The Scribblerati

Apocalypse How?

2012-01-26T22:39:00.010-06:00

Years ago, in my high school astronomy class, my teacher (“Mrs. R-4-Short”) told us of an astronomical event called “the great convergence” that was occurring, where all 9 planets (yes, there were 9 of them then) of our solar system would be in perfect alignment. This was deemed by some to be a sign of impending doom, that our solar system and perhaps our universe would be destroyed. I took this as a sign to hold a party, indeed “the end of the world party.” The party happened, I had my first vodka drunk (no hangover, though), but the world kept on spinning.

And then there was Y2K. Yawn. We all seem to have survived that close call.

More recently there was Harold Camping. He predicted more than once in 2011 that the world would end. It didn’t. He recalculated, gave a new date. The world didn’t end. He tried again. Nope. We’re still here. I guess he must feel kinda silly about that.

But now, we are coming up on December 21, 2012.

According to the Mayans, who have never been known to lie, and were apparently always right about everything (thus the success of their empire) have predicted that the world will instead end on December 21^st of this year.

Here’s a site that will fill you in on everything you need to know so you can start panicking now.

http://www.december212012.com/

But—how will the world end? There is some debate about this, and no one seems to know for sure.

All I know is that stories about the end of the world are big entertainment. The first apocalyptic story I was exposed to was “Night of the Living Dead.” Then there was Godzilla, Mad Max and “I am Legend” and “The Stand” and even “The Road.” All stories about death, destruction and the waning of humankind. And I like them all. So much so that in my own two books (in progress) I am trying to kill the human race, or rather demons and vampires are. Good times, good times.

So will the world end in 2012? It seems about as likely as the last few attempts to kill us off noted above. BUT, if the world must end, you might as well have a say in it.

End of the World Survey Here

(I will post the results when I am able)

A suitable poem about world ending:

The Horses by Edwin Muir

My wish for you:
Live (and write) like the Mayan’s might be right. It's not that long until December.

Be a little dangerous

2012-01-22T12:30:00.002-06:00

You have no idea how badly I want to be done with To Kill the Goddess.

And I'm close. So frakking close!

But there's still work to do.

I started working on the public beta draft of To Kill the Goddess shortly after the new year. I was feeling good. I had two solid drafts of Witness It (my new novella) completed and I was ready to kick some ass and take some names.

“This should be a breeze,” I thought. “I shouldn't need more than a day or two of fine editing per chapter and the whole thing should be done in a month or so.” And for the most part, I'm on track. I'm cruising through chapters, one after another, and then…

You see, here's my problem: my thought process is really methodical. That's great when we're talking about down and dirty low level sentence structure changes and that sort of thing. It's demanding work, but it's also kind of like climbing a steep hill; you just need to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Unfortunately, all that methodical logic only takes you so far. What do you do when the path disappears? What do you do when you come across a comment as vague and troubling as, “the argument these two characters is having feels wrong.”

Speaking very broadly, there are three basic tools that are writer needs. The first is to think logically. For example, event or action A leads to B, leads to C. The second is creative inspiration, coming up with those great ideas and twists that make for an engaging story. The third is the ability to blend the two, or maybe more appropriately, to develop the ability to sense which tool to employ at any given point in time.

My first impulse is to tackle a problem with logic. I want to reason my way out of everything. When I see “the argument between these two characters feels wrong” I immediately start looking within the argument to fix it, or to the section immediately preceding it, and when that fails I get frustrated. Part of the reason for that frustration is that I just want to be done with this book, but the greater and more important reason is that now I'm out of my comfort zone. Logic has failed me and I need to turn to that other tool, to creativity. I need a burst of inspiration to pull me out of the hole I've dug for myself.

Those situations are always a challenge for me because I have to go against my nature. I can't tackle the problem head-on. I have to free my thoughts from that rational part of my mind that wants to grab hold of and fix everything. I have to set aside expectation and want.

Because sometimes there is no straight path to the top of the hill. Because sometimes you have to let go and be … a little dangerous.

But Think of the Children!

2012-01-06T15:30:00.012-06:00

I recently read a blog which featured artist Dave Devries’ The Monster Engine project, wherein he takes children’s original drawings of monsters, and paints them realistically. I think it’s really cool; the results are both surreal and somehow primal – and I think Devries taps into something basic about the way children think, and view the world, and translates it so we adults are transported back to a time when we were scared of what might be – what most likely was - under our beds.

According to the comment section, however, it seems there are a few parents who don’t feel the same way. These folks said that the project was cruel, dishonored the child’s vision, and two women stated that their children would be ‘devastated’ if someone ‘did that’ to their art. They accused him of twisting a sweet child’s sweet vision into something nightmarish.

Um.

Okay then, many other commentators commented – but… Devries is collaborating with the children. He isn’t asking them to draw a precious fwuffy bunny, and then turning it into a blood-soaked serial killer. He’s asking them to draw a monster.

No, no, the mommy brigade insisted. Twisted. Appalling. Heartbreaking for a child. The argument became so heated that the blog moderator eventually deleted some of the nastier digs, and shut down the comments section.

The whole thing got me thinking about children's and young adult literature, and what exactly is appropriate for children. And also, who is the best to judge?

First of all, I know that every child is different. One 8-year-old could be blithely watching Tales From the Darkside alone with the lights off, and the next could be unable to sit on the couch for a week after watching that one Muppet Show episode where the furniture starts eating people. (Yes, those are examples from the 70s and 80s, and yes, I was the latter kid.) Also, I know that a parent should be the person to choose what is appropriate for their child to read. No question. It’s their job. But I’d argue that authors, parents and, most importantly, children themselves all have different criteria about ‘what is appropriate.’

Of course, the question of appropriateness is not limited only to how scary a thing is. There’s sexual content, violence, adult themes, religious philosophies, even language and humor. The big question on all fronts is, “Is the child ready?”

I am not a parent. Barring some bizarre and/or tragic happenstance (knock on wood), I will never be a parent. One of the first times in my life I was awed by the protective instincts of a parent was at my friend Dan’s house. He was having a party in the back yard, grilling out. There was a gaggle of children tearing about the place. I was sitting on the deck, in a lawn chair, the hot charcoal grill a mere 6 feet or so in front of me. I was watching as a little girl, at that age where she had just started to walk, suddenly started careening, hands out, toward the grill. Dan, who was not the father of the girl, but who is a parent, was in a conversation all the way on the other side of the lawn, not directly facing the girl and her imminent charring. I don’t know how he did it, but Dan was over there, the girl’s wrists clasped firmly in his hands, stopping her short, before I had even managed to completely rise from my chair. Don’t be too horrified; I would have reached her in time. It’s just that Dan, distracted, and way farther away, nevertheless got there first. He had the advantage of finely-honed daddy instincts.

The protective instinct is so innate; it’s really a wonder to behold sometimes. Sometimes, however, it gets in the way of reality. Or, more specifically, manners.

My friend Shannon was on a plane, sitting in the window seat, and like any good Midwesterner, she didn’t want to disturb her neighbors, so she waited until she really had to pee before she climbed over them to go to the bathroom. When she got to the back of the plane, dancing from foot to foot, there was a line. As she was waiting, a mother and her approximately 7-year-old child got in line behind her. The door opened; it was Shannon’s turn, but the little girl walked in front of her and started to go into the bathroom. Shannon said, “I’m sorry, honey, I think it’s my turn.” The mother, in a loud, indignant tone of voice exclaimed, “She’s just a CHILD!” Shannon, not to be daunted, crouched down in front of the little girl and asked, “Sweetie? Do you need to go really bad?” “No,” said the girl, shrugging. “Then do you mind if I go first?” “No,” said the little girl, smiling. Shannon walked into the bathroom. The mother huffed and glared.

Okay, so. No parent I know would ever behave in such a way. The woman was rude. But it’s a good, albeit extreme example of that protective instinct gone bad. It’s a miracle that the little girl, despite her mannerless mom, didn’t behave like an entitled asshole – or at least a coddled little baby chick. In truth, she had more on the ball than even her mother cared to notice. Which I think is true for many young readers, as well.

I’ve heard the “She’s just a CHILD” argument applied to children’s lit, too. How dare they market this to children, how dare they put this in that section of the store, how dare they carry this at a school! When it comes to what parents want their own children to read: fine. When it comes to institutionalized ‘protection’ of children to exposure to ‘harmful’ works (I’ll stop air quoting now), that’s when we authors, avid readers, aunts, uncles, and erstwhile children get uppity – along with every savvy parent out there.

I sometimes wonder if people who never have children somehow remember more accurately what it was like to be one. No, we’re not necessarily exposed to kids every day, but then again, our memories of childhood are not filtered through the parental lens. My friend Rhoda, for instance, a mother, had to stop reading Philip Pullman’s children’s lit book, The Golden Compass, because it featured the kidnapping and torture of children. I knew Rhoda as a child, and I can guarantee she would have loved the book then. Likewise, she would have devoured it greedily at any point as an adult, before she had become a parent.

Childhood reading experiences are fundamental in the development of language, humor, imagination and knowledge of the world. I may have been terrified of Muppet ottomans (ottomen?) as a child, but I could take most anything in book form. I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy at 11, and the Thomas Covenant books when I was 13. War, rape, torture, sex, death, cruelty… I distinctly remember my wide-eyed fascination, reading ‘beyond my level,’ stretching my understanding… what I don’t remember is being traumatized. I read books at a time when I only had one digit in my age, books about terrorists, murderers, kidnapping, obsessive love and abuse. Sure, I also read about magic and friendship, kindness, beauty and true love. But I think I understood the good things all the better for the bad. Protecting children from books containing big ideas and big evil seems backwards… after all, what gentler way to introduce a person to the big bad world then through fiction?

Living a Writing Life

2011-12-30T22:50:00.005-06:00

“I'm either going to be a writer or a bum.” ~ Carl Sandburg

(Image: me trying to decide to write or not to write)

I recall reading an anecdote about a mill worker who dies and his family discovers a hidden book of poetry under his mattress. They wonder: Was he a millworker who wrote poetry? Or was he a poet who worked at a mill?

I feel like that sometimes. No. Not like a millworker or poet, but like a person who is leading a double or triple or maybe quadruple life.

I’m an IT manager, a father/brother/son/husband/friend and writer. Many times the thing I’d like to be emphasizing and focusing on is being THE WRITER, but often he has to take a backseat to all the other stuff going on that makes up plain old life.

In thinking back on this year I couldn’t help but wonder—have I been doing a good job of keeping up on the writing side of my life?

In 2011 some of the ways I expressed my writer-side:

§ Wrote, edited and revised a lot. Results: 3 completed short stories, two novel draft revisions (Blackheart) and more scenes and material for use with my current projects and other projects down the road.

§ Entered two writing contests (one of which was a bust, the other I won’t know until February if I did well or not)

§ Took a “Book in a Month” class (April) at the Loft where I made more progress on my 2^nd novel, Sunlight. (And no, I didn’t complete a book in a month… but I wrote many more pages than I might have otherwise.)

§ Went to two writing conferences, one at UW Madison in April and another at the Loft in November (I enjoyed the Madison workshops more, but the networking was better at the Loft). One highlight at the Loft conference was past instructors making a point to seek me out and ask: “How’s Blackheart?”

§ Did an in-person “pitch” of my book Blackheart to two different agents. One asked to see more (which I sent out but have never heard a word back on) and the other gave me a reference to an agent friend who I will be looking up next year.

§ Went to two book events/readings where I got to listen to some authors I enjoy read their work and talk a little about how they live their writing lives (Neil Gaiman and Chuck Palahniuk). I even got to sing with Neil Gaiman at the Fitz (well, it was an audience sing along.)

§ Attended my first Sci Fi convention in St. Paul (Diversicon in July) and sat in as part of a panel with the rest of the Scribbleratti. To say the least we were strange bedfellows—but there were more people in our “audience” than in our panel—so I was happy.

§ Did some research for my next novel, including

o A police ride along including my very own encounter with a “vampire”

o A trip to Duluth, MN on a very sunny fall weekend (both the location and the time of year where one of the scenes in my book Sunlight takes place)

§ Took part monthly in critiquing and being critiqued as a member of the “Scribblerati” writing group and blogged monthly (hey, you’re reading our blog now)

§ Wrote 202 times out of 365 days in 2011. I’d always like this number to be higher. Some days that writing might have been a quality paragraph that made it to the page. Other days it was anywhere from 2 to 11 hours at the writing desk with lots of completed and revised chapters. Most Monday days and Saturday mornings were dedicated to my writing craft.

So what about your writing in 2011? Anything that made you feel like more of a writer than the alternatives? I’d like to hear about it.

Goals for the year ahead

2012 is my favorite year, the Year of the Dragon, and I hope to keep on writing like a mad man. My writing group is currently giving me feedback on the latest version of Blackheart. Once all the feedback is in I’ll let it sit for a month or so and then clean my manuscript up and then start looking for an agent. I plan to finish the last half of Sunlight in the spring. I know I’ve got another short story or two in me. My work schedule is changing a bit, so my best writing times will be Monday, Friday and Saturday mornings. Mostly I’m going to keep on writing in the spare moments, as I am able.

Wishing you lots of great writing in the year ahead.

Mark

A very Scribblerati Christmas

2011-12-23T23:23:00.002-06:00

It's that time of year again, boys and girls: It's the Holidays! It's time for gifts and eggnog and booze and I don't know... reindeers, I guess, and fat burglars or something and... other stuff... whatever. Anyway, we here at the Scribblerati are not above celebrating for no reason, so...

Happy Holidays to you and yours, everyone!

It's been a good year around the ol' workshop table. Lisa is about to send out some queries. Shawn and Mark are wrapping up their manuscripts. Claudia is knee-deep in her second draft. And I have started work on a brand new project and even managed to sell my first short story to boot. We're all in pretty good spots, all things considered, and the reason we are where we are is simple: We've been working, working hard and working often.

Why?

Because that's the trick. That's the whole secret. Butts in the seats, brothers and sisters...butts in the seats.

So in these yule loggy days to come, through the rummy haze of friends and family and wise men, while the rest of them are airing their grievances and performing feats of strength, remember to squeeze in a few moments for yourself. Take some time. Jot down some notes. Plot out some points. Sketch out some characters. Churn out a couple of pages.

Keep writing!

Your pal,
Jon

The Ones Who Walk Away

2011-12-07T20:29:00.001-06:00

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about Ursula K. Le Guin's short story, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. Partly it's been on my mind because I assigned it to my "Telling the Story Queer" class as a nice example of a story with an unconventional narrator.

I'm not even sure how to classify the point of view in the story. It doesn't quite seem to be third person objective, because the narrator doesn't feel neutral to me. Third omniscient seems closer, but the narrator isn't all-knowing, her ability to tell/create the story is limited and she knows it. What I love about Omelas is that tho' the narrator does not take part in any of the action of the story, she is for me the one fully formed character in it. If you're not familiar with the story, read it now and see what you think. (To entice you away, know this: it is short; it is powerful; it is creepy.) Here.

Le Guin's narrator is somewhat similar to the overarching narrator of my WIP. Neither of them are protagonists or even minor actors in their stories, yet both are fleshy characters (at least I hope One Potato is fleshy...tee hee.) I think Le Guin's narrator feels so real to me because of the particularity and forcefulness of her voice, and because she directly confronts the reader, telling us we have to help her envision the utopian nature of Omelas. (An aside, I usually hate the fourth wall being broken, but, I think because this is a parable, it works here.) My main narrator is a sentient potato, and so her voice has to be, well, potato-y. If I've done my work well, readers will feel a kinship to One Potato, even though really all she does is sit in her hill telling stories to her spudlets. So one reason Omelas resonates with me: I'm trying to play around with narration in Once We Were Bears and I adore Le Guin's breaking-the-rules narrator.

Clearly, another reason I would like Omelas is that Le Guin is asking a very core philosophical question: should the happiness of many be sought after, even if that requires the misery of a few. This is at base the debate between Kant and Mill. And Le Guin, as a fiction writer, captures what's at stake in this debate more successfully than any professional philosopher I've ever read. When the cellar child pleads with us, when Le Guin writes "It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible the...poignancy of their music.... It is because of the child that they are so gentle with children," at those moments in the story, the debate comes alive for me. In my WIP, I'm using fiction to reflect on my own philosophical questions about what it means to be human in the more than human world...so again, what Le Guin does here models for me the very best of the sort of thing I'm attempting.

A final reason I've been pondering Omelas. I was recently posed the question, would I rather live forever or die happy. That's such a no-brainer for me. Living forever would take all the horrible ephemeral-ness out of life, but I kinda think it is that horrible ephemeral-ness that makes life so wonderful, so full of wonder. I like to play the Sunday Puzzler with Will Shortz on Sunday mornings. But some Sunday mornings I forget, or am busy, and so don't get to play along. For awhile I subscribed to the podcast. But then listening to the puzzle wasn't special anymore. I could do it whenever I wanted. So I stopped with the podcasting, and now every couple weekends I get a thrill of anticipation--today I get to hang with Will!--and the show itself feels, well, special. So, here's to our own mortality, bringing the special to life.

Today's Literary News (AKA My Dystopian Thursday Morning)

2011-12-01T18:19:00.001-06:00

The Tweets just kept coming today, one thunder crackafter another signaling doom and gloom for the publishing industry. It was like peering through Twitter's looking glass and seeing into the Big 6's dystopian future.

First there was this:

From @GalleyCat

Adult mass paperback sales plunged 54 percent in September while eBook sales rose 100 percent: http://mbist.ro/srAdhg

I've been anticipating numbers like that, but it's still surprising to see them in print.

And then there was this spooky bit:

By 2016, e-book revenues from portable devices will reach nearly $10 billion and bookstores that don’t merge digital and traditional commerce may face extinction

Now I'm imagining the pages of old books blowing through empty strip mall parking lots.

And finally, there was this piece of holiday joy: How many Christmases until we see a whole new industry?

Which is neatly summarized by these two quotes:

John Makinson, the global CEO of Penguin, was quoted in a Reuters article saying that the post-Christmas period in publishing coming up is “tougher to predict” than “any time that I can remember”. Asked what he sees in the immediate future, Makinson replied “dark clouds.”

The pace of the digital switchover is quickening. That will reduce the cash available to invest in building a new ecosystem at the same time the urgency of coming up with new answers is rising. It’s enough to make a sober executive, even at a very large, successful, smart, and innovative company, admit to serious concern for the industry’s future

But in good Hollywood fashion, we'll end with a ray of hope striking out from deep within the gloom:

IndieBound Reader is an ebook reading application [... that] allows book lovers to read ebooks purchased at their local, independent bookstores.

Thank goodness, right? I've been wondering how much longer it would be before the independents began to get their act together.

Oh, and an interesting closing note: The Bookcase in Wayzata (a real nice bookstore, BTW) is where Claudia and I went to see Leanna Renee Hieber, Friend of The Scribblerati.

Aren't you glad I shared?

My pseudo-review of Tahereh Mafi’s Shatter Me

2011-11-30T20:44:00.001-06:00

Disclaimer: this isn't a real review, hence the pseudo. It's also spoiler free. I've tried doing a couple book reviews, but as a writer, I feel all kinda queeby about it. I'd rather just tell you all what I like, and what I thought was interesting and what my writer brain latched onto while reading it. So here goes…

Shatter Me, in my mind, has two very distinct sections: the first three fourths, and the rest. I'll speak about them both individually.

The first three fourths of Shatter Me is a dystopian nightmare. It depicts a horrible not too distant and entirely plausible future where our hero, Juliette, is imprisoned in solitary confinement and is going insane. It is shocking, terrible, and gutwrenching.

But having said all that...

I COULDN'T PUT IT DOWN.

By chapter 2 I was hooked and I didn't leave the couch for three hours. I finished it in two more sittings. This is UNHEARD OF for me.

But back to the book. As the story progresses, Juliette gets a visitor, and that's where things really start to get interesting. I'm not going to go into all the details, I don't want to spoil it, but suffice it to say that along the way we learn things about Juliette, and her visitor, and the world in which she lives and, oh yah, did I say I couldn't put it down? Because it's AMAZING!

The last quarter of the book caught me off guard. Again, no spoilers here, but Shatter Me took a real drastic change in tone and direction. I've never listened to any interviews with Tahereh Mafi and so I don't know this for a fact, but it seems that this was done to set up the sequel's. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but it was unexpected and I don't think I would have wrote the same ending. But maybe that's what she intended all along and I don't know what I'm talking about. Entirely possible!

So now for the big question: will I buy the sequel? Abso-frakking-lutely! I wouldn't typically buy a book of the genre set up at the end, but Shatter Me is such a tour de force that the writer in me wants to know what Tahereh Mafi is going to do next.

And don't tell anyone, but I may have a little bit of a fan boy thing starting up here. :-O

PS - more later on Shatter Me and YA in general.

Thankful

2011-11-25T14:49:00.001-06:00

On this friday after Thanksgiving, I'm honoring someone I'm thankful for. Thankful that she exists and writes and draws and helps others to find their creativity. Thankful for her character Marlys. Thankful for her honesty.

Lynda Barry - Self-Portrait

Dan Kois in the New York Times Magazine (Oct. 27 2011) article, "Lynda Barry Will Make you Believe in Yourself," writes: "Narrative, Barry believes, is so hard-wired into human beings that creativity can come as naturally to adults as it does to children. They need only to access the deep part of the brain that controls that storytelling instinct. Barry calls that state of mind “the image world” and feels it’s as central to a person’s well-being as the immune system."

