Let’s talk more TV

The new shows:

Thanks to the wonders of PVR’s, I’ve managed to watch Chuck, Reaper and the Bionic Woman so far this week. Still haven’t gotten to Life, which is waiting for me.

I have not a huge amount of spare time, and I have to fit anything new into an already packed schedule. Some shows that are on my must see list.
Friday Night Lights, Heroes, Dexter and The Office and I’m really debating on House. My love for Hugh Laurie is enduring, but unless they take the show somewhere new, I might be out.

Chuck and Reaper are similar in tone, nerdy cute guy in incredible situation, chuckles and thrills ensue. But they both do this well. They’re likeable if not really memorable, although both have their high points.
Chuck has Adam Baldwin(Firefly) and The Reaper has the devil and various demons.

I’m strangely meh on both, I think it’s because they haven’t posed enough questions. The setup is all there, but there aren’t enough mysteries presented. I feel like I know how each show is going to go.
They should take lessons from Heroes on how to pose questions that will keep a viewer hooked. I love how Heroes answers one question and then throws two more out.

Bionic woman.. eesh.. what a mess. It was like they shot a four hour show, picked scenes at random and threw it together. The dialogue was laughable, and some of the acting was borderline awful.
Except one of the main guys from Battlestar is involved, as is Katee Sackhoff, (who was the best thing about the first episode) and they just brought in one of the producers from Friday Night Lights.
Can the show be saved? Some optimist in me hopes so. Plus it performed pretty well in the ratings..
Not quite the juggernaut that Dancing with the stars is, but that’s a whole nother blog..

I didn’t watch Journeyman, although I love Kevin McKidd from Rome. Not sure about the other new shows..

New School Year! (And by school, I mean TV)

I'm trying not to reflect too heavily on the sad realization that the new TV season is the most exciting thing going on in my life right now. Oh, I started writing a new book, too.

But back to the exciting stuff -- fall TV. Sure I have my summer reality TV favs that I indulge in like comfort food, sprinkled with some high quality cable dramas for flavour. But generally summer is a pretty bleak time for TV. Not that there's anything wrong with that; summer's for outdoor things.

But I do get embarrassingly and inappropriately excited when the new fall shows premiere and the new seasons for old shows start. Actually, I want to amend that statement. Really, my anxious anticipation is almost exclusively reserved for the new seasons of my old favs. I'm basically too lazy to try new shows when they start. The networks are so freakin' fickle that I don't see the point of making any kind of commitment or forming an attachment to a show, just to have it yanked off the schedule. Similarly, if a show becomes a hit, the networks generally repeat the first few episodes during one of their ever predictable breaks in the new programming.

So, what I'm looking forward to: Old shows...

Heros for sure. I finally saw the entire first season on DVD. This is one I didn't discover until it became a hit and never did see the first 7 or 8 episodes. I watched the entire thing over the past couple of weeks and noticed a lot of things I'd missed the first time around -- connections and details and emotional impacts I'd missed, since I hadn't seen it from the start. The premiere episode didn't disappoint. It answered a few of the cliffhanger questions (but not all) and asked a whole bunch of new ones. Looking forward to this show.

Prison Break. I am still a total sucker for this show, but if they don't get out of that Panamanian prison soon, they're likely losing me as a viewer.

Lost. Enough said.

The Office. Enough said.

Battlestar Galactica. But I still haven't seen season 3 and need to rent that first.

Dexter for sure. Can't wait until that starts again. This weekend!!!!

Friday Night Lights. I've only watched the first 4 or so episodes of last season but hoped to get caught up before the new season starts. I finally cried uncle and conceded that I should always trust Molly's judgement where TV goes, as I have found myself hooked on the quiet but compelling character driven drama of this show. Definitely my style of TV drama, in spite of the fact that the entire setting and centre of all the drama is based in a culture totally alien and bizarre and warped in my opinion. (Making celebrities out of young boys like that has so many things wrong with it in my mind I don't even want to get started. I've probably already offended all my small town American friends. Sorry.) But the show itself highlights the negative side of this kind of idolization of kids too young to know what to do with it. Never have I been more sure that Canadian Universities are right to prohibit sports scholarships then when watching this show. The lure of those scholarships and professional careers after college, puts pressure on these high school kids for all the wrong reasons. Surely there are better ways to get deserving kids who can't afford it into universities. (Sorry, getting off the digression soap box now.)

Ugly Betty. Another one I didn't start watching until the last season was almost over, but City TV here in Toronto repeated every episode over the summer so I'm all caught up. What fabulously fun characters, writing and acting on this show. I particularly love Mark and Amanda. I'm so impressed with how deliciously evil yet sympathetic these characters are. Not to mention hilarious. Both actors are so well cast it's crazy.

House... I think I'm over this show. Actually, the premiere episode is playing as I type this and I'm bored (hence my blogging.) I agree with Cuddy. He needs his team back. Who cares if his patient is dying. The audience is dying of boredom! Is the old cast really gone? I know they all quit but I assumed they'd include some plot contrivance to get them all back. Anyone know? Haven't been paying attention. Perhaps all the interesting storylines for those 3 characters had already been played out...

