Squeee!

This shouldn't have me so excited, but it does.

After finishing Love Runes, I swore I'd take time off to write short stories because I had nothing coming out in anthologies this year. I saw many calls for submission that interested me, but the next thing I know, the books were in my TBR file for reviews. That got depressing. In the past year, I've sold only three short stories, and only because editors asked for them. If they hadn't, the total would be zero. But instead of moving on to shorts in December, I plunged ahead into the great time suck that is writing the first draft of a novel, and three and a half months passed - as did more calls for submission that I would have loved to have written to.

This weekend, I sent off two stories for submission. One was an older story that fit a specific call, so no work there other than reviewing it. I changed maybe five words. The other was one an editor asked for. Then, suddenly, my work time was free. (Sure, I have one story I need to finish that I promised someone, but I need to give that one a few more days to stew in my brain before I finish it.) So for the first time in ages, I looked at all the calls for submission I'd been lamenting over, found something that looked promising, sat down, and wrote a fresh story for it. Man, did that feel good. I have to let it sit a couple days before I go over it again, clean it up, and then that sucker is out the door. Yee-ha! Dance of joy!

The Writer Observed Outside His Natural Habitat

Even if the date weren't seared on my soul, I'd know that Saints and Sinners was coming simply for the emails.

Writers are a solitary group. Well, group may not be the right word. Given the choice, I think most of us would either run away to the mountains or hide ourselves in plain sight in huge metropolitans where our cunning day disguises never hint that, "Hey, you wanked over my words last night." So imagine our frisson of terror when it seems we're going to be gathered in one place and have to be - gasp - social.

My sister often points out that we were raised by the two most socially inept people on the planet and grew up socially retarded. Three years of cotillion only put a nice facade over the fact that we have no idea how real people talk to each other, much less make friends. Sure, I have a buttload of gracious manners- when I choose to use them- and I'm never in doubt of which fork to use even if the line-up stretches two feet down the linen-clad table, but a backyard bar-b-que mystifies me.

Now that SNS is approaching, everyone is trying to get into a comfort zone. No one wants to eat dinner alone. I don't blame them. Either do I. Still, I think it's a little funny that so many people are checking in with me, world's most inept social butterfly, to make sure I'll be there so that we can meet up. Maybe they need to know which fork to use. In that case, I'm golden.

Crazy Busy

I guess it's a good thing that I'm looking at my schedule over the next month and it's crazy busy. My biggest priority is Saints and Sinners. No, wait, it's getting my story for the flogger anthology polished way before the due date. Unless it's finishing the first draft of my genderqueer Japanese rope bondage tale. And then there are the readings, the Lammys, starting the rewrite of my novel, following up on another novel submission, getting to work on an anthology, BookExpo America...

This is when my time starts looking like puzzle pieces and I have to try to find a way to make everything interlock and fit. Either that, or take hammer to it and force the issue.

I finally finished my first draft on the flogger story. It took longer than it should have because I had to go back and make the dialog and thoughts fit the narrator's background. I didn't usually have that problem, but I started it off in third person, where I can use my vocabulary, and switched it to first person. That's another thing I don't usually do. Stories come to me in a certain way and they normally work in that voice. This one didn't.

It's hard to explain what makes a story work or not work for me. Words are ideas and ideas have no weight, but on the page, they either feel cumbersome or they have what I call deep edges. When I first sat down to write this, the words stumbled across the page with all the grace of a bear on roller skates. Like the bear, I felt like the words were grumpily going through the routine, but only if I kept prodding them. Switching into first person was like switching from clay wheels on grass to polyurethane on oiled wood (if I'm going to keep the roller skating idea here). Suddenly, it flowed much better. Once I fixed the problem with putting my voice into the character's mouth and let him have his own, it came together like... okay, I'm out of roller skating ideas here. I thought of going back and changing it to ice skating and throwing in a triple lutz, but I'm sure you get the idea.

Oh - I have a reading slot at Saints and Sinners, but I'm not sure which day yet. I am, of course, terrified. Thank the gods that I'll know almost everyone in the room. Oh wait - that might not be a good thing. I was going to read some boy smut, but since Haunted Hearths is coming out soon, I think I'll read from Words Like Candy Conversation Hearts. It lends itself to performance better than my smut pieces do.

I'll also be reading at A Different Light in North Hollywood the same night as the Lammys with some other writers. If you want more details, drop me a private line.

Pitch-Perfect Characters

I recently read L if For Leather for my April review at Erotica Revealed. (The website has been updated and looks fantastic). One of the stories in the anthology is Mike Kimera's Other Bonds Then Leather. In my review, I talked about how Mike's strength has always been his characters. They are pitch-perfect. They talk, react, and think like real people.

Writers, good ones, read a lot. I'm sure that poor writers read a lot too, but I cringe whenever a writer (usually a very poor one) comments that s/he hardly ever reads. How does s/he ever expect to improve his/her craft without reading? It isn't about imitation. It's about reading a well wrought piece of work and reflect one what made it so good, and then applying that to one's own writing.

After reading Mike's story, I went back to the piece I'm working on. The first thing that struck me is that my narrator is off-pitch. The language I'm using for his thoughts doesn't match with his background. So now I'm going through each line and working to keep the same ideas but express them in words that a former street kid would use. I'm not dumbing him down. I'm just simplifying his vocabulary. That doesn't make what he thinks and feels any less complex.

It seems as if a writer can say "This is so because I say it is," but the truth is that readers will only suspend disbelief for so long before they lose patience. The craft isn't really about making them suspend disbelief as much as it is pulling them into a world and then not jarring them out of it. That's the unforgivable sin. And the quickest way to do it is pull a deus ex machina, or make your characters behave, well, out of character (unless it's part of the plot and you spend the rest of the story convincing the reader that uncharacteristic moment was actually in character, but that's such an awful lot of work).

Setting doesn't have to seem real. Speculative fiction (that's science fiction and fantasy to you non-geeks) proves that. Plot doesn't even have to be terribly real either (how many dead bodies turn up in locked rooms in English country houses during dinner parties in real life?) but you better keep up a relentless pace, because the moment a reader gets to stop and think, they're going to. But characters - they have to be pitch-perfect, always, or nobody will believe a word you write.

Thinking Aloud

Or rambling in print.

I'm working on a story with a main character of indeterminate gender. That's not what I really mean though. What I mean is that the audience for hir performance and the reader will never know what gender ze is, but that makes use of the idea that there are two genders. I don't believe in that. I think gender is a lazy classification for people who like things black and white. If it were so cut and dried (I cringe at that), why are so many babies assigned a gender at birth and then forced into Box M of box F via medical mutilation of non-conforming genitalia?

Back when society had a great interest in determining if your were a ruling class male (a human worthy of rights) or a not ruling class or not male (property), I can see why people would be anxious to determine where you fit in the strata and so you didn't get your hands onto any rights you weren't entitled to. The upper echelon had a vested interest in keeping the club exclusive. I'm not saying it's right, but I understand their thinking. It was the entire basis for their civilization.

Now that those privileges have been extended to everyone in theory, I can't understand why society clings so tenaciously to the male/ not male determination. Sure, it makes things so easy for society, but it rides roughshod over the individual. (I've come to the conclusion that what's good for society is usually fatal to the individual.)

So what is all this rambling about? I'm torn about writing a piece that reinforces the idea that Ze must be male or female. Ze is hir own person. Ze transcends bi-genderism. At least, that's the character I'd like to create. It would be wonderful if I knew I could prod readers into thinking outside the M and F boxes, but that's an awful lot to ask of a short story without getting preachy.

I don't mind being prodded to examine ideas, and I love being shaken out of lazy thinking habits, but I draw the line at lectures. Lectures berate people for their modes of thought, but should people be ridiculed simply because they'd never imagined that there were other ways of viewing the world? I don't think so. Besides, most lectures (sermons) tell people what to think and feel instead of opening up an internal or external dialog.

For me, the challenge is to show that between points M and F on the graph of gender, there isn't just empty space. There's a continuum. All I want to do is open up that line of thinking and then have enough faith in people to let them explore the idea at their own pace.

That assumes people give as much thought to gender as I do.

Maybe Ze will make at least one reader pause for a second over those M and F boxes the next time she/he/ze fills out a form and wonder why it matters to anyone what gender she/he/hir is. I hope so.

(For the record, I haven't checked a gender box in years. No one seems to notice.)

Egads, Another Cat Post

I've finally figured out why writers have cats. They supply blog entry stories.

I think the cats are trying to apologize for playing tag across the bed, and my body, at 3AM today, and the following hissing-spitting-scratching-growling-under-the-bed-for-twenty-minutes cat fight that followed, because when they started up again this evening I went over to them, glowered, and told them to knock it off. And they did. Not only that, but an hour later, I found Loki's treasured "pelt" on my pillow. (It's a 6X10 inch abandoned knitting project from one of the nieces. Considering the amount of cat spit on it, I don't blame her for abandoning it - any more than you can blame me for using tongs to move it off my pillow.) After that, Skitters dropped a small stuffed animal at my feet and did that weird meowing that always follows one of her kills. I praised her for her mighty hunting skills, admired the toy, and promised to cherish it. She went away but came back a little later and mewled some more. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe she isn't looking for praise. Maybe that's her way of saying, "Cook it up already, bitch. I'm waiting." And maybe Loki's seen the Godfather and thinks he's leaving the equivalent of a horse head in my bed. "Tell us to knock it off, will she? I'll show her who she should fear." Hmmm. Skitters just walked to the couch, looked over her shoulder to make sure I was watching, and clawed the crap out of the upholstery. I think maybe I should ask her how she'd like her stuffed toy cooked.

