Grammar Geekfest or On Having an Omniscient Aneurysm

First of all, I have to totally disagree with Bob when he suggests that there is no authority on _how_ to write. I'm so sorry, but this is one of my biggest bugaboos. I actually got myself kicked out of a writer's critique group for insisting that a sentence is comprised of a subject and a fucking verb. (Not just any verb, mind you, but a fucking one.)

LISTEN: writing is the act of making order out of chaos. I am the Word, ya dig? Order needs laws. Laws must be obeyed – (mostly.)

Traffic laws exist so that people don't ram into each other at seventy-five miles an hour most of the time (people still do, even when they're obeying the law). I will concede that it is possible that without any laws of any kind the universe might not descend into utter chaos. But why ask for trouble?

Bob, I applaud your efforts in taking on Strunk & White (E.B. White, btw, author of Charlotte's Web and the Stuart Little books), but if someone is setting out on the writing journey for the first time, Strunk & White's Elements of Style makes an excellent road map. I never really understood the concept of passive voice until I read Elements. Plus, their examples are funny, not punitive -- unlike, say, most English grammar textbooks. I found them eminently readable. For this alone, I think they are laudable. They made, for me, at least, relearning basic English grammar tolerable, if not actually sort of amusing.

Granted, I still don't understand how to use commas. And anyone looking at my writing as it appears here (and in my professional work) could rightly quibble about my actual grasp on the English language. Clearly, I love the parenthetical phrase over much. However, I try to – at least in my professional writing – write in a way that is understandable to the vast majority of my readers. In order to do that, I use sentence structures that include a subject and (when writing fiction particularly) an active (fucking!) verb. I use omniscient point of view in the way it is most easily understood, which is with an outside narrator who is acting the part of the god's eye view, who is telling a story with insider knowledge, like you might in a fairy tale or a myth. I use words in their form most recognized by the largest percentage of readers -- which is to say I'd prefer to say "ominous" over "portentous" given that most readers recognize the first over the second, unless the plot or style requires one word over the other.

The goal here for me is to be read and understood. And preferably, I'd like to be read by the largest number of readers. Let's just say millions – hell, go all Dan Brown and say tens of millions.

Tens of millions of people aren't going to "get" me if I go all kung fu stylistic on them. If I decide not to use commas most editors are going to assume I'm stupid, not artistic. If I tell them I think Strunk & White is full of crap and I'm going to write however I want, they're likely to say, "Great, except no one understands a flaming word you've written."

I want to be understood. I think great writing is all _about_ being understood. If I can make you, who is so very different than me, understand who I am and where I'm coming from (or even just what I experienced yesterday), then I've performed the miracle of great writing.

Word!

"Plot, What Plot?" or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Outline

The only stories (including novels) that I have ever been able to finish are the ones where I already know the ending.

I don't have to know, chapter by chapter, what's going to happen, but I do need a sense of where I'm going. Science fiction author Joan Vinge once told me in an interview I did with her that the way she conceptulizes the process of novel writing is with the metaphor of a road trip. For her, novel writing is like knowing that you want to go to California with a bunch of friends. You don't know exactly where you're going (San Diego? Sacramento? Oakland?) or what's going to befall you on the trip (flat tire? in-car romances? too much drinking in Alberquerue that ends with a night in the poky?), but you've got your eyes set on California. Thus, there's plenty of wiggle room for that "magic" a lot of writers talk about where their characters do things the author isn't expecting them to, but you still have a goal, an end, in sight. This is exactly how I write.

I find, in fact, the more I've planned out my "trip," if you will, the tighter I write. I'm not a big fan of that bizarro advice often told to novice novel writers which involves colored index cards and a ridiculous amount of time spent organizing and brainstorming. But lately I've written to proposal, which is basically a synopsis of a book not written yet. A good synopsis is a sketch of the important emotional and action highlights, and knowing what those are going to be before I write saves me a lot of useless meandering down the backroads, if you know what I mean. I think of my synopsis as a kind of map to get me where I'm going faster and more efficiently.

Not everybody writes like me, though.

My bottom line feeling about outlines (and index cards for that matter) is that if you're having trouble writing, see if it helps. If you find the process a hinderance, stop. Anything that keeps you from writing is evil. This extends to index cards.