Grey's Anatomy. I'm still a sucker for these characters and the great writing on this show... But I am a bit over the Derek and Meredith soap opera. Time to bust those two up for good--or take the in an unexpected direction. And I'm worried this who will go down hill if Shandra puts all her efforts into the new show... (And as I said above, I refuse to get attached to it until it's proved to have legs. I watched the first season of Grey's Anatomy on DVD, too.)

On the reality TV front....

I'm starting to get over my serious love for the ANTM. Don't know if I'll be willing to give up the 40 or so minutes a week this fall to watch this season. I probably won't be able to resist the Survivor, though, in spite of my insistence every year since this show started that I won't watch it. Somehow, I always get hooked. Reality TV is the devil.

What's everyone else looking forward to?

The Writer Editor Relationship and BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

It's been such a crazy week - my son decided to not nap for about three days which sent me over the edge and kept me away from the computer for three days. We're back on track and I'm making up for it with what may be my shortest post ever but these two things are so great.

The first is a clip - with one take on the editor/author relationship (actually it's more like drunk writer talk. Maureen comes to us and says I want to write a really delicate story about a mother and a daughter and Sinead and I say "YOU NEED SHARK SEX!")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo1XFz0kac0


The second clip is for Sinead - who at last DWT - confessed a new love for Bruce Springsteen. I am stupid for the man. And this is a clip I think she will LOVE LOVE LOVE (it will appeal to her norweigan heritage). Amazing song -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGwUrmNI6wY

Writers need to be selfish

Phew, it’s been a crazy day so the blog is late. But the subject matter is timely.

I’m a mom of two kids under two, so time, any time, to shower, dress, eat, is hard to come by. Finding writing time requires strategy, perserverance and occasionally outright bitchiness.

And I have to admit, with laundry piling in the corner, a bathroom that might soon be condemned, and toys scattered everywhere I sometimes have to shut my eyes as I fumble my way to the computer for what some days is no more than half an hour.

This blog isn’t a poor me, blog, promise, but I decided shortly after my first child came into the world that writing was necessary for my sanity and I would do whatever necessary to ensure I had the time.

So my husband does the cooking, our garden is a wasteland of brown grass and bare patches, and my house is a disaster and I’m okay with all of it.

Too often I speak with women(mothers are the worst for this) who give up all their free time, all of it. I know women who write in the wee hours of the morning, because that’s the only time they can find. They’re busy taking care of children, husbands, their parents.

I have a friend who does all the cooking and cleaning and childrearing because her husband gets grumpy when he has to help out. Needless to say, she has zero energy to write in the evenings.

Screw that! It’s time to be selfish. It doesn’t mean ignore your kids, but perhaps the laundry. It may mean hubby has to watch his favourite TV show by himself, or the kids have to do their own homework.

Start with carving out an hour a day. Protect it with the ferocity of a lioness guarding her cubs. That hour might extend into two, it may not, but at least we’ll have an hour.

Forget the 24 hour sacrifice for our families crap. Make it 23 hours, or less, if possible.

Hopefully it’ll be habit forming and if we’re really lucky, someone else will clean the bathroom.

Building to a climax

Get your mind out of the gutter. This is not a post about sex scenes!

It's about another kind of climax. We all know most successful commercial fiction builds to an exciting climax that keeps readers turning the pages more and more quickly. We writers do things like shortening the length of the chapters, scenes and even sentences later in the book to give the reader the illusion they're reading quickly and/or to help make sure they do.

One of the films I saw at the Toronto International Film Festival this year did an amazing job of this. And in a non-conventional way. (Readers of this blog know I'm a big fan on non-linear storytelling structures.)

Anyway... The film was Rendition, starring Reese Witherspoon, Peter Sarsgaard, Jake Gyllenhaal, with smaller parts played by Meryl Streep, Alan Arkin and others.

I recommend this film. I saw it early in the festival but it's one that resonated with me. It's about the policy of "extraordinary rendition" that's been used by the US and other countries since 9/11 to send terror suspects to countries where they can be held (and tortured) in secrecy and without right to counsel or without even being charged of a crime.

The film examines both sides of the policy as well as the efficacy of torture for gaining intelligence, and I thought it did a good job of both. (Or maybe just because I agreed with the conclusions I think the filmmaker reached.)

But the movie's content and message aside, as a writer, I was impressed by a little trick the writer played on the audience. And I don't want to post a big spoiler, but there are three main stories being played out throughout the movie and the climaxes of all three stories happen simultaneously with quick cuts between the action in each... The clever little trick (maybe McKee would call it a mind fuck?) was that the three stories weren't actually happening at the same time and the emotional impact, in my opinion, was increased when we as an audience realize this. Certainly the overall climax of the film was more exciting in that all 3 stories hit this point at once. If the writer/filmmaker had decided to tell this story in an entirely chronological manner, it wouldn't have been nearly so compelling.