At Least It Ended Well

The SO is out of town again. Despite missing his company, the other thing I hate about him being gone is that something always happens. The past two times, it's been the garage door opener breaking. Okay, I can park on the street for a week, but hauling in groceries when it's pouring down rain isn't as much fun as it sounds. Not to mention the fact that people love to wipe sticky crap on my car that doesn't come off with soap and water. I bet they're the same people who steal my Sunday newspaper every other week. Or at least I hope they are. I'd hate to think there are two different sets of boorish jerks running around my neighborhood.

This time, it's the stove that's not working. Or perhaps it was working too well. My office is right off the kitchen, so I can hear anything that happens in there like the cats opening the cabinet and knocking glasses to the floor. I don't think I can blame the cats for this one though. Two of the electric igniters on the stovetop started clicking. I checked the knobs. Everything was in an off position, but they were firing away. I turned on the gas. They kept sparking. I turned off the gas. They kept going. I pulled all my pots and pans out from underneath the stovetop, crawled into the cabinet, and pulled the plug. They shut off. But now I can't cook unless I crawl back under there and plug it in again. Grrrr.

Did I mention that all this happened while I was doing a load of laundry? Not such a big deal to normal folks, but the drainage pipe for the clothes washer started overflowing when it drains, so I have to sit there and open, close, open, close, the lid about twenty times while it drains to let the pipe keep up with the flow of water or it floods the laundry room. So there I am, dragging out ten thousand pots and pans from under the stovetop when I hear the washer start to drain. Cursing mightily, I got up and raced to the laundry room in time to see the great flood of aught 8 pouring into the bathroom. I took the load of clean towels from the dryer and threw them down on the floor to mop it up. Can you say re-do on that load?

I've had better days.

On the other hand, since I finished the rough draft of Personal Demons, I decided to treat myself to a short story. I owe two to a couple editors, but this was the one I promised first, so I started working with my idea. Things always seem cool in your head, but when it hits the paper (computer) is when you find out if it will really work or not. The MC is Ze, a person of indeterminate gender. Ze dresses like a cross between Marlena Dietrich in her tuxedo and Joel Grey in Cabaret, and does a rope bondage show. Sure, there's going to be sex, but like the audience in the story, I want the reader to obsess on sussing out Ze's gender. Hopefully I can pull that off. I'm having fun playing around with it.

Grit

Marcy Sheiner was kind enough to feature my story Grit on her blog.

Grit was the first story I sold. At the time, I didn't think voyeurism was sort of out there as a kink, but then again, the first story I published (The ERWA website asked for it. A huge moment in this writer's life) was an extreme kink story with a lesbian protagonist, and I thought it was kind of sweet, so that tells you how naively kinky I was going into the world of erotica. (afterthought on this comment: I assumed that people who read erotica would be open minded about sexuality. Uh. No. Apparently, many hetrosexuals who have no problem reading or writing any level of kink with straight characters get violently angry about anything GLBT, even though there was no "on screen" sex in my story. One reader haughtility reminded me that decent people read erotica, and I shouldn't subject them to such things. Um. Okay. So don't read my work. I'd hate to think I was doing something irreparable to your mind, like opening it.)

I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating - I owe a great deal of my writing success to Marcy. Not because she bought my story, but because of the way she edited it. That was the best writing class I ever took. Yes, it hurt my little ego to see the pages dripping with red ink (And she liked this story? was my first comment), but I decided to learn from what she'd done instead of having a diva moment. And man, did I ever learn. Marcy changed the way I told stories. She taught me to sharpen my focus and get into it instead of taking a long running start at it (A problem I still struggle with, but at least I'm aware that it's a problem.) She made me tighten up repetitive lines. She edited out passages of narrative interference and stay on the action.

Now that I've sold many more stories, I'm aware of how unusual it is for an editor to put that kind of time and effort into a story. That was a real gift from her, one that I appreciate every time I write a story and see my bad habits creeping in. So thanks again, Marcy, and thank you for featuring my story.

So Close I Can Taste It

I could have used that extra hour this weekend.

In reality, I probably needed another 24 hours. Because, you see, I'm close to the end of my first draft on Personal Demons. I'm 3 scenes away from it. 3. My word count is in the mid 70,000s. I'm clicking along right on track. I simply ran out of time. UGH!

The worst part is that I know the last 800 words I wrote last night have to go. That's sort of how it's been going every time I sit down to write. I delete my last 800-1000 words and go from there. If I didn't have to do that, I'd be done by now. Double Ugh! On the good side, I realized that the final scenes I've been envisioning for months now will work just the way I wanted them to.

Now all I need is the time to write it out.

I think I'll be doing the Yay I'm Done dance by next weekend.

Then, of course, I have to do the re-write.

At Some Point, You Have To Suspect You're Odd

This news item had me wondering. At what point do you stop qualifying for standard deviations from the norm and simpy become a bell curve unto yourself? Porch swings in your hotel room? Dead body on dry ice in a container? Empty saki containers with light sockets shoved into the necks? Sadly, dead bodies aren't all that unique. It was almost more remarkable that he hadn't chopped her to pieces. I might even spot him the saki lamps. That isn't all that far of chianti straw bottles with drippy candles. Porch swings though? That's some sick fucker.

Fans Demand Kisses

As The World Turns is getting an earful from its fans about the lack of on-screen lovin' for its gay couple. Read about it here. In support of the fans, the writers of Torquere Press are staging a Kiss-In tomorrow (Saturday, March 8) on Torquere's live journal. Come read snippets of kissing scenes.

March reviews at Erotica Revealed

Is it spring yet?

Don’t you feel like shaking off winter’s grip like a hug from your perfume-doused great aunt? We’re looking ahead to better days too, and promise that something warm is just around the corner. Erotica Revealed has a few suggestions for you to embrace:

Art of Melinoe by D.L.King

Best Gay Erotica 08, Edited by Richard Labonté, selected and introduced by Emanuel Xavier

Best Lesbian Erotica 08, Edited by Tristan Taormino, selected and introduced by Ali Liebegott

One Breath at a Time by Gwen Masters

Sex & Candy, Edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel

Or browse our reviews from previous months.

If you're a writer or publisher and would like us to review your book, contact D. L. King through Erotica Revealed

On A Roll

I hit 65,000 words in my newest MS last night. While I don't adhere strictly to word counts, I like for my novels to be around 80,000 words and my short stories to be about 4,000. So what does 65,0000 words do for me? Well, it tells me that it's time to start bringing things to a head. 10,000 words of steadily building conflict and then about 5,000 of resolution.

I tried not to rewrite while I was still doing the first draft, but I realized I'd fallen back on my usual bad habit of compartmentalizing the set-up of the story and the conflict, so I moved the timeline up on the conflict and interspersed it with the rest so that the pace is better and it flows. (And I'm sure none of that made sense to anyone except me.)

Anyway, it feels as if this story is falling together so quickly, but in reality, I've been working on it since December. I don't keep good track of when I begin and end a project. Maybe I should. Then maybe I'd figure out how to schedule my time a little more efficiently.

Movies From Books

One of my writer's lists is discussing movies adaptations from books. One of the topics is "Has anyone seen a movie version that was better than the book?"

I'm not sure this is ever going to be a fair comparison. While any screenwriter who changes the ending or basic plot elements of a story for the adaptation should be condemned to writing late night infomercials for the rest of his/her/hir life, film is a different medium and what works in books won't always work on screen. Books can have scope and scale in setting that no movie special effects wizard can ever match, because books tap into a reader's imagination, which has no budget and isn't limited by those pesky laws of physics. Not to mention that every reader internalizes and interprets a writer's words through a unique filter, so even if a movie were able to capture one reader's vision of the story, every other reader would still be saying, "Hey, that's all wrong." Movies, however, convey action in a way that books can never match.

Books aren't limited by time, so they can go into detail that simply can't make the translation onto the screen. A great example of this is the Harry Potter movies. Much of the conflict with his Aunt, Uncle, and cousin had to be cut. So did a lot of other stuff, sometimes to the point where I wonder if someone who hasn't read the books can follow the movie. Ten or twenty years from now, someone will make new Harry Potter movies. Maybe they'll do it in a mini-series format that explores the interpersonal relationships in more detail, but even that version would have to sacrifice something from the books (probably the special effects).

I've seen one movie adaptation that I felt transcended the source book - The Grifters. Maybe because I saw the movie first and it remains one of my all time favorite movies. On the other hand, I saw a couple film versions of Rebeca before I read the book, and I don't think any film version does the novel justice. And to even it out - I love the movie Blade Runner, and I'm a huge fan of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (theoretically the source book), as long as I don't try to compare the two. Not that they can be compared. They're not the same story. But each is an example of outstanding work in their respective mediums.

When Your Editor Says: "Huh?"

Editors are either gods or demons to writers. There isn't much middle ground.

