape. Like the rest of the clan, the father of her child considers her ugly, or at least odd-looking, and he rapes her to assert dominance, not from desire. Because human babies are born less developed than Neanderthals, Ayla's adopted people think her infant son is deformed. At birth he can't even hold up his head! As he matures, of course, he outstrips his Neanderthal kinfolk in many ways. (As a child, Tarzan in the original novel fares similarly among the apes, who at first take a dim view of she-ape Kala's adopting a hairless, frail creature that will obviously never be able to care for itself. Burroughs' series, by the way, assumes that his "great apes"—definitely not gorillas, which are shown as lesser animals, so the great apes must be a "missing link"—are related closely enough to human beings to interbreed, as seen in Tarzan's visits to the ruined lost city of Opar.) In later books, Ayla learns that other hybrid children exist, usually conceived by rape of Neanderthal girls by gangs of Cro-Magnon men. She speculates that her son may have to look for a mate among these crossbreeds, since both types of human beings often view "children of mixed spirits" as abominations.

James Tiptree's story "And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side" postulates that human beings have a powerful exogamous drive. We're drawn to exotic partners because, in prehistory, marrying out of the tribe kept the genes circulating. A girl's elopement with a boy from the strange people on the other side of the mountain gave evolutionary benefits to her descendants. In Tiptree's story, this impulse has gone wild and become a liability as human beings traveling among the stars pursue the irresistible attractions of exotic aliens, with whom no fertile mating is possible.

Science fiction teems with fascinating human-alien hybrids, such as Spock. In most cases, the writer and reader simply agree to suspend disbelief in inter-species crossbreeding, with no inconvenient mention of incompatible genes. Larry Niven's well-known essay "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" uses Superman and Lois Lane to highlight how improbable this crossbreeding would be. To make such characters biologically plausible, the author would have to assume the galaxy was purposely "seeded" with life from a single point of origin or perhaps that meteors transported DNA through interstellar space.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Reviews # 28 Camp Alien by Gini Koch

Reviews # 28

Camp Alien by Gini Koch

Great novel in a great series.  What more can I say?  Read it!!!

I have reviewed Gini's Alien series quite frequently on this Tuesday writing craft blog, so there is not much more to say than just, you must read this series.

http://www.amazon.com/Alien-13-Book-Series/dp/B014J8VFNY

It looks expensive until you note the size of the volumes - and the print is small, so you might prefer the Kindle or ebook version where you can make the print larger.

Unlike many of the science fiction novels or series I point you to, this one is actually in the Romance Genre.  The first books in the series are a "genuine" Romance in that the couple first meet, establish a Relationship (with some difficulties to overcome) then marry.  But the series goes on telling an ever more complex story of that Relationship as they have a child (half-alien hybrid), then another child -- both children very unusual individuals.

One of my most repeated caveats about this series is that the writing style is "loose" -- very often wordy, and the dialogue looping ( more like real speech than fictional dialogue).

However, the editing has tightened in the last few books, and this entry, CAMP ALIEN, does not seem to have editing errors of that type.

So reading the set all together, in sequence, should give you a very good bit of training in how to tighten your own narrative and dialogue, or at least take editorial direction without balking.

Well, edited text makes for a smoother and more enjoyable read.

In addition, CAMP ALIEN is a walloping good read all by itself.  The one structural problem remaining is the plethora of characters - all of whom are instrumental in the plot, but most of whom are off stage while dialogue is used to fill the reader in on what happened in previous novels in the series.

I didn't have trouble following the wide-ranging scope of the characters and their sub-plots as the previous novels evoked those Characters strongly, vividly, and made them people to me. This effect is the signature of good writing.

In this volume, CAMP ALIEN is Camp David of international conference fame.

We started in the first novel, ALIEN, with an Alien guy who ran a small team of Field Operatives fighting non-human invaders of Earth, which the Aliens now see as Home.

They meet our main character, Kitty Kat, by accident and she leaps into battle beside them, earning her way into their ranks (to her dismay).  The Relationship progresses over the next volumes as they battle various threats to Earth, get married, have kids, and concurrently advance in rank, to be in charge of ever larger operations.