On the other hand, I just finished reading a book (not going to tell you what it is, but it was a literary novel) that was told in letters. Actually, it was told almost wholly in a single letter that quoted other letters and conversations that had occurred years earlier. So, sometimes you're reading dialog originally quoted in a letter now being quoted within another letter. Confused? Well, I was at times. And I felt very detached from the characters and their stories.

So, the connection, if there is one, is that if you're not going to use a traditional linear storytelling structure, there'd better be a very good reason why it would work better in the more complicated way... IMHO it worked in Rendition.
I think it also worked in Sidney Lumet's new movie, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, (starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke), but it didn't work in that novel for me. The new Lumet movie was really good, too... Another one dealing with the slippery moral slope that one can descend once one takes the first step.
BTW. If you're interested in films... I've been blogging about the 40 films I saw at the TIFF at www.maureenmcgowan.blogspot.com

The difference between run of the mill and success.

Went to a great TRW workshop recently, about empowering character’s emotions by Margie Lawson. Really great, would definitely recommend her workshops to anyone out there.

One of the things that really struck me was her rule about clichés. Basically, don’t go there and if you must even approach one, turn it on its head.

Cliches are just lazy writing. This hit me like a ton of bricks(ha ha!) when Margie brought it up. She talked about clichés in the context of the actual writing, the words on the page.

But then it got me thinking about the clichés that exist in the subgenre of romance.
The Duke of Slut in the regency romance, and the bluestocking heroine. These are clichés, because they’ve been produced so often.
Same with the evil villain in romantic suspense. You know, the villain pov where he stalks a victim, and we as the reader get to see everything but his identity and perhaps real insight into his reasons why.
In paranormal Vampires are headed in the direction of clichéd.
And in chick lit, it’s the ditzy but sweet heroine who’s obsessed with shoes and shopping.

I see a cliché like the above and I’ll usually put the book down right away. But turn one of those clichés on their head, and I’ll sing the books praises.

Not to repeat, but JR Ward with her unique take on vampires and amazing world building, took her vampires way beyond cliché.

There’s a lot of speculation out there on what it takes to sell as a new author. The market is tight, lots of competition for fewer spots, but I think most editors would love to see a fresh take on an old cliché.

It’s not too big a risk for an editor, but still compelling to read, it feels fresh, but they know how to market the book.

Sounds easy. Sure, if you can come up with one. Me, I’m still trying..

Impending DOOOOOOOMMMMM!

Our critique group met last night and I thought it was a better than usual night mostly because something that has been floating around in my head was totally confirmed - for me and actually I think for Sinead.

Every book needs a sense of impending doom. It's not only the WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT question that keeps pages turning. The WHEN IS THIS ALL GOING TO FALL APART question that also works.

It is of course hingent on that thin thin line of dramatic irony. For this question to work the reader has to know or suspect something that the character doesn't....wait a second, that's not even true - that book that Maureen and Sinead love - Something Blue - that hinges TOTALLY on when is the shit going to hit the fan regarding this woman's affair with her best friend's fiancee? The main character knows the poop and fan are going to meet - she just keeps at it anyway -- But THAT creates a seriously thin line between I'm totally invested in this character's delimma and this character is a total idiot. I leaned toward the idiot - Sinead and Maureen went the other way. I totally digress - Maureen is at the film festival (feel free to curse her - Sinead and I are) so I am taking on her tangents.

Anywho---

I think most books benefit from a little of the when is this all going to fall apart dramatic tension. It's why romantic suspense writers use the villian POV, and it's working really well in that subgenre. But last night - my scenes were all working - lots conflict and tension but as Sinead pointed out - no doom. It's about getting the two questions working together - the what and when. As for Sinead I think I gave her bad critique months ago and said something along the lines of "if the reader already suspects - why drag it out?" Stupid me. Dragging it out for dramatic irony is the point.

World Building – part deaux

Molly, speed reader that she is, already blogged about one of the best elements of the JR Ward book. Ward sets a tone, and keeps is really consistent throughout the entire book. It her world, and at no point does JR Ward deviate from it. It’s really effective and great to read. She doesn’t wimp out on her heroes. The book starts dark, violent and fast paced and ends that way.

World building is something every writer has to do. Ok, that’s a duh statement. But for a long time, I thought it was something only fantasy and paranormal writers had to do. Come up with new worlds, or new concepts, and while those writers have to explain their worlds more, every writer out there has to create their world.

We do it through tone, the details in how the characters see their surroundings, but also how they think of the people and things around them.
One of the movies that does this really well is the Departed. I know it’s set in Boston, and the city is well represented. The world in this movie is the two separate existences of the police, and the mob. The world the two main characters live in is tense, completely on the edge, where one bad lie could have really serious consequences. Everyone immersed in these worlds seem to exist on the edge, with hair trigger tempers and one foot in the grave.

Joss Whedon is someone who world builds brilliantly. Check out Serenity to fully understand how he can create a world that is completely unique, through dialogue, a ship that’s almost a character in its own right and again, tone.

Really great world building will pull me into a story, and keep me there long after the plot’s fallen to pieces and the characters have become cardboard. But usually the great world builders don’t fall prey to these problems.

