Taking the Easy Way Out

I was going to take the easy way out today, and blog about OUR NEXT NEW DRUNK WRITER JOINING US VERY SOON!!!, but decided that was a huge cop out. Plus, I think Molly would probably like to introduce her, so I'll restrain myself. But stay tuned....

Instead, I'd like to talk about endings and surprise twists and not taking the easy way out.

I'm struggling with the final act of one of the WIPs I'm working on now. Not that, sadly, I'm anywhere near that point in the ms yet, but I have been thinking about it. Trying to set things up properly to lead to the best possible climax and ending. (and no, I'm not talking about sex.)

Also, I eavesdropped on a little twitter discussion, between Louisa Edwards and Dakota Cassidy today, about Julia & Julie (or is it the other way around?) that got me thinking about twists and ending's, even more. And no, I haven't seen that movie yet, nor do I expect it to have much of a twist ending...

The movie I got thinking about was Junebug. A fabulous little independent film from about four or so years ago featuring Amy Adams. I think it might have been the first time I ever saw, or at least noticed, her as an actress, and I do believe she also received an Oscar nomination for supporting actress for her amazing performance. If you haven't seen this movie, you should.

Junebug isn't about her character, though. The film's about a character played by Alessandro Nivola, whom I love, and his character bringing his older and sophisticated girlfriend home to his much-less-sophisticated family in one of the Carolinas, or somewhere like that. The focus of the plot is on him coming home after so long away from his family, on them as a couple, on the folk artist the girlfriend's trying to sign and the ethical questions there...

Amy Adams plays Nivola's very pregnant sister-in-law, who's about the sweetest, most kind-hearted, naive, but curious-about-the-world character you could ever imagine. And whereas she could come off cloying or cliche, Amy Adams makes her completely believable. (Yes, the casting director for Enchanted must've seen her in Junebug. I wouldn't be shocked to learn the screenwriters for Enchanted were inspired by her performance in Junebug.)

But I digress... My point is, Junebug cruises along, pretending to be a character based story about the Nivola character, that's interesting but not really taking us on a storytelling roller-coaster of any kind (more like a merry-go-round or a pleasant ferris wheel ride at best).

The filmmakers distract us with a little business between the girlfriend and the father-to-be brother... and then BAM. A big twist. Something unexpected (I didn't see a hint of foreshadowing) that changes everything and makes you see the movie in an entirely different way. Makes you think about family and what it means in an entirely different way. Sure the whole movie was about family... but the twist pretty much punches you in the gut.

I don't want to say much more, because it would ruin the film if you haven't seen it, but I guess I aspire to walk the line this film, for me, walks so well. The line between surprising the reader, in a good way, and pissing them off, because you've written something so unexpected it doesn't meet reader expectations.

Yes, I aspire to walk that line, whereas, in real life thus far... I fear any reader will see my hand way before I play any of my cards.

You know what? It just occurred to me. Writing is hard.... Big news. LOL

How do you come up with a plot twists? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

It all started with a potato

I'm so happy to be blogging here at Drunk Writer Talk. I've really enjoyed reading the posts here and commenting on occasion. I think it's going to be great fun. And to think, it all began with a potato . . . (cue dreamy music and soft focus here)

I first met Molly O'Keefe at the Emerald City Writers Conference in Seattle. I can't remember the exact sequence of events. We might have met earlier in the day. Or not. All I know is that at dinner (which was one of those buffet style things), this very charming and pretty and pregnant woman sat down next to me. She had a tiny little plate with maybe a carrot on it. As we sat there, I couldn't help noticing that she was eyeing my potatoes.

By eyeing, I mean she couldn't focus on anything else and could barely speak because of the drool dripping out of the side of her mouth.

I asked if she'd like them. To make a long story short, after demurring quite a bit, she fell on them like a woman possessed. I have seriously never seen a woman attack a potato in quite the same way. As a woman of appetite myself, I could totally appreciate it. I was charmed.

Of such things are friendships born. We kept in touch a little. I read one of her books and loved her humor and handling of emotion and conflict.

Because I knew Molly (and the adorable and talented Eileen Cook), I met clever and charming Maureen McGowan at the NEC RWA Conference a year or two later. It was there that I may have cemented my eventual inclusion in this group by actually falling off my seat in a restaurant after drinking a beer or two. I seriously thought that bench seat went all the way across. It seriously did not, as I found out when I realized I was sitting on the floor with my feet sticking up in the air.

But my point is, and there is a point believe it or not, that it is of the little things that happen that big things begin. I offer some potato to a starving pregnant woman and a few years later, I get to join a cool group blog. I think about those little decisions as my writing, too. It's not just the big decisions, the life and death choices that my heroes and heroines make, that make a book work. It's all those little choices that bring characters to life. The kind of car she drives, what she wears, the relish with which she eats a potato. You know, those telling details that mean so much like when a cook with a drinking problem hands a potato peeler to a troubled teen and ends up saving them both.

So thanks for having me here. I'm thrilled to participate. Let's all take a moment of silence to appreciate that starchy tuber then tell me what one of your favorite telling details in a book has been.

The Sweet Spot: literary fiction and back story.

Well, two sweet spots, actually, one for literary fiction and one for backstory, but I suppose the two do collide into one giant sweet spot, but it wasn't really what I was after. I really need to learn some basic punctuation skills.

Anywho. I've done no work for a month. Read some great books and one of them has really been kicking around in my head. The People's Act of Love, by James Meek. (Given to me some time ago by Maureen - what a friend.) It's got it all, cannibalism, castration, Siberia, revolutionary Russia, religious sects. It's awesome. And I mean awesome- go get yourself this book.