MarsCON: One Fan's Report

MarsCON was held last weekend at the Holiday Inn Select in Bloomington, Minnesota. This year's theme was "Things That Go Bump In the Night." There were a couple of media guests of honor that I should have known, but didn't, and the literary and artist guests of honor were both friends mine, respectively: Walter Hunt (literary GoH) and Beth Hanson (artist GoH).

I went.

Okay, I'm terribly tempted to leave the post like that, but I should probably say something more.

I had a good time, generally.

I was on a BUNCH of panels, probably the best of which was "Van Helsing's Heirs." I got... really rowdy, and ended up leaping up out of my chair at one juncture to make my point.

I blame Walter Hunt. He gave me drugs.

Okay, so the drug in question was caffiene, but still...

I think the best thing about science fiction conventions for me is that they give me a chance to be, in public, really as nerdy and geeky (and as ethusiastically nerdy and geeky) as I am deep in the bowels of my heart of hearts. I mean, if it were more socially acceptable in other venues I have no doubt that I would leap up out of my chair and scream, "You know what drives me crazy about that vampire myth? Huh? Do ya, punk!?" much more often. But, really, SF conventions are the best place to do that because it's at least moderately acceptable, if not somewhat expected.

I'm really bummed I had to miss Sunday morning because Stone Soup Films was screening their full-length vampire film, "Pray for Daylight." I can't say anything about the film, but the screenwriter and the vampire-actor-dude (both of whom I met), were really cool. If you're curious (and I certainly am), check out their teaser page.

More About Bob and Other Stories of Omniscience

I think we have a fight on our hands.

And, for the record? I can’t BELIEVE it’s about point of view.

I agree with Bob that most of us learn that the omniscient point of view is meant to be a "God's eye" view. I think, however, the mistake is thinking one is actually meant to take on the part of God (or the Goddess), if you will, and not have any opinion about what's being portrayed in the story you are telling. The omniscient narrator is a narrator and a participant in the story, just as a limited third-person narrator would be. This is not just my opinion.

This definition comes from NYU’s class on English reading & writing. Citation: http://www.nyu.edu/classes/op/writing/old_pointofview1.htm

Omniscient Point of View:

"The story is told by the author, using the third person, and his knowledge and prerogatives are unlimited. He can interpret the behavior of his characters; he can comment, if he wishes, on the significance of the story he is telling.

It offers a constant danger that the author may come between the reader and the story, or that the continual shifting of viewpoint from character to character may cause a breakdown in coherence or unity. Used skillfully, it enables the author to achieve simultaneous breadth and depth. Unskillfully used, it can destroy the illusion of reality, which the story attempts to create."

The implication here is very obviously that there is a narrator, a commentator—with a personality (likely the author's)—who is telling the story in omniscient point of view. In fact, as said above, the biggest danger is that the story will suffer from "his" intrusion -- that the narrator will be too present.

Again, I will agree that the solution to this is not to pepper one's prose with "I supposed" or "I consider" or other wishy-washy language. It is imperative that the narrative voice make some kind of stand, posit some kind of opinion. That is what narrative voice does. It should, in point of fact, be the expression of the character's opinions, their feeling, and their general take on the scene or whatever.

A Correction!

A big HUGE apology to Mike Resnick for giving him "undue" credit. The Mike I was thinking of was actually Mike Swanwick

Sorry Mr. Resnick... I guess I just think if it's cool, you must have written it.

Openings... A Can of Worms?

Now if we all agree hooking the reader is important, how do you do it?

A lot of writing instructors will suggest that you start the story in the middle of THE ACTION. You know, "Twang! The arrow barely missed her head," and such like. That method can be effective, and it's a good thing to try particularly if you feel like your story lacks a certain amount of movement or if you've been having trouble with your pacing.

Not every story needs to start with a literal bang, however.

In science fiction and fantasy, you can also start with an eyeball kick, as William Gibson did in his famous opening for Neuromancer: "The sky was the color of a television set tuned to a dead channel."

Juxtapositions work well too. I'm not sure I can find the exact opening, but Mike Resnick's "Scherzo with Tyrannosaurus" would be a good example of how putting to disparate elements together can grab a reader's attention. Turns out it was downstairs. Here's how it goes: "A keyboardist was playing a selection of Scarlatti's harpsichord sonatas, brief pieces one to three minutes long, very complex and refined, while the Hadrosaurus herd streamed by the window."