World Building

I just finished the first JR Ward book and my husband and I rented Black Snake Moan (the movie with Samuel L. Jackson and Christina Ricci set in the south - it was sort of mismanaged by marketing folk because it became known as the nympho chained to the radiator movie when it's really really so so so much more than that.) But the book and the movie built worlds so seamless and compelling that they became practically the main characters of the stories.

The movie worked mostly because the dialogue was unbelievably true - amazingly true and it only fueled my jealous rage over southern writers who are tapped into something I just can't even pretend to replicate. And Samuel L. Jackson while not my favorite actor delivered this performance like he was born in it. But the other reason it worked and it's the same reason the Ward books work so well - there's no telling. It's just questions. The writers barely stopped to explain anything - granted Ward cheated brilliantly with her glossary of terms. She didn't have to stop and figure out a moment where one character tells another character what the reader needs to know - she did it at the beginning. And frankly, considering the plot of that first book she could have done it - but the fact that she didn't makes me like those books even more. But in Black Snake Moan it really felt like the writer was saying - if you can't figure this out - don't watch the movie. Not that there was that much to figure out but still - it just flowed - everything happened in real time. So the world never broke.

The Ward series is amazing. She's got a knack for the small moments that show and don't tell. I thought she went a little overboard with her guy talk - but that's just me - and frankly it's her world. She gets to do whatever she wants with it.

What’s in a hero..

Would love to talk more about the brilliance of Judd Apatow, but nothing comes to mind that hasn’t already been said.
Except we need more movies with Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann.

I’ve been thinking about heroes lately. It’s actually come up in Drunk Writer talk. Molly made the point that the subgenres, specifically romantic suspense and paranormal allow for more latitude in the hero, basically, heroes can be very alpha again.

I definitely agree. Been reading JR Ward’s first of the brotherhood of the dagger series. A really good vampire book for those interested. She world builds really effectively in this book, and creates, dark, sexy men with silly names(Tohrment, anyone?)

Her heroes are definitely alpha. They wear black leather, listen to rap, are tortured and unhappy and wouldn’t hesitate to kill anyone who got in their way, human or otherwise.
They remind me a little of some of Iris Johansen’s historical heroes. Dark, tortured men who had few scruples, at least at the beginning of the books. Laura Kinsale does this brilliantly with her heroes as well.
A hero as an assassin, one who isn’t filled with much self-loathing at his profession. Loved it.

Give me a hero who’s dark. Legitimately dark, with deep character flaws, and show them to me. I’ve read too many Duke of Slut books, with men who besides their predilection to sleep around at the beginning of the book, turn to kittens as soon as they clap eyes on the heroine.

I’m looking for a hero who isn’t heroic at the beginning of the story. They may have heroic tendencies, but they should have a character arc.
JR Ward’s success tells me I’m not the only person looking for this, but I also think a percentage of the romance reading public would hate it. They want their heroes, well, heroic, right at the beginning of the book.

What are the character traits that would turn you, as a reader, off?

For me, there are few. Perhaps outright cowardice, harming children, really detestable stuff, but the rest is fair game. Make him interesting, charismatic and redeemable and I’m in, hook, line and sinker.

While we're talking about Apatow...

So for a few years I've been hearing how great Freaks & Geeks is/was. I think I've actually had the DVD set in my shopping cart on Amazon on and off for at least 2 years. I finally bit the bullet and bought it. So far, I'm not disappointed.

I vaguely remember when this series came on TV (1999) and didn't watch an episode. I don't think watching it even occurred to me. I think it may have suffered from bad promos. I mean, I just assumed it was a silly juvenile comedy show aimed at teens. I certainly didn't realize it was more drama than comedy, nor did I know that it was set in 1980 -- a time when I actually was in high school, so it's full of nostalgia for me -- the clothes, the movies, the shag carpet glued onto the stairs going down to Nick's parents' basement. This series was the better, way more real version of That 70's Show in terms of representing what it was like to be in high school then.

I've only watched the first 6 espisodes (sadly, thats a full 1/3 of all the episodes ever filmed) but I'm really digging it. The episode I'm With the Band opens with one of the most perfect yet simple scenes I've ever seen on TV.

The character Nick (who we know from the pilot is passionate about playing drums) is in his basement. He puts on a Rush tape (8 Track of course), drops a piece of dry ice into a bucket, dons his headphones, turns on his strobe light and starts to play and sing along to "The Spirit of Radio". We're in Nick's POV so we hear what he's hearing, Geddy Lee singing and Neil Peart playing drums. (Hope I got that right. I may be from Toronto and I may have come of age in the seventies, but I was never a big fan of Rush. The older brother of an ex-boyfriend of mine used to be the pilot of their private jet though. Cool, huh?)

Anyway... Nick, the character, is totally into it. From Nick's POV, he's amazing, the music is amazing. He's a rockstar.

Then we switch POV's to his father walking down the stairs to the basement shaking his head and rolling his eyes. Suddenly we're not hearing the tape of Rush playing, we're hearing what the father is hearing. Nick singing hopelessly off key and banging on his drums like a four year old might, demonstrating little or no talent.