I got my first edits back on Love Ruins along with comments from my editor. She is questioning part of my story that isn't clear to her. Now, while I did explain it to her, I've given this some serious thought and I think a rewrite of that entire section is called for. Why? Because if your editor is saying, "Huh?" then so will all your readers. So you have the choice of going around to each reader and explaining what you meant, or you make it clear in the book and save everyone time and confusion.

It does have a cascade effect. It changes a later scene, and it changes some stuff in the third novel, but honestly, while I love my readers, I don't want to have to go to each one and have to explain that scene.

This is what being a published writer means - taking critique and acting on it to improve the story. Forget having a diva moment. Forget wailing about art. The editor is right. It has to be fixed.

More Hammett

I read Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett today. Great story, by the way. Gotta love a detective novel with a chapter titled The Seventeenth Murder, and it's only part way through the book.


What is it that the puppeteer says in Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead?

Puppeteer: "It's a regular bloodbath. Seven dead." (speaking of the play Hamlet. I'm paraphrasing here from Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead because I can't find the exact quote)

Rosencrantz: (counts on his fingers) "No. Only five."

Cut to scene of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern hanging from the gallows.

Anyway, about Hammett's writing, I was curious to see if all his stories were as heavy on dialog and short on setting as The Thin Man. So I read his earlier novel Red Harvest. It's much more like your typical novel, which makes me wonder a couple things.1) Did he develop into a sparser writing style later on OR 2) Did he know that The Thin Man was destined to be a movie, and saved himself the work of writing a screenplay from the novel by writing the novel more like a screenplay? (Thank goodness it isn't written in present tense like a screenplay though.) He apparently worked in Hollywood for several years, so it's possible.

Briefly glancing through the Glass Key, it also seems heavy on dialog. If I have time this weekend, I'll dip into the Maltese Falcon.

The Thin Man

Two summers ago, I got on a hard-boiled detective reading jag and bought Dashell Hammett's novels in a collection, but never got around to reading it. I spent all my time on Raymond Chandler (excellent writer). A couple weeks ago though, friends were discussing favorite movies and K mentioned The Thin Man, which I also adored. Then suddenly I was jonesing for a Thin Man fix, but I figured "Why not read the novel?" After searching my many reading stacks (and sighing over the truly great books I have and plan to read - some day.) I found it last weekend and read it.

One of the things that worries me about my writing sometimes is how little description I give of settings. The reader needs to be anchored somewhere. S/he needs a sense of time and place or else dialog is just floating heads yapping and it can be disorienting. Besides, a conversation that sounds dull as dishwater over lunch at a diner may be fraught with tension if it's being spoken as someone diffuses a bomb - setting does matter. So one of the first things I noticed about Dashell Hammett's writing is how few words he wastes on setting. He doesn't even write that much description of action. He must not have been paid by the word. It was amazing to see how much of The Thin Man was simply dialog. Being a very good writer, Hammett manages to get a lot of mileage out of every word even in dialog. His characterizations are in the words his characters speak, not in their physical descriptions or actions.

I read The Thin Man the first time through as a reader, but now I think I'm going to go through as a writer and study how he did it. I like that sparse delivery. I'm going to try to figure out how, with so few words, he was able to evoke full, detailed settings in my mind - and then I'll have to think carefully about the image I'm envisioning and compare it to the settings in the movie version. A better test of this will be to read his other novels - the ones I haven't seen on film. (But I'll read the Maltese Flacon anyway.)

Haunted Hearths

I just got word that my short story Words Like Candy Conversation Hearts will be in Lethe Press's Haunted Hearths, edited by Catherine Lundoff. I've sold nearly 40 short stories by now, so you'd think I'd be used to it, but every sale feels good.

I didn't set out to be an erotica writer. However, since sexuality, gender, and identity are important themes to me, most of my characters have been revealed through sex and sexuality. My work is therefore erotica. I've been perfectly happy in that genre. But - and there's always a but - I primarily consider myself to be a speculative fiction writer. Certainly some of my stories: Red By Any Other Name, She Comes Stars, Blue Girl, Kells, Feed, Sex Karma, Nations, and both my novels: Chaos Magic and Love Runes, would be considered horror or speculative fiction if it weren't for the graphic sex. Science fiction and fantasy writers are not amused when someone gets smut on their peanut butter though. I've been told (by some rather haughty writers) that my work shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath as their genre.

Haunted Hearths isn't erotica. It's lesbian ghost stories. Words Like Candy Conversation Hearts will be my first story to be marketed as horror, I presume. Maybe paranormal. It feels great to finally make that leap into the speculative fiction genre (and subgenres).

I doubt I'll ever leave erotica behind. My characters have a way of wandering into bedrooms and stripping down to their souls, and I'm comfortable following them there. Besides, I'm proud to say that I write smut. But I can't help that frisson of excitement as I finally have an indisputable claim to speculative fiction too.

Now - about that mystery I've been meaning to write...

Tornado Alley

We moved around a lot when I was a kid. Many of those places were tornado prone, but none more than Oklahoma. No one ever had to tell me a tornado was coming. I could feel it. To this day, I associate that feeling with dread. The sky would get a certain color and my stress induced asthma kicked in. I fought for every breath as the air grew dense and pressed down on me.

Then either the claxons would go off, or Pop would announce, "Everyone out to the car," and I knew a funnel cloud had been sighted. His hands would grip the steering wheel until his knuckles went white and he'd peer into the rear view mirror more than he'd look at the road as we headed for shelter.

We were lucky to live in a college town. The Student Union was built of red brick and the first story was underground. It was built to be a tornado shelter. When we got there, half the kids we knew from school would already be sitting on the white tile floor with their backs to the bricks. Some did homework, some played, some read. The adults stood in clusters and spoke quietly while sipping coffee. Late comers would come in with wind-whipped hair and tense faces. WOur groups scooted closer togehter to make room. Even though we were underground, if the claxons went off again, everyone would look up, as if we expected to see sky.

I never knew how word got out that the danger was past. Sometimes we'd only spend an hour at the University and then everyone would suddenly pick up their stuff and head for their cars. Some nights we used our coats and school books as pillows only to be shaken awake in the early morning hours.

The drive home always seemed to be in the dark. Usually it rained, or hailed. Sometimes, we passed destruction. Most of the time there was nothing to see. We'd hold our breaths the entire way home. No sounds. No fidgeting. Then we'd pull into the driveway and exhale great relief that our house, our block, our neighborhood still stood.

Back then, we didn't snicker like people do now when we saw mobile home parks ripped to shreds. It didn't occur to us that it was funny that kids we went to school with had no home left to go home to. We didn't realize that poor people somehow deserved that. Oh wait - I still don't.

Tornados always seemed to happen at night, but once, as the final bell for school rang and we swarmed the doors, our teachers suddenly pulled us back and told us to shelter in place. We could see it coming. A great column of twisting dust was headed right for the school, and for our mothers parked outside in their station wagons. Some kids broke free and ran for their mothers. The rest of us did as we were told. We shoved our desks into formation against an interior wall and climbed underneath, pulling the end ones down to seal off our little fortress. It was claustrophobic and the smell of dirty kids was overpowering. Maybe that was the scent of fear. My ears popped. We could hear glass shattering. Kids cried. So did my teacher. Then it passed, and we bolted for the doors to see if our mothers were still alive. It was the longest twenty minutes of my life.

I have a reasonable fear of what nature can do. I'm grateful now that I live in a place where tornados are rare. But they do happen. One touched down in Malibu a couple weeks ago, and even though that's miles away, I still felt that old dread creeping over my skin when they told people to seek shelter immediately. I couldn't even bear to look at the news on TV. I felt the same way when I heard about the tornados in Tennessee last night - that horrible feeling of helplessness while waiting for it to pass. My heart goes out to you if you were in the path.

New Reviews Up at Erotica Revealed

The February reviews are up at Erotica Revealed.




And thanks to Syd for this. It doesn't show me my score though. Does this mean I got them all right?

You Are a Smart American

You know a lot about US history, and you're opinions are probably well informed. Congratulations on bucking stereotypes. Now go show some foreigners how smart Americans can be.

Are You a Dumb American?

Three and a Half Months

Since it's coming up soon, but not quickly enough, I thought I'd make my annual Saints and Sinners spiel.

If you write, or want to write, and are GLBT, write GLBT stories, or are GLBT friendly, the annual Saints and Sinners Literary conference is a must.

I've been to many writer's conferences. Most of them promise insights into the publishing world and access to publishers and agents. While these conferences have some panels about writing, most of them are geared to the business of writing, and that's okay, but... The panels are usually aimed at people who are real beginners. The information, while true, is so basic that it's a waste of time for anyone who has read 12 Writer's Digest's issues. (Which is about the point where Writer's Digest cycles through their articles and starts repeating.) If you have zero idea about how publishing works, go to one of those conferences. You'll probably find some helpful information. Just don't keep going in the hope that you'll get deeper insight.

One of the great strengths of Saints and Sinners is that it's focused on writing, not publishing. While some panels give the same sort of general information about getting published that you can get at other writer's conferences, these are aimed at GLBT writers. The world of GLBT writing is fairly small, so the advice is much more specific. The rest of the panels tend to be focused on genre fiction. Since the audiences are manageable, everyone can get in a question or two, and some of those questions evolve into great discussions. Some of the writers leading panels or workshops are professors and know how to teach a subject. The first day Master Classes have never disappointed in depth or breadth.