Eventually, they become Ambassadors from the Alien contingent on Earth to the US Government, move to Washington and live in a fortified Embassy there.  They get involved in Politics, and the Alien guy inadvertently becomes Vice President.  In the novel previous to CAMP ALIEN, the President (a Human) is murdered (along with most of the Cabinet and other officials in the line), and our Alien Vice President becomes President.

In this novel, old threats return in very plausible ways, and the battle to save Earth moves through international politics to Camp David which is nearly destroyed by the new combat.

Kitty Kat demonstrates how she uses otherwise mundane talents, plus a hint or two from another Alien, to combat the threats (from robots to androids to biological constructs) to save Earth time and again.

This volume is notable to Romance fans and those who want to write Action Romance like this because it focuses around a very typical marital issue - one which you would never expect this couple to have.

Kitty Kat is kidnapped (business as usual), swings into action, saves herself, saves several other groups who had been kidnapped (friends and allies of hers), finds a stolen airship armed with Alien weapons, recaptures it and heads on home.

She is confident she can land this airship where it belongs, at Andrews AFB.  She radios ahead for landing permission and hits a brick wall of "you are not authorized."  Then big guns are trained on the airship.

By the time she gets that straightened out, she is so mad at her Husband The President for shutting down her authorization to land that she threatens divorce, and declares her airship a sovereign nation (only half joking! Maybe less than half.)

She is beyond furious because she feels betrayed.

Eventually, after much more action, she gets the whole story of why her husband did this to her.  And she's even more angry, because he did it because he believed a video showing her captured, maimed and tortured and begging him to come save her.  She has never, in all their adventures, done anything like that.  She's saved him a number of times.  She had assumed he understood her Character, Capability and Soul well enough to view that blackmail video with suspicion.

When she sees the video, she points out the clues that it is fake, and the being tortured and dismembered is not her, but a copy of her. (copies of people are common in this whole series -- they should have expected it.)

Her husband and the men who believed the video was real are shocked, contrite, apologetic, groveling, and most terribly, gut-wrenchingly ashamed of themselves.

In real life, of course, this would never happen.  The men would justify their error to themselves.  But with 12 other very long novels behind us, we believe these men (particularly Kitty's husband) are reacting in character here.

Moreover, Kitty herself believes their error was well within plausibility after she sees all that went on while she was conquering her kidnappers.

This depicts a marital spat over a very common Relationship problem, and makes you believe every word.  But it is science FICTION -- very fiction, though the psychological science is right on the button.

In the end, Kitty's sovereign nation grudgingly rejoins the United States and Alien combine, makes interstellar peace and maybe peace in the Middle East as well.  And you'll believe every word while laughing your head off.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Copyright: Updates and Esoterica

Update: The artist Peter Doig prevailed in the multi-million dollar suit brought against him for refusing to certify that he was the author of a work of which he was not the author.

Interestingly, he can thank his highschool yearbook photos in part for convincing the court that the Peter Doig being sued was a schoolboy in Toronto at the time that his hobbyist namesake was incarcerated somewhere else.

Read more, courtesy of Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0f1bea64-b522-4b32-9170-6bcd1f102a1a

and from Sullivan and Worcester LLP
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=e0f9d623-2302-4a13-9a8e-12e18da9bcca

Moral of the story? Keep your yearbooks!

Esoterica:
What we can learn from Led Zeppelin... who, as defendants, won the copyright infringement lawsuit brought against them on account of some alleged similarities in a riff in Stairway To Heaven with an earlier musical work, but who did not prevail in their claim to recover their legal costs.

Analysis courtesy of Dorsey & Whitney LLP
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=328c6176-400d-4831-9d48-6244a912505a

Loser does not always pay!  Motivation (of the plaintiff) and reasonableness of the factual and legal arguments (by the plaintiff) may weigh more heavily than three or four other factors that a judge considers in making a determination whether or not to award costs. New in this case was a sixth factor: alleged litigation misconduct and alleged tasteless courtroom antics on the part of the plaintiff's counsel.

Thirdly, a cautionary tale from Russell Kennedy about how the mischievous use of social media can be expensive for the mischievous, even if the posting is only up for a brief time and exposed to a limited readership.
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=500b3fed-6007-4761-8ba6-7d26cbe4c598

Defamation on social media can be ruled "defamation" even if the mischievous party does not identify the plaintiff by name, as long as the description of events makes it possible for any reasonable observer to identify the  plaintiff.