From the same collection, this alternative from "Mount Olympus" by Ben Bova, "Tomas Rodriguez looked happy as a puppy with an old sock to chew on as he and Fuchida got into their hard suits." What I like about Bova's is that nothing is really happening. It's the turn of phrase that sounds very American South coupled with a term I'm not sure of "hard suits" (space suits? something else?) that catches and holds my attention.

Let's see if there's anything else fun in here (BTW, I'm perusing the SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR’S BEST SCIENCE FICTION, edited by Gardner Dozois). Okay, here's the beginning of Paul J. McAuley's, "How We Lost the Moon, A True Story by Frank W. Allen"--"You probably think you know everything about it." A provocative accusation in second-person (you) which jumps out and bites you, personally. This works for me, especially given the title of the story. Something like that could work for you, too, perhaps.

One thing that writing instructors will also tell you, but which I've actually found fairly useful, is that sometimes it's best to leave the beginning to the end. Which is to say, start the story wherever you need to in order to write it all the way to the end, and then, once all is said and typed, go back and revamp your hook so that it's catchier. Also, depending on how you write, you may not know what a story is about until it's over, and really, the beginning paragraph of a short story (or first chapter of the novel) should lay out the main conflict of the main character. It needs to answer the question: What’s at stake here? Who stands to lose the most?

...And Now, Hooking like a Pro

I love the double entendre of that, don't you? Plus, it serves as a fairly good example of how to write an effective opening line, otherwise known as a "hook."

The idea of a hook that it grabs your reader's attention, draws them in, and (fingers crossed) keeps them rapt until the words THE END. Why is it important to do this? Why not just start at the beginning and go?

The reason is because the competition is enormous.

I was walking through the Washington County Library on my way to class last Wednesday and I was struck by the fact that each one of the books I passed represented a person, and not just any person, but a professional writer just like me. Each one of those people managed to jump through the same hoops I did, and, in so many ways, beat the odds and got their book in print.

For every book on the shelf, I imagine there must be hundreds, if perhaps not thousands, of writers who didn’t… or, more positively, haven't YET.

If you're writing for the short story market, you have the same kind of pressure. Asimov's receives something like a thousand submissions a month. I think they run a dozen or more stories, plus you have to factor in all the bigger names than you (and me) who are also taking up valuable real estate.

So, how do you stand out in a crowd like that?

Like a 'ho, ya gotta have a good come-on.

That's a sickeningly apt metaphor, since the opening is a kind of advertisement, a way of letting people know what kind of story they're getting themselves in for. If your opening is dark and serious, then the reader will expect that what follows is also dark and serious.

First, A Reply

I thought I'd reply to Bob's (and to some extent Megan's) comments on my narrative voice post here since my response is likely to be long, meandering and drawn out and, thus, not terribly suited for the narrow comments page.

Bob asks, "What about voice with gravitas? Why are so many writers terrified of sounding serious?"

I don't know that they are, but you're right that there is a trend in fiction right now toward a chatty, first person narrative voice. I suspect part of that is because the target audience (the slacker generation and younger) tends toward sarcasm and meta-fiction in their life and entertainment. Thus, it's an easy way for a writer to establish a rapport with her audience. Plus, I think a lot of writers enjoy the challenge of working with a potentially unreliable narrator. It's fun to try to figure out how to let your readers know the truth about a situation when your narrator is lying to him/herself about it, you know?

But, I think you can have a serious narrative voice. What I was trying to caution new writers about is being careful of the distinction between serious and flat. You can be plenty serious, but still have that view color the way you look at things. A serious narrator will still "notice" things that are important to him/her as they reflect plot or character. (Example: hero is space captain going for job interview. When he walks in the room the thing he might first notice is the cheap veneer on the table... or some other clue that will forward, in many ways, the plot, as it will dictate how he responds to the scene. This can all be described seriously, but I think it still ought to be a filtered by his personality and situation. A flat narration would simply start listing the dimensions of the room, the table, the color of the walls, etc with no regard to how the character might be reacting to any of it.)