By the second day of SNS, I'm so energized about writing that it's hard to sleep. Even though this will be my fourth year, I'm confident that I'll gain new insights on how to look at my writing and how to improve it. I take notes like mad and still refer to them.

It's not just the panels and classes though. It's the people. Many are friends who I only see at SNS. Talking with other writers face to face is such an incredible exchange of ideas and information. Everyone is accessible, from the people who teach Master Classes to editors, publishers, and well-known writers. Even if you paid for a one-on-one at another writer's conference, you'd never get the quality, and quantity, of face time with the people who buy novels like you do at Saints and Sinners.

While attendance grows every year as word spreads, it's still a small enough conference that it feels personal. Part (or all) of the praise for this incredible event goes to Paul Willis, who does it as an unpaid volunteer. The man is so sweet, so smart, so sharp, and he is the soul of SNS. Of course, he probably couldn't do it without his right hand - Karissa Kary, who is an extraordinary, vivacious person.

Did I mention that the conference is held in New Orleans? As you stroll around the French Quarter, you see people from the conference, exchange nods, and suddenly it's like being home. But with better architecture. And better food. And your author-idol standing two feet away from you in the mad crush of the Ambush Magazine welcome party.

But the best reason I can give for attending Saints and Sinners is that it's such a relief to be in a room full of queer writers and feel that self-censoring weight lift away. You have no idea - but you would if you went.

Apparently, I'm a Night Fairy

The Night Fairy is smart, no doubt about it. She's strong-willed, direct, and goes after what she wants. Though definitely not anti-social, she likes spending her time reading books, studying, or just lying under the stars working out a thought. She likes to dream, but she also likes to figure out how to logically make her dreams come true. The Night Fairy has an intense dislike of ignorance. She's impatient, and even if she doesn't show it, she's more often than not frustrated or annoyed. Still, people respect her, and she's respectful to other people. She enjoys having long, interesting, discussions with other people.

Fairy yourself.


I think this is a nice way of saying that I don't suffer fools gladly.

Oh, BTW totally off topic, but my King Cake was delivered today. Coffee tomorrow morning is going to be nice. About this time of year, I start getting that Saints and Sinners vibe. May seems so far off. I'm not going to make it to Portland for EPICon this year, or the Washington D.C. for Gaylaxicon, so Saints and Sinners is my single indulgence. *sigh* May. At least tomorrow is February.

I'm Chatting! (cross post)

As Jay Lygon, I'll be chatting at:

Friday, February 1: Torquere Press Authors Authors scheduled: Mychael Black, Syd McGinley, Jay Lygon, James Buchanan, Stevie Woods, Jodi Payne, Kit Zheng, Misa Izanaki, H.B. Kurtzwilde, Angela Benedetti, Cassidy Ryan, Sean Michael, Margaret Leigh, Kiernan Kelly, AJ Wilde, Tory Temple, and others!http://groups. yahoo.com/ group/Chatting_ with_Joyfully_ Reviewed/


And February 4th I'll be at Realms of Love with other Manlove Romance authors such as the dynamic Laura Baumbach.

Writer's Resources

On the ERWA writer's list, people have been sharing some great writer's resources. Google Images, YouTube, Flicker... Even writers know what a single picture is worth. Diaries are great. I've heard that there's an annotated copy of Pride and Prejudice that explains in great detail things like the carriages and the dresses, which is an incredible resource if you write historical fiction. (Love to read them, would die if I tried to write one.) Newspaper archives are tricky, because while we like to think that newspaper exist to present an unbiased account, that's a myth newspapers perpetuate but have never delivered on. But it's sort of fun to see how the writers hyped the stories. They're like ad copy writers with a longer word limit. Other writers are a great resource too.

Where do you turn for information?

Egads, I'm Going to Talk About A Celeb

Am I the only person on earth who isn't wallowing is gleeful schadenfreude over Britney Spears' current life situation?

I'm not a fan of her work, and on the whole I couldn't care less about her, her music, and her poor life choices, but it's constantly thrust into my face, so I'm aware of it. It could be that she's genuinely mentally ill. How hilarious! Maybe she'll develop breast cancer and the world can celebrate that too. Maybe the Dr. Phils of this world can seize it as an opportunity to take further advantage of the situation too. I just can't wait.

Gathering from the number of people who posted a new YouTube video making fun of Britney's latest woes to the comments section of my MySpace pages, kicking Brit when she's down is the new national sport. I guess it's easier to aim low than high. I'd say thanks for sharing, but really, I could have done without seeing that cruel streak. So I deleted the comments. And yes, I think a little less of those posters as human beings. I expect more from people I "friend."

1st and 3rd Person

Debates are raging on several of my lists about writing in 1st versus 3rd person. I'm amazed at how vehemently opposed some people are to 1st person. I suppose they don't read many literary works.

For those of you who missed the lecture:

1st person is I.

First paragraph of Huckleberry Finn:

YOU don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly -- Tom's Aunt Polly, she is -- and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.



3rd person is fly on the wall.

First two paragraphs of Anna Karenina

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys' house. The wife had discovered that the husband was carrying on an intrigue with a French girl, who had been a governess in their family, and she had announced to her husband that she could not go on living in the same house with him. This position of affairs had now lasted three days, and not only the husband and wife themselves, but all the members of their family and household, were painfully conscious of it. Every person in the house felt that there was no sense in their living together, and that the stray people brought together by chance in any inn had more in common with one another than they, the members of the family and household of the Oblonskys . The wife did not leave her own room, the husband had not been at home for three days. The children ran wild all over the house; the English governess quarreled with the housekeeper, and wrote to a friend asking her to look out for a new situation for her; the man-cook had walked of the day before just at dinner-time; the kitchen-maid, and the coachman had given warning.




Thereare variations of 1st (ancillary, protagonist) and 3rd (Limited,
omniscient, objective), but we'll keep it simple. I won't even mention 2nd. Okay, I will.

2nd is You.

First sentences of Bright Lights, Big City

You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy. You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head...



Second is really hard to write. I find it hard to read, although it doesn't throw me when people speak in 2nd. (Listen. Many people do. Speech grammar is much more fluid and forgiving than written grammar. People switch between past and present tense all the time in speech, and you have no problem following them, but if you read it in a book, it would drive you nuts. The same holds true for Person.)



Voice is one of my least favorite debates. To be irrational about it, the discussion dredges up a bad writing memory for me. When I was in high school, several of my
teachers banded together and paid my way to a writer's conference because they believed that much in my talent. The first session I went to was about voice. After a rather lofty conversation in which the terms were never explained, the facilitator spun around and jabbed his finger at my face. "I hope you think about how the voice will affect your entire work before you sit down to write." This roomful of adults,
many of them professional writers, stared, so I decided it was a question. I shrugged and said, "I just let the story come out naturally, in the same voice it came to me." "Wrong!" he bellowed, jabbing his finger at my face some more. "Wrong. All WRONG. You don't know what you're doing." So I quit writing. That's right. I let a pompous college professor (and probably failed writer) destroy my ability to write for years. (There were plenty of other pressures
on me to give it up, but his words were the tipping point.) Some way to thank those teachers for spending their hard-earned money on me, wasn't it? But that experience left me paralysed. Any time a story would come to me, I'd want to write it down, but then I remembered that I was supposed to debate voice and have a solid, defensible reason for that choice before I wrote word one.

So now when people talk about voice, I often picture that professor screeching about it, and I simply can't join the conversation. I can read it, I can listen, but I won't, or can't, defend my position.

Now that I've overcome that little mental block (and a few bigger ones)I still don't think too much about 1st or 3rd. I let the story roll out the way it comes to me. I have rewritten a story and changed it from 1st to 3rd, but I've never been happy with the result. I suppose there are writers who sit down and think about which voice to use and how it affects the story before they write. That's a good thing to be aware
of. 1st is intimate. 3rd is more objective. But despite what Professor Jabby-Fingers
said, I don't think it has to be a momentous event. The decision can be made as the story is rolling out and it naturally fits into a certain voice.

As a reader, I'd never let the voice the author chose sway my opinion of the story. I'd never, as one person said, "Chuck that book against a wall and go get something that's well written." (I suppose she thinks Huckleberry Finn and Moby Dick aren't well written.) Every voice exists for a reason. There's a right one for a story. I can't see making a blanket decision that all 1st Person sucks and refusing to ever read a story written in that voice. Then again, I have to consider the source of that statement. *bites tongue*

All Hail the Sucky First Draft

Once upon a time, I hated rewrites. I have since seen the light.

Part of my conversion from doubter to kool-aid drinking barefoot pilgrim came about because of word processing programs. Sure, Jack Kerouac could tape page after page of paper together so that his flow wasn't interrupted by something as distracting as inserting a new page into a typewriter, but for us mere humans, stories don't come out perfect the first time like that. Not to mention that I'm a lousy typist. Oh, I took a typing course. My high school teacher watched over my shoulder as I laboriously tried to duplicate a business letter, patted my shoulder, and said, "It's a good thing you're in MENSA, hon, 'cause you'd never cut it at an hourly job."