I've been noticing lately how even when I'm not working on Once We Were Bears, I'm creating story. In telling friends about how I'm doing, I'm telling a story. I don't mean by this that I'm making things up; instead I'm arranging the everything-ness of daily life into a narrative. When I'm planning out a course syllabus, I think of that course as a story with a narrative flow. When I imagine how my life might now change as I live out the break up of a 15-year relationship, I'm fashioning stories. Stories, stories, everywhere.

I'm also thankful to my fellow Scribblerati for their story advice and trusting me enough to offer up their own creativity for critique. Cheers.

If you don't know Lynda Barry, read the New York Times article. Read What It Is. Read One! Hundred! Demons! Read Cruddy.

Your life will be better for it.

And may you always have access to your image world.

Chuck Palahniuk

2011-11-18T23:55:00.004-06:00

The Scribblerati had an e-mail conversation going on recently about “how dark is too dark?” when it comes to writing. It seems like no coincidence then that this week I got to go see Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club) read from his latest book, Damned about a 13 year old dead girl in Hell. If Chuck Palahniuk’s writing has a color, I know it’s dark.

Chuck Palahniuk, to me, seemed intelligent, thoughtful, and witty. His pauses between questions and answers were long, his mind working, as if searching for the best stories, the funniest punch lines. He spoke a lot about death, writing and Paris. Based on one of his stories I recommend that if you are ever in Paris at night you make the extra effort to get to the Eiffel Tower exactly two minutes to midnight and look up and keep looking up (I won’t tell you why, it’ll ruin the surprise).

Here are a few tidbits of wisdom on writing and life from Mr. Palahniuk (filtered through yours truly—so my apologies if I’ve botched any of the quotes):

• Don’t give the audience something to like, give them something they’ll remember.

• Listen. Go to parties and listen to other people’s stories.

• Ways to seize your reader’s attention: Make them laugh, shock them, give them something to remember. This is how you, the author, take control.

• On writing and music: “Every book has its own sound track. As a writer you give up so much of your life, sitting and writing instead of doing other things. So put on music. Make it seem like a party. Even if you’re only the only one who shows up.”

• He told a good Stephen King story (told to him by a friend, Kim Rickets, I believe), of how King at a book signing where 1,500 people showed up wanting his autograph, asked for bandages when his fingers started to bleed from all the signing. Some kid in the crowd heard this and shouted, “Don’t bandage him until he bleeds on my book!” Supposedly King good naturedly smeared blood on the pages of all the books he signed that day.

• “Really drunk people are honest people.”

• “The writer’s perception of their characters is just as erroneous as the reader’s.”

• “Writing is tricking yourself into looking at something inside you that no sane, happy person would look at. Trick yourself and you’ll trick others.”

• Theme is discovered only years after you’ve written your book(s).

• If you are knocked out, stripped naked and sewn into a dead horse, after that no matter how many puppies and kitties die on your shift, it’s still better than being inside that dead horse.

• He says he re-reads Jane Eyre every year, and almost as much, The Great Gatsby

• “Of course the dead miss the living.” (from his new book, Damned)

• “Don’t write until you are 33. Go out a lot before that. People living fun, story-generating lives are out.”

• In most great literature there are three main character types: The Martyr (dies by suicide), The Rebel (destroyed by someone else), and the Witness (who may learn something from the other two types and be better for it)

• Nietzsche is not his thing

• His inspiration for Hell in his latest book? The “Author’s Suite” in fancy hotels that cater to touring authors.

• Someone in the audience asked about his research methods for all the great clinical descriptions in some of his books. The answer? At age 13 he did 1,000 hours of service in a hospital as a candy striper. He described himself as being “Forever marked by the love of Percocet and blood.”

• Mr. Palahniuk says he writes only one short story per year… but then he writes it so that it’s got to hurt people. One such short story is “Guts.” It is a story that makes people throw up and pass out at some of his readings. I’ve included it here, but be forewarned. It’s NOT for the lighthearted (and NOT appropriate for the workplace) to say the least. Click at your own risk: Guts

I have read Fight Club and enjoyed it. Probably would have liked it more had I not seen the movie first (although I like the movie). I also read “Guts”—and although I did not pass out or vomit, and I tend to like my stories dark, this one was not my cup of tea. I will remember it, but I can't say I liked it. Afterwards I was craving a story about cute bunnies or unicorns—or anything else.

I do now have an autographed copy of Damned and am looking forward to reading it.

The Official Chuck Palahniuk Website

Almost Forgot...

2011-11-15T22:11:00.001-06:00

Happy birthday, Jon.

You old fart.

WIP Update: Jaskaran's Tale

2011-11-14T19:49:00.001-06:00

Okay, I'm not gonna lie, it feels pretty damn good to sit here and write that I've completed the first draft on my second story. Count it, that's two, baby!

*dances wildly*

Yes, I'm pretty impressed with myself right now. I know it's only the first draft of a novella, not a complete book, and there's still a ton of editing ahead of me, but it's still pretty darn cool to know that within the matter of a few months I should have two different stories ready to be sent out there.

So you want deets? The novella is tentatively titled Jaskaran's Tale. I know that title doesn't reach out and grab you from the front of the shirt like To Kill the Goddess does, but I think in this case that simple name serves my purpose well. Jaskaran's Tale is a companion story to To Kill the Goddess. It's a tragic, YA-ish love story that follows the exploits of Jaskaran, a female character who plays a minor role in To Kill the Goddess. My original plan for To Kill the Goddess was for Jaskaran to be one of the major characters, but it soon became apparent that her story was tangential to the rest of the rest of the novel and so *shredding noise* I ripped her out.

Fast forward a about a year and a half, to sometime in late September. I was sitting in Common Roots, drinking a beer – as I am wont to do before Scribblerati meet ups – and working on plotting out the broad arc to To Kill the Goddess’ sequel when I flipped the page in my notebook and wrote Jaskaran's name on the page. One Surly later I had the shell of her story mapped out and now I have just a hair under 15,000 words completed.

My plan for the next month or two is to edit the heck out of Jaskaran's Tale and have it ready for the Scribblerati to review sometime January-ish. After that? Well, I'm not sure.
Jaskaran's Tale and To Kill the Goddess both exist in the same world and in the same timeframe so I thought about using one to help sell the other. But do I put them out at the same time? Put one out before the other?

Yeesh. Marketing. Now I have to figure that out too!

Blogger, Google+, Tumblr, or Honey Badger?

2011-11-09T20:00:00.000-06:00

Blogging is hard. Seriously. Not like writing a novel hard, but still, it takes thought, planning, editing, and the most difficult part of all: a theme. Blogging, at least for me, isn't something I can do on an everyday basis. I mean, I probably could, but then there would be less time for writing, or my lovely wife, or I'd have to give up my day job, etc. and I'm not really thrilled with any of those options.

But on the flip side – I kind of have a lot to say. Or at least, a lot I would like to say, and most of those things really don't lend themselves to a full-length blog. A lot of times it's little stuff like hey I found this article that I thought would be cool to pass along, or so-and-so tweeted this and I'm sure you'd like to know, and so forth. Kinda like what I started doing on our brand spanking new Google+ stream.

Unfortunately, I feel like there are a lot of similarities between Google+ and the tree that falls in the forest. I really like Google+, but nobody's really using it yet. Tumblr, on the other hand, tends to attract a lot of people and it also lends itself to the type of shorter form posts I recently put on Google plus. Although I'm not sure of the extent to which people can comment on Tumbler... Oh, and Facebook is out because their Terms of Service state that they own everything you post.

So I put this out there to you fellow Scribblerati and fine readers: would you rather see short form posts here on Blogger, or on Google+ or Tumblr? Or maybe you, like the honey badger (NSFW) just don't give a [BLEEP]. That's a valid response too!

Google+

2011-11-07T19:37:00.002-06:00

Yo, The Scribblerati is now on Google+

Add us to your circles and we'll add you back!

Sale: "Harris" by Jonathan Hansen

2011-11-02T17:01:00.001-05:00

Saturday was a good day for me.

Why, you ask?

Because I made my first sale!

I know, right? Awesome.

So, the sale was a short story entitled Harris. It's about a group of survivors scratching out a life, scavenging among the rubble of downtown Minneapolis in the aftermath of an alien invasion. It's supposed to be a nice little action piece about regular people in a wild setting with insane obstacles and a simple motivation.

I sold it to a local short story anthology called Cifiscape, Vol. 2 (pronounced Sci-fi scape). The 1st volume is pictured below and you can get your very own copy here. The good folks behind the book plan on having a website up soon. When they do, you can rest assured that I will post it here... probably more than once. In the meantime, the book is published by Onyx Neon Press, a small press out of the Pacific Northwest, I gather. In my opinion, they all seem like lovely people, so feel free to check them out, maybe even pick up a copy of Cifiscape, Vol. 1, if you want.

Cool, right? But I know what you're thinking: When is the one with my short story in it coming out?

I don't know.

Probably next year, as the whole editing/book/blah-blah-blah hasn't even started yet. I am told, however, that process will start this month and so... probably next year. When I have a date, I'll let you know... alot... most likely. The really crazy part is that when it comes out, it will be a new frontier for me. I'll exist. Out there. In the world. People will see it (hopefully). People I don't know, even (hopefully). It's strange to think about, exciting to imagine too, but weird. A little scary, maybe. I mean, what if...

Hmmm... Well, time will tell, I guess. Stay tuned, faithful masses, more information will be disseminated as it received!

WOOO!
Jon

Characters – Surprise & Contradiction

2011-10-28T06:12:00.003-05:00

A friend of mine recently gave me a CD that celebrates Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, with various authors (including Bradbury) reading and commenting on that wonderful book, a book that hasn’t been out of print in the last 50 or so years. As I listened to the first paragraphs where the main character, Montag, is burning books, I was drawn in by the poetry of the piece, but also by the glorious contradiction in his character. He’s a fireman, see? A fireman burning books. Now Bradbury is having a bit of fun, or maybe just showing off his brilliance. If you’re going to write a story of a dystopian world where books are burned, why not make your main character a fireman, someone we readers think of as the person we want to show up to stop a fire in progress—but in this world, firemen are the bad guys. The main character is part of the story’s problem—and has lots of room to grow and change as the story moves on.

When I think of my favorite characters from other books and TV shows, it is often contradiction that makes certain characters stand out and makes them, well, my favorites. Often in the contradiction is the surprise factor—and in that unusual aspect is what makes for a memorable character. Here are just a few of my favorite contradictory-filled characters from TV and books:

Ender, the main character from Orson Scott Card’s Enders Game is the strategic master upon which the Earth’s fate rests. And he’s just a kid (six in the opening scene).

This character spends his days working on the police force as a forensics/blood spatter expert—at night he goes looking for criminals to kill and dispose of. (Dexter from the TV series of the same name.)

He’s a drunk, half-blind U.S. Marshall with a shady military past who is a fifteen-year-old girl’s only chance of finding justice for her murdered father. (Rooster T. Cogburn from True Grit by Charles Portis)

He’s a golden lab. He can also spell and would probably beat you at Scrabble. (Einstein, the dog, from Dean Koontz’s Watchers.)

She’s a restored 1958 red and white Plymouth—and she’s alive. (The car, Christine, from Steven King’s novel of the same name.)

He loves car racing and wants to be reincarnated as a man (Enzo, also a dog, from The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein).

As an android with a positronic brain, he is capable of amazing computational thought—but more than anything he longs to understand human beings and experience human emotions. (Data, from Star Trek The Next Generation TV series.)

Here’s one of the characters from my novel, Blackheart:

Noel August is a 16-year-old girl who likes boys, pop music, dressing in pink and can talk to angels. Hopefully you can spot the contradiction (or at least unusual attribute). Yeah, it’s the pop music thing.

So who are your favorite contradictory characters? If you’re a writer, what contradictions have you given your character(s) to make them strong and memorable?

Hyperion

2011-10-18T18:45:00.000-05:00

First of all, to those of you who thought this was anobituary blog, this post has nothing to do with anyone who has died. So, myapologies.

For the rest of you – score! Once again this blog is aboutwriting!

Sorta.

Actually, this particular post is about reading.Specifically, the fact that I actually read a book. I think this is my secondor third book this year, which is both shocking and exciting. Shocking for theobvious reasons, and exciting because with Two Kill the Goddess out of the wayI actually have time to do something besides work, say hi to my lovely wife,sleep, eat, write, and do a bit of yoga.

So what did I choose for this momentous occasion? An old book,one I've talked about before: Dan Simmons’ Hyperion.

I first read this book – when was it? Let's see… Looks likethis edition was printed in March of 1990. That would be after it won thatyear's Hugo Award. Let's just say it was a long time ago.

Now, with some of the things I've gone back and recentlyreread, I have been somewhat disappointed. Case in point: Margaret Weis andTracy Hickman’s Dragon Lance saga. Holy crap did I geek out over those when Iwas a teenager. I mean, who doesn't love Raistlin? Another good example wouldbe Melanie Rawn’s Dragon Prince, etc. which was a staple of my early collegeyears. None of those really turn my crank the way they used to. I still likethe stories and they do have sentimental value, but now whenever I readmy Scribblerati brain turns on and I begin to critique. That wasespecially detrimental in the case of Dragon Lance, somewhat less so withMelanie Rawn’s work. Some ofthat, I think, is maturing, but a lot of it is that I now recognize that thosebooks weren't as well-written as I thought they were. They were great stories,but they weren't as well executed as my Scribblerati brain would like.

Dan Simmons’ Hyperion has none of those problems. In fact,I'm even more in awe of this guy's writing now that I was a bajillion years ago.My book, To Kill the Goddess, with its multiple character viewpoints andsprawling world building, rivals Hyperion in complexity, but Dan Simmons takeswhat I've struggled with and makes it look easy. Hyperion is at oncehorrifying, mesmerizing, inspiring, and beautiful. And I’m jealous. ;-)

Go buy a copy while you can still find one to put on yourbookshelf. You'll be glad you did.

RIP Dennis Ritchie

2011-10-14T23:29:00.000-05:00

This probably isn't a face you're familiar with.

Unlike Steve Jobs, Dennis Ritchie wasn't a public figure. He was an engineer, and the programmer, and the inventor of, among other things, the C programming language, and the UNIX operating system.

For most of you reading this blog, those two things probably don't mean much. Today, we take things like computers, and the Internet, and the voice translation software I'm using to write this blog post, for granted. Today, these things are a part of our everyday lives. 40 years ago, however, it was a much different story. 40 years predates the Internet by 20 years, give or take, and the personal computer by another 10 on top of that.

40 years ago, Dennis Ritchie was inventing the things that would make much of what we have today possible.

Just to give you a little perspective, the C programming language and the UNIX operating system, while still in existence today, are more commonly known as the forerunners of much of the technology that runs today's Internet. The programming language known as Java is the direct descendent of C and today Java exists in everything from Internet Web servers to the Android phone you might hold in your hand. UNIX is just as prevalent. UNIX still runs a significant percentage of the Internet and it is the forerunner of commonplace technologies such as Mac OS X, which just might be displaying the blog post you're reading right now.

So grab yourself a beer, or a soda, or the libation of your choice, and raise a toast to Dennis Ritchie because without him this world would be a much different place.

RIP

2011-10-05T21:04:00.001-05:00

Years ago I was having a conversation with my dad. We were sitting on his crappy couch in the little apartment he'd rented after separating from my mom. I don't remember exactly why I was there because at the time I was married, graduated, and no longer living back at home. I was probably just there to visit, and it probably wasn't too long after him setting up in the apartment.

We talked about a lot of things that day, most of which I no longer remember, but there was one thing he asked me that I'll never forget. He asked me why I didn't have any kids yet. I wasn't really prepared for the question, but I answered truthfully. I said I didn't know and that it just hadn't been a priority. He asked me, “Don't you want something to pass on in this world? Some kind of legacy that will last after you're gone?” I told him I didn't know if I'd ever have kids, but that I hoped that someday my legacy would live on in a book that people could read long after my time on this world was done.

Strange that I finished the beta draft of my first novel a day before Steve Jobs died.

I don't expect to be famous. All I want is to make a nice little ripple in this pond we live in. All I want is for some geeky picked on kid, or some tired and aspiring college student, or somebody's mom or dad to pick up my book and find a little escape from the crappy world that we live in.

If that was my legacy, I’d put that on my tombstone and die a happy man.

I can't imagine changing the world.

Rest in peace, Steve Jobs.

2011-09-30T15:00:00.000-05:00

Fall's always hard for a gardener philosopher. This one is more so. Somehow, my life appears to have gone a bit wild without first getting my expressed consent. Some of the craziness is my own choice, some isn't. In any case, for the last bit, I've been feeling overwhelmed emotionally and intellectually and creatively. So today's blog? SHORT! UPDATES! ADVICE!

Update #1: I am officially declaring my beta-draft ready for my beta-readers. (This is probably something like my sixth or seventh draft.) I will be sending it out to my potential beta-readers today.

Update #2: I've incorporated a blog into one of my classes, Telling the Story Queer, a first-year seminar that's focusing on story-tellers who break narrative conventions. As a way to make student writing more real, (i.e. not writing to an audience of one--the prof,) I'm having them blog about our novels. They've all just introduced themselves; next week they'll start on their reflections on Fun Home, the graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel. I would love it if Scribblerati readers/members would pop over occasionally and comment on the student blogs. Find us here.

Advice #1: Do you feel the need to self-medicate? But do you also need to be prepared to be awoken for the day at 5:30 in the morning when your kidlink stumbles into your bed? Yoga is good, sugar is grand, but Sherlock is better. Last year the BBC updated Sherlock Holmes. Clever, silly, and fun. And streaming on Netflix.

Advice #2: Especially for Ms. Claudia. I've also been enjoying the Forsyte Saga - yummy clothes, especially when they get to the 1920s; yummy architecture, especially the Arts and Craft-y/Deco-y Robin Hill; yummy cast: Gina McKee and Rupert Graves.

Cheerio. By my next blog things should be settling down.

Two years later...

2011-09-23T14:25:00.001-05:00

Who would have believed it to be possible, but two years ago, almost to the day, the Scribblerati put up their first post.

We had been around for a while before that, working, meeting, critiquing. We'd had some members come and go, but that first blog post really solidified us as a group. It cemented us as the core, as a team, and it put us out there in the world for the first time. It signified our intent.

From the original text:

The Scribblerati are:

Claudia Hankin Balluff
Was once voted 42nd "Sassiest Girl in America" by Sassy magazine. That's not top banana in the sassy department, but it's still pretty darn sassy.

Lisa Bergin
Philosophy professor; felted creature maker; food grower and preserver; mama who's at her calmest when she can carve out time to write her middle-grade novel.

Jon Hansen
Jon Hansen never wanted anything more than the simple, care-free life of a hammock-tester. Fate, it seems, has plans of its own...

Shawn Enderlin
Is a sci-fi / fantasy geek, foodie, alt music fanatic, comic loving, corporate IT slave who writes and travels with the lovely @mplstravelkitty.

Mark Teats
Author of BLACKHEART, specializes in angels, demons, dark dreams & fast-paced supernatural writing. Per Mayan prophecy his best seller will hit the shelves Fall 2012.

Two years later and we're still here.

We're still working. We're still unpublished, but we're still meeting, we're still critquing, still chugging along and going strong. But where are we? What are we up to? Now two years later, where do the storied Agents of the Scribblerati find themselves? Well... obviously Lisa still doesn't have a personal information page to link to... some things never change... and we recently attended our very first convention (Diversicon) with some all-bound-up-and-pretty samples of our work to hand out for a bit of swag, but other than that, let's see, shall we?

The Scribblerati

Claudia Hankin

Claudia currently splits her time between editing and rewriting the second draft of her novel, Ursala Evermore and the Case of the Man Who Wasn't, a time-traveling, murder mystery set in 1920s England, and promoting her husband's New Orleans dance-hall style jazz band: The Southside Aces.

Lisa Bergin

When she isn't teaching philosophy, working in her garden, or creating terrifying wool-animals, Lisa is circling the final draft of her novel, Once We Were Bears, the story of young bear turned into a girl who, with the help of three children from a post-apocalyptic world, must save the planet from itself, all narrated by a hill of sentient potatoes.

Jon Hansen

My first novel, Gunslingers of the Apocalypse is currently shelved pending a re-evaluation. You can read a sample of it here. So I'm between projects at the moment. I went on and on about it all, at great length, here. I'm actively looking for a new big project to dive into. It might have Dragons, Super-villains, or maybe some bad-ass, futuristic thieves versus some marauding demons, either way, I'm excited to get back to work.

Shawn Enderlin

Shawn is a self-described IT dude, a yogi, and a foodie who has just finished work on the second draft of his novel, To Kill the Goddess, a dark fantasy, sci-fi, Game of Thrones meets 9/11 mash-up. With the arrival of Fall, most Saturdays can find Shawn whooping it up for his beloved Golden Gophers football team.

Mark Teats

Mark is a father, a fencer, a fisher, and another IT guy (hmmm... there must be something wrong with those types...) who is nearly finished with the 4th draft of his novel, Blackheart, the story of an avenging Immortal, a cancer-ridden Private Investigator, and a psychic teenage girl versus the Armies of Hell, with the fate of all Creation and one very special child hanging in the balance. And when he's not working on that, he's busy forging a path through the first draft of his new novel, Sunlight, the tale of a man trying to survive in a world full of vampires.

So, where are we now?