Finally, Eversheds reports that the music industry is seeking to change the protections afforded to "platforms" that profit disproportionately from "user generated" piracy of copyrighted works, and that, when the DMCA was written twenty years ago, the lawmakers' intent was not to protect business models that had not at that time been invented.
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=7aa7f01c-f522-488e-b404-cd4f1f85419b

All the best,
Rowena Cherry

Ponies and Changelings

The latest episode of MY LITTLE PONY: FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC offers an interesting example of applying fantasy to real-world geopolitics—a "ripped from the headlines" story—with no explicit mention of actual events or peoples. In "The Times They Are a Changeling," Princess Twilight Sparkle travels to the Crystal Empire to visit her brother and sister-in-law (the prince and princess of that kingdom) and their baby filly. Twilight's assistant, young dragon Spike, accompanies her. The capital of the Crystal Empire is in the grip of paranoid fear because a changeling has been glimpsed in the area. Spike, who became a hero among the Crystal ponies on a previous visit, joins a squad of guards searching for the creature. Getting separated from the group, Spike stumbles upon the changeling and discovers that the terrifying monster, named Thorax, isn't a threat at all. In fact, the "monster" saves his life. Parasites who feed on love, changelings infiltrated Canterlot (capital of Equestria) in a former episode, their queen disguising herself as the Empire's princess—hence the Crystal ponies' state of high alert. But Thorax left the changeling country because he yearns to experience friendship without devouring love-energy in a destructive mode. If he can make friends, generating enough love in such relationships that he won't "starve," maybe he can rise above his nature and cease to pose a threat to others. Spike welcomes him as a potential friend, introducing him to Twilight and some of the Crystal ponies in the guise of an ordinary pony. When Thorax accidentally gets exposed, Spike fails to stand up for him. Realizing how he has betrayed his would-be friend, Spike goes after Thorax, persuades him to give friendship another chance, and changes the other ponies' minds about their belief that "there's no such thing as a nice changeling."

In the MY LITTLE PONY universe, a changeling is a creature that can disguise itself in the form of any other person (pony, dragon, etc.), what the D&D game calls a doppelganger. In folklore, changelings are fairies left in place of stolen babies. In some cases, adults could be suspected of being changelings, too. An Irish woman, Bridget Cleary, was burned to death in the modern, civilized year of 1895 because her husband claimed to believe—apparently sincerely—that she was a fairy changeling; by killing the substitute, he expected to get his "true" wife back. The MY LITTLE PONY concept and the folklore concept have one factor in common, that changelings can infiltrate normal society by posing as "one of us." Because they look like "normal" people, only constant vigilance can guard against the danger they present.

Just below the surface, "The Times They Are a Changeling" fits into the "good guy vampire" subgenre. Thorax fights against his predatory nature to find happiness through friendship. At the next layer down, though, it's a story about what terrorist threats do to individuals and societies. Because the changelings attacked in an earlier episode and almost destroyed the Crystal Empire, the Crystal ponies have become so paranoid that at first they suspect Twilight and her companions of being changelings in disguise. The citizens of the empire are determined to keep all changelings out, making no distinction between the evil ones and those who might be harmless. This climate of suspicion and fear leads Spike to turn against Thorax instead of supporting him at a critical moment. When the majority demonizes all members of a different nation or culture, it's hard to speak in defense of them.

The message of this episode isn't totally unproblematic. While Thorax wants to be "good," it's clear that all the rest of the changelings (all whom we see, anyway) really are dangerous, amoral predators. He's presented as more of an exception than an example. However, the ending offers hope that other changelings can learn about friendship and alter their world-view and behavior, just as Thorax has done. Evil isn't necessarily an essential part of their nature. On the level of the show's target preteen audience, this episode conveys yet another message about friendship overcoming differences. Adult viewers can perceive (or not, as they choose) deeper layers of applicability.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Guest Post by Julie E. Czerneda - The Clan Chronicles

Guest Post
by
Julie E. Czerneda
Author Of The Clan Chronicles From DAW Books

--------Introduction---------

I've been reading Julie E. Czerneda's novels for years and just finished The Gate To Futures Past (Reunification #2).

It is a sequel to This Gulf of Time and Stars (Reunification #1).

The Reunification novels are part of The Clan Chronicles.

Julie E. Czerneda is one of the few writers like Charles E. Gannon, the absolutely-must-read writers.