As a side note, one of my most irksome memories of high school was the career aptitude test. It was part SAT, part pounding square blocks into round holes with a timer going. Number one on the list of careers I had no aptitude for: writer. Not that it asked for a writing sample. No. It was all about dexterity. I have yet to figure out what pegs and holes have to do with the ability to write a coherent story. Maybe Jack Kerouac held the world's record for peg pounding. Not that his stories are completely coherent. Strangely enough, according to our profiles, the military was the best career fit for every Senior in my high school. And the test was sponsored by the Army. What were the odds? (Those of us who could calculate that number in our heads were told we were officer material. Those who made their square pegs fit by brute force were told they had a shinning future ahead of them as cannon fodder enlisted men.)

Worse than composing on a typewriter was having to write by hand. Can you imagine the Bronte sisters, Jane Austin, and Mary Shelley with their quills? Good lord. Maybe they had fountain pens. Oh yes, that would have made it so much easier. *rolls eyes* At least with typewriters we had correction fluid. I swear that some papers I turned in to college professors were 99% white-out. If they could have chiseled away the layers micron by micron, it would have been like a literary archaeological dig, complete with one instance of blood sacrifice. (My cuticle was torn once while manually fixing mangled keys. Bled like a some-bitch all over my gushing essay/ love letter extolling the virtues of Joseph Conrad.) I remember when cut and paste meant literally taking scissors to an essay and taping the rearranged paragraphs on another sheet. (God I sound old)

Maybe I didn't hate to rewrite. Maybe I hated to retype. But one led to another, so I grew an aversion to reading my completed work. I preferred to hand it in and pray that the five papers before mine were so bad that my typos would be forgivable in comparison. The one girl on my dorm floor who was studying to be a secretary was publicly scorned most of the semester, but the night before papers were due, offerings were laid at her feet by humbled math majors. (There's a lesson there. Math majors are submissives. Okay, that's what I took away from it. Your take may differ.)

Ego is another reason why I hated rewriting. It seemed as if the story should come out perfect the first time. Maybe that attitude was simply inexperience. Maybe it was from sniffing too much correction fluid. Whatever the reason, the idea that the first draft had to be perfect hampered my writing for years. (Well, that and the people I grew up with. Don't get me started on them.)

Have you ever seen James Burke's The Day The Universe Changed series on PBS? It followed scientific thought through history and showed how disparate ideas improbably came together at a certain moment to create a breakthrough technology. Fascinating stuff if you're a geek girl like me. Anyway, the day I sneaked into my father's office and wrote a story on his KayPro's temperamental word processing software was the Day The Universe Changed for me. Cut and paste took about seven DOS commands, but it could be done. Hell, I was happy to be able to type without committing anything to paper until I hit the print button. From then on, composition would never be the same.

However, even having this miraculously easy way to edit my work didn't cure me of my dislike for rewrites. By then, it was a deeply ingrained prejudice. So How Did I Learn to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Rewrite? It took an editor who cared enough to splash red ink all over my story. It must have taken her hours. Considering what editors make on anthologies, editing my story with that much care was far beyond the call of duty. Instead of throwing a Diva fit when I saw all those suggestions, I studied what she'd done and incorporated them into my story. Oh. My. God. What a difference. That was the best writing class I ever took. I learned more from having that one story edited than I did in any of my college courses. It changed the way I looked at telling a story. It changed the way I write. It changed my entire mindset about rewrites.

Now I embrace rewrites. It makes writing the first draft so much easier. If a chapter isn't flowing just right, I don't sweat it. I don't let it block me. I simply soldier through it as best I can, admit that it sucks, have a Scarlet O'Hara, "I'll worry about it tomorrow," moment, and move on. I know that in the rewrite I can fix anything. Letting my writing suck on the first draft is freeing. I embrace it. What is that quote? "Even F. Scott Fitzgerald wasn't F. Scott Fitzgerald until the rewrite." Yeah. Like that.

I'm Sure I've Mentioned Before

At Saints and Sinners one year, Poppy Z Brite said, "You don't learn how to write A novel, you learn how to write this one." He probably doesn't remember saying something that useful, but that's okay. I'll remember for him. It's amazing how many times those words come back to me and how profoundly true I find them each time for completely different reasons. It's like a koan of writing.

My previous entry, I talked about linear writing versus - well, what should I call it? Smoke jumping? Passionate writing? Carpe sceneium (yes, that's fake Latin)? Okay, I'll call it non-linear writing. The topic on my mind right now is chapters.

When I wrote Chaos Magic II, I didn't break it into chapters as I wrote. There were some natural chapter breaks, but not all of them were clear. Also, I played around with the time line a lot because I felt as if I were front-loading a lot of information, and I wanted to avoid the dreaded info dump and get on with the damn story. Everything hinged on something else happening first , so I couldn't have the reaction before the action, but I didn't want chapter after chapter of heavy drama. Who wants to read that? Even Russian literature pauses in the gloom to breathe occasionally. (although the Russian version of "lightening things up" is still pretty grim)

Instead of numbering and renumbering chapters as I cut and paste huge blocks of text to get the sequence the way I wanted it, I left the chapter breaks out. When I was satisfied that everything balanced, the last thing I did was go in and create chapters.

The problem with that was that chapter breaks make it easier to rewrite. They're nice signposts in the middle of all those words. I tend to remember scenes by unique strings of words, so I had no problem moving around my document without the chapters marked. However, I think that if I had specific chapter separations in mind as I wrote, it might have helped me regulate the length of my chapters. I don't see anything wrong with varying chapter lengths, but it never hurts to get a scene wrapped up instead of going on too long.

The real question is: Would I write like that again? Well, I'm doing chapter breaks this time around, but there are big differences between this novel and the previous one. The final chapters of CM II had to fall on Beltane, but the time line of the rest of the story was open. For CM III, every chapter is tied to a major film festival or event in the Wiccan calender. I have to make things happen in a very specific order and by certain dates. That makes chapter breaks obvious and also stops me from moving events in the story back and forth through time. Rigid chapter breaks work for this novel. That's what I've learned writing this one. What will work for my next novel? I have no idea. I'll figure it out as I'm doing it.

Writing Habits

I used to write whatever scene had the strongest hold on my imagination. There's a lot to be said for that. It's passion and creativity and everything flows so well. But... You have to know where your story is going, don't you? If you're an out liners and can stick to your outline, then you can freely hop from scene to scene and chapter to chapter. If you're a purely organic writer who lets characters determine the story, then you're going to end up rewriting an awful lot.

I'm of the opinion that all writing is practice and it doesn't hurt to write 30,000 words that don't make it into the final draft, but your might be horrified at the thought of wasting that much time and effort.

Now I mostly work from the beginning to the end of the novel in a linear fashion. The advantage to writing linear is that when something changes the time line, a minor character becomes a major one, or the plot gets pulled in another direction, it mostly affects what happens after that point, which is stuff I haven't written yet.

However, linear is not a hard rule for me. I've been working on a novel and was at a spot where I was waiting on some information to finish a chapter. A future scene had pretty much taken over my daydreams. It got to the point where it had such a strong grip on my imagination that the only way to exorcise it was to write it out. So I did. I know when I catch up to it in the linear timeline I'll have to rework a lot of small details. But what the heck. I had a lot of fun working on it and now it's out of my head so that I can concentrate on where I am in the linear timeline.

I do have one caveat to jumping around from scene to scene other than a warning that you may have to rewrite almost everything you've written, and that's to beware of skipping the "dull parts." If you story has dull parts that you can barely stand to write, how do you think your reader is going to slog through it? You need to examine what makes those parts of the story the dull. Do you really need those scenes? Maybe not. If you can't do away with them entirely, can you condense them or combine them with a better scene? Or can you find something about that scene to love? If, however, you're avoid scenes because they are emotionally difficult, then you need to grab your box of tissues and go for it. When you get uncomfortable, keep pushing. Don't gloss over anything. The more it makes you squirm, then better it is on the page. Come to think of it, that's true for erotic scenes too. Go figure.

Many writers I know started out writing whatever scene grabbed them, but after a couple years, they seem to have settled into linear writing. I'm not saying that's the only way or the right way to go, but I think it makes sense. It's the most efficient way to work. Then again, when you're talking about creativity, efficiency be damned. Do what ye will.

Thought Of One!

Sort of. In my previous post, I mentioned that there were rare stories that began with the characters with similar POVs, but through shared experiences, their POVs diverged, which was the point of conflict. At the time I couldn't think of one. Now I have an example.

Underworld.

The main POV character, Selene, is in conflict with Kraven over how the vampire war against the lychans should be run, but she is completely faithful to their leader, Viktor. As her conflict with Kraven grows, she brings Viktor out of his slumber because she knows that she and Viktor have a similar desire to destroy the lycans, and she suspects that Kraven doesn't. However, as the story progresses, she learns the truth about the war between the vampires and werewolves. Her loyalty shifts. The man she once revered as a father becomes her enemy and she kills him to protect her werewolf/vampire lover.

Underworld is a fascinating story from a writer's perspective.

Somewhere along the line, vampires stopped being monsters. Now they're sexual fantasies. This story takes advantage of that. The vampires are portrayed as desire able. They have wealth, hot bodies, sexy leather clothes, cool guns and fast cars. The lycans are shown living as, well, beasts, in the sewers. Their medical space looks like something out of a Nazi nightmare. They're mangy men. So of course our sympathies are with the vamps. Beauty has it's advantages.