We're hard at work. We may be called the Scribblerati now, but initially our name was "Gonna Get Published." That's everyone's goal, of course, but we've found that maintaining that attitude has helped shape the way we work together. This means an acceptance of different voices and styles. It means both giving and receiving tough but fair criticism. It means understanding that the goal of the process is to improve everyone's work. Most of all, it means supporting each other and pushing each other to keep at it.

In a nutshell: We're fun. We're funny. We're geeky, and we encourage everyone to write to the utmost of his or her abilities.

Where are we now?

We're doing good and we're still at it.

Stay tuned,

Jon

Of Sloths and Men

2011-09-16T12:45:00.012-05:00

Over the last week I had the opportunity to have two “behind the scenes” tours. One was at the MN Zoo, the other was a “ride along” with a local police officer (and good friend of mine). The first tour was purely for fun; the ride along was research for my next horror novel, SUNLIGHT (my main character has a police background). Both were fun experiences, and the background from the ride along will be invaluable for certain parts of my book. (Thank you, Officer.)

Here is what I learned, comparing the two experiences:

Attitude

Sloths: You really have to mess with a sloth to make it angry.

People: It doesn’t take that much to piss a person off, really. Many misbehave with little or no provocation at all.

Territory

Sloths: can live in one or a few trees for life. They stay high in the air, except once every 7 or 8 days when they come down to the earth to defecate.

People: most are law abiding and inhabit homes or frequent public places with friends and family. Those that don’t abide the law seem to hangout or wander around in places where they don’t belong, for instance retail stores or homes of ex-spouses where court orders are in place to keep them out. The result? More quality time with law enforcement. Defecation may still be involved.

Handling

Sloths: The zookeeper is able to conduct routine veterinary care on most sloths without sedatives. Jangled keys and almond extract placed throughout the enclosure may induce sloths to be more active and curious.

People: The police officer carries a taser, a sidearm, handcuffs and sometimes an AR15 or shotgun. These items come can in handy with some of the more lively human specimens.

Care of Young

Sloths: The gestation period for sloths is 10 – 12 months. Sloths nurse their young and otherwise protect them from harm until they reach the age of maturity.

People: may choose to fight with others and/or exercise poor judgment in front of their children with apparent disregard for the short or long term effects on their own offspring.

Intelligence

Sloths: Lay reclined in a comfortable tree branch in the sun or heat lamp, whichever is available.

People: Have advanced minds capable of deciphering complex problems like space travel—but when bored may seek leisure time activities which can be fun and harmless or may take the form of things like drinking and drug abuse, reckless driving, lying, cheating, stealing, vandalizing, assaulting, killing and/or committing suicide.

I’ll leave it to you to figure out which species is smarter.

Holding Area

Sloth: a small enclosure with bars or metal mesh that smells like wiz and poo

Jailhouse inhabitants: a small enclosure with bars or metal mesh that smells like wiz and poo

Sloth vs. Dinosaur

Named after one of the cardinal sins?

Sloth

Number currently hiding in witness protection

People: Over 7500 witnesses

Sloths: 1

Who’d I rather hang out with some days?

Sloths—but I need to work on my upper body strength first. I also get dizzy hanging upside down.

I hereby dedicate this post to the zookeepers and police officers who do a helluva job day in and day out. I’m glad you’re out there using your good judgment protecting those under your charge and keeping the animals and/or people in line as needed. Keep up the good work.

Fall Update

2011-09-09T17:25:00.004-05:00

Welcome back loyal readers!

It's a gorgeous time of year, isn't it? Everything's still lush and green and yet it's cooled off and dried out and there's just a nip of fall in the morning and evening air. It's perfect weather for outdoor barbecues, Big Ten college football (go Gophers!), and a WIP update from yours truly!

You may recall this post back in February where I said I'd finished my rewrite of To Kill the Goddess. Now I can one up that because I've just recently finished my Beta Draft! That's six months of work for those keeping track. Six months where I edited the heck out of everything, rewrote a few chapters, and generally holed up inside my room for hours on end and disappeared from my wife's life.

Thank God it's over!

I mean seriously, it was a frakking death march.

So what am I up to now? I have to admit, there's a little bit of relaxing going on. One of the big reasons I was making a big push to get done was so that I would have time to watch a bunch of college football without feeling guilty. So I'm doing that. (How about that Jerry Kill, eh?)

I've also been doing some writing. Something new. Something without all the fighting and biting that takes place at the end of a good sci-fi/fantasy novel. It's a little something I've tentatively entitled, "A Red Blooded American Guy and Gal Get Stuck in an Elevator." Yes, it's a little outside my usual genre, okay a lot, and I won't be querying it, but damn is it nice to write something different for once. It's like standing up and stretching after sitting at your work desk for hours on end, only just a wee bit different.

Of course, all this begs the question: Shawn, what are you going to do with this fancy pants novel now that it's done?

Good question.

I've written a lot of posts about self-publishing, and many of them have ended with me saying how happy I am I am I don't have to decide whether I want to self publish or not. Well, time's kind of running out on that.

So here's what I'm thinking. I'm going to query TKTG. Yes, I'm going to take the plunge, but like everything else I seem to do, I'm not going to do it the traditional way. My query letter is going to say something along the lines of: “Yes, I'm seeking agent representation, but I don't really have any interest in signing a traditional contract with a traditional publisher. I want to self publish, or I want to publish through a publishing house that puts e-book distribution before physical book distribution.”

Yeah, clearly I have to wordsmith that, but you get my drift.

So am I crazy? I don't know. What I do know is that every day I see new tweets about some bookstore or another closing and about how e-books are taking a bigger and bigger slice of the traditional market and that just isn't good. The way I see it, it's simple economics. An industry based on physical book distribution can't exist in today's environment, not without change, and I just don't see enough of that happening. Don't get me wrong, it would be a dream come true to publish with somebody like TOR, but I just don't think I can take that risk right now. Like I said here, my worst fear is that I would sign a contract and then in the 18 to 24 months it would take to get my book on shelves, the industry would fall apart and I'd be left with my book rights wrapped up by a company that was either severely wounded, bankrupt, or worse.

I'm just not gonna do it.

So there you have it, folks. Maybe I'm crazy, but maybe I'm not. All I know, is that I feel like I'm standing at the entrance to a long, dark tunnel that has no visible end and I don't know where I'm going to end up, but it's COOL. I feel like somewhere inside that tunnel is a door and just like Roland Deschain, I'm gonna open it, and it's gonna take me to places I've never been before.

Stay tuned….

NPR's Top 100 Science-Fiction, Fantasy Books

2011-09-03T11:31:00.000-05:00

So I don't know about the rest of you fine and devoted readers, but it seems like I've been barely caring my weight around here lately. I blame it entirely on the WIP but have no fear, the Beta Draft is a sword thrust away from being complete!! More on that later…

Here, for your Labor Day enjoyment, is NPR’s Your Picks: Top 100 Science-Fiction, Fantasy Books, along with some thoughts of my own, some nice pics, yada yada…

1. The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien

well of course

2. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams

the first of many that I've never actually read. Every time I say I've never read this everybody's like, what??? I know, I know. But when I was in high school and this was popular EVERYONE was reading it and then just turned me off. Yes, I'm one of those people.

3. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card

I've extolled the virtues of this book before, along with a few others.

4. The Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert

I've read the first one. It's good. Not like, “fourth best book ever good,” but good.

5. A Song Of Ice And Fire Series, by George R. R. Martin

Okay, so, The Scribblerati kept telling me two things about this book: that it was frakking awesome, and that my WIP was similar. So what did I do? I didn't read it, and I still haven't, but I have seen the HBO series and OMG is it frakking awesome! And yes, there are several similarities between it and my WIP.

6. 1984, by George Orwell

never read it (this is the beginning of a trend).

7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

Nope.

8. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov

Started but never finished the first one. That was way back when I was just when I was just a young un so to be fair probably I should probably give it another shot.

9. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

Uh, no. Noticing a trend here?

10. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman

Now I have to say, I really don't have anything against Neil Gaiman. I think he's a really talented writer but I just don't honestly get why everybody is all Ga-Ga Pants for everything he writes. It just doesn't melt my butter.

11. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman

Really? #11?

12. The Wheel Of Time Series, by Robert Jordan

I read the first one and I thought it was pretty good, good enough to buy the second and then I was like, man am I tired of all the series where you have to wait forever in between books. I'm just gonna wait until it's all done.

Still waiting…

13. Animal Farm, by George Orwell

OK, I get it, but do people feel obligated to vote these kind of stories or something?

14. Neuromancer, by William Gibson

**embarrassed** I really should do something about this….

15. Watchmen, by Alan Moore

Fascinating. A graphic novel made the NPR list! But then that opens up all sorts of arguments about why this or that graphic novel didn't make the list. And there's some really great stuff out there…

16. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov

Oh, that's not what they meant…

17. Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein

Now here's a “classic” that I actually have read. I read it when I was a teenager, which may be why I haven't read any more like this. It was good, but I was really more into a lot of things that haven't made the list yet.

18. The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss

Never heard of it.

19. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

Nope.

20. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley

oh please…

21. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick

Care to guess?

22. The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood

I’ve heard of Margaret Atwood, of course, but not the book.

23. The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King

Only #23? SERIOUSLY PEOPLE! Even with the lackluster ending in the final volume this is one of the greatest pieces of literature ever produced.

24. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke

Eh…

25. The Stand, by Stephen King

I really need to read this.

26. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson

27. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury

28. Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut

29. The Sandman Series, by Neil Gaiman

Nope.

30. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess

No, but the move totally frakked with my teenage head.

31. Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein

I'm guessing the shower scene in the book is nowhere as near as exciting as it is in the movie.

32. Watership Down, by Richard Adams

33. Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey

I read several of these when I was really young and I wish I still had them – where did they go?

34. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein

35. A Canticle For Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller

36. The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells

37. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, by Jules Verne

38. Flowers For Algernon, by Daniel Keys

39. The War Of The Worlds, by H.G. Wells

No, not her. I've never read the book, but I remember watching the classic movie adaptation back in the 80s, when I was 12ish. They were running it on that, what was it? Masterpiece Theatre on TNT? It blew my mind.

40. The Chronicles Of Amber, by Roger Zelazny

Finally were getting into some good stuff! I must have read the first five half-dozen times and while the second five started out with serious promise they really sputtered out at the end.

41. The Belgariad, by David Eddings

LOVE THESE! Yes they are full of tropes but they are fun!

42. The Mists Of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Beautiful book. 42 is a disservice.

43. The Mistborn Series, by Brandon Sanderson

??

44. Ringworld, by Larry Niven

45. The Left Hand Of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin

46. The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien

This isn't a real book….

47. The Once And Future King, by T.H. White

48. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman

49. Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke

50. Contact, by Carl Sagan

Great movie. And who doesn’t love Jodi Foster?

51. The Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons

Not even in the top 50 - such a shame! I love these books so much I want to marry them!

52. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman

53. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson

54. World War Z, by Max Brooks

55. The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle

Haven't read it but ...

56. The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman

??

57. Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett

58. The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever, by Stephen R. Donaldson

I read the first one and, well, not so much…

59. The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold

60. Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett

61. The Mote In God's Eye, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

62. The Sword Of Truth, by Terry Goodkind

Another one that I read the first novel of and not any more. No offense to Mr. Goodkind, but it makes me wonder, how many times can we write that same story again and again?

63. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

64. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke

Weird book. I got like 100 pages in and still nothing had happened…

65. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson

Okay, I probably should read that.

66. The Riftwar Saga, by Raymond E. Feist

These books are like yummy candy.

67. The Shannara Trilogy, by Terry Brooks

Okay, so I probably shouldn't like these as much as I do, but damn I love these. Let me just say, there's a reason that the magic wielding people in my WIP are called Druids and it starts and ends with Terry Brooks.

68. The Conan The Barbarian Series, by R.E. Howard

Jason moma Man Crush!

69. The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb

70. The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger

71. The Way Of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson

72. A Journey To The Center Of The Earth, by Jules Verne

I think those Robin Hobb books should probably be on my list.

73. The Legend Of Drizzt Series, by R.A. Salvatore

Sweet! These make me want to get out my dragon dice.

74. Old Man's War, by John Scalzi

75. The Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson

76. Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke

77. The Kushiel's Legacy Series, by Jacqueline Carey

78. The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin

I read this for a class in college and it single-handedly got me re-interested in science fiction after years of being nothing but a fantasy junkie.

79. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury

80. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire

81. The Malazan Book Of The Fallen Series, by Steven Erikson

Never heard of it.

82. The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde

Or this one.

83. The Culture Series, by Iain M. Banks

84. The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart

This is one of the first novels I ever read. I don't even think I was 10 and I was slogging through this one page at a time. But if there was one thing that's true then that is still true now, it's that there isn't enough magic.

85. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson

86. The Codex Alera Series, by Jim Butcher

87. The Book Of The New Sun, by Gene Wolfe

88. The Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn

Two words: Mara Jade!

These are easily the best Star Wars novels ever written. The only thing that comes close is Michael Stakpole’s X-Wing series.

89. The Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldan

90. The Elric Saga, by Michael Moorcock

Oh, Elric of Melnibone, I totally have a hard on for Stormbringer, even if it does eat souls.

91. The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury

92. Sunshine, by Robin McKinley

93. A Fire Upon The Deep, by Vernor Vinge

94. The Caves Of Steel, by Isaac Asimov

95. The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson

96. Lucifer's Hammer, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

97. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis

98. Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville

Weird book.

99. The Xanth Series, by Piers Anthony

I don't think I could read this today, but at the time, when I was a teenager, these were full of awesome.

100. The Space Trilogy, by C.S. Lewis

Well, that's it friends. Thanks for sticking in there. It was a blast!

I'll leave you with this curious omission...

When Do You Know It's Time To Move On?

2011-08-26T11:42:00.006-05:00

I have lost track of the number of full revisions Once We Were Bears has gone through. Which is to say it has been uncountably many.

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to "move Beryl into the world." I'm quoting from the fragments of intentions I developed last January when I took advantage of a generous offer from my massage therapist: a free, New Year's yoga session for her clients. Some wicked challenging poses, a variety of thoughts on values, goals, and courage, and then space and silence and time to write.

In that stillness an image came to me: blackbirds flying.

I'm getting close to letting Beryl take flight, but I'm still holding on, fiddling with the small stuff before sending her out to Beta Readers. How small? Well, let's just leave it at the fact that I'm currently running a search for the word of. Yes. OF. (I use it a lot, and sometimes the line works better without it.) But seriously? Of?

So, yeah, I suppose it's about time for those birds to fly.

And what better time for blackbirds and endings and moving on than autumn?

-----

The opening image is the paper cut art of Nikki McClure, whose calendar I buy every year for myself and those close friends and family unable to make monthly use my bathroom in order to see the beauty she creates with a piece of paper and an X-acto knife.

Name Game Quiz Answers

2011-08-20T13:35:00.009-05:00

Here are the answers to the name game quiz from a couple of weeks ago.

If you want to take the quiz before you read the answers, check out the original post HERE.

Shirtless Nathan Fillion: Cynical ploy for more hits, or Mrrrrrrrowwww: You be the judge.

1. Popeye Doyle: movie The French Connection (Gene Hackman).

2. Travis Bickle: movie Taxi Driver (Robert DeNiro).

3. Sarafina Pekkala: book series His Dark Materials (Philip Pullman).

4. Elinor Dashwood: book and movie Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen).

5. Zaphod Beeblebrox: book, TV show and movie Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)

6. Angus Thermopyle: book series The Gap Cycle (Stephen R. Donaldson).

7. George Bailey: movie It's a Wonderful Life (Jimmy Stewart).

8. Malcom Reynolds: television show Firefly (Nathan Fillion).

9. Mad Sweeny: book (and soon to be TV series) American Gods (Neil Gaiman).

10. Salacious B. Crumb: movie Return of the Jedi (Jabba's little ratty puppet friend).

11. Atticus Finch: book and movie To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee).

12. Corky St. Clair: movie Waiting for Guffman (Christopher Guest).

13. Raleigh St. Clair: movie The Royal Tenenbaums (Bill Murray).

14. Jerry Lundegaard: movie Fargo (William H. Macy).

15. Inigo Montoya : book and movie The Princess Bride (Mandy Patinkin).

16. Holly Golightly: book and movie Breakfast at Tiffany's (Audrey Hepburn).

17. Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps (pronounced "Fungy Fipps"): several Jeeves and Wooster books and television episodes (P.G. Wodehouse).

18. Brian Crookshanks: movie Charade (Cary Grant).

19. Archie Leach (this is a famous person's real name and a character name): Cary Grant's real name, and John Cleese's character's name in A Fish Called Wanda.

20. Charlotte Haze: book and movie(s) Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov).

Happy Birthday Ray Bradbury!

2011-08-20T06:54:00.005-05:00

I’ve written about Ray Bradbury at least a half dozen times on this blog, and Monday 8/22 is his birthday, so I figured I’d just dedicate this post to him.

Some of my first memories of books revolve around Mr. Bradbury. As a small child I recall playing on the floor of my father’s den while my dad read Bradbury books. I could always tell Ray’s books—they were the ones with the skulls and rockets and dinosaurs on the back cover. Even before I could read I was intrigued by what might be inside. Later, when I was finally old enough to start reading on my own, I couldn’t help but gravitate back towards books like “The Illustrated Man” and “Golden Apples of the Sun.” After reading one book I had to move on and read the next.

Ray is one of the many authors who have inspired me as a writer. What do I like most about Ray Bradbury’s writing? Three words come to mind: poetry, darkness and foresight. The images he conjures in his stories are something I aspire to. His vision and ability to see into the dark places in the everyday human world and at times predict the future with his writing are also amazing to me. These words, writing advice from his book, “Zen in the Art of Writing,” hang over my desk as my writing mantra, WORK, RELAX, DON’T THINK.

I could go on and on about his works and accomplishments, but instead I encourage you to check out some of the links below that speak for themselves.

In conclusion—Happy Birthday, Ray! Thank you for all your imagination, inspiration and influence on the world of fiction.

Sam Weller, discusses Bradbury's accomplishments in science fiction

Links to some great Bradbury short stories:

The Fog Horn

All Summer in a Day

The Veldt (the first holodeck story?)

A Sound of Thunder

The October Game

Ray Bradbury Maternity Shirts

http://www.cafepress.com/+ray-bradbury+womens-maternity

On Writing:

Ray Bradbury on Writing Persistently

Ray Bradbury Quotes:

“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

“Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down.”

“Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.”

“Recreate the world in your own image and make it better for your having been here.”

“Stuff your eyes with wonder. Live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made up or paid for in factories.”

“Anything you dream is fiction, and anything you accomplish is science, the whole history of mankind is nothing but science fiction.”

“My job is to help you fall in love.” ~ Ray Bradbury

Update to my previous post on Diversicon, Self Publishing, and Amanda Hocking

2011-08-13T15:49:00.000-05:00

Here's the link to the original post. Go read it and then tell Mark how much you like Rush!

RUSH: What They Taught Me About Writing

2011-08-11T15:51:00.003-05:00

I finally saw the 2010 documentary, RUSH: Beyond the Lighted Stage about the rock band of the same name http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1545103/

I really enjoyed it—although I was a bit biased going into the film. I’ve seen RUSH in concert at least 3 times during the last 20 years. During my teen and college years I spent many an hour (sometimes while writing and/or doing homework) listening to the fantastic guitaring, drumming and lyrics of RUSH. The movie has some fun cameos featuring various actors and musicians who have been influenced by their music.

As I watched “Beyond the Lighted Stage” I could not help but marvel at their wisdom and how they developed their craft from high school students forming a band to prolific rock legends. Here are a few tidbits I learned from this movie that I think apply as much to writing as to rock and roll.

Practice, practice, practice
Have a sense of humor about yourself
Your art is just one aspect of your life (be it music or writing)
Your health and well being are more important than your art
Build on known stories and mythos
Good friends can help you succeed
It’s not about the booze, drugs and chicks
Go for your passion
Don’t focus on making money
Ignore expectations of others
Be true to yourself/don’t cater to what sells and you’ll succeed
Read – it’s good for your writing/lyrics (Neil Pert)
A large nose can come in handy (Geddy Lee)
Humility is a good thing
Always be open to new influences
You can always learn something new
Be aware of what you have—and appreciate it
Hard work & virtue are rewarded
Some of my favorite RUSH songs:

The Trees: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4amV7__XFA

La Villa Stangiato: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78D00dYOBrM

Closer to the Heart: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEgXe-gQxX4

Spirit of the Radio: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm0hSUs6giA

Red Barchetta: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMtTJS3YcMc

Help RUSH into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lets-get-RUSH-into-the-Rock-and-Roll-Hall-of-Fame/102414003128378

The Name Game

2011-08-05T13:20:00.020-05:00

Names are fun.

- end post -

Heh.

No, but really now. The great fun in naming your characters is that you can chose a suitable name for a fully-formed adult. In real life, Eugene Schwab may grow up to be an Ultimate Fighter, and Rock Hardshanks may end up an actuary. Although, come to think of it, that's pretty unlikely. There's a certain amount of manifest destiny in a name, I think.

I remember an episode of Airwolf (yeah, you heard me right) - where the main character, Stringfellow Hawke, (*snort*) is talking about how pretty girls always have pretty girl names. Wait. That doesn't sound like ol' Stringy. On second thought, it was probably Riptide. (I get those 80's helicopter-centric action shows mixed up.) Anyway, his point is proven again and again throughout the episode when every gorgeous girl they meet is a Vanessa or a Gabrielle, and every plain Jane is... well, just that. The reason why this sticks in my mind is that one of the beautiful woman they meet is named, you guessed it, "Claudia."