Julie has blended good science (physics and genetics) with imaginary science with theories of souls and the spiritual significance of Time, and added in a whopping dollop of amazing Romance that fuels the blistering hot plot.

Without the Romance, there would be no story here! That is the very definition of Romance Genre.

So I was delighted to get this Guest Post from Julie on the occasion of a new novel in The Clan Chronicles -- a series that explores the farthest reaches of alien and human biology, genetics, romance, and the structure of the universe, the nature of Reality, and what is important (and what is not).

Most writers would flub this blend, putting too much of one or the other, getting too abstract, inserting indigestible lumps of exposition about nothing relevant, or just cutting to the sex scene and forgetting the oddities of the carefully built logic of the world surrounding the characters.

The Clan Chronicles are a must-read for Science Fiction Paranormal Romance writers trying to blend genres.

The Clan Chronicles gives the eerie feeling of reading Asimov genetically spliced to Heinlein mothered by J.D.Robb (Nora Roberts).

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

------------Guest Post by Julie E. Czerneda------------

Author Bio:

Julie E. Czerneda photo by Roger Czerneda
www.photo.czerneda.com

Since 1997, Canadian author/former biologist Julie E. Czerneda has shared her boundless curiosity about living things through her science fiction, published by DAW Books, NY. Recently, she began her first fantasy series: Night’s Edge with A Turn of Light, winner of the 2014 Aurora Award for Best English Novel. A Play of Shadow followed, winning the 2015 Aurora. While there’ll be more fantasy, Julie’s back in science fiction to complete her Clan Chronicles series. Reunification #1: This Gulf of Time and Stars, came out in 2015. #2: The Gate to Futures Past will be released this September. Volume #3: To Guard Against the Dark, follows October 2017. An award-winning editor as well, Julie’s latest project is editing the 2017 Nebula Awards Showcase, a singular honour. Meet Julie at Acadia’s Dark Sky Festival, Bar Harbor, Maine this September and at Hal-Con, Halifax, this November. For more, please visit http://www.czerneda.com.

About the Clan Chronicles Series:

Cover art by Matt Stawicki www.mattstawicki.com

The Clan Chronicles is set in a far future where a mutual Trade Pact encourages peaceful commerce among a multitude of alien and Human worlds. The alien Clan, humanoid in appearance, have been living in secrecy and wealth on Human worlds, relying on their innate ability to move through the M’hir and bypass normal space. The Clan bred to increase that power, only to learn its terrible price: females who can’t help but kill prospective mates. Sira di Sarc is the first female of her kind facing that reality. With the help of a Human starship captain, Jason Morgan, himself a talented telepath, Sira must find a morally acceptable solution before it’s too late. But with the Clan exposed, her time is running out. The Stratification trilogy follows Sira’s ancestor, Aryl Sarc, and shows how their power first came to be as well as how the Clan came to live in the Trade Pact. The Trade Pact trilogy is the story of Sira and Morgan, and the trouble facing the Clan. Reunification will conclude the series and answer, at last, #whoaretheclan.

And what will be the fate of all.

Cover art by Matt Stawicki www.mattstawicki.com

GIVEAWAY
2 sets of 2 books. 1 mass market of A GULF OF TIME AND STARS and 1 hardcover of GATE TO FUTURES PAST. US/Canada only.
RAFFLECOPTER FOR TOUR WIDE GIVEAWAY:
a Rafflecopter giveaway 

To Smell Me Is To Love Me

If you’re built that way. The means by which living things communicate has been my passion since I knew what a biologist was—and, wow, what a great thing to be. Living things communicate regularly for all manner of important reasons: don’t eat me, hold still while I eat you, learn or be eaten/or starve, that way lies death/this way less death, status/age/and oh, yes.

Reproduction. That’s a handy one for biologists to study, in part because unlike Humans, most species have a specific time when they are in the mood, being not-so-much for the remainder. Sex as a time-limited activity, usually tied to a season. Sex as the end of life, so it happens only once. There are wonderful variations on these themes, but generally speaking? You’re all in, or not interested.

Please don’t misunderstand me. Affection, even love, for those living things who enjoy it, isn’t the same as sex drive to a biologist. For us, sex is about results.