I disagree with Bob about omniscient p.o.v., in that I don't see omniscient as lacking a personality or distinct narrative voice. In fact, the omniscient p.o.v. is merely a character outside of the story who can see into other people's heads. A good example of this is almost any sort of mythological or fairy tale like story, in which the narrator basically directs the story to the moral that he or she is trying to make. Sometimes they're _not_ invisible in the text, they might break out with an imperative sentence like, "Imagine!" or a comment directly to the reader, like, "This was before you were born, and so things were different then." A great modern writer who uses omniscient well is Eleanor Arnason.

Certainly, Bob is right when he says that it is possible that pumping up the voice won't help every writer who has been told that their writing is flat. I agree that it's likely something more holistic. However, I have read at least two manuscripts from students of mine who did everything else right, as far as I could tell, but there was still something that felt missing. I spent months mulling over the problem, and finally decided that what I thought the manuscripts needed was a better sense of voice.

But, voice as a concept is no trendier than the idea that a sentence must include a verb.

How voice is presented has changed dramatically over time, but fiction has always had a voice. Why? Because fiction in its primal form was spoken. Stories have always been told by SOMEONE. This doesn't change because they are written down.

My First Review!

Barb Radmore reviewed Tall, Dark & Dead at Armchair Interviews.

"What's My Motivation?" Creating Character Through Narrative Voice

Creating believable characters is the essence of fiction writing. But how is it actually done?

First of all, I don't think anyone really knows. So much of writing is magic, after all. (I mean that quite seriously, but maybe that's a post for another day.) Even so, it is also a craft. There are tricks of the trade that help flat words on the page blossom into vivid, living imaginary creatures.

One such trick is what is called narrative voice.

I searched desperately for a good definition of what is meant by narrative voice and I didn't come up with much of any use. So, I’ll have to stumble through an explanation of my own. The narrative is comprised of the parts of the story that is not dialogue. That would include all of the description, the internal dialogue (if there is any), the action, and everything (except the bits in quotations). The narrative voice, therefore, is the way – the tone, if you will – in which those parts are written.

Your narrative will be in a point of view (the usual suspects: first or third). It will be in a verb tense of some sort (past or present).

The voice, on the other hand, will convey a certain kind of personality, such as chatty, sarcastic, militaristic, hesitant, or angry. Since your story is being told, in essence, by the main character, the narrative voice (remember: the bits in between) should reflect their personality as much as the character's dialogue and actions. It will be consistent throughout the text, ie. your chick-lit heroine will still be chatty even during the scary scenes or the sad scenes. She'll just be chatty in a scared way or a sad way. Though not necessarily when she's talking (dialogue), but when she's explaining things to us, the readers.

One of the big mistakes beginning writers often make is to underutilize the narrative voice. I don't know why, but a lot of people seem to approach those parts of the story as if they're the boring bits. He walked into the room, yada, yada.

No, no, no. The narrative is where your character LIVES. If your critique group is telling you that your characters feel flat, this may be part of your problem.

The narrative voice is the reader's main window into the mind, the emotional state, and the... well, character of your main character. So he walked into a room. Is it a room he's been in before? Does the room make him feel instantly at ease? Why? What about it? Is it the dried flower arrangement collecting dust in the sunlight that reminds him of his mother's house? Is the room warm? And, how does this reflect the plot (or the theme)? Is this room a place in which he's going to take shelter after having his world-view shaken after discovering his lover is a werewolf? If so, what about this familiar place suddenly feels wrong?

Plus, as I've said many times before I think one of the reasons readers read is to get a sense of what it’s like to be someone else. We want someone else's take on the familiar. So he walked into a room, is there something there I might understand, relate to? Okay, so I've never discovered my lover is a werewolf, but what is it about walking into a room you've been in a million times before after hearing some world-altering news that is universal to the human experience? Or maybe it's not even that close. Maybe it's like the feeling of wrong familiarness that you get once you’ve been overseas and come home, and you look at all the houses in the Midwest with their expansive lawns that you've grown up with all your life, and suddenly they seem far too far apart.

That's part of using narrative voice to its full potential.

The other part is word choice. Part of keeping your narrative voice consistent is remembering to always use the kinds of words your main character would know when describing people, places, and things. For example, a nuclear physicist would describe a garden in a different way than a ten-year old girl.