I laughed out loud.

But while this was a brilliant little funny scene -- the teaser before the opening credits -- it perfectly foreshadowed the heartbreaking character arc that Nick goes through during this episode--facing the fact that he's never going to reach his dream of being a drummer in a big rock band. And it's such a relatable character arc. I mean so many of us first realized in our late teens that maybe all our dreams weren't necessarily going to come true just because we wanted them to. It's when many of us realized we weren't as special as we may have thought we were, even if we were the best at something in our high school, our high school was just a tiny insignificant drop in the world. This tiny, maybe 45 second scene, also showed Nick's (also heartbreaking) relationship with his father really well. Brilliant writing. (A weaker writer would have had Nick tell another character how he's such a big disappointment to his father, but in these few seconds, we get it.)

That episode was written by Gabe Sachs and Jeff Judah. I'm off to check them out on IMDB.com and/or listen to the commentary for the episode. (Okay, maybe I'm off to bed. The DVD will still be there tomorrow.

Oh, and fun fact for those of you who've seen Superbad. I'm about 99% sure that the old guy who gets arrested in the bar in Superbad is the same actor who starts a fight at Lindsay's party in Episode 2 of Freaks and Geeks (Called "Beers and Weirs".) Yup, just checked. He was. He was on an episode of Firefly, too... Must rewatch that.

Anyone else have a perfect scene they've seen/read?

Superbad The Movie - juvenile perverted gross out film? Or master class in dialogue?

Here's my confession - I love juvenile perverted gross out films - but only when they have the heart behind them that this one does. Superbad is so gross at times but there's such a nougaty ribbon of sweetness in just about every scene, that it is utterly redeemed and becomes a hilarious romance between two friends. (Seriously, it's a romance.)

But what's really amazing about this film - and about most of the films Judd Apatow is involved with is the dialogue. The dialogue doesn't just get characters from A to B - in fact it rarely does that. It goes from A, circles B zigzags near C and ends up back at A. But somehow plot is forwarded, subplots meet up but every single time a character opens their mouth - the words reveal and stay true to character. Which seems like a no brainer - but think of the books we read - wherein there needs to be a lot of information revealed - say, about a 11th Century political situation involving a King and some marauding oh...vikings. (Were there Vikings in 11th century - Margaret?) Or, a serial killer with unknown motive but some disgusting calling cards. Often times we get lazy - and we just dump that information. Just put it out there in one big chunk. Case in point - I have a character reading a newspaper article to three people very emotionally involved in what that article says - and right now she's just reading it and they are just listening to it. That's all. Strictly information. I can do better than that. I should do better than that.

Superbad elevates dialogue - makes it what it should be. And the kid from Arrested Development sings in it. What more could you want?

We have a Winner! (And new beginnings)

I'd like to announce that the winner of the ARC of Debrah Williamson's PAPER HEARTS is Marcy!

Marcy, when you read this, e-mail me at info @ maureenmcgowan.com (spaces removed of course) and we'll figure out how to get you your ARC. There may be a short delay in you receiving it due to an emergency on Debrah's end, but we'll make sure we get it to you one way or the other.

On other news... I'm starting a new project. Or to be more accurate, trying to decide between two (or more) projects I've bandied about for a while. I have two short listed right now... And I'm trying to flush one of them (the scarier/more challenging one) out to see if I really have a story I know how to tell.

I find this stage of the writing process both terrifying and fun. I think much of the terrifying part has to do with my commitment issues... partially revealed to the masses (the masses being the thirty or so people who read by other blog) on this post . While the commitment issues discussed in that post had to do with furniture, I think the same fear translates to writing.

But maybe it's not a fear of commitment. Maybe it's a fear of making a huge mistake. (Or are those the same thing???) I discovered doing my last project that I may not be as fast a writer as I thought I was. Although perhaps this new project will get me back on the fast-writing track. (She said hopefully.) Or at least out of the super-slow lane. So, because of this slow-writing thing, taking on a new project is a huge investment of time--time that may end up proving fruitless should the book never sell. Okay not fruitless. I don't need that lecture. But you know what I mean...

So, before I start actually writing pages for my next project I want to feel good about the story. I want to feel like I'm at least 60% sure it's actually going to work, (I don't think I'd be challenging myself if I picked something I was 100% sure about), and I want to feel like it might have a chance of being marketable, too. (And I don't even want to think about the will-it-be-a-good-follow-up-to-either-of-the-projects-my-agent-already-has should-either-of-them-sell question.)

So, scary times for Maureen...

Do you like starting new projects? I have a few writer friends and CP's who seem to do four books a year and I am so, so jealous of this.

What I am looking for in a romance....

With all my various beach vacations and a new critique partner opening up her extensive and delightful keeper shelf - my summer has been filled with some seriously good reading. Brockman aside (seriously, at this point this Alyssa Locke/Starret romance is killing me. I'm like a junkie and the worst part is -- these books aren't that great! They are kind of all over the place and messy BUT can't wait to get my hands on the next one!) I've been introduced to some great romantic suspense. And I like my suspense lite - no need to overshadow the romance for me. But as I was reading Tara Jenzen (her Crazy series - have you guys read these??? Wow! What fun!) A couple things came to me about romance, sub-genres and what women, myself in particular want from romance.