I'm a Claudia, and I love my name. It's quite rare in the U.S., rare enough that it was a bit torturesome to wield it as a child, but well worth it in the end - so thanks Mom and Dad!

We as authors have less responsibility to our characters in naming them, which is deliiiicious. We can call a guy, oh, say, Severus Snape: a horribly cruel appellation for a child, but a fantastic name for a morally ambiguous wizard.

J.K. Rowling, the creator of Harry Potter and the aforementioned Snape, is a genius with names, although sometimes she can get a little too literal. This is fine, and even humorous when she's dealing with minor characters like Professor Sprout (Herbology teacher) or Adalbert Waffling (author of "Magical Theory"), but when it comes to a major character like Remus Lupin, the literalness of his name not only defies logic, it's also a spoiler. And speaking of which.... SPOILER ALERT, (but not really if you've ever taken Latin or studied mythology), Remus Lupin is a werewolf. But he wasn't born a werewolf, he was bitten as a child. How bizarre that he was given a name that pretty much translates as "Wolf Child McWolferstien Van Wolfysnout," and THEN LATER was turned into a werewolf! Quelle Coincidence! But I get it, Rowling's being sly, and I forgive her, because she's Queen Awesome, and also came up with the names Cornelius Fudge, Belletrix LeStrange and Neville Longbottom.

someone aged well

So then, here are some of my favorite names. Let's make this a game, shall we? I'll give the name, you provide the book, movie, or T.V. show from whence the character hails. Some of these will be easy peasy. For obvious reasons, I've left out names that are also titles. (Indiana Jones, Austin Powers, Sweeny Todd...)

No interwebs, please. Answer in comments below!

1. Popeye Doyle

2. Travis Bickle

3. Sarafina Pekkala

4. Elinor Dashwood

5. Zaphod Beeblebrox

6. Angus Thermopyle

7. George Bailey

8. Malcom Reynolds

9. Mad Sweeny

10. Salacious B. Crumb

11. Atticus Finch

12. Corky St. Clair

13. Raleigh St. Clair

14. Jerry Lundegaard

15. Inigo Montoya

16. Holly Golightly

17. Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps (pronounced "Fungy Fipps")

18. Brian Crookshanks

19. Archie Leach (this is a famous person's real name and a character name)

20. Charlotte Haze

If you want to guess without reading other people's guesses, post below before you read others' comments!

And what are your favorite character names?

On Diversicon and the Success of Amanda Hocking

2011-08-02T21:26:00.002-05:00

So a couple of writing groups, a senior editor at Tor, and a bunch of writing enthusiasts go to a con…

No, that isn't the start of a really poor joke, that's what happened at Diversicon last weekend. The Scribblerati were there, as were some of the Wyrdsmiths and several others. We, The Scribblerati, hosted a panel on writing groups and then we attended several other of the sessions. It was our first con and we’re all glad we went, but now that we have dipped our toes into the great pool of con-dom (get your mind out of the gutter) we’re ready for more. I think Wiscon or Convergence might be in our future. Stay tuned!

Among the many things I heard at Diversicon, one offhand comment really caught my attention. The comment was made about self-publishing and was made in a rather disdainful in tone. It went something like this, “there's a clear difference in quality of self published books.”

The Diversicon comment wasn't the first time I've heard that opinion about the quality of self published books. I've done a lot of research on self-publishing because, as longtime readers of this blog know, I have been thinking long and hard about self-publishing my WIP, To Kill the Goddess. But one thing I hadn't done (until recently) is actually buy a self published book and read it. So, a few weeks ago, I decided it was time to check out some of the competition. Who better to start with then someone who has turned themselves into a millionaire by self-publishing?

I chose Switched (Tryelle Trilogy, book 1) by Amanda Hocking.

At this point I've only read about half of Switched. The story is put together well and the technical/grammatical editing is actually pretty good (although not as good as what I'm used to seeing in print) but there is, IMHO, room for improvement. In fact, there are things in this book that would be called out in a Scribblerati critique session. And speaking of the Scribblerati, I’m willing to go on the record as saying that everything we are currently turning out is just as technically well written, if not better, than Switched.

So maybe the person at Diversicon who made that comment was somewhat right, at least in this case, but I think they are missing the point. Amanda Hocking may not have written the best book I've ever read, but neither was it the worst and, if you ask me, I think Amanda Hocking is brilliant. She has made a boatload of money off the Tryelle Trilogy and I don't care how you slice it, that is nothing if not brilliant.

It's also, in my opinion, not terribly surprising.

One thing I think that we writers are is perfectionists. I mean, we are artists and artists tend to be highly critical of their own work. I'm no different. We tend to look at our art and say we need to make it the absolute best it can be and while that's great, the lesson that Amanda Hocking's success is giving us is that it's not necessary to be great.

I think this is something that people in the movie and music business have known for a long time. You and I both know a lot of money has been made off less than perfect songs and movies. Similarly, Amanda Hocking is telling us that we writers don't need to write War and Peace in order to be hugely successful. We just need to write something that's “good enough.”

If you stop and think about it, this notion of “good enough,” combined with our ability to self-publish something that falls into that category, is actually quite a revelation. Please don't misunderstand me, I'm not advocating a new world order where books are full of spelling errors, poor grammar, and disconnected plot threads. But maybe we writers should take a look at Amanda Hocking’s success and think about “good enough” the next time we’re staring down the face of a contract that pays a fraction of what we could earn by self-publishing.

After all, I imagine that after Amanda Hocking reads reviews that call into question the quality of her work, she laughs all the way to the bank.

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

UPDATE 8-13-2011

I like to maintain a positive attitude toward self-publishing, which can be challenging given how many people out there bagging on it. But today I am bummed out because just had a brief yet interesting twitter exchange with @jane_l regarding a HORRIBLE self-pubbed book (you can find the review here, but I don't recommend it because of the subject matter involved).

I think it's one thing to self-pub a novel with a few grammatical errors, or one that may not be as polished as it could be, but it's another thing entirely to self-pub something that's just awful.

As someone who would like to self-pub someday, that makes me mad. What is the likelihood that someone would take a chance on my self published novel after reading something as horrible as the book mentioned above?

Clearly, self-publishing, should I choose to go that route, will be challenging.

Sci-fi Conventions and Sample Books

2011-07-22T15:40:00.010-05:00

As our myriad of long time readers can attest, strange things have been afoot lately for the Scribblerati. There have been persistent plans and preparations! Anxiety and anticipation abound! And all for a single goal: The big day…

Diversicon!

Next Saturday (7/30/11) is going to mark a lot of firsts for us. It’s my first convention. It’s OUR first convention as a group. We're also running our first panel. It's about creating and maintaining a diverse writing group.

Sounds great, right?

Well guess what else? Not only is this a great opportunity to meet all the various and sundry Scribblerati Agents at the same time and place, but good friend of the Scribblerati, local Sci-fi author and Wyrdsmith Lyda Morehouse is one of the Guests of Honor. Fantastic!

Plus, there will probably be costumes, there will definitely be some interesting things to see and I can almost guarantee you that there will be even more interesting discussions to be had. Honestly, I’m not sure what to expect with this or how things will go or anything, but all in all, it sounds like a hell of a good time.

You should come, if you want. Or don't. Whatever.

Anyway, all the information—tickets, times, location, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera—can be found through the Diversicon link above. You really should check it out, come on down, have some fun, and support diversity in genre fiction and genre fiction in Minnesota in general while you’re at it.

But that’s not all…

Next Saturday will also be the first time the Scribblerati Sample Book will be available.

What’s the Scribblerati Sample Book?

Oh, it’s a thing of beauty. 50 pages. 5 Authors. 5 samples of their work, plus a quick bio and some contact information, for the low, low price of $5.50 (plus shipping and handling of course) and all of it created by us! Woo!

We’ve ordered a few for ourselves to hand out at the convention. Hopefully, those lucky few who receive them will be excited. If you’re interested and you think you might want a free copy, show up on Saturday, find one of us and ask. However, if you can’t make the convention and still want one... Here’s the link to where you can order your very own copy to have and to hold and to love forever. I’ll put a link up on the sidebar too.

The Scribblerati Sample Book

Pretty cool, huh?

Are you excited?

We are too.

See you next Saturday,

Jon

Before and After: A Mirror into the Editing Mind

2011-07-15T09:00:00.001-05:00

A few posts ago, I blogged about editing my WIP down to a more reasonable size. This time, I thought I'd give an example of my cutting, with line notes. A bit of background: Beryl (my bear in girls' clothing) has been posing as a student at Wood's Hall to gather information on humankind. She's found out, in a manner of speaking: one of her favorite humans, Meridel, the school librarian, realizes that Beryl thinks she's a bear and commits her. Facing an extended stay in a Psych Ward, Beryl calls her slice-of-weather guardian, Auntie Claire, to help her escape. Giant tornado! The hospital, town, and school destroyed! Months later, Beryl must deal with the emotional aftermath:

Scat it all down a well.

I know I said I wouldn’t write about it anymore. But ~~it’s happened again.~~ (Unnecessary) I’ve just woken up from another nightmare. Insiders’ faces, the ones I knew, who I thought were my friends, who I cannot think on without the stabbing pains. In the dreams, those faces weave in and out of images from my travels. Blood dripping from jaguar fang. Snake coiled tight. A shark whipping up the waters. I’m ~~still~~ drenched with sweat. Won’t be able to fall back asleep now.

I need to figure this out.

They can’t hurt me. They’re dead. I don’t have to be afraid of being trapped anymore, or worse: being killed at their hands. ~~I know this; so why can’t I just accept it?~~ (Blah sentence)

No, wait. Now that it’s written down, I see ~~it. What’s not right.~~[what’s wrong]. (Two less words! Says the same thing!) )I’m not afraid. That’s not the taste, the scent of what I’m feeling ~~whenever the trap snaps shut inside me.~~ Not fear. Pain. A ~~hurting pain, a~~ deep, ~~hurting~~ pain. (Thought this sounded better with the cut - crisper) But not caused by a scrape or a bruise or a cut or a….

I’m hurting. I’m hurt--

Oh. My. Dirt Clod.

I’m sad.

~~That’s what it is.~~ (Doesn't really need to be said.) I'm sad that I killed my own jailers. I’m scatting sad I had to destroy those who ~~were going~~ [wanted] to destroy me.

Perfect. Just Perfect. They trap me. And then they make me feel bad for what I had to do to escape? ~~Now, doesn’t that just take the chocolate cake.~~(Wrong emotional tone)

Why’d they make me do it? Why ~~did they~~ make me care about them in the first place? Why’d they have to be all friendly and sweet and funny and silly and smart? Lexie and Meridel and Mikey and Xander and Rebeka and Alex and Mr. Begin? I liked them.

I LIKED THEM!

~~I cared about them~~ ~~and I lived with them.~~ (What comes later says all this, but in a much more specific way, truer to Beryl's voice) We were a pack. ~~We were~~ a covey. And then they make me destroy them by capturing me and why oh why oh why would they do that to me?

I Hate Them!

My process has been to go through each scene. After I've cut, I read the scene aloud and find more to delete. I can tell I've been working for too long when I'm not finding much; if I come back later, I can see what I've missed. Note that I haven't cut out all the repetition: I've got three examples of riled up animals in the dream, "why oh why oh why...." Sometimes saying more is truer to the story and makes for a better telling. But often, it's just grey and deadening.

Current count: 102,623, down from 128,119.

Feel free to suggest further trimming, if you see any fluff.

Shawn Throws Down with the Wyrdsmiths!

2011-07-11T20:01:00.003-05:00

Okay, so really it's more of a thoughtful, civilized, and engaging conversation, but that just isn't as snappy, you know?

Tate started it here

Then Eleanor posted here and here.

That's where I "threw down" - check out the comments. (I'm like a moth to flame when it comes to e-pubbing.)

Then Doug posted replied here.

My Superfly-splash is in the comments.

Will there be more? Stay tuned...

Running with Geeks

2011-06-30T23:32:00.009-05:00

My wife and I had the pleasure to attend WITS last Saturday night at the Fitzgerald Theatre in St. Paul. I have to say it was steeped in Geekiness from the get-go, complete with Tweets up on the big screen, an accordion player who knew “Smoke on the Water,” Neil Gaiman’s dogs and lots of other fun stuff. I believe one of the tweets described it as a “hipster sweat lodge” which seemed kind of appropriate. It was one of the more unusual shows I’ve gone to in a while, but I loved every minute of it.

In no particular order, here are some of the things I learned and bits and quotes I liked, all filtered and paraphrased through me, a slightly intoxicated writer/audience member. My apologies in advance for any inaccuracies—and for my inability to recall necessarily who said what when. Q (Claudia) from our very own Scribblerati was there too, as well as her musically gifted husband up on stage. Q please do pipe up about anything I missed or got wrong.

The host told an amusing story about John Clarkson, his invisible friend.

“Have an inner life that goes outside the lines.”

“Allow other worlds in.”

Neil Gaiman talked about how his novel “American Gods” (to be made into a TV miniseries soon) is about the “immigrant experience”

“Funny books take people places and have them see things with new eyes.”

“Geography Sucks”

As a child Neil Gaiman worried about Daleks. Who can blame him?

Neil says he has at least 7 unfinished story ideas in his head now. It sounds like he may work on his books for many years. This makes me feel a little better about my book in progress (also taking years and years)

Some people think you are a particular character in your book—but the truth is the author is ALL the characters in their book(s). You must connect with all characters as you write and give them some little part of your soul for them to come alive and be believable.

Neil read from “American Gods” (The “I believe” speech)

“There are no second acts in American lives.” F. Scott Fitzgerald (Wil Wheaton doesn’t believe this)

To succeed in writing you need other people/writers, hand holding and luck

According to Wil Wheaton the actors on the Big Bang Theory are not really nerds

Josh Ritter sang. I was unfamiliar with him, but really liked his stuff; he performed “Galahad” and “The Curse” and “The Temptation of Adam.” I was impressed by the way his songs all embodied stories.

Which monsters are these celebrities?

Marilyn Monroe = Cave Troll

Thomas Edison = Elf

Benjamin Franklin = Were Turkey

Emily Dickinson = Cthulhu

Josh Ritter = Elf Slayer

The form dictates the story

“Writing a novel is freeing. They don’t have to rhyme” Josh Ritter (song writer)

“Novels have to answer questions—songs don’t” Neil Gaiman

My personal bummer of the night: I failed to bring any device to Tweet with; also I did not win any Neil Gaiman honey during the Intermission

A good story (novel) resonates with other things you know and have read—but takes you someplace different

Neil Gaiman sang his song about Joan of Arc (I’m not sure of title)

Bigfoot has a facebook page. Friend him. He’s probably lonely.

“Believe in giant man-beasts. It’s OK.”

“Witchcraft is involved in Rod Stewart’s career.” Neil Gaiman

“Raising women is difficult.” Adam Savage (MythBusters)

“Liquid Oxygen is some of the scariest stuff on Earth.”

On the MythBusters TV show when nothing happens with one of their experiments, “it’s the scariest thing possible.”

Adam Savage is a bleeder. He also did the most awesome imitation of Gollum I’ve heard. Tremendously funny! Here it is: SavageGollum

Neil read his poem, “The Day the Saucers Came.” Awesome.

The show ended with a group sing along of “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.” I now get to say (like anyone in the audience) that I’ve sang with Neil Gaiman (as well as the other awesome people there that night).

My wife got to pet one of Neil Gaiman’s dogs. I did not. They didn’t even growl at me.

So what’s my point in all this? Thank God for writers, entertainers, comedians, thinkers, artists, people who think outside the box. This evening was a silly, fun romp and I’m glad we were able to attend. I heard somewhere that “Wits” was sponsored in part by the Minnesota “Legacy Act.” As a taxpayer in Minnesota I think it was money well spent. I find it hard to put a price tag on creativity and joy--and both were in high quantity at this event.
I was also inspired to dig out my copy of "American Gods" and get to reading.

Starting Over Redux

2011-06-24T09:00:00.001-05:00

I, like Jon, have been thinking a lot about the concept of Starting Over.

Last month I had my annual fabuloso trip to Wiscon. The Con for me was bookended by Starting Over.

My first three hours were spent in a writing workshop, offering critiques of three other women's first 10,000 words, and getting feedback from them, as well as our pro, Catherynne Valente. The session was a good one; I left it with more confirmation that what I'm trying to pull off with the three intertwined stories is extremely difficult, that I've pulled off Beryl's voice well, but the other two story lines need more polishing. For me, the harshest thing CV said was "Revise the hell out of it and then get yourself an agent."

Every time I do one of these workshops I go in thinking, alright, the novel's pretty much ready now. We'll just get that confirmed by the pro and then we'll send this bear off.

Never happens.

In the moment, when you've revised and revised and revised for years, it is a wee bit heart breaking to take in that it's not enough yet: Revise the Hell out of it! But, you know, I've always gotten through the bruise pretty quickly, more committed to writing better than I know how to. (Here I'm borrowing from Kelly Eskridge's amazing story "Dangerous Space" a meditation on gender, music, creativity, and vulnerability: "He smiled; the artist's private smile, the power and pride when the work is good. 'You know what's amazing?' he said. 'I knew I couldn't write these songs. I knew it. And then I wrote them anyway.'")

I'm sure like many writers, I don't feel as though I created my protagonist. I feel as though she's creating me; she's making me write her into being. And because I find that I'm at my most sane when I'm consistently writing, and because I really like Beryl, I feel an intense loyalty to her. Hell Yes, I will Revise The Hell Out of this thing, Beryl deserves it.

So that kind of Starting Over is good. It's good for me to feel like a brand new spark plug again, it's good for the project, it's good for Beryl.

But now we turn to the other bookend: the very last session I went to at Wiscon, and another sort of Starting Over--Jon's Starting Over. Not Starting Over as in, I'm going to revise this project again, but Starting Over as in, I'm going to set this one aside, and start a brand new project. Members of another Twin Cities Writing Group, Wyrdsmiths, made up the bulk of the panel on being a resilient writer. Kelly McCullough talked about not selling his first four (I think four) novels, but nevertheless going on, writing the next, getting better at his craft, until he final made his first sale (of many.)

Let me tell you: After this session I was depressed. Because I want this one to sell. Because I owe it to Beryl. Maybe that day will come: I've put my all into the story, I'm no longer inspired to rework it, and I realize it won't sell. Clearly I'm not there yet. But I do feel the grief that that image of the drain in Jon's blog radiates. Especially given that Jon's a great writer - even his first drafts are enviable with their attention to human emotion, getting the full feel of a scene, the smells, the textures, the tensions.

So here's to Starting Over and Starting Fresh. Hats off to you, Jon. You'll break through. You know it; we know it.

Starting over

2011-06-17T13:49:00.009-05:00

Recently, I have reached what I feel like is the end of the line, as far as my book being a viable product is concerned. It’s a whole thing. Anyway, I’ve come to my decision and as such, I have stuck the proverbial fork in it. But this leaves me with a question: What next? The obvious answer is, of course: Start a new book. But what about? And more importantly: How?

I’ve never done this before.

From inception to trunking, I worked on my last book—my first book—for six years or so, give or take 6, 7 months. Sure, sure, it’s not as long as some, but I’m not arbitrarily abandoning my book. I’m not setting this book aside because of a few stagnant years and a few more rejections… well, not entirely. I’m setting it aside because I’ve looked at the market, the saturation, the interest, the responses I’ve received and not received, yadda, yadda, yadda. I’ve taken all that and I’ve sat about and thought and thought and thought and basically, I think it’s just time. I think, for the moment, the project has run its course. Will I keep querying? Yes. I still have some names I haven’t tried and there are a handful of queries out there still current and there is also an agency that has the first three chapters, but I haven’t heard a peep from them since February, so I’ll just go ahead and hazard a guess as to their interest level… pppphhhbbbttt, but yeah. I will finish her up. I will let the clock run out, as the kids say.

Why?

Because it’s done.

It’s sad, like I said over at my blog: With this book goes three more stillborn, but I’ve still got things to do. I’ve got some short stories I need to work on still. 2 or 3 still need that second and third draft attention. A similar number might still exist in the ether of pre-creation floating about within my laptop, so that’s good, but that’s not what I’m here to talk about...

I’m here to talk about: Where do I go after that? What’s next?

I want another novel project, but how do you start?

This is my question. You see, I want to start it off right, get me? It has been a long time since I was last in this position and a combination of accidentally stumbling into the last novel project in the first place and barely remembering the beginning parts of the process at this point means I have no clue as to how to get started again. I hazily recall working on a first chapter that somehow became two and then it was three and… after that, I don’t know. I’ve got an idea for a book. Two, really. And I’ve got the Scribblerati. I didn’t have them last time, so that should help, right? Of course, that help will probably kick in more AFTER I actually get started again, I would think, since none of them are on their second book either, so… so, I googled it. (Actually I Binged it, since the crap temp job blocks Google for some reason…)

344,000,000 responses.

I searched: How do you start writing a new novel and I got 344,000,000 responses.

And every single one of them (that I bothered to look at) concerned starting your FIRST novel… Great, thanks Bing, you stupid bastard… hmm… well, maybe it’s still applicable. What else am I gonna do with my time? Work? Shyeah, right… Okay, so the first link is blocked by the crappy Temp job internet filter… so is the second. And the third. And the fourth (fuckers…). And the fifth… Christ...