In the opening scene of the story, the lycans are hunting some hapless human. What's more despicable than that? The vamp Selene saves the human's ass and then gets sort of pissy about having to. Aww - how antihero. The story could have followed along those lines to a rather formulaic ending. But where this story got interesting was when Selene probed into the past and found out that the history she'd been taught wasn't the truth. The audience's sympathies shifted as hers did. By the end, it was pretty clear that the bad guys were the vamps and the lycans were the underdogs (sorry) to root for. I can't remember many stories that bring an audience along on a complete 180 change in POV like that. (The original short story I Am Legend does to some extent, as does We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which is a fascinating story. Highly recommended reading.)

What I Meant Was

I titled my previous post Another Day, Another Layer, and then went with the Newton's Cradle metaphor instead. Confusing? I bet. Made sense to me, but my mind works in weird tangents. So let me explain.

My stories tend to be densely written. I can't help it. I try to write something simple and straightforward, but I simply can't, because I can't stand stories where I have to take the word of the author that people fell in love or whatever. I have to see it. So I can't write stories like that. I have to prove it to my readers. It's kind of like being a trial lawyer and presenting a case. Evidence is shown and testimony is given in a specific order. The background comes first. Then the setting. Things start to speed up as the major event (conflict) is revealed and discussed. Hopefully, if all the evidence was presented correctly, it leads the jury to the desired conclusion. As a member of a jury, I'm not going to take the prosecutor's word for it that something happened a certain way. I have to hear the testimony. As a reader, I feel the same way about a story. I have to be shown everything so that I'm convinced that the conclusion is realistic and inevitable.

But now I'm talking trials and not layers.

The way I make my case, or tell my story, is to first fill in the bare facts of what happened in a timeline from the main character's point of view. But then I go back to each important secondary character and make sure that they react to the facts of what happened in a manner that is consistent with that character's POV. This helps build the conflict. In real life no two people are going to see the same event and interpret it the same way, and they shouldn't in a book either.

Tangent: Okay, in the beginning of a story, characters should have wildly divergent POVs that, through mutual experiences and building understanding, begin to merge so that in the end, if the characters have truly become a team, they will tend to process the same facts in a similar manner. Never exactly the same, but they should reach conclusions that mesh. OR you can begin with characters who are already a team and have meshing POVs, but through their experiences those shared beliefs should begin to diverge to the point that there is major conflict between them. (This type of story is much rarer. I wish I could think of an example off the top of ym head.)

Back to layers: So I keep going back over the same chapters, each time concentrating on some aspect of it. Plot. Setting. Character. In earlier chapters, I try to show a smaller example of the larger conflict that will play out at the end.

As an example of this - in the new classic holiday movie A Christmas Story, Ralphie wants a Red Ryder BB Gun for Christmas. Earlier in the story, he receives in the mail his Little Orphan Annie decoder ring. He waits impatiently through the radio show for the secret message. When he has it, he runs upstairs and barricades himself in the bathroom as he fumbles around with his decoder. His little brother is pounding on the bathroom door. The tension mounts. His mother yells at him to get out of the bathroom. Finally, he has the message. BE SURE TO DRINK YOUR OVALTINE. He leaves the bathroom crushed that he was duped into decoding "A lousy Ad." Through the rest of the movie, he's trying to convince his parents to get him the BB Gun. After a lot of disappointments (the bunny suit) his Old Man finally hands him a hidden package that contains the BB Gun. We've already seen Ralphie get what he wants only to be disappointed by it, so we're primed for tragedy as he heads out into the back yard with his new gun. And he does have a mishap. But because this is a happy story, it's only a little setback, and at the end he falls asleep cradling his BB Gun and the voice over tells us what we already know - that this was his best Christmas ever.

So I try to have scenes that not only move the story forward and kick up the tension a notch, but also reflect the bigger conflict. It's like applying coats of varnish. Each coat is transparent so that you can see through to the primary coat, but those layers also add depth. That's what I meant by another day, another layer.

I'd explain how that translated into a Newton's Cradle, but my thought processes defy explanation. Just take my word for it that, in my mind, the two are logically related.

Another Day, Another Layer

Even though I swore I would take some time away from novels and work on short stories, I couldn't shake this one from my brain. I wonder if it's like that for other writers: A story steps forward and won't budge until it's put on paper (in computer actually, but on paper sounds better).

So I'm reading all these calls for submissions for short stories and it's breaking my heart to let them pass, but I simply can't get out of this novel until I finish it. The problem is that I'm in those tricky first five chapters where so much has to gel. The pace needs to be set, the major conflict of the novel has to be introduced or foreshadowed, the characters have to be introduced (or reintroduced since this is the third of a trilogy), the major players have to make an entrance, etc. It's like pulling back the first ball of a Newton's Cradle and--.

Except that it would be great if this little detail got tweaked a bit.

Okay. So now I pull back two balls and--.

Wait! There's a film festival in Palm Springs, and the MC has friends there, and this can make that work even better. All hail the god of serendipity!

Where was I? Pulling back three balls...

At this rate I may never get out of those first five chapters. Oh, I will- eventually. Getting things lined up perfectly and setting them into motion takes time, but once the action starts it's smooth clickity-clack (of balls or computer keys) from there on. Hopefully.

Submissive Men

I've had a lot of private comments on my post about women and BDSM - and some public ones too. I was a little surprised because that was a bit of a rant - just me expressing my frustration with men who can not accept that a rational woman might choose to have rough sex. Apparently a number of other people are fed up with it too.

In that rant I mentioned how men who don't approve of women enjoying BDSM sex tend to completely ignore the idea of submissive men, and then I went on to ignore them in my rant. The specific conversations that pissed me off were about women, so that's where my mind was at, but it seems only fair to give equal time to the guys.

I only know two submissive men. So any conclusions I have here are based on a very limited sample size and colored by my perceptions, but... Submissive men aren't all that different from submissive women. Don't think for a second that means I find them less than masculine. Submissive men, including the gay ones, are still men. The similarities between submissive men and women are that they're educated (sometimes advanced degrees), have a good sense of humor, are mature in their sense of sexuality, and have above average intelligence.

Again, this is based on a small sample of the population, but it seems to me that men who embrace their submissive side must have a very secure sense of their masculinity. They don't seem to feel that it's threatened by the act of submission. If you're a submissive male, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

Best Christmas Present Ever!

Got the contract for my novel Chaos Magic II: Love Runes in the mail yesterday, and a contract for Chaos Magic and Love Runes to go to print!!!!!! Happy happy joy joy!

I'm in an 80's Christmas mood.

Bear with me. The videos suck, but I love the songs.

Christmas Wrapping

Father Christmas

and Love is Around Us. (okay, this video isn't 80's, but I crack up at the Robert Palmer girls - which was an 80's vid - in the beginning, because they look a bit like vampires, and of course, that actor played Victor, the head vampire in Underworld. And yes, weird associations like that make me laugh.)

Micro Managing My Characters

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you know how I feel about micro-managed characters. If the author is playing Twister (He picked up the red coffee mug with his left hand while his right hand rested on the knee of his blue pants.) then the character is micro-managed. Writing a scene isn't like drafting a technical schematic. It's more like an impressionist painting. Capture only enough to get the idea across and move on.

Advice is so very easy to give, isn't it? Not so easy to follow, especially when it's your own.

I was working on a scene that was running like a movie in my head. I could see every detail of the room and what the characters were doing. And I caught myself transcribing everything I saw from my imagination onto the page. Wrong, wrong , wrong. I only need enough detail to anchor the reader into the scene. The rest is getting the characters from point A (where they were when the scene opens) to point B (where they are emotionally, physically, etc when it ends). The only things that should be happening in that scene are things that move the characters from A to B. That's it. I know that. So why am I looking at a scene I've just written and thinking "left foot, green?"

BDSM and Women

Several groups I belong to have recently had discussions about BDSM. Many people will never understand the dynamics of a power exchange relationship. That's fine, but not understanding and willfully misunderstanding are two different things.

Those conversations usually center around submissive women. For some reason, the subject of submissive men is ignored, as if they are either figments of literary imagination or somehow beneath notice.

One of the most frustrating things to me is the tone of the discussion. Some men purport to love and worship women, and can't understand why women "let themselves be abused," because that man would "never hit a woman." The submissive (and some dominant) women on the discussion group then explain the vast difference between abuse and BDSM in well thought out replies - which are ignored. Why? The reason seems to be that the men feel that those submissive women are deluded and have bought into the idea that there's a difference, but there isn't, and the men are there to help them realize the error of their ways. So what those men are saying is that while they'd never "hit a woman," they are more than willing to tell a woman that she isn't smart enough or mentally stable enough to make a decision about her own body. Now that, to me, is abusive. The message is that women can't be trusted with their sexuality and that women can't possibly be turned on by that sort of thing because women are fragile and require kid glove handling.

Bullshit, guys. Stop the patronizing attitude. Loving and adoring women means treating them like rational adults, not coddling them.