But I almost put it down at one point. I know I read literary fiction to learn something, to be challenged, and I don't think I'm alone. I want to feel at times smart and stupid, but there's a point in the smart/stupid continuum that when crossed, makes people hate literary fiction.

In The People's Act of Love, there is so little back story - it's delicious. A man, in the frozen wasteland watches some horses and a man fall from a train. He eats some of the horse, cuts the hand off the dead man and then gets up on the train trellis and starts to follow the tracks. There he finds another man, that man is carrying a bag with a bloody knife, some booze and a picture of a woman.

I mean how freaking AMAZING is this!!?? Every moment is a mystery, a puzzle a delicious tease. Why did he bury that hand? Who is the woman? Why is the equipment bloody? Now, the first man who ate the horse and buried the hand looks at the bloody surgical equipment and doubts the second man's answer about them - which I do to, we're supposed to. But the first man KNOWS what the second man is, but though we're in his POV he doesn't tell us. So, as the reader I'm totally left behind. It seemed, in all of this mystery, like a betrayal and I felt dumber than I wanted to, like if I was smart I could get it.

He edged just past the sweet spot in back story. And I almost put the book down, thank God I didn't, because it only got better. But that one little moment was tough.

You can tell your reader's the bare minimum, but as soon as your POV character understands something that we don't from the information laid out in front of us - oops. Now, further into the book I think you can getaway with a little more slight of hand, but at the beginning when the reader has just turned the light on in the world you've created - help the reader out.

Writers are like sharks

There's this old theory about sharks, they stop swimming and they die. Which is true for most sharks, it's how they breathe and stay afloat.

And for writers, the constant need to read, watch movies, examine what we love, talk about writing, edit and critique our own writing, it's how we grow and evolve as writers. It's why I almost never take a complete vacation from writing. Because even when I'm taking a writing vacation, I'm thinking about my next book, the characters, the turning points.

And it's one of the things I love best about writing. The fact that you can never quite leave it behind.

But the growth, the learning is how we keep making our writing fresh. We need to take risks, try new things, just to keep this interesting. And as an unpubb'd writer I have zero expectations, except the ones that I place on myself, so I get to write just for me right now and I'm really relishing it, as much as I can relish in my unpubb'd state.

It might not help my quest towards publication, but I'm loving the concept that no idea is taboo as long as it works within the confines of my story.

And I have season 2 of Mad Men and soon season 3 to provide all the inspiration I could need. That show is a masterclass in showing not telling. It's a masterclass in a lot of things.

Big News at Drunk Writer Talk

We've lured another author over to the dark side! Mwha, ha ha!

Actually, our great and wonderful news is that the lovely and talented Eileen Rendahl, aka Eileen Carr is joining Drunk Writer Talk as a weekly correspondent. (Correspondent? Are we all correspondents? Seemed to fit.)

We couldn't be more excited. As a teaser, here's the trailer for Eileen Carr's February 2009 release, HOLD BACK THE DARK! Creeeeepy. Yay!



Eileen is definitely simpatico with us here. She loves to talk about books, movies, TV and storytelling, especially over a glass of red wine. While her commute from Northern California to Toronto for our weekly pub meetings might be tough for her, we won't let her drive home drunk. ;-)

Starting next week, we're hoping to get back to roughly this schedule:

Monday: Molly O'Keefe
Tuesday: Eileen Rendahl or Carr (depending on which of her personalities comes out that day)
Wednesday: Maureen McGowan
Thursday: Stay tuned for another announcement, soon!
Friday: The ever-mysterious Sinead M.

There's a schedule???

Sure, some weeks we're bad bloggers. Especially during the summer when vacations and the sun and kids home from school interfere. But we're hoping the new blood will help inject some new ideas and life into DWT!

Welcome, Eileen!!!

Why do people still consider romance the last refuge of the damned?

I had a friend ask me the other day if she should write a harlequin. Strange question, but she wants a way out of her day job, and other than knowing I have some great writer friends, she knows absolutely nothing about the industry.

I've perused her book shelves, and she has a lot of books, but very few romances and absolutely no series romance.

My question to her was, have you read any?

Her answer was no.

Do you know what line you would like to write?

She looked at me perplexed, because she didn't know Harlequin had different lines. Had no clue what they paid, and even less about what it would take to write a book.

I know a lot us start writing because we believe it's easier than it is, but very few people think, I really loved The Lovely Bones, I'm going to write a book even better in my spare time, one draft and I'm on the path to wealth and acclaim.

My friend(who's really quite lovely, if slightly deluded) had the sense that she could write a harlequin in no time at all.

What do we, as an industry, and as romance authors, have to do to convince the public that what we do is both difficult and requires skill and real effort? I know RWA has spent a lot of time and money on this question. And certainly the press recently regarding romance authors who have PHD's and medical degrees has certainly helped, but is there anything more we can do?

Because I do believe we're still battling the perception of the lonely middle aged woman penning her novels in between meals for her children, because she had nothing better to do. When the reality is, writing takes perseverance and a real intelligence and an absolute love of the genre.

How many smart, articulate, polished women have to speak up in defense of the genre before public perception changes?

High School Required Reading

My friend, a high school English teacher of much acclaim in Missouri, and I were talking about required High School reading and how in far too many cases "the classics" that kids in high school are forced to read and analyze and discuss are actually killing any love of reading some of these kids have. The Scarlet Letter, anyone? How many of you can name five books you read in high school that you can actually remember (and not because you watched the movie?) To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies...um.... All Quiet on the Western Front. I know we read Gatsby - that's it. That's what I remember from my many many English classes. I had an incredible Mythology class and Theater class and I remember lots of the things we read in those classes - Hamlet, Homer, Candide.