One of the more difficult parts of writing is remembering to always stay in your main character’s head – to think like they do. One of the reasons I don't like to read much horror, particularly the kinds of horror novels where there’s a serial killer who has p.o.v. chapters, is that I hate getting into the mindset of someone so damaged. And, when a writer does it well, that's exactly what happens. It can be kind freaky, actually. See my nephew's blog (Sunday, January 29) where he talks about reading American Psycho.

The Magical Forests of Schenectady, or Hunting Down and Capturing Fantasy Ideas

The best place I’ve found for hunting down fantasy ideas is a library (or your favorite local, independent used bookstore).

If I look up from my computer I can see books with titles like these – A Dictionary of Angels, Arab Folktales, Tokyo Underworld, Mythical Trickster Figures, American Indian Myths and Legends, Greek Homosexuality, The Complete Prophecies of Nostradamus, and the History of Grave Robbing.

I think the word you’re looking for is: eclectic.

And, actually, this represents one shelf. I’ve got books of much greater range stashed all over the house.

The best reason for becoming a writer is because, when all else fails, you’re often a hit at cocktail parties. Because we’re trolling dark and strange places for ideas, writers know the weirdest stuff – and we know it passionately. When I get on the thread of something, I’ll follow it all over the place. Often my original intent gets lost among all the cool side streets.

So, I think if you’re trying to cultivate the heart of a fantasy writer, you need to develop the passions of a researcher.

Or, as I said in class, it helps if you naturally think too hard about stuff. (God, I’m so articulate!)

Part II: Does Blood Pool in Zero G? Or SF/F Ideas Lost in Space

One of the things that can scare nascent writers about science fiction is, well, the science. Even professional SF/F writers, like my mentor Eleanor Arnason, have been known to choke when it comes to the nuts and bolts part of the story.

First of all, don’t let "getting it right" stop you. Remember – William Gibson wrote his groundbreaking cyberpunk novel Nueromancer on a typewriter, and while having almost no experience with a computer. All you really need from the science is the spark for the idea.

In fact, a quick side story about all of that.... I had the honor of being at the pre-award banquet for the Hugo the year that Eleanor's "Stellar Harvest" was nominated in the novelette category. She had named me her alternate, because she didn't want to deal with going to the award ceremony. I talked her into going. Which was funny in and of itself since my name was listed on the guest list and on the reserved chairs, and I actually had to tell the guards at the door that Eleanor was _my_ guest.

At any rate, being the sort of person I am, I instantly recognized all the luminaries in the room (I regularly scan the photos of LOCUS so I’m never caught with my pants down, as it were.) At any rate, the editor of Analog came up to Eleanor in a kind of fanboy way and started telling her how much he loved her work. I could see her slinking away from him, so I took on the role of introducer, even though he and I have never met. I said, "Eleanor, do you know Dr. Stanley Schmitt?" She brightened instantly. He immediately chided her for not sending more of her stories his way. She gave a dismissive wave of her hand and said, "My stories aren't technical enough for you." Dr. Schmitt never missed a beat. "Eleanor," he said, "Let me be the judge of that."

The point of this story is that the story elements -- like character and plot and theme -- are far more important to most editors than the preciseness of the physics (or chemistry or biology or math). Now, that’s not to say you have a license to not TRY to get the science as right as possible, because SF/F fans (your readers) will notice egregious errors and be more than happy to corner you at a convention and explain the way gravitational physics REALLY works.

I think the key to writing successful science fiction stories is to be enthusiastic about the science you're writing about. I don't think about science every day, though I'd like to. One of the ways I keep myself open and receptive to the seed of a science fiction story is to hang out where ideas germinate.

If you're struggling to find SF ideas, (or if, like me, you just like to hang out where the smart people are,) I'm going to suggest that after you read the New York Times in the morning (or whatever your post-coffee gathering ritual is) you check out some scientific web sites – or, like I do, keep a few of these magazines in their print form in the bathroom for quick perusal.

Popular Science
Popular Mechanics
National Geographic
Science News

There are many, many more I could list, but the articles in these magazines are written in such a way to make you the kind of vaguely informed dangerous that really promotes a good science fiction idea. That's to say, they aren't terribly technical and they leave out the details that would probably send your idea down in a flaming wreck.