The women I know who are submissive in BDSM relationships are not poor deluded mental cases. They are intelligent. Many hold advanced degrees. Many have careers that pay well. They are competent. And they are perfectly able to distinguish between sex that turns them on - which they seek - and abuse - which they would not tolerate. Submissive does not mean weak. Submissive does not mean stupid.

I wish I knew the magic words that would make the light bulb go off over those men's heads during those discussions. Unfortunately, their minds are so tightly closed that I doubt any of that light would get through to them.

Writing Rules

There are tons of writing rules, all of which are passionately debated on writer's lists. The problem with rules is that some writer breaks one, and does it so well that suddenly everyone sees the rule was merely a guideline.

The rules I'm having problem with right now are personal writing rules. I like to tell a story in a linear direction and not loop back in time with extended flashbacks and scenes. That seems pretty straightforward, right? Except that it's in direct conflict with another personal rule, and that is that the major conflict is foreshadowed or shown in the first chapter. So which one to break? Well, they are just personal guidelines, and I think it's more important to show the conflict, so I'm writing it out of sequence and then quickly getting back on the linear track. It can work. It better work. *sigh*

December Reviews Up at Erotica Revealed

I really just have to accept that it's December.

Holy Hannah, It's December!

I swear that someone stole half a month from me while I wasn't looking. One day it was mid-November, and suddenly it's December. (I actually suspect that a couple months were swiped out from under me, but can't prove it.)

I never knew handing someone a plate of cookies was such a dangerous thing, but what was once a little gesture has turned into a tradition. Bah! Humbug! I swear that when the police come by with their Santa Float for the neighborhood kids, they park in front of our hovel because they know we'll come out with a plate of Charlene's Favorites, Nutmeg Logs and Toffee Squares. This year I even made pralines (with a healthy dose of Maker's Mark). And the cooking frenzy isn't over yet, because we're hosting for Hanukkah this year, so I'm on latke duty.

Tradition is a weird thing. Every year for Thanksgiving, I get assigned (among other dishes) the dreaded canberry pineapple jello mold. Even though I won't eat it, I dutifully make it. And every year, the only person who eats it is the SO, and he takes the smallest sliver he can cut. Then, when the older people are safely snoozing in front of the TV, those of us still in the kitchen make a command decision and dump it into the trash. No one ever questions why it isn't with the other leftovers. Why do I have to make that wretched thing? Because it's tradition. Why did I have to make the flaming yam surprise? Tradition. Did anyone eat it? No. All the non-traditional dishes I made were consumed, while all traditional ones were ignored. It's almost like sacrificial food at this point. I'm tempted to set up an altar and offer them up to... who? Maybe those who are no longer with us but who live on in recipes.

Thankfully, except for the latkes for Hanukkah and torepitas for New Years, there aren't many traditional foods left to make this year - and they're the good ones. At least, I've never seen one dumped in the trash.

Interesting Article on E-Publishers who also Do Print

Okay, interesting to me. I like to take things apart and see how they work. Anway, read it here.

Clarification

Someone sent me a private e-mail in response to my post about e-books. The question was basically: Wait, so you write romance?

Sorry I gave that impression. The short answer is that I don't write romance.

The long answer:
I write erotica and speculative fiction(science fiction). One of these days I'll write a mystery. Or I'll just slipstream it and combine all those genres in one story. I already have the story. I just need time to write it.

I talk about the romance industry a lot for several reasons. The major one is that represents 50% of the sales of printed books, and probably more like 75% - 80% of the e-publishing world, but that's just a guess based on what I'm see e-publishers offering. Any genre that big can't be ignored, because the readers of romance will ultimately determine where publishing goes and how it fares. (Much as porn chose VHS tapes at the expense of Beta, and also drove the big switch over to DVDs)

Another reason I watch the romance industry with so much interest is, as I've mentioned many times before, they know how to promote. I don't see any other genre reaching out to its core of readers the way that romance does. One of the biggest romance conventions in this country is for the fans, not the writers (although the writers attend in droves). Only science fiction reaches out for its audience the same way, and even then it's mostly about television and movies, not books. I'd love to see queer writers work at being accessible to fans and promoting more, because I think the niche is slowly dying. (I have a few theories on that, but I'm trying to keep this post on track)

One of the other things I admire a lot about the romance industry is the sense of community. I'm not saying that they're all angels, but as a group, romance and erotica writers are generous with information and their time. Comparatively, science fiction writers are rather stingy with advice and information. Mystery writers range the full spectrum. Don't get me started on the paranoia of literary writers I've met. Part of this difference between the genres might be because so many of the writers of romance and erotica are female, and women tend to understand the benefits of cooperation. It also might be that with 50% of the book sales, they can afford to be generous.

So that's the long answer. I don't write romance, but I pay a great deal of attention to what the writers do to boost sales and try to figure out what part of that can be translated successfully into other genres. Some of the culture of romance is unique. It can't be duplicated. But the rest? We'll see.

Analysing My Characters

I spent some time on the phone with DL King today to discuss my latest novel. This is one of the things I love about having writer friends. (Especially the ones who are so generous with their time). It's hard to talk to a non-writer about the construction and purpose of scenes. Readers tend to accept what's there as just the way it is. Other writers, however, know that scenes don't simply exist. They always serve a purpose (or they should be edited out) Either the scene moves the plot along, or it reveals something about the character(s). Ideally, it does both.

One of the hardest things to know is if I've gone far enough with a scene or if it's okay where it stops. I have a character who never apologizes for what he's done, but he will try to set things right. The discussion I had with DL was - should I have him apologize? That led to a long discussion about where the character was mentally. It's so fun to pick apart a character and analyze their motivations and actions. I want so much for him to apologize, because deep down I know he's a good guy. (I wrote him that way, after all) DL feels that he's not to that point of self-realization yet. She's right, of course. In the third book, I'll not-so-gently push him in that direction, and finally get him there, but as usual, it's going to take a lot of angst.

Once upon a time, in a management class, I saw a series that explained where your employees and customers were in terms of needs and wants, and how those motivations had a lot to do with when they grew up. Some of that is common sense, and some of it is buzzword bingo, but it's an idea that I return to when creating characters. People can change, but it takes a lot to overcome that inertia. The emotional levers have to be strong. People have to want to change. And they almost always have to face a major life event that makes change possible. What this means for characters is, of course, duh-rah-ma. It has to be powerful enough to shake them to their core and make them question what were givens in their life, and it has to give them a reason to want to change, which brings me back to my character. Poor guy. The next novel is going to be rough on him. But it's for his own good. Really. I'm not poking him with the calamity stick just for the hell of it.

Black Friday

Today is Black Friday, the day when all good little consumers rush out to the stores to spend money they don't have on things they don't need in an orgy of full-contact shopping. Thankfully, I was born without the shopping gene. The harder stores push me to spend, the more I dig in my heels. I can't remember ever having taken part in this charming little ritual and don't plan to start now. There aren't a whole lot of material things I need now, and if it's a "must have" gadget, I'm even less likely to truly need it.

Many times, I prefer to want something than to have it. For example, for years I've lusted over orrerys. I look at them on websites, in museums, and in antique stores. Do I need an orrery? No. No one needs an orrery. If I have a sudden, desperate need to know where a planet is, I can go to a million different websites and track it down. But I do enjoy looking at the orrerys, and I can admire them equally. I can like one for the detail on the planets and another one for the gleaming brass gears. If I were to buy one though, I'd have to pick just one (if no one needs an orrery, absolutely no one needs two), and the model I'd settle on would never be everything I wanted it to be. Ownership = lingering dissatisfaction. Lusting from afar = being able to enjoy them all.

I've been slowly gathering presents for the SO and family since September. I have a nice little stash at the back of my closet. The SO buys himself whatever he wants when he wants it, so he's very hard to shop for. I'm no easier. We're about at the point where we give each other experiences rather than tangible objects. That's fine with me. I'd much rather go on a trip than have another thing I have to find room for in the hovel's rather limited storage space. Family is tricky too. Since I have no idea what they want or need, even though it seems impersonal, I buy gift cards for all the nieces and nephews. I hope they use it unwisely to obtain their hearts' desires instead of buying something practical. That's what their parents' gifts are for.

Print versus E-Publishing

In my conversations with other writers about the state of publishing, one of the topics that always comes up is print versus e-pub.

Since Amazon just launched it's new e-book reader, I thought this would be a good subject. Early reviews of the Amazon product basically say that 1) it's way too expensive, 2) people want integrated devices instead of something dedicated to one function, and 3) it's bulky and heavy. Like the Sony reader, I've heard - but have not verified - that the Amazon product only takes the files you download through them and in their format, which means fans of e-books can't get books from all their favorite publishers. Looks like a swing and a miss, but it's nice that they're trying.

I've also heard that several of the big box book stores are looking into installing e-book kiosks in their stores so that people can download books while in the store. This seems awfully counter-intuitive to me. Anyone who is already buying e-books knows where to find them online. These are internet shopping savvy people. Why get dressed, drive to a store, deal with parking, shopping,etc. when you can stay home in your bunny slippers and accomplish the same thing? Book stores obviously want a cut of the e-book revenue stream but do e-publishers want to give the stores that cut (especially since those same stores refuse to give shelf space to the print versions of these same books)? Right now, the publishers have an audience that buys directly from them. Why would an e-publisher want to encourage a practice that will only cut into their profits? (book stores, including Amazon, take a huge cut of the cover price. So when Amazon offers a book for 40% off cover, you can imagine how deeply they publisher had to discount it to get Amazon to take it.)