In terms of coming of age - is The Cather in The Rye even relevant anymore? Isn't that book all about context? And in high school, shouldn't the reading be relevant? Isn't part of why we all love to read is because we see ourselves in some of those characters? My friend the acclaimed english teacher, has lots of free reading, but he still has to teach some of the classics - Even Mark Twain, he says, makes most of the kids start to glaze over. Hemingway? Forget it. For Whom The Bell Tolls? Well, needless to say it's not tolling for high school kids, not anymore.

I ran across this list trying to find a list of high school reading - and I thought it was a solid list - though I agree we need more feminine voices.

What do you think? What do you remember reading? Should high school reading be about the classics? Or should it be about getting kids interested in reading? In finding the voices that speak to them?

Limitations

I have been on a reading binge lately and it has been spectacular. I have finally caught up on the list that’s been sitting by my bed for months.

And in the lot, were some amazing books. Another great YA, Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr, You belong to Me by Maria Santos(seriously, amazing author). Some so so books, but all entertaining and all of which I finished.

Some books I read and I can see how the author wrote it, can figure out the pulsepoints, almost get a sense for what the author was thinking, how they plotted it. A peek behind the door, so to speak, and not one that in any way affects my enjoyment of the book. Other books just read like pure magic, effortless as if they tripped off the keyboard and those books, other than making me envious, completely intimidate me.

They are usually the kind of books I don’t write. Heavily character based, deeply emotional, and I know they are as intricately plotted, if not more so, than my books, and I know sweat, blood and tears went into them, and I believe that not in a million years could I write a book like it.

You Belong to Me is one of those books. I adored reading it. And I’d sit down to write something in a similar vein and be lost by page three.

I don’t even wish I could write it, because I get a thrill from writing a scene where my characters are in danger, and the atmosphere is tense, and I’m working at reversing an expectation and the words flow and I can picture what’s happening in my head.

My strengths and limitations have really honed the books I’ve written and while I’m constantly working on my limitations, I’m always going to focus on my strengths, because those scenes are easier for me to write, certainly more fun and usually require the least editing. (that’s my lazy side talking)

And right now, in my surprisingly zen state of being, I’m really OK with that.

Pitching your novel -- love it or hate it?

Anyone who's been reading this blog over the years knows I'm a big believer in the conference verbal pitch, and went after these opportunities aggressively when I was agent hunting.

So, you might be surprised that my opinion wasn't swayed by St. Martin's editor, Jennifer Enderlin, saying, during the SMP spotlight at RWA Nationals, that she doesn't believe in verbal pitches, and rarely agrees to take them. She doesn't like them because she can't tell whether or not she'll want a book based on a verbal pitch.

Contrary to what you might think, this doesn't go against my reasons for liking pitches, (more later), but first I want to share this exchange from a few moments later in the SMP spotlight:

Audience member: If you can't tell whether or not you'll like a book based on a verbal pitch, what can you tell?

Enderlin: (looking slightly baffled) Whether or not I like your clothes?

LOVED that answer on so many levels. First, it was a humorous, slightly-sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek answer to a question that was moderately silly given Enderlin had already said she didn't believe in pitches. But I ended up loving that questioner, because in addition to making me laugh, Enderlin clarified that what she can gauge in a pitch is your personality.

Ultimately her contract-or-not decision depends on the quality of your book, not your looks or personality or clothes, but meeting an author does give her an idea of whether or not the author's someone she'd like to work with. Or really not want to work with...

But from the other side of the pitch table, I believe the verbal pitch is (almost) like free pass past the query stage. And that's where I believe my love of pitches and Enderlin's dislike of them converge. And it's all in her reasons.

She said she can't tell if she'll like your book until she reads some of it. And that's my point, too. While a query letter does show a bit more than a verbal pitch, in that there's actual writing and less "performance" involved, there's still a chance (often very high chance) the letter reader will never see any of your actual book.

The problem with query letters is the agent/editor doesn't have the opportunity to judge your story by, well, reading your story.

To me, sending a query always feels like playing roulette. Sure, if you've got an amazing premise and can craft a great query, you can increase the odds of your ball landing in the "request" slot, but it's still roulette. Whereas, if you include a sample of your writing along with a query, or can leap past that query stage altogether, at least you're judged on the quality of your writing, not your ability to write a query.

Not to mention that it's so easy, in a query, to hit some pet peeve you couldn't possibly know about ahead of time. (I didn't need to sit through a pre-conference workshop, where a panel of 6 editors and agents went through the query letters of 10 Golden Heart finalists, and ended up making, I think 3 or 4 requests out of a possible 60, to know that agents, are looking for reasons to say no when they read queries, not reasons to say yes. No means clearing something off their to-do list. Yes means adding to their mountainous reading piles.)

But, as hard as it is to deliver a verbal pitch, it's just as hard to say no in person. So, if you do your homework and pitch the right person, you're almost guaranteed to get a yes at a verbal pitch. Ta da. Free pass to request land. I rest my case. ;-)

All that said, queries, (like the dreaded synopsis), are part of the process of publication, and it's important to learn how to write a great one. But when I sent queries, I almost always included at least the first five or so pages of the manuscript. Because ultimately, it's the writing that matters.