Sub genres like romantic suspense and paranormal and erotic are exploding because I think men in traditional romances have gotten a little too PC. The heroines are all tough and can take care of themselves and the men aren't about to fight too hard for what he thinks is right for the heroine. Unless of course he's a cover FBI agent and there's some serious bad guy after them. OR he's a werewolf and if she doesn't get out of the way she'll be dog food. I think paranormal and romantic suspense have given us back the alpha male. And - I think that's what readers want.

The Greek Tycoon's Secret Mistress and books in the Presents line have kept him alive and well fed but he's missing from so many of the historicals and contemporary romances that I love. Hell, I'm not even writing him anymore.

This month, after packing up my stuff, my son's stuff, making sure my husband had his stuff, getting directions, getting gas and snacks, asking the tenants to take care of the mail, my in laws to take care of the dog - I slipped into these romantic suspence books with these heroes and heroines and it all made sense. The fantasy is having some of the decision making taken away. It's about being swept up in something that's utterly utterly outside of the heroine's control - ergo - the readers control. That's why I think those sub genres are working so well and why it's so hard to get a mainstream romance that's satisfying.

That's my latest thought. That and I love smores. Love them. Why do I wait until I'm on a beach before I indulge in those?

Harry Potter

You had to know one of us would get around to blogging about it sooner or later.

Like the rest of the world, got my copy of the 7th book the day it came out. Unlike most others, it took me a few weeks to read it, due to being seriously busy, occasionally sick and somewhat sleep deprived.

I love this series. Probably my favourite was the 4th book, which I read in a day and half. But having finished the 7th, I feel satisfied. The series and I can’t give away any spoilers, felt complete, I closed it with a happy sigh. Did I love the last book, not with the same fervent attention I had given the first four books, but I did really enjoy it.

One day, I’d like to reread all seven books and try and really figure out what it is that JK Rowling does so well. Some day far in the future.

My initial impression is her pacing. Except maybe for some excess in the 5th and 6th books, each scene adds something new to the plot. Even though the books are long, they don’t feel that way when you read them.

Her plotting is also excellent. I rarely know exactly how things are going to go and those lovely surprises are a rare treat these days.

How did everyone else feel about the 7th book?

Meet Debrah Williamson (and a contest!)

Today, in lieu of a normal DWT blog, (because I'm lazy and it's hot out), I'm posting an excerpt of an interview I recently did with Debrah Williamson, whose latest novel, PAPER HEARTS hit the shelves yesterday, August 7, 2007. On my other blog, I've talked about cyber friendships and meeting people online. Well, Debrah is another example. She found my website, noticed we have the same agent, and we started up a correspondence.

UPDATE! Debrah is generously running a contest. Comment on this blog post before August 23rd for a chance to win an ARC of PAPER HEARTS! (Note to self and to fellow drunk writers... We should have contests more often.)

Here's a bit of the interview. (Some context since this is from mid-interview. Debrah published close to thirty romance novels with various publishers under a couple of different pen names, including Debrah Morris. Some of these novels were co-written with another writer.)





MM: You describe yourself as a veteran romance novelist. Do you think the genre has changed? For better? For worse?



DW: A veteran is someone who’s been through battle and survived, right? Maybe wounded, maybe scarred, but stronger for having seen the elephant, and no longer starry-eyed or delusional about her insignificant role in the big scheme of things. Yep, that’s me. A veteran.
Seriously, romance gave me opportunities I probably would not have found in other genres of fiction. I will always be grateful for those opportunities and what I learned from them. And yes, I think the genre has changed. A lot. Hence, the reason I am a veteran romance writer and not a currently successful one. I won’t make a judgment call on better or worse. It is what it is. Like any living organism, fiction must adapt to the changing world or perish. Romance is still going strong, and that says a lot.



MM: Why did you decide to branch into mainstream fiction?



DW: I think I’ve always been a mainstream writer at heart. As I said, I didn’t read much romance before I got into it, and what I read was mostly Mary Stewart and Victoria Holt.
I quit writing for a while after our collaboration dissolved and focused on my clinical profession. But you know what they say. Writers must write. My last foray into romance was as a solo writer. I wrote five Silhouette Romances as Debrah Morris and had a good time with those. However, when I realized the line was on the verge of closing, I finished my contract and decided to make one last do-or-die stab at cracking mainstream.

Besides the practical consideration of the line folding, I just wanted to write bigger stories than could be told in 50K words. Even after cutting and revising, my novels are 100K words or more. And I wanted to explore relationships other than romantic ones. There are too many kinds of love in the world to limit myself to just one. For example, my recent work delves into the meaning of love for children, parents, and friends.





MM: Tell us a little about PAPER HEARTS.