Ah! Finally! Ehow is apparently okey-dokey A-ok with the Internet overlords here at the salt mines, so let’s see what they say.

Ahem…

The hardest part of writing a book is starting.

O RLY???

You want to write a book.

I do.

You have ideas and characters bouncing around in your head but can not find the time to put them onto paper.

Well, that’s not really the issue, but…

Your book will not be written until you start.

Uh, yeah. I suppose that’s true. It will also not be done until I finish.

The hardest part of writing a book is time.

I thought it was starting.

Give yourself consistent time to start and write your book and you will be able give those characters life.

Able give?

Here are some tips and suggestions to start writing your book

Can’t wait…

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Is that kind of like ordering “Minnesota spicy” in a Thai restaurant?

Instructions
Things You'll Need
• Time set aside to focus on writing.
• A desire to write a book.

What about an idea? A beginning and an ending? …Paper? …You know what? Forget I said anything, that’s my baggage. Please continue…

Start Writing or Does Writing a Book Seem Overwhelming

Is that a question?

This is the book you have always wanted to write.

Uh… I guess…

You may have slips of paper with notes scattered throughout your home and office.

I haven’t had time to clean lately, alright? And I don’t appreciate you judging me.

What is holding you back?

I don’t know. Work, life. I mean, where does the time go, right? Really, I think this is less a reflection upon my own inability to pick up after myself and more of an indictment of the ingrained expectations of American work culture. Did you know Europeans get nap time every day? I’ve heard that’s true.

Is it that writing a book seems like an overwhelming project, or you do not know where to begin, or your plate is so full you do not have the time?

Those all seem like the same thing... The middle one, I guess.

Compare writing your book with the prospective you received at the beginning of your first college course.

My first college course? Uh… Okay, but I fail to see how Introduction to Anthropology has any bearing whatsoever on my idea of writing a noir book about a super villain heist...

How were you going to get all those assignment done?

What assignments? What’s going on? What are we talking about? Are we still talking about novels? This better not be a trick where I’m suddenly a Scientologist at the end of this thing…

As you worked your way through the semester, finishing one project or paper at a time, it created a sense of relief when the end came and all assignments were complete.

Are you…? What…? Is that a question? You’re totally about to bring up Jesus, aren’t you?

During your coffee take some time to jot ideas down.

Coffee? What? I was told all I needed was time set aside to write and a desire to write a book. No one said anything about coffee!

Writing a book -Break it Down Into Steps.

What? Are we back to writing again?

All big projects seem overwhelming when you view them in their totality.

You know, that is so true.

If you think about the end before you start the immensity of the project will hold you back.

Uh… Well, I think it’s good to know where your story is going, at least in the abstract. You might want to reconsider that stance.

The first thing you need to do to when you want to write a book is to sit down and start.

Ah yes… the hardest part…

You do not have to write the entire book in one sitting.

Yeah, no shit. You know, sentences like that really make me begin to doubt the validity of your advice…

Take the time you need at intervals you can spare. Use a tape recorder so your thoughts, especially when driving, can be documented. Take all the 'small amount of times' such as waiting for your child's lesson to finish or use you lunch break as 'think' or 'write' time. You could get up an hour earlier and/or go to bed an hour later. You do have the time needed. You just need to set aside time to write, just like you do for other activities

So, what you are saying here… in a nutshell, is that I should treat writing like any other activity and make time to do it when I have the time available to me? That is some Zen shit right there, man. My mind = fuckin’ blown.

Use this process to start writing a book:

Ok.

Make writing your book part of your schedule

Uh, yeah, I think that’s been sufficiently covered.

Take out your calendar, now, and mark "I Want To Write a Book", "I Want To Write A Novel" or whatever your ultimate goal is on a date and in a time slot, just like any other important meeting or activity.

I want to eat ALL the ice cream!

Ask For Family support to give you time to write.

“Family”? You mean, like the mafia?

Make sure that everyone in your household knows this is your time to write a book, they do not bother you, and you put all thoughts or excuses out of your mind. Let your family know that everything they need your attention for will get done, also, but this needs to be your time uninterrupted.

Right, yeah, that’ll work. I can’t even go to the bathroom by myself…

Adhere to your book writing schedule.

Ok.

When this date and time have arrived sit down, pull out your slips of paper, notes, a tape recordings and start writing.

A tape recordings? You keep adding shit! I didn’t know I was supposed to make a tape recordings! Who even has a God damn tape recorder anymore?!?!

Your starting time is the most important part to get past any overwhelming feelings or excuses you have had. Start writing your book and nothing will get in your way.

Possible exceptions: Meteor strikes. Free doughnuts. Lactose Intolerance.

Start Writing A Book Just like any other habit the first time of setting time aside for writing a book will lead to the second time and it gets easier each time you sit down to write your book. Once the habit is formed take your book writing one day at a time. When you work on it a little at a time you will eventually have written the book that has been inside you wanting to get published.

I wonder if it’s possible to say the word “time” more often in the space of three sentences… So, basically: If you want to write, then take the time to write and you will be writing. It’s just that simple? Well, then... That was very helpful, wasn’t it?

Thank you, Internet.

You’re welcome,
Jon

Book Review: Lyda Morehouse’s Resurrection Code

2011-06-02T21:39:00.003-05:00

I used to be a voracious reader. I wasn't a fast reader, but I was dedicated, and like the proverbial turtle, I made the finish line more often than most. I couldn't even tell you how many books I've read in my lifetime, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if that number is in the high hundreds.

Writing has changed all that. I now spend the vast majority of my time writing and I bet I haven't read more than a dozen books in the last three years. So you can understand how excited I get when I actually have an opportunity to do some serious reading, like on a vacation. I try to choose my books carefully, but more often than not I find myself underwhelmed or flat-out disappointed.

My latest read, consumed by the pool in Vegas, was Lyda Morehouse’s Resurrection Code. Resurrection Code is a fun, exciting, thought-provoking dose of boo-yah! in a marketplace overrun by safe, unexceptional, and unoriginal fare. It's also, in my humble opinion, the best book Lyda has written in several years.

Resurrection Code is billed as a prequel to the other four books in her Angel Link universe but it also works as – if not quite a sequel – a coda to what came before. The book starts out in the present with Mouse (international hacker extraordinaire), Page (the sentient AI Mouse created), and Dierdre (PI with an Angel fetish) but doesn't waste time before flashing to the prequel. The story weaves back and forth between coda and prequel, and Lyda manages to intertwine the stories with polished ease. The coda story starts like a walk in the park with old friends, then quickly develops into a story in its own right, but the heart of the book is the prequel, which takes us into a part of the Angel Link universe that the previous books only gave us the barest glimpses of.

That this was the first book in the Angel Link universe in several years was immediately obvious. Maybe it's just that I haven't read one of those books in a long time, but I felt that the tone of Resurrection Code was colored by Lyda’s experience writing as Tate Hallaway. Turns out that color is a good thing. I felt like there was a new, natural whimsy to the writing that enhanced, rather detracted from the serious nature of the underlying themes.

Did I say themes? All good science fiction has an underlying theme and Resurrection Code is no exception. In this case that theme is gender, or more specifically, transgender. Without giving anything away, the prequel story features a heretofore unknown transgender character. There's a bit of romance, and while it's sweet, the story doesn't shy away from the realities faced by our transgender brothers and sisters. This story challenges your preconceptions and makes you think. That also is a good thing.

Is there anything didn't I like? I could've done without some of the pop culture nods, particularly the zombies, which felt a little crowbarred in, but that’s a giant nit pick among nits. And now I'm remembering the Battlestar Galactica reference - that was full of awesome, so I guess I’m Mr. Inconsistent.

What was my favorite thing? I have two. The first was Page’s commentary to the Mouse interviews that begin each chapter. Hilarious! The second is Morningstar. That’s Satan to the rest of you. Not a pitchfork and horns Satan, but an approachable – dare I say sexy? –Satan who all too often reminds us of ourselves.

In closing, go buy it. You won't be disappointed.

Disclaimer: I know Lyda. Were not bosom buddies (heh, I said bosom) but we’ve shared a laugh or two, so take that for whatever it's worth. Even so, I'm not afraid to dish out criticism where appropriate. Just ask my fellow Scribblerati!

** UPDATE 6-5-11: So, while this comment was fun to write "in a marketplace overrun by safe, unexceptional, and unoriginal fare" it's not fair to those of you working hard to write, publish, etc. I'm sure there's great stuff out there, I just haven't stumbled on to much of it and that's more my fault than anyone else's.

I feel better now - conscience absolved! :-P

Short. Sweet.

2011-05-20T14:56:00.006-05:00

At its heftiest, my WIP came in at 128,119 words. Most middle grade novels run 40-60,000. For the Math Phobics and Lazyheads, Once We Were Bears clocked in two to three times over standard length.

So, yup, I've been working on paring mine down. First I deleted peripherial characters, (RIP FiveLeg, you sweet, mutant frog.) I slashed scenes better ones had parallel purposes. I excised, I truncated, I thinned. I clipped, sheared, mowed...

Oops, what I really I meant to say is: I cut.

And then I gave the whole, slightly trimmer beast to the Scribblerati, who made fantastic suggestions. And then...

Yes, and then I added.

So now I'm back to subtracting. I thought I had all the fluff out last time around. I was wrong; still finding lots of superfluous words and sentences. (No more scenes or chapters tho'.)

Apparently, I love the word "that." I use it all the time, unnecessarily.

Beryl thought that she'd rescued Fiveleg from the poisoned pool.

vs.

Beryl thought she'd rescued Fiveleg from the poisoned pool.

Today's word count: 110,933.

That's 17, 186 already gone.

Back to the scissors.

Grabbing Your Reader’s Attention: Your First Line

2011-05-13T12:01:00.002-05:00

Not long ago I entered the first page of my novel, BLACKHEART, in a “One Page” contest. The rules were simple: submit the first page of your manuscript (short story, novel, poem, whatever)—and I did exactly that. When contest winners for each category were announced I was somewhat crestfallen that the winner was not me. Dang. I thought my entry was pretty strong—although that’s probably what everyone else thought about their entries, too.

But really, in the first page of my book I introduce my main character(s) and put them in a creepy situation where somebody is going to end up dead by the end of the scene. There are bodies, lots of blood, SWAT, FBI and a scarred-up, mean, hulking son of bitch wielding a shotgun. I thought some of that might grab the judges’ attention. Apparently not. Back to the drawing board.

The winning entry in this contest for the genre fiction category was a piece about an imp dangling his feet in a lava pit. Written nicely enough and it stood out. Nobody else had an imp main character. The winner of another category had a lot of nudity that I’m sure would cause many a reader to read on. All good stuff, and I applaud the contest winners, but…

Entering this contest made me realize a few things:

Grabbing your readers’ attention on page 1 is critical.
More importantly, grabbing their attention on line 1 might matter even more.
On a personal note, I am revisiting my novel’s page 1 to see what can be improved on.
We live in a time of short attention spans. The Internet is rewiring our brains, we spend hours in front of computers, TV and video games, we’re busy, distracted, running about with too many things on our minds, and I need only point to Twitter as an example of how much time and space you get to try to capture someone’s attention. About a line’s worth of text.

So page 1 had better count. Scratch that—Line 1. Make it good. Make it sing. Make it memorable.

I’d like to say I’m better than that--that I’ll give any book 100 pages before I consider giving up on it, set it aside. (I know several people that use this rule when they start reading a book.) But the truth is when I shop for books in a bookstore (how old fashioned of me, I know) I pick up a book that catches my attention (from the title and cover—talk about shallow!) and turn to page one and start reading, or maybe even a random page elsewhere in the book. If I like the voice, the craft, if there is a hook that catches me, I may buy that book. But if after reading a few paragraphs or less I most likely will put it back if it hasn’t grabbed me.

Do first lines matter to literary agents? To quote one agent (who shall remain nameless, sorry agent) from Jeff Herman’s Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, & Literary Agents:

Q: What’s the most effective ways for writers to grab your attention?

A: For fiction: Have a great first line that provides an immediate insight into your protagonist.

Good advice.

So just for fun, here are the first lines of some novels that you may have read or heard of (or perhaps, not). I’m curious, which of these entries makes you want to read more? Which of them stands out? Which of them makes you want to go get that book and find out what happens next? If you’re a writer, feel free to comment with your own first line. I’d like to hear it. Is it a line that will make me want to read more and not put it down?

Some Great (or are they?) First Lines

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." --Tolkien, The Hobbit

"Many years later, as he stood facing the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 100 Years of Solitude

“Where's Papa going with that axe?" said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast. --E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web

“It was a dark and stormy night.” --Snoopy or Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

"Death was driving an emerald-green Lexus." -- Dean Koontz, Winter Moon

"Marley was dead: to begin with." -- Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold." -- Hunter Thompson, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas

"First of all it was October, a good month for boys." --Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

"On the fifteenth of May, in the jungle of Nool, In the heat of the day, in the cool of the pool" --Dr. Seuss, Horton Hears A Who

"When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake - not a very big one." --Lonesome Dove

“To burn down a farm house do the following: apply plenty of kerosene or lawn mower gas or rubbing alcohol or whatever other type of accelerant you have on hand; apply your lighter, stand back and wait for the screams.” --Mark Teats, Sunlight

"My name is Odd Thomas, through the years in this age when fame is the altar at which most people worship, I am not sure why you should care who I am or that I exist." -- Dean Koontz, Odd Thomas

“I am the vampire Lestat.” --Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat

“I always get the shakes before a jump.” --Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“At a village of La Mancha, whose name I do not wish to remember, there lived a little while ago one of those gentlemen who are wont to keep a lance in the rack, an old buckler, a lean horse, and a swift greyhound.” --de Cervantes, Don Quixote

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” --Stephen King, The Dark Tower:

"Rage — Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles." --The Iliad by Homer

“All this happened, more or less.” --Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Slaughter House Five

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” --Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)

“Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen it's true face.” --Watchmen, Alan Moore

"Jack Torrance thought: Officious little prick." --Stephen King, The Shining

"In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, and old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul." --Dune by Frank Herbert

"I’ve watched through his eyes, I’ve listened through his ears, and I tell you he’s the one." --Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

“When he woke in the woods in the dark and the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him.” --McCarthy, The Road

Lots more great first lines here:

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Opening_lines

Happy Writing.

Konrath & Eisler

2011-05-07T18:45:00.001-05:00

For those of you who missed this a few weeks back, Barry Eisler turned down a half million dollar advance to self-publish. Why? Because he thought he could make more money on his own. There more to it than that, of course, but that's the basics.

Now, those of you who are loyal readers of this blog know that I am a big self-publishing fan, but even I was blown away by this development.

I've often wondered where I would draw the line between traditional and self-publishing. At this point it's a foregone conclusion that I would turn down the standard 5-10K advance for a genre first-time author. But what if they offered me more than that? If I'm honest with myself, I don't think I would have turned away a half-million. But that was before I read this. Now I'm not so sure.

Go ahead and check out that link. It's the full 13,000+ word discussion between Joe Konrath and Barry Eisler. Both are well established legacy authors. There is some fascinating stuff in there (and a bit of silly fluff as well).

So, loyal reader, how much would a publishing house have to offer you to buy the rights to your book?

Fantasy Schmantasy

2011-04-29T19:45:00.006-05:00

There’s been a huge kerfuffle on the interwebs recently about two reviews of HBO’s fantasy series Game of Thrones. One, by New York Times reviewer Ginia Bellafante, has caused the most outrage, as she pretty much dismisses the entire population of female fantasy fans as, well, fantasy, and implies that we girls would much rather read a book stamped by Oprah than a book with filled with swords and medieval political machinations. Whatever. I won’t try your patience; many folks out there in the interworld have very eloquently told Ms. Bellafante what for in that respect. What is stuck in my craw is that both she and Slate’s reviewer, Troy Patterson, dismiss the fantasy genre as not worth reviewing in a serious manner, while they’re reviewing it. Bellafante gets her facts shockingly wrong, and also says that the show, because of its content, does not belong on the venerated HBO. Patterson admits he dislikes the genre, and only kinda-sorta actually reviews the show.

Fortunately, we have Matt Zoller Seitz at Salon.com to set them straight: all you fantasy geeks out there, just try not to fist punch the air as he takes these two on.

Times Review

Salon Review

The whole hurly-burly, however, has gotten me thinking, and I realize that I’ve encountered more than my fair share of disdain for liking speculative fiction as an adult.

I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I’m so not alone in this, and yet, when it comes up in conversation – Them: “What’s your favorite show?” Me: “Buffy.” I’ve gotten many blantant reactions of eye-rolling disbelief, from sneers to “Reallys?” Okay, right. Unlike Game of Thrones, Buffy the Vampire Slayer isn’t graced with a name that reeks of gravitas: so, those who haven’t seen it might lump it in a category with Sabrina the Teenage Witch, or, I don’t know, Small Wonder.

We’ve said it before on this blog, and we’ll say it again: Buffy is an incredibly well written, well acted, dramatic, creative and humorous show, full of characters who grow and change (okay, yes, sometimes into a werewolf, but still). And you know what? Some people just don’t like sci fi/fantasy, and that’s okay. I have a good friend who, because she loves me, watches episodes of Buffy with me. She generally only watches serious, realistic dramas, but she sticks with Buffy because A) There are moments of truly stellar drama in the series, and B) David Boreanaz is hot. That said, she could take or leave your standard “Monster of the Week” episodes, whereas for me, the Hellmouth is half the fun. The thing to note here is she’s not dismissive of the genre; it’s just not her favorite. Whereas many folks look upon we speculative fiction fans as childish, regressive, socially inept losers. Why is that? Really?

Another story: A coworker of mine blew the ending of the sixth Harry Potter book for me. I’m crazy about J.K. Rowling, and I think those books are brilliant – I believe they will go down in history as great classics. The coworker in question was talking about Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, a book, it should be noted, that he hadn’t himself read, nor had he read any of the series – but his wife had finished it over the weekend and told him what happened. After repeated requests for him to stop talking about it, as I hadn’t finished the book, he looked me straight in the eye with an irate look on his face, and blurted out the ending.

I was furious and hurt. I’d been waiting breathlessly for over a year for the book to come out, I was looking forward to going home and savoring a few more chapters that night, and although he didn’t ruin the book for me, he certainly stole away one of the biggest surprises of the series. When I confronted him, his response was, “I don’t know what the big deal is. It’s only a kids’ book.”

Interesting. There was almost envy in that statement, as though he didn’t, as a Grown Up, allow himself to go there - to a fantasyland of magic and monsters - and the fact that I and many others could extract childlike wonder from the experience made him spiteful and mean. I picture him now: a grounded child sitting in his living room, palms and nose pressed against the front picture window, as unicorns and fairies and elves and wizards frolic around his yard.

What’s very weird is the idea that sci fi/fantasy, comics, magic and swords are childish, and if someone continues to enjoy these things into adulthood, it’s because they’re somehow damaged: they’re geeks and dorks, living on the fringes of society, holed up in their basement playrooms with their pewter orc figurines and dungeon maps. (Okay, well, those people do exist, too: fair’s fair.) Yet, hmm. Superheroes. Elves. Dwarves. Vampires. Wizards. Giant robots. Aliens. These are the heroes and villains of some of the biggest movie blockbusters of the last 15 years.

Perhaps it is okay to love the unreal as long as you have a bag of popcorn in your lap. Mighty Odin forbid you get your fantasy kick from a book or any other lauded medium.

Beginnings

2011-04-22T14:30:00.000-05:00

In my last post, I wrote about killer endings for chapters.

Another thing I've been trying to pay attention to in my own reading is how authors start their chapters and what techniques really pull me in.

I noticed a great one while reading To Kill a Mockingbird this past winter. (For the first time!) Now, TKaM exemplifies many writerly skills to engage the reader, not the least among them, create characters who are real, flawed, and who you can't help cherishing. But for now, I'm just concentrating on this one thing that really stood out for me: you don't have to start a chapter at the beginning. Instead you can start it after some action is already underway.

That's counterintuitive to me as a writer-funny, how so many of my lessons in learning to become a better writer have to do with throwing out what initially makes sense. Case in point: it doesn't make sense to confuse your readers. This is true, and so you might then think: Well, I should start at the beginning; if I throw the reader into a scene that has already begun, they won't know where they are or who's there with them. They'll be lost; being lost is scary; they'll be angry at the one who got them all confused, frightened, and lost-like; they'll throw the book across the room and let the cats gnaw on the corners.

But, it turns out, sometimes plunking your reader abruptly into a scene can work. And work brilliantly.

Here are a nice example from the start of chapter 9:

"You can just take that back, boy!"

This order, given by me to Cecil Jacobs, was the beginning of a rather thin time for Jem and me. My fists were clenched and I was ready to let fly. Atticus had promised me he would wear me out if he ever heard of me fighting any more; I was far too old and too big for such childish things, and the sooner I learned to hold in , the better off everybody would be. I soon forgot.

Cecil Jacobs made me forget.

We know hardly anything about the setting. Are Scout and Cecil inside or outside? Are they alone or surrounded by other children? Maybe there are adults there too? And most importantly, we don't know what Cecil has said that's pissed Scout off. And that not-knowing is a large part of the force that drives the reader on. (So much the better that Harper Lee's also got the humor-drive and the Scout-drive going at the same time.) Had Lee explained it all chronologically, it would have been flat in comparison.