Used Bookstores

I love used bookstores. Well-run, well-organized - it's like walking into someone's extended keeper shelf. There's one in the Milwaukee airport (I know brilliant, right? There are small magazine vendors in the gates, but not a bookstore and this one is in the main lobby, so if you're waiting for someone you can find a book. ) And there's one in Florida where I vacation with friends, that literally every year sends me into fits of book love. I've found City of Thieves (AMAZING BOOK)! The Shadow of the Wind (OH!!! The nights I've stayed up too late!) The Birth of Venus (delight, start to finish). All by authors whose next books I will buy - because I am in love with them.

I know a lot of writers think that used bookstores are robbing them of royalties, and in way - they're right. But I've been thinking a lot about Sherry Thomas' comment that what sells books is love. People have to love your book to talk about it to their friends, on-line, in the grocery store, over dinner - everywhere they can. And the only thing that builds love is actually reading the book. And that's where used bookstores come in. People take bigger risks on books and authors they've never heard of, when the price tag is in half.

So, yes, no royalties on that second sale. But if you think of those bookmarks everyone makes, or the postcard mailings to bookstores and booksellers - and the end result isn't known. Do the postcards get tossed in the trash? Do they make it to readers? Do the readers care? That feels to me so often like money tossed away. But getting books into hands of readers - how can that be bad?

That said - Internet piracy sites. The scum of the very earth - all they do is ensure that good books and good authors don't get published. It's stealing and there's no love there.

Relatability at RWA Nationals

This post isn't going to be what you might think from the title. I'm not going to blog about writing relatable characters... Rather, it's a blog about the things that struck me the most at last week's RWA National conference.

#1. Janet Evanovich

She did the opening session and it was a Q&A. Since there were nearly 2000 of us in the room, the questions were on index cards, but she hadn't seen them ahead of time so it was lovely and spontaneous. And what slayed me was finding a moment when I could totally relate to her. No, it wasn't when she talked about how her make up artist was going to kill her because she blew her nose on stage (although that was funny) and seriously? she travels with her own hair and makeup people? Could not relate to that. ;-)

What I could relate to was the reason she had to blow her nose. One of the questions was: How long did it take you to get published? Her answer, more or less, was: it took 10 years after she seriously started writing and submitting romance novels. Makes me feel better about my current 6-7.

When she described the moment she found out she'd sold her first ms (for $2000) she started to cry on stage. I felt so connected to her at that moment. Here's this huge bestseller. A multimillionaire. And it took her AGES to sell her first book, and she still remembers that moment so well it makes her cry. Wow.

#2. J.R. Ward

Whom I adore. She did a 2 hour talk with her CP Jessica Andersen (whom I also adore) and, as usual, they were funny and informative. Such intelligent women who know who they are and are in such command of what they're doing.

But the moment that slayed me in this talk was when pal and frequent DWT visitor Stephanie Doyle, asked J.R. and Jess to talk about the transition of their careers from midlist and/or category into bestsellerdom. And that's when J.R. cried.

She cried because she says she doesn't yet understand "why her"? (her readers could tell her, but that's another matter) But it was so great to see (and have her show) that she's so humble about it all, and understands how hard it is for all of us in this business, no matter at what stage we're at, and that she realizes how lucky she is. She said that the person who sits down each day, at her desk in boxer shorts to write, is still the same "Jessie" who wrote all her other books, but this new persona has emerged who's J.R., and you could tell that, at times, it's still all a little overwhelming for her. Made me tear up, too.

#3. Eloisa James

The strange thing about this one hitting me, is that I've seen Eloisa give the exact same talk before. Her DC speech might have been a combination of two different talks I've heard, but I'm sure I'd heard nearly every main section of the talk. And it's a great talk. The difference for me this time was how emotional she got telling her story and in particular the part about how her mother never accepted what she chose to do for a living.

Her mother, like Eloisa (in her Mary Bly persona), was a professor of literature. So her mom approved of *that* career choice. The difference is that the fiction writing her mother chose to do, in addition to her teaching, was literary short stories, while Mary/Eloisa chose to write romance novels. And it's clear, hearing her talk, that she chose to write romance because she LOVES romance, in spite of her occasional, "I write for money", claims.

I have a similar disapproval thing going on with someone in my family, right now, and it hurts so, so much to have someone you love disrespect what you've chosen to do with your life, and find all these ridiculous arguments to refute your every attempt to explain why you think what you're doing is valuable and not what she thinks it is. That she refuses to even consider that the literary education she got in the early 1980's was not only biased against the genre, but totally out of date. To have someone tell you that the thing that makes you happy isn't worthy or is trash, is so hard. But enough about me.

Eloisa says for years she hid behind the excuse of "I'm just doing it for money" but now admits, that's (mostly) a lie. She writes romance because she loves it. The money's a bonus and has provided a nice justification against all the disapproval from her family. (And, of course, we all know that even in genre fiction, only a very few writers really make much money.) Eloisa says she's Simon and Garfunkel born into the Bach family. Loved that. (Although... wasn't Bach writing popular music in his time??? Still, I get her point.) While she was telling us how her mother, on her death bed, told her she felt sure Eloisa would write a "real book" some day, it was the closest to tearing up I've ever seen this very strong woman, who I've seen speak to groups about emotional events in her life before. I teared up, too.

All in all. It was amazing to find that I had something in common with, some way to relate to, each of these three NYT Bestselling authors. Awesome.

Worth all the money I spent to go to DC? Well...

I won't talk about another highlight (lowlight?) when a certain Pocket editor said she liked the bra I was inadvertently flashing. And I'm not talking straps. Not as bad as it sounds. I hope. You had to be there. At least it matched my temporarily unwrapped wrap dress.