DW: Thanks for asking. Paper Hearts is about the oddest of odd couples: a young girl at the beginning of her life and an old man at the end of his. Fifteen-year-old Chancy Deel runs away from Pittsburgh and her abusive mother and finds herself stranded in picture-perfect Wenonah, Oklahoma. Streetwise and vulnerable, Chancy is afraid. Afraid to be alone and of being hurt. Afraid she'll never find the new life she so desperately wants.

Eighty-three-year-old Max Boyle is scared too. And just as desperate. He's lost his beloved wife and is about to be forced out of his home of fifty years by a well-meaning social agency. He has no reason to tough out the rest of his lonely life. Because his chronic heart condition isn't doing the job fast enough to suit him, Max decides to end it all.

Everything changes when Max finds Chancy sleeping in his garage. He believes the girl with the wary heart was sent by his late wife and hatches a plan that might just save them both. One transforming summer teaches these two unlikely friends what we all know in our hearts-that no one is meant to go through life alone.

I have worked with these at-risk populations in a professional capacity. In our city, abandoned or homeless teens can have their own place through an independent living program.. We have a day care program that allows young parents, both girls and boys, with custody of their children, to attend high school. I’ve also dealt extensively with the geriatric population. On both professional and personal levels, I understand how devastating the loss of independence can be. Max Boyle grew out of some statistics I read about how the fastest growing rate of suicide in this country is among men over the age of seventy.

It’s been said that the true test of a society is how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. In PAPER HEARTS, I try to put faces on these voiceless – and often invisible – populations. I hope after readers meet Chancy and Max, they will never look at a grungy teen or grouchy old man in quite the same way again.



MM: How about SINGING WITH THE TOP DOWN.



DW: Oh, now we’re talking about the book o’ my heart. I first started hearing Pauly Mahoney’s voice twenty years ago. In the conversation with the author pages in the back of the book, I talk about how she visited and revisited me over the years. Well, nagged the heck out of me is more like it. She just wouldn’t shut up until I wrote her story. So I did. When I finished it, I realized I didn’t have it quite right and put it away. I did other things. Wrote those five solo romances, and a historical (as yet unpublished). When I decided to make the do-or-die-trying effort to break into mainstream, an interested agent asked to see something completed.

When I pulled out SINGING WITH THE TOP DOWN and re-read it, after so much writing time had washed under the bridge, I realized exactly what it needed. So I rewrote it. The agent took it on, submitted it to publishers and it sold within a couple of months.

The story is set in 1954 and is about a couple of children orphaned when their irresponsible young parents are killed in a freak carnival ride accident. An aunt they don’t know — a wannabe movie starlet — shows up at the funeral to take them back to California and a new life.
SINGING is essentially a road-trip story. They set out in a 1953 Buick Skylark convertible, thus the title, and share many adventures and misadventures between Oklahoma and California. They pick up an elderly hitchhiker who is a nursing home refugee, and together these four figure out how to be a family.

Editorial Changes at Harlequin Superromance

Sorry I've been out of the blog/loop for so long. It seems like my summer has started late but with a vengeance - it's been nothing but beaches and cottages the last two weeks...it's a rough life but someone has to sit on that deck chair.

So, by now word has spread about the change in senior editor at Harlequin Superromance. Laura Shin was replaced a few weeks ago by Wanda Ottewell. Of course rumors and theories abound as to why this happened - but I think it all comes down to what we writers usually forget - business and numbers. As a writer for the line I can attest to a pretty substantial leak in sales and printruns and cashola, and from what I have heard from other writers it's been going on for a while. It's going on almost across the board for category romances, with the exception of a few lines. The romance reading world has changed and category has had to scramble to maintain readership - and a lot of that responsibility falls on the senior editors of the lines. It's a job I do not envy. And Laura Shin was a great editor - a classy smart lady. But with numbers where they were something had to happen.

I think what Harlequin and Silhouette has done in the past is been at very start of trends - christian romance, chick lit (RDI was there from the get-go), the various paranormal lines that have come and gone over the years as well as the romantic suspense lines, and the Blaze line pushed the envelope in terms of sexual contact leading the way for mass market erotica.
But there are a lot of lines stuck in ruts of their own making -- Superromance being one of them. The last year Laura did a great job of bringing in new authors with new and interesting story lines and voices, but Superromance is a huge boat and it takes a while to turn it around.


I've worked with Wanda for years - since the doomed Flipside line - she's brilliant. And, if anyone can pull Superromance around - it's her.

Does writing lessen our enjoyment of reading?