The Clan Chronicles, which started with A Thousand Words for Stranger, is at heart about sex and results. I deliberately created the Clan, the aliens we meet in the books, as having no capacity for love or affection. Their reproduction neither requires nor rewards it. Males compete with females to create a pairing able to produce offspring. Lose?
The male dies. The female? Waits—literally, in a physiological sense, her body immature--for the next contestant for her Choice.

Simple and not that far from spider sex.

The Clan have reached a point where they are losing males faster than they can be born. In other words, extinction looms. One individual, an unChosen female named Sira, has waited long enough. She’s determined to find a solution and save her kind.

How being the tough part. Oh, there are “other” humanoids within this multi-species Trade Pact. Not to breed with—biologist remember, so inter-species fecundity is right out for me--but what if one, say a Human, could successfully compete and pair with a Clan female, in order to invoke the reproductive maturation of her body? Sira, despite Clan loathing for the non-Clan, decides to try.

So far, I’ve a textbook mental experiment in reproductive behaviour, breeding for extreme/risky characteristics, and a cool alien species about to crash. A problem, but not yet a story.

There is another side to me, of course. The romantic. The dreamer. I love stories of space travel, of daring starship captains and crew, of the whole messy business of getting along when your biology doesn’t.

The driving force of the story of the Clan Chronicles may be their predicament, and Sira’s involvement of Captain Jason Morgan, a Human telepath. The heart of the story—its warmth and passion—arrives when Sira learns what her kind has forgotten.
How to love.

--------Excerpt from This Gulf of Time and Stars by Julie E. Czerneda 2015 DAW Books-----

      A lock of red-gold rose from the mass tumbling down Sira’s back, curling towards him like a languid finger. Warm and sensual, that hair, strangely willful, and the mark of a fully mature Clanswoman. She’d become that by being near him. By being attracted.

      By falling--that unforeseen consequence--in love with an alien.

      As had he. For he wasn’t, Morgan thought, the simple trader he seemed either.

      When he’d met Sira he’d been a telepath of respectable skill, for a Human, with enough potential to make him uncomfortable around the noisy minds of others and wary of the Clan, who disapproved of such power in others. Since?

      Suffice to say, he no longer noticed crowds. Sira had honed his abilities, trained and tested them to Clan standards, wanting above all else to protect him from herself. For Clan thoughts and bodies moved outside the known universe, through a dimensionless space they called the M’hir. It was real. He’d almost died there, when she’d lost the fight with her own instinct. Sira had honed his abilities, trained and tested them to Clan standards, wanting above all else to protect him from herself. For Clan thoughts and bodies moved outside the known universe, through a dimensionless space they called the M’hir. It was real. He’d almost died there, when she’d lost the fight with her own instinct.

      Almost. Instead, he and Sira had managed the formerly inconceivable. Not only had her body matured into its natural—and glorious—adult state before Choice could take place, but their minds and hearts had forged the permanent Clan pair-bond called a Joining.

      While he remained wary of the rest of her kind, even the most xenophobic of Clan couldn’t argue with that.

      Not that he cared. What mattered? He was no longer alone, no longer empty and courseless. The clear brilliant sanity of Sira’s thoughts, her passion and goodness, filled him. Each shipday he woke to the joy of discovering the universe with her. And when they made love—

      Her head half turned, hair lifting to reveal the sweet curve of her jaw, the blue of the airtag adhered to her skin, and, yes, a coy dimple. We could leave, you know.
      He came close to tripping over his own feet. Witchling.

      You started it. With distracting warmth.

-----------End Excerpt-------------

Oh, the hair? Sira—all Chosen female Clan—have opinionated hair. I did that because it gave me an instant reality check. She isn’t Human and never will be. Also, it’s a wonderfully sensual seduction device. Read the books.*

So the Clan Chronicles is a love story between aliens. It’s a science fiction examination of a biological question. It’s a lark and an epic, with dark places and some truly hilarious moments. It’s all those things at once, my dreams, for you to share.

Enjoy.

*I’ll admit Sira’s glorious locks had their start in personal aggravation. I’d been trying to get a curl in my own hair and failed miserably. What better than fabulous self-curling hair? Naturally, I immediately made that hair a nuisance; it’s what authors do to their characters.