Conference Agenda

Well, I'm here in DC. And feeling somewhat relaxed considering the RWA National conference is about to begin.

Last night I had dinner with the lovely and talented Diana Peterfreund and the equally lovely and talented C. L. Wilson and was asked: what's your plan for the week?

I realized I didn't really have one. Yes, I have meetings. Yes, I'm getting together with friends for drinks. Yes, I have a few parties scheduled. But plan? Not so much this year.

Part of me thinks that's crazy. This conference costs a (relative) fortune and to come without clear objectives seems frivolous. On the other hand, in other years I've come with such a clear set agenda in my mind of who I wanted to meet and how I wanted that meeting to pan out... that invariably I came away disappointed. I suppose, back a few years ago when it was all about pitching, I usually came away happy. But since then, my goals have been more nebulous and it's been harder to quantify whether I achieved much.

So, this year? Go with the flow. Try to learn stuff. Try to come out of my borderline introvert shell more often and meet new people. Pass out business cards (with info about the anthology I'm going to be in on the back). What? You didn't know about that? More later. ;-)

Gamechangers

I check the Rotten Tomatoes website once a week. It lets me know without having to read a single review whether a movie is worth watching and in less than thirty seconds of my time.
And occasionally they will interview a director, or an actor. This week they asked Kathryn Bigelow her top 5 favourite movies.
Kathryn Bigelow directed the Hurt Locker, which right now seems to be one of the best reviewed movies of the summer, second only to UP and one of the movies that created some serious buzz at the Toronto film festival. Plus, she directed Near Dark, a spectacular, vampire flick.
Her list is terrific, but the film that jumped out at me is The Terminator. She calls it a gamechanger.
And for the time it was. Go back to 1984 when the movie was released and for the time, the tension, the special effects, the storytelling, it was a movie that raised the bar for all sci fi and thrillers.
I was thinking about what my gamechangers are in romance. I know for sure, and this is going back a bit, the Anita Blake series was a gamechanger for the paranormal genre. I know they're technically urban fantasy, but they had tense plots and some amazing sexual tension and I do think they started the urban fanstasy craze, and then the series fell off the rails, but before it did, man, those books were great reads.
The JR Ward series felt like a gamechanger, in terms of connected books, secondary plot lines, and some intricate world building. For me, those books have changed the way I approach plotting.
And then in historicals, you had Sherry Thomas and Joanna Bourne writing these incredible historicals with intelligent, non-perfect heroines and scenarios that couldn't be set further from a regency ballroom, making the historical a hot commodity again.
To me a game changer raises the bar, creates new standards of what works, and smart writers pay attention. Not that we'll always agree about which books were gamechangers, but I like being challenged by better books, more imaginative storylines, better characterization. I like to see how far we can push this genre and those books usually spark some serious creative thinking and some great drunk writer discussions.
I know I've left a lot of books out of this discussion, but would love to hear if anyone has any other books that they feel are gamechangers.

Mysterious Premises

I love a good mysterious premise. I love ambiguity. I love not knowing 100% of what's going on at the beginning of a book or movie or TV series. I love wondering (to a point) why a character is behaving a certain way.

But when does a mysterious or ambiguous premise, or not-fully-revealed motivation, become an annoyance?

When it doesn't work, that's when.

And not working is sometimes a hard thing to put one's finger on, so I can only think of examples of "works" and "does not work".

Life on Mars... I didn't watch the British version of this show, and would like to, if for no other reason than to compare it to the US version, which I really enjoyed... But I think this one is a brilliant example of "works". And maybe they handled it so well because it was all contained in one short season. (The British version has a sequel called Ashes to Ashes... don't know that it's about. But assuming the British version of Life on Mars ended the same way as the US one... well, it's hard to imagine a sequel. Now I've made myself curious...)

I've heard people talking about the US version being "canceled"... and I admit I haven't read up on all the dirt, but from watching it, well, they couldn't possibly have had a second season. Or rather, if they had stretched it into a second season, at some point the "big mystery" would've become annoying rather than mysterious. There were only so many possible answers and I was still getting chills almost every episode until we finally got our answer. An answer, which, for me, was none of the possibilities I'd been considering. I think if they'd led me down all those other garden paths for too much longer, I might've been angry when the answer was "none of the above". But over 13 episodes, or whatever it was, it worked for me.

If you didn't see Life on Mars, rent it when it comes out on DVD. The lead actor is hot, hot, hot -- the acting was great (Harvey Keitel, Michael Imperioli) and I, for one, loved the mysterious premise and how it got solved. Plus, there's a nice little romance running through it. (Not to mention a great, early 70's soundtrack.)

Lost... Now there's one of the biggest examples of a fabulous mysterious premise. For five, (six?) seasons we've known they crashed onto an island (or were maybe dead). We've known strange things happen on this island. We know it's hard to find. We know people get healed and come back to life and others get sick and babies can't be born and some people don't age -- etc. etc. etc. And for me, it's always stayed interesting enough to pull me through the confusing bits. I know others (Molly) who think it fell apart in Season 3... and if I agree with that at all, (I actually enjoyed Season 3), it might be because they lost track of the mystery and instead transferred focus onto the love triangle. Or was season 3 the one where they were focussed on the people from the other side of the island?

I admit this show has become incredibly complicated... and I'm not sure the time travel thing is going to wrap everything up satisfactorily... And they've dropped a few threads... Michael? Walt? Walt seemed so important in the first seasons... And reappeared mysteriously a few times after leaving the island... yet now he's gone. But overall, the premise of Lost works for me.