Lee only uses this particular method of pulling the reader in a couple other times in the book. Which probably speaks to not overusing any one technique. Significantly, she employs it in the first chapter:

When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. ...

When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out.

And right off the bat we have mystery: what happened? how did it start? who's Dill? making Boo Radley come out from where, and who is Boo anyway? That's a lot of questions for the first two paragraphs, but those lot of questions motivate us to keep reading so we get the answers.

My own opening raises a lot of questions as well. And many of my writing workshop readers haven't liked that. My guess is that if the writing is good enough, and you start answering some of those questions right away, they'll stick around. So, in the end, I'm suggesting we provoke questions, but have our characters, language, setting strong enough that those questions create reader-quests, rather than reader-confusion.

And now I'm off to make my writing good enough for the questions I want to raise.

How to Pitch Your Story

2011-04-15T12:39:00.001-05:00

I’m a firm believer in taking advantage of opportunities as they arise. And what could be better than an opportunity to sit down across the table from someone who has the potential to make your dreams come true and take your shot?

That’s exactly what I did last weekend at the Madison Writer’s Institute http://www.dcs.wisc.edu/lsa/writing/awi/

Part of this conference, like many writing conferences out there, were optional “pitch” sessions with a half-dozen literary agents. These sessions cost extra ($15 each) for the 8-minute session you got to spend with each respective agent. During registration you were limited to only two such sessions—which from the sounds of it filled up early.

Prep Work

Before the conference I had done my best to have some materials ready for the agents I was going to talk with. I spent hours trying to whittle down my synopsis to only a couple pages (epic fail), tried to have a page that explained my book’s concept, my bio and next project, and also brought a sample chapter along. I think all of this was good prep work, and it was nice to have something for me to refer to during the pitch sessions, but for the purposes of the agents I could have left it all behind. The agents didn’t want it—their preference was to receive everything by e-mail.

When is a Manuscript Done?

I heard the story recently of American writer, David Guterson, sitting around his house doing edits on his printed/published book Snow Falling on Cedars—just toying with it, seeing if there was anything that could be improved—for his own purposes. I just completed my 3rd edition of my novel BLACKHEART, and immediately I’m ready to do revision 4. Before ever signing up for this conference I asked myself if my book was ready to be seen by agents. I decided “yes.” That doesn’t mean that revision 4 still won’t happen…

A Sleepless Night

I had signed up for the pitch sessions months before when I signed up for the conference—and I hadn’t felt nervous about them at all consciously—until the night before they were scheduled. At about 3:30AM I woke up, realizing that I was going over specific plot points of my novel BLACKHEART in my head, preparing, preparing, preparing. My mind kept going over each great part of my book that I wanted to share—and also the parts I did not want to bring up (multiple POV, a couple chapters that still need tightening, etc). I would have preferred a good night’s sleep.

Important advice: Know your agent(s).

When I signed up for these agent pitch sessions I had done my best to pick the couple that seemed most likely to handle the type of work that I want to sell. My novel is “horror” so I definitely wanted to talk with agents who handled genre fiction. Imagine my disappointment during the conferences opening introductions when I heard one of the agents I was scheduled to meet later that day say, “I sell everything but horror.” L

Batter up…

There were two rooms dedicated to “pitching.” When I arrived a young woman with a timer and a checklist stood between the two rooms acting as gatekeeper. “They’re running a couple minutes behind,” I was informed. I gave her my name and waited with the other half-dozen or so authors all milling around nervously, waiting for their turns. We compared notes: What is your book about? Who are you meeting with? Is this your first pitch session? And so on and so on. As we waited other authors came out of the rooms, showing a variety of emotions: relief, disappointment, elation.

“You can go in,” I was told.

Eight Minutes in Heaven

Agent A was very upfront when I asked him to clarify if he carried horror. “No. And I’ll tell you the reason why. I only have two or three places I can try to sell it—then I’m out of options.” I asked if he minded me trying my pitch on him. “Go for it,” he said, but clarified, arms crossed, “But no matter how good it is I won’t be able to represent you.” I gave it my best shot.

What I learned about the opening to my novel BLACKHEART is that it is awesome to adapt for a dramatic pitch. When the book opens my main character Clay is seated at a bloody table between two corpses—across from him, peering out of the darkness is the hulking and horribly scarred badass Blackheart. As I gave my pitch I lay my head on the table, explained how Clay wakes up, how he’s handcuffed to the chair, how his gun sits on the table just out of reach, how the SWAT team is beating on the doors and windows that won’t be broken down on this creepy little home, how Clay has to kill Blackheart or watch his friend get gunned down. In many ways I was able to act the part of Clay to the agent’s Blackheart, each of us across the pitching table from each other. It was fun, and no pressure. After all, the guy had already told me he couldn’t represent me.

“So, what do you think?” I asked Agent A.

“It sounds like a great story—but I can’t sell it,” he said.

“Do you know anyone who can?” I asked.

“Get out a pen,” Agent A said. He gave me the name of one of his associates who he thinks might like a story like mine. He said I should use his name. Awesome.

Eight (no make that ten) Minutes in Hell

About an hour later I was back at the pitching room door, loitering outside with the other authors, comparing notes on previous sessions. The timer sounded, gatekeeper girl told me to go inside.

Agent B and I shook hands. She said she enjoyed meeting writers—most of her 20+ clients she has right now from all over the world she has never met. Agent B was also kind enough to clarify for me that she did agent horror. Woo hoo! This pitch session was off to a much better start.

I one again acted out the opening scene and the shootout between Clay and Blackheart. I realized this time I was a bit more nervous, that I was omitting some subtle details I’d done a better job telling in pitch session 1. No matter… time was ticking away. Agent B listened intently, leaning across the table, wide eyed, nodding her head. Occasionally she’d ask a question. “What happens next?” “How does it end?” “We’re actually out of time… but go on.” I went through each turning point as best I could, grossly over-simplifying my 450 page book. When it was over I asked her, “So do you want to see more?” “Yes,” said Agent B. “E-mail me your first three chapters.” J

So did I get my $30 worth of agent time? Hell yeah. I got to explain my book to two literary agents who are in the business of selling fiction—with positive feedback. I also had a request to see more of my manuscript from one agent, and a lead I can pursue in the future from the other. Will these meetings ultimately help me sell my manuscript? That remains to be seen. But I definitely enjoyed the experience and the whole process definitely put me in a mind frame to understand my story better, from the perspective of someone who might want to buy it.

Advice for Pitching Your Story?

From my experience all I can say is have your manuscript as complete as it can be, know your story as well as you can, rehearse if you have the time, and try to meet with agents who sell your genre of material. After that I like to just think it’s either meant to be or it’s not.

Happy Writing.

Book Review: Joe Abercrombie's The Heroes

2011-04-08T16:25:00.025-05:00

They say Black Dow’s killed more men than winter, and clawed his way to the throne of the North up a hill of skulls. The King of the Union, ever a jealous neighbour, is not about to stand smiling by while he claws his way any higher. The orders have been given and the armies are toiling through the northern mud. Thousands of men are converging on a forgotten ring of stones, on a worthless hill, in an unimportant valley, and they’ve brought a lot of sharpened metal with them.

Bremer dan Gorst, disgraced master swordsman, has sworn to reclaim his stolen honour on the battlefield. Obsessed with redemption and addicted to violence, he’s far past caring how much blood gets spilled in the attempt. Even if it’s his own.

Prince Calder isn’t interested in honour, and still less in getting himself killed. All he wants is power, and he’ll tell any lie, use any trick, and betray any friend to get it. Just as long as he doesn’t have to fight for it himself.

Curnden Craw, the last honest man in the North, has gained nothing from a life of warfare but swollen knees and frayed nerves. He hardly even cares who wins any more, he just wants to do the right thing. But can he even tell what that is with the world burning down around him?

Over three bloody days of battle, the fate of the North will be decided. But with both sides riddled by intrigues, follies, feuds and petty jealousies, it is unlikely to be the noblest hearts, or even the strongest arms that prevail…

Three men. One battle. No Heroes.
- Joe Abercrombie’s The Heroes

I had grown tired of Fantasy.

After all the long years, I just couldn’t do it anymore. I was done. Finished. I was over it. This was sad, because I had grown up on Tolkien, on Lewis, on White, on Alexander. Jack Vance’s Lyonesse is still one of my favorite books, but the truth was undeniable, and that was, barring a few notable and well deserved exceptions, if I never read about another wistful elf maid in a flowing gossamer gown staring longingly out her moon-lit tower window again, that would be just fine with me.

The problem was I still really liked bits of the genre. Big bits. Dungeons. Dragons. Knights. Kings and castles. All that. I wanted it, but I didn’t want the lame Ren Faire bullshit that came with. I couldn’t take that “forsooth” crap anymore. No, thank you. And the next portly asswipe in goatee and curling moustaches that says “Have at thee!” at me is getting a boot to the nuts.

I was done.

But I didn’t go easily. I still trolled the fantasy section at the bookstore from time to time, but… meh. I tried Jordon’s Wheel of Time series, and for a time that was alright, but well, we all know how that worked out, or didn’t. Then I found George R. R. Martin. The Game of Thrones and the rest of the Songs of Ice and Fire series that followed were like a well deserved and long anticipated homecoming. Fantastic, yet real. Noble, yet brutal. A grand and sweeping multiple POV fantasy masterpiece, brilliantly realized. Incredible. Amazing. And the HBO show looks like it’s going to be even more amazing than one has a right to expect. I consider him and Tolkien as bookends to modern fantasy. Unfortunately, while it’s true that George R. R. Martin is not my bitch, and despite the fact that the latest novel is coming out in a few weeks (allegedly), it has been almost six years since the last one.

Six years?

Six years!

I met my wife and got married in the time since the last one, which, let's be honest, was just treading water to appease the fans anyway, and George, baby, in the time since… I have strayed.

And that’s when I found Joe Abercrombie.

And up they came indeed. Four of them. New recruits, fresh off the boat from Midderland by their looks. Seen off at the docks with kisses from mummy or sweetheart or both. New uniforms pressed, straps polished, buckles gleaming and ready for the noble soldiering life, indeed. Forest gestured towards Tunny like a showman towards his freak, and trotted out that same little address he always gave.
“Boys, this here is the famous Corporal Tunny, one of the longest serving non-commissioned officers in General Jalenhorm’s division. A veteran of the Starikland rebellion, the Gurkish war, the last Northern war, the siege of Adua, this current unpleasantness, and a quantity of peacetime soldiering that would have bored a keener mind to death. He has survived the runs, the rot, the grip, the autumn shudders, the caresses of Northern winds, the buffets of Southern women, thousands of miles of marching, many years of his Majesty’s rations and even a tiny bit of actual fighting to stand – or sit – before you now. He has four times been Sergeant Tunny, once even Colour Sergeant Tunny, but always, like a homing pigeon to its humble cage, returned to his current station. He now holds the exalted post of standard bearer of his August Majesty’s indomitable First regiment of cavalry. That gives him responsibility—” Tunny groaned at the mere mention of the word. “—for the regimental riders, tasked with carrying messages to and from our much admired commanding officer, Colonel Vallimir. Which is where you boys come in.”
“Oh, bloody hell, Forest.”
“Oh, bloody hell, Tunny.”

The Heroes is Abercrombie’s fifth book, all of which take place in the same world, but you don’t have to have read the previous four to appreciate this one. Yes, the First Law trilogy (starting with The Blade itself) is a trilogy, but Best Served Cold stands alone and so does The Heroes. However, reading all five in order will give you the bigger picture of the world and add some weight to the familiar names that occasionally stroll through the various tomes.

Abercrombie’s world is one that at once resembles our own and yet is fundamentally different. He uses that old trick of brushing up against familiar cultures and countries and lands, drawing a quick sketch, and then skipping away again into new territory, so the reader will be comfortable settling in at first and yet enough of a stranger in a strange land to require the hand of a skilled guide to get around, a position Abercrombie excels at.

Some Background:
There were once three brothers. Juvens (the father of magic or High Art, as it’s called), Kanedias (or The Maker, a kind of scientist-magician and creator of technology, whose ancient House of the Maker is a looming and featureless giant gray mass of stone still rising over the capital city of the Union), and Bedesh (the one who famously destroyed the Old Empire—an ancient Rome like country now lost to antiquity and a near nuclear holocaust level of destruction). Eventually, Juvens and Kanedias warred and Juvens was killed, which caused his students—the Magi—to kill The Maker in revenge. But are the stories true? Is that how it all really went? History is written by the victor, after all. Now, thousands of years later, the Magi still haunt this world, and through their myriad of agents and spies, apprentices and puppet armies, they are locked in eternal struggle.

Quickly now:
The three major countries involved in the near constant series of hot and cold wars are:
1. The Union, a large kingdom similar to Europe made up of a handful of formerly independent states and now governed by a King and Senate. It is the plaything of Bayaz, First of the Magi.
2. The Gurkish Empire, similar in set up to middle eastern empires of old, run by an Emperor and more importantly, Khalul, The Prophet, Second of the Magi, and his Hundred Words, a troop of half demon/half human vampire-esque warriors.
3. The North, a rough alliance of tribes patterned on Vikings and Celts and Huns and other barbarian cultures of old. They are a harsh people where warriors become recognized as Named Men (kind of like officers, but more generally regarded as bad ass) after proving themselves on the field of battle.

There are more nations, of course, like the Mediterranean-esque island nation of Talins, which is run by the Snake of Talins herself, Monzcarro Murcatto (the main character of Best Served Cold) for instance, but they do not feature as prominently in this specific book, so I will refrain from going into further detail...

No, this book focuses on a three day battle in an unremarkable valley in the North and two armies: Bayaz and the Unions’ red-coated masses on one side and the hardened warriors of the North backed by an agent of the Prophet, moved by the fingers of Khalul, on the other. More so, it’s about a handful of people on both sides, who they are and why they fight and their struggle to stay alive, to survive.

And that is how this book fits in with the others, in the larger story sense. And that’s part of what makes them such a great all together read; the story is about the continuing war between two opposing and opposite and inhuman forces, but it's never told from the grand heights. Bayaz, Khalul, they are unknowable things; they're dangerous, monsters in human skin. This story is about the people on the ground, the ones struggling in the wake of the giants that stride amongst them, and down there, it's never black and white. It's never good versus evil. It's all shades of gray and the only Heroes that ever appear in this story are the ancient ring of stones standing atop a useless hill in that unimportant valley.

Dark and grim, but funny and insightful, full of mud and blood and steel and death, but brimming with real life and honest characters, Abercrombie writes the type prose that draws you in and moves you along; the kind of prose that tells a great yarn in a grand way. It’s big and it’s bold and yet it's quietly human too and all in a story that is too damn good a time to put down.

I love it.

Conside me a fan.

Great settings:
“The place was a maze of sluggish channels of brown water, streaked on the surface with multi-coloured oil, with rotten leaves, with smelly froth, ill-looking rushes scattered at random. If you put down your foot and it only squelched in to the ankle, you counted yourself lucky. Here and there some species of hell-tree had wormed its leathery roots deep enough to stay upright and hang out a few lank leaves, festooned with beards of brown creeper and sprouting with outsize mushrooms. There was a persistent croaking that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Some cursed variety of bird, or frog, or insect, but Tunny couldn't see any of the three. Maybe it was just the bog itself, laughing at them.”

Great characters:
“When it came to hatred, Brodd Tenways had a bottomless supply. He was one of those bastards who can't even breathe quietly, ugly as incest and always delighted to push it in your face, leering from the shadows like the village pervert at a passing milkmaid. Foul-mouthed, foul-toothed, foul-smelling, and with some kind of hideous rash patching his twisted face he gave every sign of taking great pride in.”

Great times,
Jon

Amanda Hocking's making a whole lot of sense

2011-03-24T19:06:00.001-05:00

There's been a lot of buzz about Amanda Hocking on the Internet lately, even today on the Scribblerati e-mail list. I don't know Amanda Hocking, nor have I read any of her books, but I have been catching up on her blog and let me tell you, Amanda Hocking's making a whole lot of sense.

I'm not going to go into her whole life story, you can read her blog for that, but here's the basics. Amanda Hocking is a self published/indie sensation who is making a shit load of money. Here ends the basics.

Why am I so jazzed about her? Because she's one of the few people who seem to truly grasp what being an self published author really means.

She can tell you better than I can, so here's a few bits from Some Things That Need to Be Said

Traditional publishing and indie publishing aren't all that different, and I don't think people realize that. Some books and authors are best sellers, but most aren't. It may be easier to self-publish than it is to traditionally publish, but in all honesty, it's harder to be a best seller self-publishing than it is with a house.

I don't think people really grasp how much work I do. I think there is this very big misconception that I was like, "Hey, paranormal is pretty hot right now," and then I spent a weekend smashing out some words, threw it up online, and woke up the next day with a million dollars in my bank account.

This is literally years of work you're seeing. And hours and hours of work each day. The amount of time and energy I put into marketing is exhausting. I am continuously overwhelmed by the amount of work I have to do that isn't writing a book. I hardly have time to write anymore, which sucks and terrifies me.

I also have this tremendous sense of urgency, like if I don't get everything out now and do everything now, while the iron is hot, everything I've worked for will just fall away. For the first time, I truly understand why workaholics are workaholics. You can't stop working, because if you do, it unravels all the work you've already done. You have to keep going, or you'll die.

I was blown away when I read this. For one thing, it's incredibly heartfelt and while I'm not as far along in my career as she is, I can identify with the angst she feels. Holding down a full-time job, spending time with my lovely wife, and writing in my spare time already leaves me feeling strung out and exhausted.

As I've gotten closer to the end of my journey with To Kill the Goddess, I’ve often wondered how I would EVER be able to tackle writing book two and living the rest of my life all while doing everything else she talks about. Facing that mountain is enough to make even a self-publishing fan boy like myself that there just might be something to be said for a more traditional route.

But having said that, here's Indie vs. Traditional

This whole ebook thing is going to benefit everyone in a real big way.

Traditional publishers will not die. Some may suffer, most will adapt. As a breed, they will change, but they will not go quietly into that good night.

Indie authors will also continue to flourish. Some with have great success, some will have no success, but most will do moderately well. Writers will be happier because of this, and readers will be happier with more options.

Midlist authors will go almost entirely indie. I think this move with benefit both the authors and the publishers. In a real way, publishers lose money on midlist authors.

Publishers have for years been in the business of making bestsellers. They put all their money and energy into make best sellers, but the problem is, nobody can actually predict a bestseller. …. So sometimes publishers put money and energy into books that were not bestsellers, and because of this, they lost a lot of money.

That meant that publishers had even less money and energy to give to midlist authors, who suffered because of it and had fewer sales, which meant less money for publishers, who then had even less money, and the cycle goes on.

…

What indie publishing allows authors to do is grow the way they used to with publishers. Authors can put out books and build a fan base. (Or a "platform" for those who like terminology). They can become bestselling authors before a traditional publisher ever works with them.

Because of this, for the first time in history, publishers have a real way of being able to tell if a book will be a best seller. Basically, because it already is a best seller or is written by a best selling author.

You may ask yourself, "But if I already have a best seller on my hands and I am a best selling author, why would I want a traditional publisher? Aren't they just swooping now that the hard part is done?"

The answer: Ebooks are still only 8-30% of the market. People speculate that in five years it will be 50%, maybe in more than. But for the sake of argument, let's assume that's right. If you're already a best selling author in the 8-50% market, why wouldn't you want to take a chance on being a best selling author in the the other 50-92% of the market?

Let me put it this way: Being Amanda Hocking right now is awesome. But being J. K. Rowling is out of the world. If you're an author, and you've worked your ass off on your books and your career, why pass on a chance at maybe being J. K. Rowling and settle for being Amanda Hocking?

So as you can see, Amanda Hocking is making a whole lot of sense.

There's a lot of people out there on the Internet right now we seem to be saying that either traditional publishing is going to die or that, unless you're incredibly lucky, you're a fool to forgo the benefits of traditional publishers and self publish. People who know me also know that I've been predicting major changes in the publishing industry, yet the more I learn, the more I believe there is room at that publishing table of the future for both indie and traditional authors.

Amanda's argument articulates one possible (dare I say probable?) manifestation of that future.

Self Promotion

2011-03-21T15:40:00.002-05:00

Is self promotion worth it?

The question comes up now and then with us writers, especially among those of us deep within the vast herds of the unpublished or the about to be published. Should you be taking yourself away from valuable writing time, valuable product-creation time, in order to possibly maybe/maybe not drum up a handful or two of new readers? Is it worth the time and effort?

The conventional wisdom seems to be: No.

There are those out there that swear by self promotion and all the myriad of potential bounties it will lead to and they have specific cases they will cite and cite and cite ad nauseum to prove this. The thing is, most authors (that I've seen/read/talked to/whatever) who've been there seem to say they got very little benefit out of their efforts and that ultimately, the writing is the most important part and if you're out there banging your drum all day screaming "HEY! ASSHOLE! LOOK OVER HERE, JERKS! AAAAHH! AAAAHH! BOOOOOK!" ...or something to that affect... you're wasting valuable time, time you could be writing. And without that writing, you've got nothing, most especially, you've got nothing to promote. So... get back to writing, right?

And there's the question: How many people do you actually expect to reach? 7? 15? 50? 104? 392? Huh? HUH? How many? And have you ever stopped to consider how many are needed to make an actual SALES difference? Take a moment and ask yourself, how many connections of value do you really have? In the sudden harsh light of those hard numbers, how can the internet version of a one-man band at a street fair come off as anything but a waste of time, money-wise? Isn't promotion better left to professionals? Is it anything but constant work for very little provable gain? After all that, how can it not boil down to the fact that, in the end, it was time that would have been better spent writing?