------- End Guest Post---------------

OK, you have your homework assignment -- go read The Clan Chronicles with special attention to the blend of science and romance.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Incorrect Information About You As a Writer May Turn Up In A Search Engine

Incorrect Information About You As a Writer
May Turn Up In A Search Engine 

WRITERS BEWARE:

Readers used to "vet" you by looking you up in a "Who's Who" or similar paper book brought out front by a reference librarian (I'm in a lot of them).  Some of that info, printed on paper, would be out of date, and some of it never was true.

The same thing happens on the internet, only sometimes the info page is not dated.  What you read must be kept in your tentative-file, and not believed until confirmed by direct contact with the individual involved.

We all know better than to believe anything found on the internet.  Except, sometimes, you are in a hurry and find something that looks legitimate, and just use it as if it is true, or the whole truth.  Much of what is written about any public figure will have been written by enemies of that public figure.
Published writers are not immune to this phenomenon.

So READERS BEWARE.  

Here is an example that might be illustrative of using a well known name as click-bait for a scam selling information about Internet Figures, people known on social media to be influential.  It is possible this site might be collecting info with bots, then reselling it to advertisers.  They did not consult me before excerpting these items.

A friend of mine found my name used thusly:

http://www.zoominfo.com/p/Jacqueline-Lichtenberg/1625153

It appears some of this is lifted from things like classmates.com or ringsurf.com and other subscription services -- where I often fill forms with untrue info because it's none of their business. A lot of it is true, and lifted from my sites -- Facebook -- simegen.com -- by some kind of "bot" that really does not know how to read!  Some of it is true, or was at some time.  All of it is online somewhere, or was at one time or another.

What I'm posting here today is true as of August, 2016.

Note the copyright listings at the bottom of this page. Obviously, they are trying to conform to any legal details.

There is true "information" on that page mixed with information that is not true or way out of date.

Yes, I write books, and those are titles of mine -- but there exists newer information.

Here is where to get updated information and contact information:

You can find me on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/jacqueline.lichtenberg

And the Sime~Gen Group where it's easy to talk with me to directly verify information. It's not hard to get in touch.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/SimeGen/

You can talk to me on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/JLichtenberg

You can find me on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacquelinelichtenberg

I'm on blogger:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/

http://out-territory.blogspot.com/

http://dushau.blogspot.com/

http://makingangelsthemovie.blogspot.com/

http://editingcircle.blogspot.com/

I'm also on a numbeer of chat services such as whatsapp.

The master biography/bibliography that I update is:

http://simegen.com/bios/jlbio.html

There is a Sime~Gen wiki which is currently firmly edited by those who know what they're talking about -- but will be open to additions and embroidery by many casual readers trying to be helpful.  By then, we expect to have a paper printing of this Wiki's information in a Concordance of Sime~Gen which will be authoritative.

http://simegen.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

You can find my page on Amazon where you can use the "follow" button to get notified of new titles:http://www.amazon.com/Jacqueline-Lichtenberg/e/B000APV900/

Or focus on the Sime~Gen Series:
http://www.amazon.com/Sime-Gen-13-Book-Series/dp/B016QAFPMK/

Here is a documentary on French TV that has a few clips of me, and discusses my Star Trek series, Kraith:
http://www.france4.fr/emission/fanfiction-ce-que-lauteur-oublie-decrire

And here is Kraith for free reading:
http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/kraith/

And of course, I own and update my own domain:

http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

So if you find info on me you want to quote, check with me first.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

A Famous Artist Is Sued For Denying That An Alleged Namesake's Work Is His...

Allegedly!

Authors try very hard not to write under the same pen name as another author. Sharing a name tends to confuse and annoy readers.

How is an established artist to know if there is an obscure dabbler (no pejorative intended) somewhere who has the same name? Is it his legal responsibility to know?  If the established artist is asked to agree that a work signed with "his name" is authentic, and is threatened with a multi-million dollar lawsuit to force him to lie, what's he to do?

The legal blog of Sheppard, Mullin, Richter and Hampton LLP tells a story every bit as intriguing as anything written by Jeffrey Archer (in my opinion).

http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=698a4030-3edd-416b-a1e8-a3e9eae086f9&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email+-+Body+-+General+section&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2016-08-17&utm_term=

I do hope the jurors are fascinated!