Heroes is another example of one where the mysterious premise was AWESOME in the first season. But then they let themselves get too complicated. Talk about time travel issues. (Which Sylar is he tonight? Which Claire? Which Hiro? Which Peter? Which powers do they have this week?) But still, I think this show is a good example of a mysterious premise which, at least for a while, pulled the audience along by balancing how/when the truth was revealed. (Until it fell off the rails.)

But what really prompted his post was a new TV show called The Listener. And to be fair to the writers/producers, I haven't seen every episode. (And maybe I just want to be fair because the show's Canadian), but the "mysterious premise" is pissing me off. And has pissed me off from episode one. Okay, maybe I don't really care about being fair.

The hero can read minds. Okay. Fine. I can accept that.

He's always been able to read minds, and had to learn as a little boy how to block them out/control it, but in the first episode, "something" suddenly changes (we don't know what) and now he hears people in distress and can't get them out of his head until he solves whatever problem is causing the distress. (Talk about a convenient contrivance for a weekly series...) And we get no explanation for why things suddenly changed. But that's not even what bugs me. What bugs me is he's been told that "he must NEVER tell ANYONE he can read minds". Doing so means danger, bad things, horrible things. And while I love a big mystery, I'm sorry, but "you can never tell" isn't good enough for me. Especially if it means your girlfriend dumps you and worse, you keep getting suspected of crimes.

Why the frak doesn't he tell? Especially when not telling causes problems for him? He's a grown man. Wouldn't he question this professor guy who's been telling him he can't tell anyone, since he was a little boy? (Even if professor guy is played by Colm Feore? Okay, now I need to include a photo of Colm Feore... He's playing Cyranno at Stratford this year. REALLY want to go see it... US folks, you may have seen him as the "first gentleman" on 24 this season.)

But back to my rant... I guess my main issue is that him not telling is clearly causing big-stakes problems for him (suspected of murder, etc.) and yet they haven't convinced me that him telling carries equally dire stakes.

All that would've been annoying enough, but then I caught a bit of an episode last week and suddenly his partner (they're paramedics) knows his secret. And his partner's character hasn't exactly been set up as the kind of guy who can keep a secret... Yet, the hero seems okay with babbling-idiot-partner-guy knowing his BIG DANGEROUS SECRET. And the world hasn't ended. So why not tell the ridiculously-pretty-and-always-inappropriately-dressed-for-her-job cop, who each week is coincidentally (with a big C) involved in solving a crime related to the person who's thoughs the hero can't get out of his mind. Especially since she always suspects him of the crimes because he knows so much? And why not tell his also-ridiculously-pretty-doctor-who-doesn't-act-like-a-doctor ex-girlfriend, who he loves but who dumped him for keeping secrets??? Why doesn't he tell these two female characters? Because then the writers would have no conflict.

And with a conflict that flimsy... Well, I tend to rant.

Is anyone watching this show? Am I wrong? Is there more? Could the lead actors or the premise holes be more annoying?

If there is something else, I'm willing to take this rant back, because after the first 3-4 episodes of Dollhouse I would've said the same thing (although not this bad) and they ended up fixing that problem big time and creating a whole bunch more interesting questions/conflicts to lead us forward and now I'm desperate to see season 2.

My lessons from all this: if your plot hangs together on a secret that no one can know, the writer better give the reader/viewer a fraking good reason to believe that keeping the secret has very high stakes. And if a writer is purposefully holding back a secret about the premise... he/she had better be changing things up, and raising new questions, and upping the stakes, or we'll just get impatient and feel manipulated when we're not given the answer.

Thinking back, both Sinead and I have had premises that relied on the heroes of our stories not being able to reveal a "big secret"... but I think we both handled it better than the writers of The Listener.

Ha! While writing this, and simultaneously half-way watching Canada's Next Top Model, I just saw a teaser for this week's episode of The Listener. The voice-over announcer says: "How long can he keep the secret? Is it time to tell the truth? And then one of the pretty chicks (doctor or cop, can't really tell them apart) looks at the hero and says, "You know what I'm thinking, don't you."

Maybe they've finally realized they can't keep that crap up. Still not watching. My TBR and TBW (watched) piles are too high to waste time on crap TV. Even if it's set in Toronto.

Now. Back to Make Me a Supermodel. ;-) Hey, a gal's allowed to watch some stuff that's just pure fun.

bad bloggers pt 2

ugh. proposals, deadlines, The freaking HUNGER GAMES - taking over my life right now. I have so much to say about that book! And I will - later. I only have the brain cells for one blog and I'm over at the superromance blog at eharlequin today. Please stop by

http://community.eharlequin.com/content/harlequin-superromance-group-author-blog

Crying in the Theatre

Well, we've been very bad bloggers this week... I blame birthdays. Within 4 days at the beginning of July, I have Canada's, my younger sister's, my Dad's and America's.

Not that (being a Canadian) I really celebrate the 4th... Unless I find a good excuse to... Like an American friend... Maybe Molly needs someone to have a drink with on Sat? (Call me.)

Anyway, in the interest of not having the same post up for an entire week, I thought I'd just say how much I enjoyed seeing West Side Story today, onstage at The Stratford Festival. (Yes, they do musicals as well as the Shakespeare, to get more bums into seats.)

Clearly I knew the story going in. And I've seen the movie several times. But boy did I cry. Wow. Really well done.

Went with my sister, two of her friends, and 4 tweenaged girls. The adults were all balling. The kids, not so much. They just thought the actor who played Tony was hot.

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....

Reviews in Romance Land

Once again, Maureen is tackling a subject about which she has more opinions than knowledge, but I can't help myself.