But there's that nagging little voice...

What's wrong with spreading the word a bit yourself? What can it hurt? And what if it helps? What if that one shameless little self-toot was all the blatt you needed to bring yourself to the world's attention and as a result, open a big time door?

And then there are those success stories, those tantalizing, golden and undeniable success stories, ones that deserve the accolades and success, and even more maddening, ones that most definitely do not. And you gotta wonder, what if a little bit of self promotion was the secret, the last little push needed to ascend the peak. What if? What if? What if? After all, no one wants to miss the boat.

So which is it?

Yay? Nay? Maybe the answer to enjoying the benefits of self promotion lies, much like twinkies, in balance and moderation. Maybe, much like twinkies, too much of it is a bad thing. And maybe, much like twinkies, too little is also a bad thing.

Mmmm... Twinkies...

Myself?

I'm going to go for the balance.

(With self promotion, not Twinkies... I am just a man, after all, I am no god...)

In the time since finishing Gunslingers of the Apocalypse and starting my blog about my efforts to get published... and comics I like... and some movies too... and the occasional cute girl... and other stuff I like, but I digress, ever since I started all that, I've been signing up at messageboards and finding blogs and websites, places that look like folks that share my particular interests, and thus may enjoy my book, hang out.

My initial plan was to maintain a presence there, and then, when the day came and my book was imminent, I'd spew links all over those places. All over. I was planning on being a ticking info-bomb ready to explode. BOOM! BOOOOOK! LOOK AT MY BOOK! READ IT! LOVE IT! LOOK AT MY BOOK, DAMN YOU! DO IT! DO IT NOW! ...or something to that affect...

The reality however, is that I am way too lazy to bother with most messageboards anymore and frankly, at this point, I lack patience for the types of people who would happily dub themselves as regulars at those kind of places, you know? Ew, right? Anyway, I'm still gonna splatter-link them, eventually... they'll just have less clue it's coming.... Or who I am... Anyway, that's just about it. A little effort that may yield some interest, maybe, but not take up too much time. Other than that, I'm just going to stay open to any other possibilities and should one fall in my lap...

This is The Culture Buzz. It's run by my long time friend John Busbee. He's someone who has been active in the arts community of Des Moines, the greater Iowa area, and beyond (Mark, he did Locations on the Crazies, FYI) and his site is all about the arts and upcoming events and things of interest concerning theatre and movies and literature, what have you.

It's a great resource about the Arts.

And I am an Artist.

Heh.

Seriously though, John and I have recently done an interview. It's about fifteen minutes or so and it's all about me, my book, trying to get published and all and sundry, basically the trials and tribulations of the process. It'll be available soon on The Culture Buzz as a free download and he and I will be talking periodically as the process continues and I hope you'll take a moment and have a listen. It's not up yet, of course, so keep an eye out, keep checking back. In the meantime, swing on over and peruse all the fun that The Culture Buzz offers. Say hi to John for me

So, toot. I have begun.

Look at me,
Jon

Some Good Books About Writing

2011-03-17T23:15:00.003-05:00

I knew I owned a lot of books about writing—but I never realized I have quite so many until I counted them tonight. Over 50.

I’m including among these some standard books every writer should have on hand. A couple dictionaries, the Chicago Manual of Style, Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style (Yes, believe it or not, grammar nannies, I do own a book or two on grammar) a battered version of Roget’s Thesaurus, a handful of books on police procedures, building science fiction worlds and even on creating dark horror characters. But beyond that I have a lot of other books on the craft of writing, and I’ve read most of them, some from cover-to-cover, others just certain chapters that pertained to writing questions on hand at the time I picked them up. Most of them have not been all that helpful, some of them are downright bad, but there are a few of them I’ve enjoyed and have learned a lot from. These are the books I’m listing here.

Writing Down The Bones by Natalie Goldberg

What I like about it: The mix of Zen and writing practice. This book is pure inspiration. Fun to read and full of encouragement.

Nuggets of wisdom: When sitting down to write commit yourself to that task. Keep your hand moving, don’t cross out, don’t worry about spelling, punctuation and grammar, lose control, don’t think, go for the jugular (don’t pull away from things that come up in your writing). Good stuff that makes me want to put a pen to paper.

How to Write a Movie in 21 Days by Viki King

I love movies and I’m a big fan of trying to write on the page in ways that are exciting and potentially filmable. Viki King’s book does a great job of breaking down how a screen play works, section by section, with writing prompts to help you think about your writing project. It may be about writing a movie, but I used certain parts of her book to help me brainstorm my novel BLACKHEART (and I think with good results).

Save the Cat by Blake Snyder

Another good book about screenplay writing with hints and tips about understanding story in movies. The author has a “Beat Sheet” section in his book that takes you through 15 key scenes (beats) that all good movies have, and then illustrates all these points with examples from contemporary movies.

Stephen King’s On Writing

I’ve read many, many books by Stephen King and it is interesting to me that several writers I know who had previously never read any Stephen King read this one book—and loved it. It’s a fun read (especially if you’re a King fan to begin with) containing many personal aspects of the author’s life as a writer and lots of good advice. There is a nice example towards the back of the book showing part of an edited manuscript. My favorite part of the book has little to do with writing: Stephen King’s retelling of the auto accident where he was run down by the equivalent of one of his characters.

STAR WARS the magic of myth by Mary Henderson

A very “Joseph Campbell-esque” look at the hero’s journey in the Star Wars storyline.

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

Bird by bird refers to dealing with things in small chunks, which for a novelist is the only way to go. My favorite concept of her writing about writing is that of the “shitty first draft.” Take small steps, get it down, fix it up later.

Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury

There are three slips of paper I have tacked above writing space containing these words: Work, Relax, Don’t Think. Bits of wisdom from Ray Bradbury’s book, that on an ideal writing day I try to follow. The “don’t think” part of the equation to me is the most interesting part of being a writer. I sit down at my writing desk some days and when I get into that groove and work and relax and let the characters go where they may things happen in the story I never would have planned and plotted out. Lots of fun stories and quotes in this book from Bradbury.

Do you have a favorite book on the craft of writing? I’d love to hear about it.

What I Got for X-mas or The Hunger Games - Part II

2011-03-04T16:52:00.010-06:00

Mark recently blogged about his impressions of The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins.

Which fit nicely into a blog I've been planning for the last while.

Over the winter holidays, whenever someone wanted my gift list, I asked for books. I've never liked owning books, because I've always lived in small quarters and I like my spaces sparse. But, I decided that if I want to publish my books, I ought to support the industry that might some day print those books.

And yes, I am aware that there's a big ol' elephant crowding out all these nice letters I'm typing - go check out Shawn's current blog about e-publishing.

But setting aside that elephant for the moment (uuuummpph), I thought I should in some way support the industry I want to support me.* So I asked for books. And I got books. Lots of yummy books. (And to deal with my I-like-my-spaces-sparse fetish, I've been passing on these books to friends and then eventually to the Women's Prison Book Project, a local outfit which sends books to, you got it, incarcerated women.) I spent my time off work reading, reading, reading.

And I learned a couple things. And one of the things I learned was from Suzanne Collins: how to end a chapter. (This is the flip-side of advice that Lyda Morehouse gave us in a Loft class: never end a chapter with your character falling asleep: your readers will do the same.) Collins very often ends a chapter with a one-line paragraph--sometimes it's even a one-word paragraph. And that one line or word packs a huge emotional punch. A punch which makes you want to pause for a moment and think, feel, reflect. But after that moment, it makes you want to turn the page and keep reading.

It's hard to showcase her skill here, because realistically I can only give you a couple lines of text, but here's a shot at it with an excerpt from Mockingjay, the final installment of The Hunger Games:

Then I know Prim is right, that Snow cannot afford to waste Peeta's life, especially now, while the Mockingjay causes so much havoc. He's killed [----] already. Destroyed my home. My family, Gale, and even Haymitch are out of his reach. Peeta's all he has left.

"So, what do you think they'll do to him?" I ask.

Prim sounds about a thousand years old when she speaks.

"Whatever it takes to break you."

Oomph. Collins doesn't have to go on to say how Katniss, the narrator, feels when she hears this, because I as a reader feel it. Like a punch to the gut. And if Collins had gone on to describe Katniss's reaction, my own reaction would have been dampened; I'd be reading about a feeling, rather than feeling the feeling.

After realizing this, I've been going through my own WIP, trying to end more chapters in the same way.

Saying everything without actually writing very much at all.

---

*I've also thought that I should send a couple bucks to authors whose books I got from the library and adored. Maybe choose my top ten authors of the year and send them each ten buckeroos. Especially if they're still in the struggling category. Any thoughts?

The Changing Face of Self-Promotion

2011-03-01T20:24:00.000-06:00

Lyda Morehouse recently started a discussion here that Kelly McCullough continued here about self-promotion over on the Wyrdsmiths blog.

The Wyrdsmiths have had elements of this discussion before. Generally, they have been of the opinion that a writer gets more out of their time by writing than they do by trying to market what they have written. Generally, I would agree.

What makes this discussion interesting to me is how I believe the answer to this question is changing along with the shifting landscape of the publishing industry.

Let's start by taking the case of traditional publishing. Within that framework, the publisher typically takes on the responsibility of publicizing and marketing. Now, we could argue about the effectiveness of their efforts, especially regarding the difference in the way publishers treat mid-list authors versus more popular authors, but I don't want to go down that rabbit hole in this post. Let's say, for sake of argument, that they do market your work. In that case, I completely agree that it makes sense for publishers to do the marketing and for writers to do the writing.

Now let's consider how the publishing landscape is changing. E-Books are exerting major price pressures on publishers (read this by Mike Shatzkin). Every e-book sold means one less book sold within the brick and mortar distribution channel. This in turn means increased returns and price pressure from both sides of the equation. Furthermore, brick and mortar booksellers, already under siege by the economy, are going out of business (e.g. Borders’ bankruptcy). It's only a matter of time before publishers start ordering smaller print runs, which means more cost per unit, which means even more price pressure on already low profit margins.

I could go on, but I think at this point it's easy to see these are major concerns for both the publisher and the author. Publishers are going to have less money. That means, among other things, less money for marketing. There will also be less places for someone to see an author's book on a shelf and buy it. That means less sales. Can anyone say, “Vicious cycle?”

As the publishing landscape changes, I think the question about self-promotion will necessarily change as well. I think it will shift from, “Is it worth it?” to, “How do I do it effectively and with minimal investment of my own time and resources?”

While I don't think there is anyone who can say for certain what the effects of these changes will be, one thing seems to be clear: authors are going to need to learn how to compete with cheap e-books. If you are an author who has chosen to traditionally publish, can you continue to rely on your publisher to make a case for your book vs. the $.99 e-book when your publisher is forced to make do with less and less money? If you are self-publishing, how do you get noticed?

I think these are the questions that are going to shape this debate as it evolves over the next months and years.

Now I just wish I had some answers. Stay tuned!

I'm done!

2011-02-26T09:02:00.001-06:00

This week I finished my rewrite of To Kill the Goddess. It's a pretty amazing achievement, but I don't plan on talking about that much in this post. The Scribblerati will be critiquing my last three chapters on Monday and I don't want to count my chickens before they're hatched, if you know what I mean!

So what am I going to talk about? Doing nothing. Yes, you heard it here, I plan rewarding myself on taking the next couple of weeks and doing absolutely nothing - related to the book at any rate. Now, I'll probably be thinking about book 2 nonstop and I might even jot down a few things here and there, but the focus of my next few weeks is going to be not writing.

I need some time to do nothing.

#1 Do Nothing Activity: spend more time with the lovely @mplstravelkitty

Sometimes I think I would see more of my lovely wife if we had two dogs to walk and three kids to ferry back and forth to hockey, gymnastics, and baseball. The lovely @mplstravelkitty has been amazing through this long journey and I'm looking forward to a little do nothing time with the love of my life.

#2 Do Nothing Activity: READ!

Everyone else in the Scribblerati seems to be able to write and read just fine, but I can't do it. I'm not exactly a slow reader, but I’m far from the fastest. On a normal day, by the time I've been to work, made dinner, and spent a few minutes with the lovely @mplstravelkitty I'm usually left with an hour or two to write and even less time for any reading. I just can't get into a novel if I only have 10 or 15 min. at a stretch to read. Comics are another story, and I've definitely found refuge there, but holy frakking cow do I want to read a book! I have three on tap and I plan on doing a little book review blogging with them as I finish. Stay tuned!

#3 Do Nothing Activity: Purge!

This particular activity is already in full swing. If any of you have seen my man cave you know it's wall-to-wall books, comics, and God knows only what else. Two weeks ago we pulled it all out (that took a week just by itself), had new carpet installed, and painted. At first, when the lovely @mplstravelkitty tentatively mentioned the idea, I was dead set against it. The mere thought of moving all that crap out of my room and then back in was, quite simply, terrifying. But then, one night when I was in there finishing up To Kill the Goddess I looked around at all the crap and I thought: purge! So that's what I'm doing, and there is a really amazing symmetry with this purge coinciding with the completion of my rewrite. I feel like I'm stepping off the plank into new, uncharted waters.

And speaking of uncharted waters….

#4 Do Nothing Activity: catch up on the RSS feeds and figure out what in the heck is going on with the publishing industry.

Has anyone else been paying attention out there? There is some crazy stuff going down. I plan on blogging more about this later, but it appears as if the publishing industry may be falling into that tailspin I've been yammering on about for a while. The landscape could look a lot different in several months to a year from now and while nobody knows anything for certain, I feel absolutely confident in saying there are some choppy waters ahead. The million-dollar question is once the storm is over will the industry see land or will it get sucked down into a spiraling maelstrom of corporate death?

#5 Do Nothing Activity: Blog!

Expect to see more of these in the next couple of weeks.

Until then, I have a book to read.

The Hunger Games - A Pseudo Review

2011-02-18T00:01:00.006-06:00

So I just finished The Hunger Games series recently and I thought I'd share my thoughts--and see what others think about this series.

Spoiler Alert: I’ve tried to avoid giving away info crucial to the plot of this series, but I can’t guarantee I didn’t include some spoilers. If you are reading The Hunger Games and don’t want to risk it, please stop reading here. Otherwise, keep on reading….

If you haven’t heard of The Hunger Games, here what Wikipedia has to say:

The Hunger Games

Clearly many people like The Hunger Games. The series has sold several million copies—I (or any author) should hope to have a book series as successful. Multiple people recommended the books to me before I read them. One of my fellow Scribblerati loaned me the last two books (Thanks, Lisa). Over all they were a quick read. Are they the best books ever? No. Are they the worst? No. I guess for my reading tastes I give them a solid “C.” I liked them enough to read them all over a short period of time. Yet, do I feel the need to ever read them again? No.

Things That Bugged Me About The Hunger Games Trilogy

No Shields. In the first two books it seems to occur to none of the characters in a life/death struggle that having something to block an incoming blade or arrow might be a good idea.
Archers shooting down a bomber. (Book 3). Stealth Bombers come to mind—but in general most planes dropping bombs travel at such a height that their targets probably don’t know the bombers are there until they are blown to bits. Yes, in this instance they are special bows, and yes, exactly what the bombers are and what height they travel at is unknown, but I still had trouble buying it.
The name Peeta (pita) for a bread maker’s son. Really?
At times vague descriptions of settings and technology. For example, the bombers mentioned in my second example above. Were they planes? Something else? I had trouble picturing them from the material on the page.
A lot of really good action happens “off camera.” In particular, many “tributes” die in the arena, but we never see the battles that happen and when some characters die we never, ever get to find out exactly what happened to them.
We know a little about Panem, but how big is it? And what about the rest of the world? How did things get to this point? We just don’t know.
The Mockingjay (Book 3) really dragged for me. It seemed to take forever for a rescue attempt to try to save Peeta (which to me seemed like the logical place to start the 3^rd book). In the final book in the series the main character Katniss often seems removed from the main, exciting action until almost 300 pages into the book.
The Rebel Forces/District 13. Could there be a less desirable rebel-alliance to be sided with? I’m sure that was the author’s point, but I could have used a more likeable counterpart to the Capital.
In The Hunger Games (Book 1) why don’t Peeta and Katniss try to align together immediately? If one of my pals and I are going to be thrown into a life and death arena I’m pretty sure we’ll decide from the get-go to align against the people we don’t know (who seem to have no problem making alliances before the game begins).
No sex. These are teenagers we’re dealing with, right?
Never trying to find a way out of the Arena (or even finding its dimensions) in Book 1. Many people when put in a life or death scenario might choose a plan to escape vs. trying to fight your way to victory. To have the main characters never seek or even see the edges of the arena bothered me as a reader.
The “pregnancy” lie. The Capitol has fabulous technology: hovercrafts, mutations, force fields. Yet, they don’t have any means to immediately disprove the claim from a Tribute who claims to be pregnant?
The love triangle/teen angst. Sheesh.
Gale: for being part of the love triangle in many parts of these books he seemed like a non-entity. Because we are in Katniss’s head, a lot of action with Gale, as well as many other characters, happens “off screen.”

OK, Some Things I Liked About the Hunger Games

I did, over-all, like Katniss and her ability as a hunter/archer. Some pretty fun moments with her and her bow. Believable that she is a survivor.
The “Mutts.” Creepy/scary.
Many of the secondary characters: Haymitch, Cinna, and even Buttercup
My favorite book was probably the first in the series. The whole concept of the Hunger Games and the all the jeopardy Katniss, her sister and Peeta are put in really kept me reading.
The last section of The Mockingjay (Book 3) from the point when Boggs gets his legs blown off was hard for me to put down. Non-stop action from there to the end of the book, mostly.
President Snow was plenty creepy, but I always pictured him a bit like “Larry Bud Melman”
Katniss’s last arrow fired. Had she not shot the person she had, I would have hated the whole series.
The children at the end of Book 3. Nicely done.

So that’s my opinion.

If you’ve read The Hunger Games I encourage you to comment here about what you liked/disliked about the series and why you think it has been such a hit.

Thanks for reading.

Good vs. Evil: Getting to Know Angels & Devils

2011-02-04T06:56:00.005-06:00

In my novel BLACKHEART there are both angels and demons alike. This posting is a quick summary to help you tell them apart, and sometimes it can be tricky. The angels and demons in my book are all based loosely on Christian, Jewish, Islamic or other accounts of angels. When researching angels and demons the one thing I found out is that our (human) knowledge of them is limited. Many of them have multiple names, jobs and backgrounds, depending on whose story you want to listen to. I’m sure only they know the truth, which has made them a fertile cast of characters for me, a fiction writer, to have inhabit the world of BLACKHEART.

How many different angels and demons are there? The highest number I’ve found is 300,000 fallen angels alone. And of course scholars have debated that whole “how many angels can sit on the head of a pin” thing for too long. Only 2 angels appear by name in the Christian Bible today (Michael and Gabriel). So what about all the others?

Note: I've left out a few angels and demons from BLACKHEART in this posting to avoid SPOILERS.

Hafaza

In Islamic mythology, the Hafaza are equivalent to the Christian concept of guardian angels. They help the soul fight off attacks from devils and djinn. My character, Noel August, is able to commune with them—which is both a blessing and a curse. At times they save her life, at others listening to them leads her into great peril.

Mastenem (The Lesser)

When Noah asked God to destroy all demons after the great flood, supposedly the demon Mastema intervened and asked that 10% of the demons be saved under his control to test mankind. God said “Yes.” (Thanks a lot.) These remaining demons that roam the earth are the Mastenem. Blackheart refers to them as the Lesser—and whenever he and the Lesser meet blood is shed. Their evil minds are simple and revolve around how to best inflict pain and harm on human beings. Their shapes vary, taking on aspects of monsters and beasts—all the better to terrify their victims. Besides their original demon savior, Mastema, all manner of greater demons take control of the Lesser, and use them for their schemes.

Semyaza

This name is sometimes synonymous for Satan, but in the context of BLACKHEART it refers to a class of angels who were cast out of heaven for teaching angelic secrets to man (like warfare and how to make weapons)—and for fornicating with women. ‘Nuf said.

Uhriel (or Uriel)

Known as “the fire of God” and “he who watches over thunder and terror,” in BLACKHEART (per some recorded accounts), Uhriel is the presider over Tartarus (Hell) and the leader of the massive angel guard that lives there, keeping all the damned souls and demons confined and delivering punishments as part of his thankless, daily routine.

Psychopomps

Per the Greek word, literally “guide of souls.” According to some cultures, souls do not immediately enter the world during birth, nor exit the world during death without some assistance. The transition between life and death is often aided by helpful spirits in animal form, the Psychopomps. In BLACKHEART Psychopomps make their appearance in the forms of voles, scorpions and fish, to name a few. My favorite example of Psychopomps in another work of writing? See “THE CROW” by James O’Barr.

Lucifer

With so many angels and demons in my book I’d be remiss not to mention Satan. Known by many other names, the baddest of the bad, the prince of evil, tempter of Eve and Jesus alike in some accounts he still walks the Earth. Pretty scary, I think. There are many accounts and variations of how he was thrown from heaven with his host of followers, but I like this one a lot:

Joseph Campbell (1972: pp. 148–149) illustrates an unorthodox Islamic reading of Lucifer's fall from Heaven, which champions Lucifer's eclipsing love for God:

One of the most amazing images of love that I know is in Persian – a mystical Persian representation as Satan as the most loyal lover of God. You will have heard the old legend of how, when God created the angels, he commanded them to pay worship to no one but himself; but then, creating man, he commanded them to bow in reverence to this most noble of his works, and Lucifer refused – because, we are told, of his pride. However, according to this Muslim reading of his case, it was rather because he loved and adored God so deeply and intensely that he could not bring himself to bow before anything else, and because he refused to bow down to something inferior to him (since he was made of fire, and man from clay). And it was for that that he was flung into Hell, condemned to exist there for eternity, apart from his love.

Thanks for reading.

Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth  
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep. 
~John Milton, Paradise Lost

RIP John Barry

2011-01-31T22:16:00.000-06:00

John Barry passed away today. I can't say that I was a huge fan, but I was a fan. Like many of us, his music has touched my life more than once and if you take a moment to browse through the list of movie soundtracks he's composed I think you'll be able to say the same.

How is this relevant to The Scribblerati blog? Only marginally, to be honest. I always write to music. Typically, that's something techno-ish; mostly house, with a little trance and other whatnot thrown in. Every once in a while though I'll turn to some classical and a soundtrack that I always come back to is:

I love the Dances With Wolves soundtrack. It's sweeping, haunting, and beautiful all at the same time. In many ways, the imagery and emotions it evokes is almost perfect for writing. I don't know about you, but there's something about truly excellent music that always stimulates my creativity.

And there's one other thing about Dances with Wolves that I'll never forget. That's the movie the lovely @mplstravelkitty and I saw on our first date.

Go ahead and follow the links and let us know how John Barry affected your life.

Interesting Bits

2011-01-30T18:36:00.000-06:00

Interesting Bits – my thoughts on a few interwebby things I found interesting

Foreign Rights: How Authors Tap a Rich Vein of Royalties

I really can't disagree with anything the author of this article says. I can, however, disagree with the underlying subtext, which appears to be: here's something else those silly self-pubbers don't get. Clearly, the author of this article did not explicitly say that, but for the sake of this post I would like to focus on that particular notion.

This isn't the first time I've seen defenders of the mainstream publishing status quo make the argument that those who self publish are missing out on all the advantages that come along with mainstream publishing. I can't really disagree with that either. Mainstream publishers bring many advantages to their clients, including foreign rights. The problem with that particular argument is that there is no guarantee that anyone will be interested in obtaining foreign rights for your book. So while one can claim that foreign rights sales are an advantage to the author who chooses to mainstream published, it's only an advantage if it's a realized.

(I could belabor this point, especially in regards to marketing, but that's another post.)

The other thought-provoking bit about this article is that I don't see why foreign rights sales and self-publishing need to be mutually exclusive. The article states that navigating those murky legal waters can be terribly challenging for the typical author and again I can't disagree with that. But whoever said that you can't self publish AND have an agent who understands these things?

I've mentioned before that I'm pretty close to finishing my novel, To Kill the Goddess. Once I finish I will start querying agents just like everyone else. The difference between me and those who are only looking to mainstream publish will be that I will be keeping an eye open for an agent who is interested in representing me even though I may choose to self publish.

There are of course a whole host of questions around how that particular arrangement might work, but I've caught wind of these relationships here and there on the interwebs and I think that sort of thing just might be the wave of the future.

Hmmm… That sounds like another post too…

Goodbye Cruel World - BLACK HEART Writing Retreat

Doesn't that sound like heaven?

After having been unemployed for 2 1/2 months this summer I totally know what Holly is talking about. I can't possibly convey how much of an incredible experience that was for me to have that block of uninterrupted time. It's just like she says in the article, you really do become immersed in your story. You think about it all the time and you even find yourself dreaming about it.

But could I really go away for a month and do nothing but write? I kinda don't think so.
One of the nice things about being at home was that I didn't have to be away from the lovely @mplstravelkitty. Actually, after being by myself all day I was like a big puppy dog by the time she got home from work. I was all like, “How are you doing? How was your day? Guess what I made for dinner?”

The other reason I don't think I can go away for a whole month is that I found that I needed to get away from the writing on a fairly regular basis. Don't misunderstand me, I wrote every day, but after writing from 8 AM to 2 or 3 PM my brain was kind of mush. I needed the downtime to recharge for the next day. Besides, what better way is there to recharge then spend some time with your honey?

The Random Post

2011-01-23T14:26:00.000-06:00

So whatever happened to that #Reverb10 thing you were doing?

Yep. I feel bad about letting that one slide. I really meant to go all the way to the end with that one, but then there was all of this business:

And it was a weird one too. Yes, there was all the usual family and Christmas stuff going on, but the lovely @mplstravelkitty and I had this great idea that December was a wonderful time to start remodeling our master bath. To be clear, we hired it done because I'm about as inept at remodeling as I would be flying the space shuttle, but it takes a ton of time even when someone else is doing the heavy lifting.

Do I want a nickel or chrome finish on the faucets?

Undermount sinks?

Do I think Dave's Den is the right color to paint the bathroom?

Dave’s Den??

Thankfully, the aforementioned lovely @mplstravelkitty is a whiz at navigating the bathroom supply websites and we survived.

Admission: I liked Dave's Den, but it didn't end up in the bath.

Self-mutilation

Yesterday I tried to kill one of my toes. I'm not entirely sure why kicking the side of the couch seemed like a good idea but I did and the lovely @mplstravelkitty insists it's not broken but I'm kind of a whiner and ooowwwwWWWW! Plus, I can't really do much yoga with my toe like that so – POUT!

Hey man, isn't this supposed to be a writing blog?

Well, yes, so here’s my WIP update.

I'm so frakking close to being with this draft that I'm ready to freak out!

I don't know if anyone else is this way, but when I was a kid in school, taking those standardized tests, I would get all squirmy and itchy and sweaty the closer I got to the end. Kinda like: oh my God make it stop! That's how I feel about my WIP right now. I've been on a serious push the last couple of months and I'm “this close” to done. Can't wait!! And not just because I want to be finished, but because I want to hear what the rest of The Scribblerati has to say about it. So far so good, but…

Unicorns kick ass and I don't care what anyone says

It may surprise some of you to know that unicorns are a frequent topic at the Scribblerati meetups.

It all started with people making fun of me because I have a unicorn in my WIP. It's not just that I have a unicorn, but that I have an elf princess who rides the unicorn. Now, in my defense, I am writing high fantasy, and I can't help it that fantasy has elves and unicorns, but still, I know how it looks.

I suppose I could've stayed away from the cliche, but that's really not my style. When you get right down to it, my whole book is about taking fantasy cliche, tropes, whatever you want to call it, and turning them on their head. Yes I have a unicorn, but my unicorn is kick ass. And my elf princess? Hot, of course. Okay, so I have one tiny little cliche…

But it all works and it isn't crochet.

(Um, that's cliche, voice translator, not crochet.)

You'll just have to take my word for it – for now!

PS. This is for you, Scribblerati:

The Worst Movie Ever?

2011-01-14T14:39:00.006-06:00

Last weekend a few intrepid friends and I sat down to my husband’s stellar waffles and watched what some folk call the Worst Movie Ever. This was not my first experience with a movie that had laid claim to that disreputable title; I have sat through many a Worst Movie Ever in my day.

Brave, you say? Not really. I can’t make it through one of these cinematic turds without the help of the cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000, or one of their current incarnations (Rifftrax, Cinematic Titanic). Take away the constant humorous riffing from those professional Bad Movie Watchers, folks with much stronger constitutions than yours truly, and I’d be rendered a quivering pile of goo, all sense of beauty, truth and artistic integrity forcibly drained from my very cells.

But I digress.

In this particular instance, the Worst Movie was Troll 2, an experiment in, let’s for the sake of argument call it ‘filmmaking:” that fails so extraordinarily in its efforts to be remotely good that it ends up being bizarrely entertaining in its own right. We watched the Rifftrax version. A few highlights:

It’s a movie called Troll 2 that not only is not subsequent to a Troll 1, but also contains no trolls.
It features one of the hammiest performances in the history of the universe, in the form of the actress playing the goblin queen. Even if the film had been made on Planet Pig, with sets carved from pure Cumberland Gap spiral bone-in ham, she’d still be the hammiest thing around.
And speaking of ham, the makers were clearly anti-vegetarian, or at least anti-eating your veggies, because the goblins (not trolls) turn all their victims into trees or vegetable goop before consuming them – and our young hero saves the day (spoiler alert!) with a double-decker bologna sandwich. That’s right. You heard me.
And then there’s the PG sex scene featuring a young man and the goblin queen both biting a corncob, which then (presumably due to the heat of their encounter) explodes into popcorn. The scene, incidentally, has no relation whatsoever to the rest of the story, except perhaps a tenuous tie to the fact that the goblins do love them some veggies. Even in the boudoir, it seems.

Here’s a sample: Troll Clip

Truly awful? Yes. But I have to say that Troll 2, popcorn sex notwithstanding, is a little too snappy and cheery to honestly deserve the Worst Movie trophy.

So then, what constitutes a truly awful movie?

The obvious: Bad writing. Acting so terrible it barely counts as acting, and actors that are inherently unappealing. Incompetent directing. Abysmal, laughable special effects. Lack of continuity.

But what constitutes the Worst Movie of All Time? To qualify, the movie has to have that certain something extra. In my mind, it’s a pervasive atmosphere of depressive creepiness: not the creepiness derived from good horror writing and cinematography, but that icky, dirty feeling you get when you realize you’re witnessing actors as puppets, forced to perform the director’s particular twisted proclivities for his own titillation. (Honestly, I get this feeling from Tarantino’s films too, although in every other respect they’re exceptionally well done).

Ed Wood films fit this profile, except there’s something so gleefully innocent about his strange quirks (not the least of which was his desire, against all reason, to be a filmmaker), that I never feel creeped out by them.

There are two movies that I feel might qualify for Giant Turd Trophy (I just made that up, but I think it needs to happen) and both have been given treatment by Mystery Science Theater 3000. The first is Eegah – a picture from the 60s featuring Richard Kiel (Jaws from the James Bond franchise) as the last surviving caveman, and a pie-faced squishy, greasy, whiney young male ‘star’ (the director’s son, natch). Eegah contains a truly repulsive sequence, in which the young hot female lead is trapped in Eegah’s cave with her father, played by the director, where she performs a series of humiliating tasks, including sitting on her daddy’s lap and shaving him. *Shiver*

The second, and probably champion, is Manos, Hands of Fate (or, translated, ‘Hands, Hands of Fate"), a dank and depressing devil story, in which an entirely incompetent family is trapped in a desert hotel by a big-kneed manservant. The movie features a scene where dead, ensorcelled gossamer clad devil slave ladies have a big old pile-up girl fight accompanied by ghastly saxophone music. The scene goes on and on and on. And on. Also, the female lead gets repeatedly (and very awkwardly) pawed by Torgo, he of the big knees. There is something so horribly weighty and depressing about Manos, that after watching it, one is left with a sense of ennui that lingers for hours, much like that feeling you get after waking up from a really oppressive, really stupid dream.

So then, now that I’ve thought it through, I highly recommend throwing a Troll 2 party (Rifftrax style): sure it will hurt your brain, but feed your friends waffles and plenty of mimosas, and eventually they’ll forgive you. After all, it isn’t actually the WORST movie ever made.

Name that Character - or rather, your character

2011-01-01T07:37:00.005-06:00

Natural Build

Hackwar Smof Swunnset

Darth Competent

Chuck Banger

Harry Potter

Rinkashime Chikukachiari

Baraqijal

These are all my names.

Really.

At least thanks to the Internet and the magic of random (or semi-random) name generators. The above are my Jersey Shore, Fantasy, Sith, Porn Star, Harry Potter character (score!), ninja and fallen angel name(s) (Baraqijal is the angel who taught astrology).

Our friends at #Reverb10 asked the question, “If I could walk into a room of strangers and introduce myself for the first time with a fake name, what name would I choose?” Not really sure. I suppose Darth Competent would work. I’m guessing he is the scariest but most organized of the Sith. If I were still a single man, Chuck Banger would have a certain appeal to the ladies. Ladies? Where did they all go? Anyway….

So what about Character names? Does it matter what you name your characters? How should you go about naming your characters in your story?

Here is a pretty good link on the subject that is pretty comprehensive:

http://www.babynames.com/character-names.php

Here are some character names from my book BLACKHEART, and why I chose that name and/or what they mean.

Clayton Jaeger: My human main character. He’s a detective and he is also suffering from illness and the loss of his only daughter. In Chapter 1, the character he has come to arrest, Blackheart, comments on his name, “Take dust and water mix ‘em together you get Clay—the same mud God made man out of.” I consider Clay to be the common man, hopefully the most relatable character in my novel for most readers. Jaeger, his last name, means “huntsman”—which I think is appropriate for a detective.

Blackheart: AKA Carl Black, AKA Cyex, is the violent protagonist and antihero of my novel, titled for the same. Terribly scarred and at war with literal demons, Blackheart is like his name suggests dark—in many ways to his core. Discovering his true motives and nature (his heart) are one of the things that I hope will keep people reading.

Noel August: Is a psychic teenager who talks with angels. She spends a lot of time in the company of Blackheart and demons. I wanted a name that would stand for her purity and brightness. Noel is literally the masculine form of the word “Christmas” (French). In English speaking countries it is sometimes used as a female name. “August” is a reminder of summer (the book is set in a winter blizzard.)

Marauder: Nemesis of Blackheart. He’s been around for a long, long time. Marauder is the current name he goes by, but he’s also been known by Af, Pahadrone, Rabdos, Apep and many others (all references to other times, places and bad things he’s done). The name Marauder means “Plunderer” or “Attacker.”

A couple mentions for awesome character names from my fellow Scribblerati writers (and there may be more, these are ones I like that come to mind as I’m writing this): Claudia’s time travelling character Ursula Evermore; Lisa’s nature-steeped main character: Beryl Kodiak. Very fitting names. Read their books and find out!

So what are some sources for finding good character names?

A few I have used:

q Sit through credits at the end of any movie and jot down names. There are some awesome names out there in real life. Mix and match first and last names as needed.

q Books on Naming: I have 3 books on my writing desk that are full of names. The best is the “Writer’s Digest Character-Naming Sourcebook.” It lists thousands of names from many languages with definitions. I also have a baby naming book and a pet-naming book. All of these have come in handy when trying to name fictional characters.

q The Internet. Duh. J I’ve included some links (there are probably thousands of other related links) that will help you either find or generate names.

Random Name Generator from US Census

http://www.kleimo.com/random/name.cfm

French Male Name Generator

http://nine.frenchboys.net/randboy.php

Harry Potter Name http://rumandmonkey.com/widgets/toys/namegen/406/

Angel/Demon Name generator:

http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=adname

A Plethora of Fantasy Names. Yeah. A plethora.

http://www.lowchensaustralia.com/names/fantasylinks.htm

This post is dedicated to my friends with the best names ever: Syshwinsnyx Mollieux and Wyoho Cheelaburb. You know who you are.

Happy New Year!

Agents & E-Books Exclusive Survey Preview

2010-12-23T16:28:00.001-06:00

Check out this article at Publishing Trends.

These are preliminary results to a survey that will be published by Mike Shatzkin at Digital Book World in January.

Some interesting stuff in there...

#reverb10 - Action!

2010-12-21T20:19:00.000-06:00

Hokay…

It's now been over a week since I last did one of these #reverb10 posts and that makes it official: I've fallen off the wagon.

I have good excuses though. Really! I was kind of under the weather for a few days there. Then there's the weather itself which has really blown goats and frakked my commute up good. The real killer was last Saturday's family Christmas. We hosted, which means lots and lots of prep work, but it was all good. We went non-trad this year and had Mexican Christmas. We made to slow cooked beef brisket, homemade refried beans, fresh salsa & guacamole, tortillas, and, of course, plenty of liquor. Good times!

Time to get back up on the wagon.

December 13 – Action. When it comes to aspirations, it’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen. What’s your next step?

This is the big one, isn't it? That was rhetorical because, of course it is! It's so easy to talk the talk, but walking the walk is another thing entirely. I'm gonna walk it good, baby! Walk what? The book. What else?

I'm not exactly sure yet how it's all going to go down, but 2011 is the year in which I'm going to start moving ahead on the publication front. I'm putting To Kill the Goddess out there one way or another. My plan is to start with the traditional old-school publishers and see what kind of response I get. Clearly, that's the easy way to go. No, easy isn’t the word I'm looking for. Safe. It's the safe way to go. We all know how that process works.

For those aren't familiar:
1.    query an agent
2.    wait
3.    pray

I think in my case there is going to be a lot of praying. I think my book kicks ass, but like this years Christmas, To Kill the Goddess is non-trad. At its core it's high fantasy, but there's also a healthy dose of suspense thriller, sci-fi, and horror. Add in the multiple point of view storyline, an adult / non-YA target audience, and a complete lack of vampires and, well, you can see how it might be a hard sell. It's going to take someone with vision and while I truly believe there are agents who have the vision to see what I'm trying to accomplish those agents still need to sell my book to an old-school publishing house that is typically more interested in the easy/safe sell than they are taking a chance on something unique.

Add all that together and I think the best I can hope for is a mid-list commitment which translates to selling my book for peanuts and if that's the case then I'm going to take the option behind door two, which is self publication.

Stay tuned to The Scribblerati and see how it goes!

Mark’s Reverb 2010

2010-12-18T11:13:00.004-06:00

Mark’s thoughts on the last year and his writing per the prompts from reverb 2010 (in no particular order): http://www.reverb10.com/the-prompts/

1 word to encapsulate my 2010:

Full. By full I mean both busy and blessed. Work, classes, writing, editing, a new book started, parties, time well spent with friends and family, lots of books, movies and other diversions—but full. In most ways good: gainfully employed, creating, and trying new things, hanging out with people I like and love. In some ways bad—every day, weekend and most weeknights booked or over-booked. Full.

1 word for 2011:

Who knows until the fat lady of 2011 sings? But—I hope: FOCUSED. In particular being focused on completing both my novels (done in a form so I can finally look for an agent). Being focused on being present in all the things I do: my day job, my writing, my roles as a spouse, parent and friend. Yeah. Focus for me in 2011.

Thing I could do daily that I could eliminate (or the 11 things my life doesn’t need in 2011):

1) Organize and thin down all the incoming digital input I receive daily: e-mail (no less than 4 accounts); twitter (over 1,000 people I’m following); a dozen or so blogs that I follow at least, etc. It all becomes information overload that I’m not very good at keeping up with. Some of it has got to go. Not sure my strategy yet, but I’ll get there.

2) Time wasters: A chronic problem for me: games, video games, online poker, TV, digital news feed (per above). I took a month off from just online poker and made quantum leaps with my writing during that month. January 1 I’ve decided to kill my poker account. Trying for four aces and millions of fake chips is just another form of procrastination for me. It’s gotta go. This gets back to the “focus” plan for 2011.

Make. What was the last thing you made?

Sweet, sweet love.

TMI? Sorry, you asked (or rather those Reverb 2010 people did).

OK, so of course as a writer I have put down lots of words on paper this year, creating fictional characters and worlds that I hope someday others will want to pick up and read.

Besides the writing (and other pastimes as noted above) I am blessed with a creative 7-year old kid. Some mutual friends recently gave us a stop-motion camera setup—so this is the movie that I helped create. We hope you find the storyline enthralling. I am sure it is just the first of many. (Thanks Jerry & Janette and family) Hope it plays for you... it was a challenge to post it to blogger.

Body Integration This year, when didyou feel the most integrated with your body? Did you have a moment where there wasn’t mind and body, but simply a cohesive YOU, alive and present?

I took a fencing class last winter with my son. This was his first foray into that sport, but for me it was a refresher course. It turned out I was the oldest pupil in class (the 21 year old instructor usually referring to me as “Dad”), mostly fencing with teenagers. I was sadly reminded how long it had been since I had last fenced by my initial attempts at catching my breath and legs that burned from muscle fatigue after the classes. BUT I was also was pleased to find I could keep up with the class—doing footwork up and down the lengths of the gymnasium and scoring points against the much younger, more fit fencers. I was also usually was the number one pick for team games where often half of the class fenced against the other half of the class. It was a lot of fun, but I found I continued to enjoy the mind-game/strategy/concentration part of the sport just as much as the physical work out. I even found out that fencing with the épée—the one type of sword I had never tried to fence with before—was something I was really good at (class champion). Yes, I am adept at stabbing people in the toe and hand. Watch yourself.

Lesson Learned What was the best thing you learned aboutyourself this past year? And how will you apply that lesson going forward?

I broke my arm in September. For the first couple weeks it was really inconvenient. I couldn’t do little things like tie my own shoes or button my own work shirts. (This made me thankful for my helpful family). I found I really don’t like having to rely on others or ask for help (but I already knew that).

This broken arm happened on my second day of my “book in a month” class at the Loft (it was actually a six-week class, so the title is a bit misleading). I missed that class—and for the rest of that class I was also reduced to half-typing speed at best. Despite this injury and my reduced physical capabilities I found that it really wasn’t slowing me down much. I only missed one day of work due to the broken arm. In the writing class I hit all my goals I set, and ended up creating more material in a month than I ever had—around 30,000 words (and more words than anyone else in this class). My learning? If I focus (there’s that “F” word again) I can overcome any obstacles to accomplish whatever I set my mind to. So can you.

Wishing you great success and happiness in the year ahead.

Back to writing.