Half-assed ideas are the ones with the most wriggle room. Go for it. Make your characters real and the situation believable and the science won’t matter. Get it close enough, and then find an expert to fix what needs fixing. Or just pray that with enough hand waving, the editor will be so charmed by your work that s/he won’t give a crap that your science is wonky.

Next up -- Part III: The Magical Forests of Schenectady, or Hunting Down and Capturing Fantasy Ideas

Y’all Come Back, You Pagan Cowpokes!

I was listening to country music last night in the car, as I often do, and I was struck by the fact that country western really has the corner on the sappy, sentimental, stirringly religious songs, and, frankly, that's just not fair. I mean, I love singing along to Carrie Underwood’s "Jesus, Take the Wheel," but the Pagan in me recoils at having to promote through osmosis the one dying and rising god I have a few problems with (really, my issues are with his father and his folowers, but still.)

Since I love singing along so much, I've come up with a number of solutions:

For: "Jesus, Take the Wheel" (Carrie Underwood), I sing: "Isis, Take the Wheel"

For: "When I Get Where I’m Going" (Dirks Bentley and Dolly Parton) – They sing: "...And see my Maker's Face, I'll stand forever in the light of His amazing grace;" I sing, "And, see my Mother's Face, I'll stand forever in the light of Her amazing grace."

For: "Long Black Train" (Josh Turner) – He sings, "I cling to the Father and His Holy Name;" I sing: "I cling to the Mother, and Her Many Names..."

For: "The River" (Garth Brooks) – He sings, "But with the good Lord as my captain;" I sing, "But with the Goddess as my captain..."

I’m still working on how to fix songs like "Three Crosses," by Randy Travis, but it doesn’t stop me from singing along. If only there were pagan songs Christians felt the same way about.

Oh wait, there is: "Deck the Halls." (Quiz: What's Yuletide?)

When Accuracy Strangles Writing

One of the things I've been yammering on about is this concept that it's a good idea to have one's fiction be faithful to the world as it exists. My main argument revolves around inclusiveness, particularly when imagining supporting (or main) characters' race, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual orientation.

I also think it's great, if one has the expertise, to write settings that are atypical. I'm particularly drawn to this, even though I have in my other life written the excruciatingly familiar cyberpunk in a big city (in fact, THE big U.S. city, New York) and a fairy story that takes place in of all stereotypical places as Kerry, Ireland.

I know someone who, as far as I know never finished, had set a novel in a future Thailand. She was a good writer and, IMHO, probably had a shot at publishing the thing because the setting alone was deeply captivating. She'd spent some time in Thailand and she was a good enough writer that you really felt like you were there. I think you can get a lot of mileage out of that kind of expertise or, as I sometimes like to refer to it, "arcane knowledge," because I think that one of the reasons people read is to go somewhere new and to experience someone else's life. I think that desire is profoundly universal. To quote A. A. Milne’s WINNIE-THE-POOH, Chapter 2, In Which Pooh Goes Visiting and Gets Into a Tight Place, "Well, [Pooh] was humming to himself, and walking along gaily, wondering what everybody else was doing, and what it felt like being somebody else..." [emphasis added.]

A friend of mine and fellow writer Naomi Kritzer has books set in ancient Uzbekistan, and short stories set in WWII Russia and Prague. But, having talked to her, I also know that the amount of research that goes into some of her scene setting can be overwhelming -- to the point of strangling the creative process.

Writing isn't terribly fun. Anything that stops you from writing is EVIL.

So, while I advocate all of this deep thinking and going somewhere different from the norm, I also admonish you to never let it stop you. You also have to trust that your experiences are unique.

I remember talking to a writing class about this. The question inevitably arises as to how much physical detail is necessary. My answer is always -- only as much as the plot requires. But, the plot is more than a simple moving forward; it's often also an expression of character. So, I tell my students that a drive through the boring bits of North Dakota can become a moment of character revelation, even if it's something simple, like, that your character is the sort to randomly turn on the windshield wipers to stay awake while rolling past yet another flat field of tumbleweeds. (If the trip itself is Important. Otherwise, synopsize it at the beginning of the "arrival at destination" scene.)

Anyway, the point is this: when you can, explore the complexity of life, think beyond your own neighborhood, but don't let what you don't know stop you from writing what you do.