From what I can discern, because newspapers and literary review journals have never, ever, taken the romance genre seriously enough to review any of the books, except very grudgingly and with much disdain, the genre, up until the past five to ten years, hasn't been subject to the same kind of critical scrutiny as has, say, literary fiction.

RT magazine (and maybe others?) filled in the gap that this snobbery created, but they're generally known to be gentle in their reviews, never issuing the kind of blistering criticism that so often hits books reviewed by Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, the NYT and other major newspapers, or even Library Journal. Yes, RT likes some books more than others and a great review there is a big deal, but they rarely tear books to shreds.

Then the internet, and particularly the one-button-publishing of blogs, came along and changed everything. Several new sites emerged to specialize in reviewing romance. Today there are many.

And from what I can tell, the vast majority of these review sites are also pretty soft on the books. Gentle. Perhaps it's because we're 99.9% women. Perhaps it's because the genre already takes such a beating in the public eye, that the reviewers figure criticizing a romance novel is tantamount to criticizing the genre they love. But for whatever reasons, reviewers on many of these sites seem to like virtually everything they read, or at least only review the ones that they like. Or find benign things to say about the ones they don't.

That's fine, if that's what they choose to do. Everyone who has a blog, or magazine, or newsletter or column, or other venue to express their opinions, is free to do so. As an aspiring author, I've chosen to avoid reviewing books, full stop, rarely do it, because I don't want friends to think that because I didn't review their book, I didn't like it. (Okay, I've actually chosen to avoid reviewing books because I'm lazy. And have no aspirations to be a book reviewer. Not my thing. Except maybe while drinking with Molly and Sinead.)

But what I don't understand, or agree with, is the backlash against a few review sites, most notably the ones which are hard on books they don't like, (like Dear Author and Smart Bitches, Trashy Books and Mrs. Giggles) -- the sites where reviewers speak their opinions clearly and honestly and often with humor.

Why all the hate for these sites, as if they're doing something evil or mean? Why accuse them of attacking authors when they're simply describing why they did not enjoy a some authors' books? (Perhaps it's the humor people object too? Don't know.) And it doesn't take more than a moment on theses sites to know they LOVE the genre and LOVE some books in it. Just not every one.

Writing is very a personal process, but publishing decidedly is not. Nor is reviewing. It's not personal. Reviewers are not attacking you if they don't like your book.

As Smart Bitch Sarah said, when she visited our blog a few weeks ago and we asked her and Candy about the controversy their blog sometimes generates:

“...saying I disagree with you” very rarely means “I don’t like you,” nor does it mean “You’re wrong and I’m right.” “I disagree” are not words upon which to detonate massive bombs and shit. ... “I didn’t enjoy your book” does not mean “I deplore the fact that you’re breathing.”

Almost all writers endure tons of rejection and criticism on their way to becoming published authors. I don't get why authors can't take a little criticism after they are published. Sure, it's slightly more public than the criticism they've likely had to that point, but that's because their book is now public -- a good thing.

I've discussed this with a few people before, and was aware that there was a school of thought amongst certain romance authors that some romance review websites were "too mean", but I was appalled this week, to read Michelle Buonfiglio's transcript of an address she gave at an academic conference on romance, held at Princeton. The thesis of her address seemed to be that open honest discussion of the genre was only okay if it was "nice". Not only did she suggest that academics might look to blogs to do research on the genre (ridiculous enough in itself) but that they should only look at HER blog, because everyone posting there was nice (as opposed to her competitors' sites that were mean.

Her arguments fed into so many stereotypes about the romance genre, and the women who write and read it, that it made me embarrassed to be associated with the genre. I'm not even going to link to the transcript of her talk... but will link to the Sarah Wendell's smart response. She linked to the address if you're interested.

And here's what I think.

I don't believe in mean for the sake of being mean. Not at all. But criticism makes us stronger. Criticism makes us better. And even if we're incapable of learning from it, criticism is part of the entertainment business. Anyone who produces work intended to entertain the public -- whether they be writers or musicians or actors or poets or supermodels -- is subject to public scrutiny of their work. Putting your shit out there, means risking some people telling you it doesn't smell as nice as you think it does. Comes with the territory. If you don't want to get a negative review? Don't publish your books.

Will I jump for joy when I get a horrible review some day? No. I'm not that emotionally evolved. I'll probably crumple up into a little ball and cry, and then go get drunk with my friends to talk about how wrong the review was, maybe burn the reviewer in effigy. But then I'll get over it and either thank the reviewer for taking the time to look at my work, and/or I'll try not to think about it ever again. Even if I can't erase it from my mind, I'll know it's part of the business, suck it up, and move on.

And I'll act like a grown up and simply be glad at least someone read and mentioned my book.

Effortless takes a lot of work...

As Molly mentioned, I am taking a break from paranormals, which after reading too many in a row, have now all started to blend together, and become boring.

So, I'm reading historicals and putting a list of contemps together to buy. The latest historical I've read is the Elizabeth Hoyt, To Seduce a Sinner.. and while this isn't the best of her books, I practically devoured it, read it in two days, front to back and really enjoyed it.
So much I'm buying the next one, which just came out and looks amazing.

But what struck me about the book was how effortlessly it read. Smooth, scenes flowing well into each other and there seemed to be a real sense of confidence on the page, as if she knew she could take her time with the small scenes, because they'd be fascinating regardless.
A different experience from the paranormals I've read recently, which have felt anything but effortless, where I could almost see the author behind the scenes, working on their plot points, trying to add suspense and surprise, and adding new elements to make their books different from the other paranormals on the market. Molly covered this in her post.

And I know that the effortless book takes a stupid amount of work, polishing, removing repetition, ensuring the characters are always moving forward, and when it works, it really works. And right now, I'm seeing the effortless most in historicals, where the authors have had to step up to be noticed in what has been a declining, but just mostly overcrowded, field.

I still don't know where the effortless happens. Is it in author confidence, the fifth edit, the first draft, I just know when I read it. It's the next puzzle I'm trying to figure out.

To Market, to market, to sell a fat book

This week, I asked both Molly and Sinead: "If you were me, what would you write next?"

They both know me. They both know the industry. They both read a lot. They've both seen virtually everything I've ever written. Who better (other than my agent) to have an opinion on such a topic?

And I got two different answers, but together those answers melded into something profound and clear and useful. Exactly what I wanted/needed to hear.

My conclusion: I have to stop thinking so much about the market and just write the shit out of whatever idea feels shiniest to me right now. If it's the shiniest one -- to me -- I'll be able to write more shit in. Wait. That's not what I meant!!! ;-)

That said, I think some of the best advice I've heard about writing popular fiction (particularly genre fiction) is to write with one eye on the market. To figure out what elements of popular books/movies/TV/culture you can incorporate into your work, etc. etc. and still make it fresh. And nothing makes me more crazy than wanna-be-writers who complain that the industry is too close-minded, when said writer doesn't get requests on the query for her novel about her elderly aunt's adventures in needlepoint, written from her cat's point of view.

But all that "keep an eye on the market" advice aside: I think I had a small epiphany a couple of days ago, (that I shall probably reverse in another couple of days--cause that's what I do.) And it has to do with my personality type more than anything.

Confession: I'm highly analytical. My strongest traits on the Myers Briggs thingy are N and P. I almost always see two sides (sometimes four) to any particular problem or issue, I don't always come to conclusions in a linear fashion, and unless pressed by some kind of urgency, I hate making decisions. I can make them. But don't see the point if I can put it off for further analysis. ;-)

But what this means is: worrying about the market, about what's selling now, about what might be the next big thing, about what would be the smartest genre or sub-genre to aim for, about which genre best fits my particular strengths and weaknesses as a writer, is not necessarily a smart thing. For me.

My endless analyzing leads to nothing but frustration and second guessing. Which then leads to depression and anxiety inviting crazy over for tea.

(My apologies to Molly for plagiarizing that last bit. It's an homage to this post, where she talked about professional jealousy inviting crazy over for a BBQ.)

Ultimately, so much about this business ends up being about luck, and trying to control luck can lead to insanity.

The magic get published equation: Talent, Persistence, Luck

We can only hope to control two of those, at best.* And while, when we start a new novel, we can make an educated guess, about what's likely to happen in the market in 9-months to a year, (first date when we can realistically hope to be on submission, assuming we need to write the whole damn book -- add a year to that if you need to find an agent), or 2 - 3 years from now, (first date we can realistically hope to hit bookstores) -- the best we can do is guess. Whether our guess, an arrow shot high and hard into the stratosphere, hits the two-or-three-or-more-years-out bulls eye is highly dependent on luck.



*Caveats to above statements:
I suppose you can't strictly control talent, either... but you can learn how to make the most of your talent. Really, that magic equation should substitute skill for talent...
Also, you can influence luck by taking opportunities and putting lots of great work out there, but I think that's as much related to persistence as luck...
Did I mention I tend to be overly analytical?

Paranormal Beef

We've read a lot of great paranormal romance around here and even though Sinead is on paranormal romance hiatus and Maureen is loving urban fantasy - I'm still reading paranormal. But, I'm beginning to not love it. I think the subgenre is jumping the shark for me because recently, every paranormal romance I pick up - messes up the romance.

All these subgenres - paranormal, romantic suspense, romantic comedy, historical etc...etc... work for me and millions of other avid romance fans because the machinations of the subgenre make the romance better. More poignant, more exciting.

The alpha males and danger of paranormal romance, make the romance taste better. The internal conflict that the characters have to get over to be in love is made worse by the fact that they are a demon, or a demon hunter or whatever...

But suddenly it seems like not only are there too many of these kinds of details muddying up the world, but what the characters have to do to truly be in love comes as a huge surprise in the third act. Instead of just overcoming all the internal stuff - which is what we all love romance for- they also have to kill the demon and embrace their vampire side and mate in a pool of fire - but we didn't know that from the outset. It's like the writer changes the rules of the world, or didn't tell us all the rules, or becuse of all the external plot drama they've put in the book - a simple I love you doesn't work anymore -- and I hate that. I really hate that.

If the big premise of the book requires a huge suspension of disbelief - then the romance needs to be simple. Ward, Liu, Cole - simple romances. Really simple. And I think that's why it works - that, of course, and the characters. But when everyone starts jumping on the sub genre bandwagon, they get so distracted by the shiny elements - the things they can do with plot and external conflict and world building, forgetting that in the end, it's still always about characters and it's still always about romance.

And the Winner is......

Alison Heittman!!!!

Based on my random number generator, you are the winner of a copy of BEYOND HEAVING BOSOMS: THE SMART BITCHES' GUIDE TO ROMANCE NOVELS generously donated by the Smart Bitches themselves.

Congratulations!!!

E-mail me at maureen @ maureenmcgowan.com and we'll make sure you get your book!

Thanks to everyone for stopping by the blog this week. And thanks to the Smart Bitches for giving such great interview. Way better than Billy Bob Thorton who ran from Canada mid tour with his tail between his legs after giving really bad interview. Just saying.