Speaking of publishers... From various sources, I get two very different pictures of e-books.

Print publishers say there's no money in e-publishing. And yet, they're beginning to offer e-books and include e-publishing wording in their contracts.

E-publishers, on the other hand, say that there's no money in print. Some e-books sell for 1/3 of the price of printed books. That should tell you something about the cost of printing, shipping, and storing printed copies of books. (print runs versus print-on-demand is a whole other ball of wax that I don't want to get into right now) Printed books currently have more prestige than e-books, so some e-publishers do limited print runs of popular books. One publisher says that print is break even at best for them, but it makes their writers happy, so they offer it as a bonus to their best-selling authors.

So what's the truth? Is the money in print or e-publishing for publishers? It actually might be a bit of both. Print and e-publishing are two different business models (something a few publishers are finding out the hard way).

I think that a lot of it has to do with the audience. Many people who buy e-books are voracious readers. They can consume many books a week. (And man oh man, is this a dream slice of the market.) Being rather sharp, these readers are opting for e-books for three reasons 1) cost, and 2) storage (I'll get into #3 below). When they are done reading the story, it only takes up memory space on a computer. Storage gets to be a problem after a while with printed books (glances at my teetering piles of unread books around the house.)

This shouldn't come as a shock since 50% of the US market for print books is romance novels, but generally e-book readers seem to like romance. Ah, but not just any romance. Because these women are computer literate, they tend to be a younger crowd, and this younger crowd generally wants something more than her mother's regency romance that ends in a chaste kiss. Today's reader wants sex. So what you see in the e-book word is a huge representation of erotic romance novels. This is point 3 of why these readers opt for e-books. Print publishers lagged far behind on the demand for erotic romance books, maybe because they thought that sex was icky, but their readers sure don't feel that way. The big romance publishers are getting into the erotic romance market now, but the audience has already been shown a different product that's cheaper, faster, and available for them whenever they feel like buying.

The last thing I'd like to mention about print versus e-books is what it means for writers. Print traditionally paid an advance, printed the book, and did a little publicity, but they don't do publicity anymore, and advances are shrinking down to nothing. E-books typically don't offer advances, but most have generous royalty sharing contracts. Many e-book publishers offer chat rooms, lists, and other vehicles to help their writers promote books. And e-publishers can produce books much quicker than print publishers can. Many e-publishers are very hands-on with their writers and offer great communication, something print publishers notoriously lack. One added bonus - with e-books, you're never out of print. Your backlist is always there, so when someone discovers you and wants to go back and read everything you've written, they can get it. The earning life of a book is vastly extended in e-publishing.

So what will win in the end? I don't think printed books will ever go away, but when 50% of the market for books is romance, and the romance readers are buying e-books, and the writers are getting tired of the way print publishers treat them, well.... I'm sure you can do the math.

What's Happening Here?

One of the other big topics of discussion last Saturday night when I was out with Trebor was the state of publishing. Lately, this seems to be the major topic whenever I sit down with other writers. At lunch with M. Chrisitian and Sage Vivant, we sighed over the state of the erotica publishing world. DL King, Lisabet Sarai, and a few other writers are involved in what has been (so far) a disheartening conversation about print, e-publishing, backlists and shelf space. Add to that all the recent small press closures, and you've got a lot of writers sitting around asking, "What am I going to do with this MS?"

The picture is even worse in GLBT than it is in erotica. On one hand, I'm watching Saints and Sinners GLBT Literary conference grow every year, on the other hand, the number of viable presses is shrinking. I expect a panel this coming year at Saints and Sinners to address this crossroads for GLBT publishing. Has it's time come and gone? Do queer writers still need GLBT presses, or do they have a shot at the big houses? And if you do sell to a big name publisher, is yours their token GLBT book? Do they help you reach a wider audience? Do they get you out of the GLBT ghetto at the back of the store and into the literature or genre shelves like all the hetero writers? Do you want to be in with the hetero writers?

So what's happening here? Are erotica and GLBT books stepping into the mainstream? Or are our audiences going into mainstream genres and leaving us behind? Who are the crossover writers? Where did they get their start? And perhaps most important for hopeful authors out there, will those same first opportunities be around for them?

I wish I had an answer.

Trebor and Felice Reading

Saturday night, I went to a reading at Skylight books for Trebor Healey's A Perfect Scar and Felice Picano's Art and Sex In Greenwich Village.



It's always a pleasure to see Trebor (he even wore the cheesy rosary I gave him) and to hear his work. He read from his short story collection A Perfect Scar, but I love his poetry (Sweet Son of Pan) and his novel (Through It Came Bright Colors). We went out afterwards for drinks with a couple other friends and talked for hours, something I don't get to do often enough. We talked about where we'd run away to live if we could. I think we all want a remote cabin surrounded by pristine nature that's within walking distance of shops and entertainment so we never have to use a car again and we won't feel islolated, has a low cost of living, is in an artist's community full of intellectually stimulating people but that's free from all that attendant art diva nonsense, and we'd like for the weather to be perfect because we're weather whimps. If you know of such a place, let us know.





After my rather sassy introduction to Felice at the West Hollywood book fair, I was glad that he seemed to forgive me. He read from his new book Art and Sex in Greenwich Village. His reading was fascinating, so of course I had to pick up the book. I could have listened to him talk for another hour.




And I was so pleased to get to talk with Malcolm Boyd again. If you know me, you know my deep interest in spirituality despite my disgust with religion. Malcolm has been exploring gay spirituality for years and has a number of books out. Such a gracious gentleman. And his partner (I can never remember his name) is so sweet, and obviously also has a very spiritual core. I adore people like that, and talking to them is such a thrill for me.

Also in the audience (the reading was well attended. I was lucky to get a seat) - Stuart Timmons of Gay L.A. fame. He always makes me smile.

On a sad note, when I walked into Skylight Books, I saw a notice that Lucy the Store Cat had passed away. She's a character in a short ghost story I just sold (not as a ghost cat though). I guess I'll have to dedicate it to her memory. (The ghost in the story disrupts a reading, just like I'd seen Lucy do countless times.)

One Beta Reader Reports

My novel's been in the hands of two readers, and I've been pacing my
brains out waiting to hear their opinions (No pressure, darlings) and
one handed me comments last night.

Except one chapter to chapter transition, he said everything flowed well. Yay! And made sense. Double Yay! And he said, "Um, yeah, you had to show the bad guys get their asses kicked." Well, sure that's obvious now. Why it wasn't before, I have no idea. According to him it was a satisfying scene of devine retribution raining down on the two villains. That's what we want to see, isn't it? We don't often get jusstice in real life, so it's nice to see someone pay for their evil ways.

Oh, and I got this one little bit of side commentary that I loved: "That Sam is one messed up guy."

Sure he is. I wrote him that way. Poor baby. Every time his life seems
settled, I poke him with the calamity stick. Writers have to be
sadistic to their characters or nothing happens. But I guess I
shouldn't enjoy it so much....

Trebor Healey reading in LA

Next Saturday, Trebor Healey and Felice Picano will be reading at Skylight books in LA.
Trebor's book was one of the last to be printed by Haworth Press, so the ones that are available now are it. After that, it's a collector's item.

Trebor is serving wine and snacks. I'll be there. Come by and say hello.


Saturday, November 17th @ 7:30 pm

Trebor Healey reading with Felice Picano, author of the recently-released Art & Sex in Greenwich Village: Literary Life After Stonewall http://www.felicepicano.com/

Skylight Books

1818 N. Vermont Ave.

Los Feliz District/Los Angeles

323.660.1175

Link: www.skylightbooks.com

Duh *smacks forehead*

The last two chapters of Love Runes have been giving me fits. Part of
it is what I call the downhill slide. I can see the end, I'm galloping
towards it at top speed, butsometimes I'm going so fast that instead of
taking the individual steps, I gloss over things. Anyone who has ever
walked down the steep slope of a sand dune or a mountainside knows what
it's like when suddenly you slip downhill a couple feet. Sure, you
moved faster, but you lost your sense of balance. Realizing that I was
in that precariousposition, I went back and forced myself to slow down and do it step by step.

The other problem I had was my Duh! moment. It would seem like a no brainier
that you have to show the bad guy getting an ass kicking for a
satisfying conclusion, but someone that huge obvious point escaped me
as I wondered why my last few chaptersdidn't work. Some things can
happen off-stage in a novel. The big confrontation isn't one of them.
Duh! In my defense though, I'd like to point out that there are two big
confrontations at the end of this story, and the one that I felt was
more important eclipsed the other one. Now that I have both, everything
else fell into place and I'm happy with the way it worked out. I'm a
little late with this, but I couldn't have turned it in the way it
stood.

Oh - and another little piece of satisfaction - I
estimated that this story would come in at 70,000 words. Final count is
69,875.

November Reviews at Erotica Revealed

The new reviews are up at Erotica Revealed .

I've been waiting impatiently to read Jeff Mann's A History of Barbed Wire ever since I heard him read from it at the Lambda Literary Awards panel at Saints and Sinners (THE must-attend writer's conference of the year) last May. It was worth the wait. This is what Erotica should aspire to.