This is a question that comes up pretty frequently in our little Drunk Writing Circle, and amongst other writers. Do we read differently now that we write and have to analyze our own work and that of others.
It’s also something the Smart Bitches Who love Trashy Novels recently posted on. Check out their website, they are tremendously entertaining. www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com

The short answer on this question is YES.
I read much differently now and am much harder to please. Cliché’s bug the hell out me, I really notice repetition and where before I would read a ho hum book all the way through, now I toss them aside the moment I lose interest. I’d just rather be writing than read something not completely worthwhile.
But when I read a book and don’t notice scene structure and don’t take note of POV, or the intricacies of plot, I am thrilled in a way I wasn’t before I became a writer.
We all have them, the books, or writers who can sweep us into a story and we forget everything but the characters and what might happen next.
One writer who almost always does this for me is Susan Elizabeth Phillips, I can never analyze her books, even on multiple readings, because I get too caught up in the story. Is this because of voice, or plotting, or an amazing skill level I can only gnash my teeth in envy over, (probably all three).
Because this happens less often these days, I treasure these writers and their books. Anne Stuart can do this on an inconsistent basis, Maggie Osborne, JK Rowling, absolutely, and then there are my favourite books, but that’s a much longer post.
There are times I mourn those days of carefree reading. But I’ve come to realize it’s a side effect of writing, unavoidable I’d guess and a small price to pay.

Multitasking vs One thing at a time

I read somewhere recently that few of us actually multitask very well, in spite of the fact most of us think we do. I also heard that what little ability we have to multitask gets worse as we age, and that scares me.

Why have I been thinking about this? Actually, it was Sinead's last post about writing faster (and my recent snails pace of finished product production). My snail's pace is due to the frustrating time I've been having doing final revisions on my latest opus.

I've always been a multi-tasking kind of person. At least that's how I think of myself. But I'm realizing (either because of age or wisdom or both) that maybe I'd be more effective if I forced my ADD underground and focused on one thing at a time.

And I don't mean doing multiple books at once. I've stopped projects mid-way to start others... but I've never been a write-two-books-at-once kind of gal. I wish. I mean, dealing with one stage of revisions/editing at a time.

Once a book is sold to a publisher, it goes through a few very distinct kinds of edits. Here's how I understand it:

The first is revisions. Which, for popular fiction at least, is mostly about changes to the story. Making sure it's as tight and strong as possible. Depending on the book and the editor, this may go through a few rounds. (Have you ever heard Lisa Garner talk about her revisions for The Perfect Husband?)

Then there are line edits. This is where the words become the issue. The prose. Are there repeating words or phrases, overuse of adverbs or adjectives, repetitive sentence structures. That kind of thing. (I understand depending on the editor, and the extent of revisions needed, these two stages are sometimes combined. I also understand that with more "literary" novels this stage is more rigorous. Fine. I heard one story about an authors and her editor arguing over the choice of one particular word for a few weeks. Lucky publishers have popular fiction to help pay for that kind of anal-retentiveness.)

Then, only then, does it go to the copy editor who worries about continuity and fact checking and punctuation and grammar and do the heroine's eyes change color on page 243.

This is how I understand the process to work, anyway.

So, I'm thinking. Why the hell do I make myself crazy trying to combine all those different kinds of edits into one set of revisions myself? Why do I worry about all of these things on each pass through my manuscript? Why am I fussing over the exact wording of a paragraph until I'm absolutely positive the overall story is working? Do I like wasting time? Making extra work for myself? Subsequently cutting huge swaths of prose I'd tinkered with until I loved it? Am I that worried about my CP's opinion of me that I can only show them stuff I think's nearly finished?

I'm not sure why I never tried to apply this multi-step approach to revisions to my writing process.

And even if I hadn't made the connection earlier, I could have taken a lesson from my CP, friend and fellow drunk writer, Molly, who never cares about line edit things when she's just trying to get the story right.

I've learned to (mostly) ignore grammar and repeated words and poor punctuation in Molly's early drafts, but I'm seriously just realizing now how friggin smart she is. (I knew she was smart about lots of things, just not this.)
What I now realize is how much time I waste trying to polish my work before I show it to my CP's for that initial "does this story work" critique. Or even before I make my own assessment of my story.

Damn, damn, damn.

Can you edit your work for just one thing? Can you ignore the wording and just worry about the story? Or do you multi-task-edit, too?

Writing faster

I have a really limited amount of time on my hands these days… largely due to my expanded family. Whoever said newborns sleep a lot should be shot..

So when I do have a free moment, I have to think carefully about what I want to do. The usual answer is work on my current WIP. Which is what I’ve been doing.

What I would love to know is how to write faster. I really have to work on this, because right now, a book is taking me close to eight months start to finish and I really have to shave two months off that.

Lots of people write several books a year and raise families, so I know it can be done. I think it’s a lack of focus on my part. I sit down to write and my mind wanders and I take breaks and check email, and all of a sudden my time is up, and I only have four pages written in two hours.

Molly is great at writing fast, three books a year, and she has said what helps her is having a computer disconnected from the internet, along with deadlines.

Other people leave the house, go to a coffeeshop where they have nothing to but work. This works really well for Maureen.

Me, I work in spurts. I have great weeks, and really pathetic weeks. Some weeks I get to the computer and can focus on what I'm doing and get tons done, other weeks, I find surfing the net irrestible when I should be writing.

What does help me is having a specific goal when I sit down to write. Knowing exactly what scene comes next, and what needs to be accomplished in the scene. If I sit down to the computer with only a vague idea of what comes next in the book, I'm screwed.

Does anyone have any other ways to keep focused and write faster? I'd love to hear them.