The art law blog of Boodle Hatfield also discusses the same dilemma with some added details. I cannot help wondering why the established artist doesn't countersue for defamation.

http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=cf755b74-7a2b-4a7d-b46b-9a183ce53e94

On the other hand, if there is consternation in the fine art world over this legal coercion of an artist to "authenticate" a work that he denies creating, it is unlikely that anyone will ever want to buy the daub in question.

My apologies for the short post!

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

Mother Nature

That's the title of a 1999 book by anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. (No, that's not a typo.) The phrase has at least a double meaning, referring both to maternal instincts and behavior in nature and to the nature of motherhood.

Some animals practice semelparity, putting all their literal eggs in one metaphorical basket by breeding only once in a lifetime. Examples include the salmon who swims upstream to spawn and die or the spider whose newborn young eat her body. More commonly, "higher" animals practice iteroparity (what a cool-sounding word), like us and our primate kin—reproducing multiple times. A female in an iteroparous species has to balance the welfare of the newest infant against her prospects for maximizing the number of offspring who survive over the long term. "Nurturing" is only one trait of the ideal mother in nature; she may also compete against other females for the status and resources that give her children the best chance to thrive or even make hard choices about cutting her losses with one baby for the sake of future babies who will have better prospects for survival.

A culture of sapient aliens in which the dominant female's pheromones suppress ovulation in the other females in the group, as among some social mammals on Earth, would have a very different family structure from ours. Among sapient aliens with biology like that of the above-mentioned spiders, a female who devised a way to survive the birth of her children might be condemned as scandalously immoral.

Female primates during their fertile periods often mate with numerous males so that those males will protect the resulting offspring rather than threatening them. It's not uncommon for males of many social species (lions, for instance) to kill infants sired by other males in order to bring the females into estrus immediately. In some human hunter-forager cultures, people believe a fetus is built up gradually by repeated infusions of semen from multiple acts of intercourse. Women deliberately consort with several men during pregnancy, and everyone who's had sexual relations with her during that time is deemed a father to the baby. Suppose an alien species existed in which this belief reflected biological reality, so that a baby really did have multiple fathers? In their society, polyandry would probably be the norm.

Among the vast majority of primates (including Homo sapiens in most cultures), males take little part in caring for infants. A satirical novel about a women-ruled planet I've read, however, takes the logical position that because women bear the burden of pregnancy and nursing, the father should do all the rest of the work of child-rearing. Men in that society stay home to care for the house and the babies, while after giving birth women don't do much with infants besides breast-feed them.

In hard times, some pregnant animals can re-absorb or spontaneously abort embryos at an early stage. Some species even have the power to alter the sex ratios of their offspring by selectively miscarrying embryos of one sex, according to which sex has the best opportunity for reproductive success depending on the availability of resources in a particular breeding season. Think what an advantage would belong to an intelligent species that could consciously perform this kind of "natural" birth control.

Maximizing the number of surviving offspring to carry her genes doesn't mean a mother necessarily nurtures every infant she bears. In the case of a too-large litter, females of some species may abandon the weakest, maybe even eating them to "recycle" their substance as nourishment for the mother herself and her favored young.

We might find it difficult to accept as "civilized" a planet where mothers have a duty to cull sickly newborns and where eating the culls is considered perfectly reasonable. Or a society that has institutionalized and ritualized the practice of dominant males killing the children of their predecessors, as the mating duel to the death is ritualized in the Vulcan Pon Farr ceremony.

Imagine encountering a species of advanced aliens who practice one or more of these pragmatic "nature red in fang and claw" customs. Think of the Martians in Heinlein's STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, whose culture shocks the human characters for several reasons, not only that the Martians practice ritual cannibalism (among other things) but that they cast their young out into the desert to fend for themselves and prove their worthiness to survive. As Mike, the human "Martian," explains, among his adoptive people competition for fitness happens in infancy and childhood rather than adulthood. (We get a glimpse of this process in the earlier novel RED PLANET, which appears to be set on the same version of Mars.) Another kind of struggle for fitness among children occurs in Suzy McKee Charnas's MOTHERLINES. Upon weaning, children leave their mothers and join the "child pack." They grow up wild, learning to provide for themselves and form rivalries and alliances among their age-mates. Only at adolescence are they reclaimed by their mothers and readmitted to adult society.

Adjusting to intelligent aliens with customs like these might be more shocking to our sensibilities than the three genders and male pregnancies of the TV series ALIEN NATION.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt