Brilliant isn't always fun

I have a terrible admission. (Molly, prepare yourself) I have had the 4th season of the wire at my house, waiting to be watched, for almost a week and still haven't cracked it open.
And may not tonight.

We drunk writers have not been shy about our admiration for this show, and I certainly have loved it, the dialogue, the way the plot twists, and drama that seems completely true to life and really, characters like Omar and Stringer. There is a reason why this show has been hailed as the best television ever.

And when I'm immersed in a season, I watch it quickly.
But I never tear open the DVD case like a kid with a present on Christmas morning.
I know the season will have it's highs and lows and will tear my heart out while awing me with it's brilliance. I know this, and still the excitement I should have isn't there.

Because what's missing, and what keeps the Wire from being in my top three TV shows, is that sense of fun, and uplifting moments and sheer exhilaration that I got from Battlestar, or Firefly, or even True Blood.
Shows that really, in execution and scripts have more flaws, but I still find more fun to watch.
And I do love the Wire, but will I want to watch it again, just for the sheer pleasure of enjoying great TV, well, I'm not sure.

It reminds me of the movies that I loved passionately while watching, but never really felt the need to re-watch, like The English Patient, or Dogville, or even Saving Private Ryan. While I've watched Star Wars, and 10 Things I hate about you and Terminator over and over.
But in the next three days, I will open that DVD case and start the season and from there, I will once again, be immersed in the great TV that is the Wire.

Bleary eyes

Dang. I should have posted before my eye doctor appointment. Pupils are uber dilated, and I just survived (barely) the most horrendous, terrifying, exhausting walk in the heat and sunshine from the hospital where I had the snaps of my retinas taken to the dark corner of a Starbucks where I sit now trying like hell to see what I'm typing.

For the second time in about a month, I am so close to blind it's scary. I can barely see my screen. I don't realize how much of my days I spend either typing or reading until I can't really do either.

I tried to comment on another blog (actually a new groiup blog I'm part of, check it out) and it took me about three minutes of squinting and blinking and staring to figure out the stupid word for the spam check. It was readers. And not even typed in that distorted a font. For most people. Right now, I might as well by typing in wing dings. (Please excuse typos.)

So much for getting any work done today. Crap. Why doesn't this book just write itself? Maybe I should go to the movies. Who cares if Sandra Bullock is fuzzy. Ryan on the other hand...

My head hurts.

Whine.

We don't talk much about our drinking problems....

I have had a drinking Renaissance. I am a born again drinker. And what you may ask has brought me to this new level of imbibing? Martini's. That's right. In particular a cucumber and thyme martini with real bits of lemon and cucumber in it. I'm a beer girl from way back - but those days are over. I want ice cold glasses and garnishes of fresh mint and green grapes (can't even remember what that drink was - I was the drunkest person at a very swanky wedding last weekend. You honestly don't want to know, but I'll tell you anyway - I passed out in my hotel room at 8 pm with a mouth full of chocolate shake. It's a low point. Delicious. But low.)

So outside of drinking, I've done little to no writing. Little to no thinking. But I read some GREAT books - The Kitchen Boy, about the imprisonment and assassination of the Romanov's. Awesome book. And so help me - Belong To Me, the sequel to one of the best freaking books I read last year - Love Walked In. I cried non-stop from LA back to Toronto.

I think it's going to be a good drinking summer - I'm gonna buy a blender.

It's a thin line between character and plot

Have you ever read a book where it seems that the writer loved their character so much that they wrote even the smallest scenes, scenes that did illuminate some other facet of the character, but did little else?
Am reading the third in a trilogy right now, and the same character has been the lead in each book and I'm skimming large chunks of the third. We know this character too well now, that focusing in on her, and her interactions with those around her, just feels repetitious.

It reminds me of a great line from The Truth about Cats and Dogs. Love your character, but don't Love your character. (line bastardized for my purposes)

What was a fascinating mystery and character study in book one has become long and drawn out and really, boring, by book three.
Not everyone would agree with my assessment. I'm certain some readers must have loved this book. It's a fine line, because every reader is different.

Some readers love the intricate details of a character study, others want fast paced but in there somewhere, is a balance. And it's why writing is so freakin' hard, because the balance is different for each author, each book, and there is no equation, or course, or graph. There is just writing the scenes and seeing if they work.

But there are ways to illuminate character in short, but vivid ways. Watched the episode 1 of Tru Blood this week. And the elements that bothered me about the show were still there. I find the dialogue between Sookie and Bill still really stilted, and their relationship is still my least favourite storyline, but the rest is ridiculously great.
Love Tara and the way she is on the edge of peril, in a way we don't understand, but am salivating to discover. Love Jason, even if his stupidity is broadly drawn and the Lafayette in the cellar storyline had to be the highlight of my week.
What topped it all off, was Eric coming down and tearing apart one of the other cellar dwellers, in a vicious, bloodthirsty fashion, all while wearing highlight foils in his hair.
The foils were a brilliant touch. You have a vicious vampire who highlights his hair. Perfect character details in ten seconds.
Could not love this show more right now.

Perfect Little Movie

This has been a depressing six to ten months for movies for me. To understand this fully, you must understand that I saw approximately seventy to eighty films in 2008. At least. In the theatres. (That is not counting DVD's and on TV.) And 2008 wasn't an incredibly unusual year for me.

This year has been more unusual. We are almost half-way through, and I'm barely into the double digits.

Last fall's TIFF was disappointing, and I don't know if it was that, but somehow I lost my typical enthusiasm for going to the movies. Part of this is because I got caught up on some great TV like Battlestar Galactica and Mad Men and The Wire and True Blood and Project Runway. But part of it was I just didn't feel inspired to go out to the movies, and every time I did, I ended up thinking I'd have spent my time better watching high brow TV like Make Me a Supermodel or Paris' BFF.

Other than Star Trek, I hadn't seen a film I enjoyed in a really, really long time.

And while I did enjoy Star Trek, a lot, it's not really my favorite genre of film, and since this was my highlight, it felt like AGES since I'd seen a film I truly loved. A film that made me laugh and cry and feel better (or worse) about the world. Last week I went to see The Taking of Pelham 123 (boring) and My Life in Ruins (inane). Not sure why I went to either of those films except that there was little else playing I wanted to see more.

But I finally saw a great film tonight. Away We Go.

What a lovely, smart, well acted, well written, well directed film. Just about everything worked for me in this movie. Okay, can't think of anything that didn't work for me. Don't know why I hedged that.

And nice to see Sam Mendes doing a movie with a true heart after the great but depressing Revolutionary Road. Away We Go is basically about a couple searching out family and a sense of home when they're six months pregnant. Kind of nesting on a big scale. And it's just so genuinely funny and tender and real. At least I'd like to think people like their characters exist in real life. That relationships like theirs exist in real life.

I went in knowing almost nothing about this movie and I'm glad. In fact, if you can avoid seeing trailers, avoid it. Just go. Not that there are any real spoilers in the trailer (I saw the trailer just an hour after seeing the film, because I also went to see Easy Virtue... not as good).

Instead of talking about the story, (or how great Maggie Gyllenhaal was in her small part) I'd just like to mention why I'd like to buy the DVD when it comes out. I've been taking an online class on body language in an attempt to take my characters beyond smiling and shrugging... And watching the pitch perfect performances of the actors in this film made me want to study bits of it frame by frame and then try to describe the facial reactions. One scene in particular, where Allison Janney is listening to her husband talk, while the two of them are out for dinner with the Maya Rudolph and John Krasinski characters, was priceless. With just her face, we see frustration, embarrassment, anger and then a combination of acceptance, defeat and maybe even a hint of love. Brilliant.

And Jim from the Office can act. Wow. LOVED him in this movie. Seriously loved him. Want to marry him now.

So glad I got my movie mojo back.

Is YA the most exciting genre happening right now?

Let me start by saying, it is a travesty that I'm writing a blog on YA. I know little about it and up till maybe a few weeks ago, I had the stupid, and uneducated opinion that YA was about orphaned wizards, or vampires who don't have sex.
But I was lucky enough this week to spend twenty minutes at Maureen's house, and peruse her books, and picked up a couple of YA's both of which went on to blow my little mind.

The first was, The Dust of a Hundred Dogs. It's about a pirate, a teenager, who is cursed at her death, to spend her next hundred lifetimes as a dog, until she is finally reincarnated as a human, who remembers her pirate life.

The second was The Hunger Games, which, and I've only read the first chapter, completely enthralled me. I am seriously salivating to get my hands on this book, based only on the first chapter. It's set in an alternate world, features a seventeen year old girl, who has to compete in a fight to the death with twenty-three other teens.

Both books are really dark, and the premise of both is imaginative and well thought out, and like nothing in the romance genre.
As far as I can tell, the only limiting factor in the YA genre is age, your main character can't be fifty, but otherwise, almost anything goes.
The other common factor of those two books, was the voice of the main character was crisp and clear and leaped off the page. So amazing writing is also part of the package.
So I'm going to hunt down more YA books. Or maybe just scour Maureen's house again, and take all the books she's been telling me to read for the past while.

Storylines That Arc Over More Than One Book or Does Anyone Really Care About The Spinner Falls' Traitor?

We're bad bloggers - and so I'm jumping in here with something that's top of my mind right now. Over-arcing storylines. Trilogies or more with some sort of mystery that needs to be solved, or plot line that threads through every book.

My question is this - does it really work? Really?

I am reading Elizabeth Hoyt's newest - To Beguile A Beast and she has a very excellent plot line/mystery through all her books -- who is the traitor? As plot lines go it's got it all - intrigue, betrayal, torture and death and let me tell you - I could care less. Don't get me wrong, I'm heavily invested in what the events at Spinner Falls did to the heroes of the books - but as for the traitor...don't care. I skim those parts. It just doesn't seem to have any impact. No forward momentum and not enough emotion tied to it.

Now, if Hoyt can't pull it off, can anyone?

I was thinking of Brockman and her storylines over more than one book and they're usually romantic. One couple's romance gets told over several books and that's some good writing. Some good storytelling. Captivating. Until she blew it and wrote a whole book for that couple where there was no tension because she'd used it all in the previous seven books. But a romantic story arc isn't quite the same thing as that over arcing mystery.

So, then I was thinking of one of my favorite trilogies of all time Nora Roberts' Chesapeake Bay books - if you haven't read these books - do it. Even if you aren't a fan of Nora (which I'm not) these books are absolutely the bee's knees. But the mystery introduced in the first book - who is this kid? Gets resolved in the first book - he's the brother's father's grandkid. (Complicated - there's a lot of adoption in there.And I'm not really ruining anything, if you thought that was a spoiler.) So after that the mystery turns into a problem -- how to deal with this kid. And that gets escalated into --how to deal with the kid's mother. So the mystery isn't really a mystery but an ever-changing subplot. And more importantly, I think, a super super emotional subplot.

So my new feeling is this; if a mystery is raised in the first book, it might be best to solve that mystery in the first book. But it's the fallout that drives the following books, or at least impacts the characters and plots. That way it keeps rolling forward, driving things along and becomes unskimmable.

P.S. Smurphy, Beguile a Beast is great, by the way - but it is no Not Quite A Husband. It's not even close.

Summer

It's warm and sunny outside, and while I might be working, it's Friday and tomorrow, the weather forecasts tell me, it will be more of the same.
Love the beginning of summer, not just because of the weather, but there always seems to be a sense of anything is possible through May and June. I stay up longer, day dream more and plan out my weekends like each one is precious.
And, perhaps, because there is little on TV, I spend more time reading and writing, and in the movie theater. I love the trailers for summer movies, and the possibility that the movie might live up the promise of the trailer. I love the fantasy of spending a week on a chaise by a pool, reading all my TBR pile, while someone ensures my drink is always full. (Sadly, this will not happen this year, or probably anytime soon).
Maybe it's the extra Vitamin D coursing through my bloodstream, but I get my best ideas during the summer. So right now, while everyone else is figuring out all the outdoor activities they can fit into their schedule, I'm sorting out how many hours of writing I can squeeze into the next two days.
And anxiously awaiting the second season of True Blood. The trailers look amazing.. can't wait.

Inspiration

Boy, I almost missed another Wednesday. Bad blogger.

I'm currently running my RWA chapter's contest and the entry deadline was Monday night, so swamped doesn't begin to describe it.

And I'm also at the beginning of another project -- one I promised my agent she'd see something on before we meet in DC in just over a month. So, yikes.

The start of new projects are a time that can be both exciting and scary for me. A time I love if the ideas are coming, characters are forming, and the story is falling into place, but a time I hate if I keep going over the same issues in my mind over and over without finding solutions. A time I hate if I keep thinking too much about the market and how my work fits into it. A time when I, personally, need to be thinking about little other than my story.

What a great time to be spending 10-12 hours a day on contest matters and putting out fires, and trying to solve puzzles like how to divide up 100 judges, all with preferences re genre and limits on the number of entries they'll judge, across nearly 500 scoresheets that need to be completed, rather than the puzzle of my plot. Fun. Fun. Fun.

My mind can't handle too many puzzles at once. And based on the 25 pages of crap I've written for my ms this far... I need to stop and puzzle out more of my plot and start again.

Why are some books so hard?

BTW. This is NOT what I was going to post about when I started typing. Go figure. Brain broken.

Breaking Bad

In an effort to close the giant gaping hole that The Wire created in our lives, husband and I started the first season of Breaking Bad - the AMC show about the science teacher diagnosed with cancer who decides to make Crystal Meth in order to make money.

It's a great show. Bryan Cranston is spellbinding with his tears and white brief underwear.

But it's made me think about likeable characters, or in this case truly truly sympathetic ones. By the time Cranston's character decides to cook Meth, we're practically begging him too, that's how sympathetic he is. How much we feel his plight.

But my problem is this: (of course there's a problem. I have too much time to dissect this stuff.) Once a truly likeable and sympathetic character takes that step off his regular road, we know what's going to happen. Really really crappy things. The writers are going to turn the screws by having the character regret getting on this path, or repent from the path. But they won't be able to, things are going to keep them on the path.

That's good story telling, no doubt about it. I can't wait to see what decision is going to be made about the guy in the basement in Breaking Bad. But it's also a little predictable, right? Because these people are good and the screws are being twisted, I pretty much know what's going to happen to that guy in the basement. But the how and the when and the why, are all still super super compelling questions.

Now, good writers flip this stuff on their ear and I really hope that continues in Breaking Bad - I'm sure it will. But it made me think of our always likeable, always boring heroines. We know what's going to happen to them the second they get on the page - we can turn the screws all we like, but the end is the end.

Which is why we like those dark characters. The ones that live in the grey area. For some reason I'm thinking of Brisbane in those fabulous Lady Grey novels. We just didn't know that guy right away and it was good. Mysterious. Something Borrowed - again, grey area. Anne Stuart's heroes -- very grey. It just leaves room at the beginning of the novel for doubt.

And in this case a little doubt might just be a good thing.

Harlequin Behind The Scenes...

Where in the world did May go? Honestly. It was April a minute a go.

I had the very cool opportunity to go down to Harlequin's direct to consumer distribution center outside of Buffalo last week as a part of their employee appreciation day. I had lunch with the customer service reps who handle all the phone calls from subscribers. For those who might not know Harlequin offers their books on subscription, so every month, should you subscribe you get deep discounts and all the books from a line you subscribe to right in your mailbox. This system not only sets them apart from other publishers, but is a huge part of my royalty check.

Numbers for the subscription service have gone down over the years, due in large part to the aging demographic (average age of subscriber is around 63) but they still manage to ship out THOUSANDS OF BOXES A DAY!!! Granted they also do Internet orders, but still, I was totally gobsmacked. And the fifty some men and women I talked to handled thousands of calls a day too. This place was hopping.

The distribution center sits right in front of the printer - so books are delivered to the back of the building - packed into boxes and shipped out the front. Harlequin is undergoing what seems like a huge effort to cut down their waste. A lot of authors are reporting that they can turn in manuscripts via email (which is a huge savings for the author!) and now this distribution center has bought a printing press capable of printing a few thousand copies of any book. So while the print runs may have gone down in an effort to save on returns, they are able to print and ship in a matter of hours thousands of extra books, should they be needed.

I was hugely impressed by this. Hugely.

We've talked about how the return system is so wasteful and antiquated - Harlequin loses millions every year due to the return system. And the impact of this system on the environment is enough to make anyone shudder. But it's sort of like a huge barge in a small river, hard to turn around.

I was really proud to be a part of Harlequin last week. And I got free books - so seriously, what's not to love?

How many great scenes make an amazing book?

Drunk writers is not a review site. We sing the praises of the authors we love, and happily, but we never really speak critically of books, or authors, at least using specific names or titles.
But recently I read a book, Broken Wing, which had been given amazing reviews by at least two review sites I really respect.
And while there are some wonderful aspects about this book, I can not say I loved it. I can't really say I even liked it.
That this book was a labour of love was clear on every page, the characters were wounded and dark, normally characters I love, but the plotting, and pacing, was uneven, to the point of slow.
Scene upon scene, all really lovely written, went nowhere, and really didn't progress the plot. There was a ton of telling, and so many pages that I skimmed, or skipped, and in between, gorgeous, lush scenes that were dark and dramatic and compelling. For every one lovely, entrancing scene, there were five that didn't seem to do much.
I feel like I'm missing something when it comes to this book, because some of my favourite review sites are calling this book the best historical of the year. To me, it needed a good editor and a complete rewrite.
But is it just that as historical readers, we've needed a dark, dramatic Laura Kinsale type romance for so long, we'll take a book with deep flaws and some greatness and love it anyway?
Or is is that three, or five deeply emotional, amazing scenes in a book can make it great, despite the other scenes?
Or is that I need to go back and re-read this book and figure out what I missed?

Fly on the wall

Tuesday, I spent an interesting (if unproductive) hour in a Starbucks.

Sitting next to me was a man who appeared to be a sales rep for Universal Records and another who I assumed was the owner of a record store.

The sales rep gave him a few CD's, they talked music and upcoming concert tours... then the rep pulled out a catalog and talked up a few new recording artists and new titles he had from established artists.

The buyer (record store owner) then took the catalog and flipped through it saying, I'll take one of these, I'll take five of the new XXX. Oh, that's a nice cover, are they any good? (Shrug from sales rep.) Owner: Okay, I'll take one of those. Etc. etc. Until he worked through the catalog.

And from everything I've heard, this is essentially how booksellers choose books, too. Flipping through a catalog with a publisher's sales rep saying, okay, I'll take some of these, one of those, that looks like a nice cover, I'll try one of those, etc. etc. Even for the big chains.

Even if what I saw was simplified, because it was clearly a small business owner who didn't need to be looking up past sales numbers for the bands, and was only buying for one small store, I was witnessing a process not unlike a publisher's sales rep selling books to a bookstore owner.

It made me realize, once again, how authors (especially debut authors) need to recognize that even if our book rocks, the decision for a bookseller to say: I'll take five of that one, or one, or none, depends less on what's between the pages, and more on whether the sales rep has chosen to talk it up, and whether the cover looks good in the catalog, and the personal tastes of the buyer, and even what kind of mood the buyer is in the day he/she makes the order.

Yet another few ounces of out-of-our-control random to face in this business. Yet a reality.

Eye-opening. And for me, a reminder to only worry about the stuff I can control. First and foremost, my writing.

Star Trek and the joys of Genre storytelling

Saw Star Trek last night, a movie that when I first heard was coming out this summer, did not excite any interest for me. And then I saw the reviews and had to see it.
And it’s good. It relates back to the old TV series in clever ways, but at the same time the movie is a thousand times faster, more relevant and well, better written.
Hell, I even loved Kirk, a character up till now, I’d found annoying.

It’s a movie that seemed to really understand it’s genre, and rather than try and be something it’s not, it just tried to be the best of the genre and it really succeeded.

I still don’t understand, why, after both Battlestar and this movie, sci fi continues to get such a bad rap. Some of the most interesting story telling lately has been happening in this genre.

How does Star Trek relate to romance? Other than the common joys of great storytelling, there was a love for the genre on the screen. Whoever wrote this movie loves sci fi.

To me, to write romance well, you have to unabashedly love the genre. Which seems like a no brainer, but I’ve known people through my local RWA chapter who are trying to write romance, but really don’t enjoy the genre. Some, even expressed a disdain for it. They see it as an easier way to get published and hopefully by now have learned the error of their ways.

We don’t have to love all the books, but we have to be passionate about some romances to really write well in this genre. Because if people pick up a romance and are consistently surprised by the quality of the storytelling, then eventually, romance will no longer bear this stigma of being trashy.

Or maybe I’m just in an optimistic mood today..

On rats, hope and publishing

Recently, I was directed by a few different people, including Kathy Holmes, to a great article written a few years ago by Jennifer Crusie.

You should read Crusie’s article here.

But in case you don't... Here's a précis of the part that most resonated with me. Basically, psychologists proved rats that’d been trained to believe there was an island in a vat of opaque water, kept swimming (even when it wasn't there) much longer than rats that had no previous knowledge of an island.

Crusie related this to publishing and how we all need to believe there's an island and keep swimming.

Right now, I happen to be in one of those mind-spaces where I truly believe there's an island in my particular vat of opaque water. I truly believe it's just a matter of time. I truly believe that my not-yet-sold manuscripts, will sell eventually, (just not first), and will be published "better", than if they'd been contracted earlier. These already-shopped projects aren't dead, they're hibernating.

My island is out there. I believe. I'm happy to be swimming again.

Problem is... Even if you’ve seen evidence that your island is there (by way of various bits of success along they way), once you've been around this business long enough, if you're bright, realistic and non-delusional, at various points in time, no matter how much faith you have, you stop believing in the island.

I'll bet the island-believing rats would’ve eventually converted to non-believers, if they’d subsequently been dumped into island-less vats enough times. You can only be smacked in the head so many times before you start to anticipate head smacks. And the publishing business is rife with head smacks. (And writers, even successful ones, are rife with self-doubt.)

Still, thus far, every time I've suffered a major publication defeat, there's been something that keeps me believing in my island. I find reasons to rationalize my failure based on market timing, or some flaw in my project I'd do differently if I had the chance to do it again. Or I remember that the reasons editors failed to bite might be completely out of my control and more to do with their existing list and what they were looking for the day they considered my project. That if I'd been a month (or a year) earlier or later, things might've been different. And there is no getting around the shear randomness of this business, either.

But I do admit, the longer I continue, the more evidence I find to negate previously held beliefs in my island. So I have to find new evidence. New reasons to believe.

And I think that's why many writers revel in the small triumphs. The contest finals. The pats on the back from critique partners or agents or editors or reviewers or readers. The small pieces of outside evidence proving we know what we're doing and the island does exist -- even if we feel, at times, very, very far from shore.

Maybe I need to start entering contests, again.

If you're thinking of entering one... Check this out.

Literary Snobbery...It Starts So Young

I had this really fantastic, surreal experience. I was asked to be the keynote speaker at a high school literary event held at my old high school. It was very cool - the kids were incredibly keen and incredibly focused and laughed at all my lame jokes.

But little did I know the brouhaha I would create when I referenced the Stephanie Meyer Twilight phenomenon. The cheers and boo's - the fist waving and sneering. Seriously, there could have been a high school literary rumble. And this crowd probably would have broken into the appropriate song.

Anyway - the kids asked questions about the quality of the Twilight books and my response was - Stephanie Meyer is loved by millions of people - she's a gazillionaire. A kid on the "down with Meyer" side of the debate asked why such bad writing gets bought. And I said, publishers need to make money and sometimes making lots of money means appealing to lots of people. And, swear to god, someone said "isn't that like totally selling out?"

My response was - you will need to make up your own minds about what kinds of books you want to write. Selling out, or not. And then of course, someone else yells; "what did you do?"

I said, I chose to be the best writer I could be in a genre I love and buy groceries.

But as I've thought about that talk and the budding literary snobs in attendance, I wish I had answered the quality of books question differently. This is what I wish I had said:

You know how you feel when you read something you love? That jittery, excited, revved up feeling like the world is smaller than it was a minute ago and anything is possible and someone, somewhere is thinking or feeling the exact same thing you are? That feeling is why people read and it's why other people write. Now, if you love reading why in the world would you negate someone else's reading experience? Why would you diminish their joy and their excitement? Because you don't like it? Fine. Don't like it. Don't read it. But leave it there - because everyone deserves to have that joy.

The best heroines are found in real life

It seems to me that heroes tend to drive book sales. Come up with seven delicious men, and the readers will forgive you lackluster, occasionally dull heroines. Some of my favourite authors have written books, where the heroine pales next to the wonderfully complex, dark, conflicted hero. See most of Laura Kinsale's books for example, and from there go to JR Ward, both authors I read compulsively and love.
And I'm pretty sure Molly has a shrine to Laura Kinsale in her house somewhere and I find nothing wrong with that.
But what makes Jenny Crusie a goddess is her ability to create a hero and heroine that were both complex and interesting and complemented each other wonderfully.
It's something I keep in mind as I edit this book, that will never be done. I'm thinking about the traits I've given my heroine, her drive, her independence, and ensuring that somewhere in there, I'm also making her likeable, but never a pushover.
The women I most admire in my life are more and more coming to mind when I start thinking about my heroines. I write historicals, so some of it has to relate to the time period. But I have a friend, who's personal life is a disaster, who is basically a single mom and both her parents are very sick. And somehow every day she manages, not only to get out of bed, but also to laugh at something, usually herself.
She occasionally bemoans her fate, but only for a short while, and then gets back to the process of moving on. Her sense of humor, her refusal to dwell on the negatives in her life, and her need to carve out some pleasures for herself are all traits I would love to somehow embue in my heroines. Because she is not self-sacrificing, and she does wish for easier times, but she still deals magnificently with everthing that is on her plate.
In romance, in our need to make our heroines likeable, make them too self-sacrificing, never complaining, too serious and not real. The best of chick lit and women's fiction gave us heroines that felt real and fully developed, but usually in the process, the male lead suffered.
We at drunk writers have been thinking about what will make the next best selling contemporary, and I think right now, it's combining a fully realized hero and heroine and making them equals, and real.
I would read that in a heartbeat.

Human/monster action

Thinking about paranormal romances today... (My copy of Lover Avenged finally arrived!!! And I'm reading Melissa Marr... So lots of vamp and sympath and faery action in my literary life right now.)

And wondering... Those of you who read/write in the genre, do you like humans in your paranormals? Is part of the thrill, imagining the heroine with someone/something dangerous and not quite controllable? Or do you think monster/monster books work better or just as well?

Seems like a lot of authors get around this by having heroines who are half-human and half-demon, half-vamp, half-whatever...

Sorry this isn't a meatier post, but hoping some of you will add some beef in the comments... OMG, we're back to paranormal beef, zombie cows and all that jazz.

There's nothing like a twist....

Recently I had begun to doubt my new love of writing plots and subplots and external conflict, worrying that I had begun to neglect inner conflict and frankly the love story. According to my agent, editors are asking for THE BIG LOVE STORY. And I was wondering, did I even know what that was anymore? Was it time to drop some subplots and have myself a good old fashioned "let's talk" kind of romance?

Then I watched Dollhouse on Friday -- I won't give it away, because Smurphy hasn't seen it and frankly the twist was so delicious and perfect I sat up on my couch and "WHAT THE @)!?" I fell in love with the twist. I want to have twist babies with that twist. And I realized, sure good old fashioned romances are great -- but man, nothing absolutely nothing beats that moment when you get hit over the head with something you didn't see coming.

What to write when you have nothing

Some blog posts are hard.
Especially when it's Friday and I just want to ramble on about why I love chocolate pudding, and how I've been fantasizing about a Dairy Queen Blizzard, and want to read interviews with the creator of the Wire all day, instead of doing the many, many things I should be doing.

I've been trying to understand what it is about that show that we all love so much. I'm a small ways into Season 3, and itching to watch the rest, but not completely obsessed. Yet. The one thing about the Wire is that, is drops you in the middle of it's world, without ever explaining the world, but takes its time to really build the storylines. Almost the opposite of what every other show does... or book for that matter, where we spend endless paragraphs building and explaining the world and start the story immediately..
See Molly's paranormal beef post.

I've been thinking about getting my hands on the next Sherry Thomas and Elizabeth Hoyt historicals and when I can see Wolverine.. because I don't care about reviews when Hugh Jackman and Taylor Kitsch are in the same movie.

And really, I've been editing. The nuts and bolts stuff, fixing details, deepening POV, making sure the scenes make sense, not really thinking much about the actual storytelling.
It's not my favourite part of the process, by a long shot. And I'm nowhere close to being on my self-imposed deadline.

It's an exciting life....