For Those With a Fast Internet Connection

...and who are vampire fans -- check out:

http://www.annefrasier/currentprojects.html

It's what's called in the biz as a "book trailer," part music video, part advertising tool.

Ah, if I had the time and money!

Mason Humor

This gem from my two-year old...

What sound does a rooster make when he's sick?

*cough*-a-doodle-do.

Thank you. Thank you very much. I'll be here all week.

The Devil Is Not in the Details, the Devil is In My Pants. Yeah!

Spare me a media fan moment.

Can I tell you that I love the new Battlestar Galactica? I know, I know. I'm not exactly bleeding edge here with this admission. Thing is, we don't have cable. I've been catching up on this series as soon as the DVDs arrive at Netflix.

I'm sure there are plenty of blogs devoted to this series, so I'm not going to say much. Except that last night while I was watching the first few episodes of season 2, I turned to Shawn and said, "Do you know what I really love about this series? What I love is that when people get hit hard enough to bruise the bruises don’t magically disappear in the next episode! Apollo has been sporting a shiner he got in the middle of the last season during a prison riot."

My suspenders of disbelief are made of the strangest kind of stretchy material. I have no problem with faster than light or machines that can mate with humans.... IF, and this is the key, IF you provide me these "contemporary fantasy" details I talked about in an earlier post. I will roll with the most insane plot holes -- like a virus that can infiltrate a LAN -- because the people, the situation, and the details captivate me.

This is true in writing to a fair degree as well. TV has the advantage of being singularly consuming. Pretty pictures can completely distract from a lame storyline (sometimes). Reading is a slower more internal process, so you have to be much more careful with plot... BUT, I still think that a detail can make or break a book. A detail that knocks the reader out of the story is a very, very bad thing. Cops don’t use those kinds of handcuffs anymore! Bang. The book hits the wall and bounces into the recycling bin. (And, if you’re my partner, the author's name is committed to memory on the "never buy again" list.)

Meanwhile, bits of arcane minutia can fascinate and captivate a reader. My experience as a reader tells me that a reader wants to feel like they're experiencing something new in a "true" way. Like reading about an archeologist might actually give you a tiny bit of understanding about archeology as a science, or a profession, or a lifestyle. (Like, the summer I did archeology camp I got eighty hours of sun. I had the best farmers' tan ever that year. Of course, my snot was black from the dust... but hey, I looked good.)

I think about this in reflection of the other posts I’ve made recently. Like, one of the reasons I think it's important to represent all the various ways of being in the world (ethnicity, queerness, religious bent) is because the more of the weird, fascinating truth you include about your world, the more real it becomes to the reader, and the more interesting. Knowing that Minnesota has a large Armenian immigrant population, for instance, is just the kind of cool, useless knowledge that readers love to collect, IMHO.

And, in some weird way, you can get away with minor plot problems if your details are all right. At least a satisfied reader is more likely to forgive.

She Thought She Was A Woman, But She Was Another Man

I want to talk about a book I read some time ago called A BROTHER'S PRICE by Wen Spencer. Set in ubiquitous fantasy/stock science fiction alternate universe, this is a fairly straightforward gender role reversal story. On this unnamed Earth-like planet (complete with horses, steam power, and European feudalism), men are rare. Women do all the heavy lifting and the men are left in charge of raising children and keeping house. Our hero, Jerin Whistler, is the prettiest and most fertile boy in the all land. When a princess ends up nearly dead on his family's doorstep, sexual hijinks ensue.

Actually, I found the sexual situations fairly entertaining. Admittedly, this is a fantasy I like to play with myself. I've even started a few role-reversed stories of my own (though none are finished, see entry regarding my problems with short stories below) and I even have a dystopian matriarchy, which involves an alternate future Russia that I've been noodling around with in my own head for years.

Plus, my own life lends itself to thinking about gender and gender roles a lot.

I had a very weird problem with this novel. It pushed all my buttons, but none of them hard enough. It's a strange complaint to say, "Hey, you didn’t piss me off enough."

I think in a lot of ways this is a really ambitious novel. Or, maybe it could have been, and that's what bothers me. My sense is that all my big questions with this novel were accidental. Spencer seemed to be playing up the titillating aspects of all of this, rather than bringing the gender/sex question to the forefront.

After a couple of days of mulling this book over, I started asking myself, what was Spencer thinking when she wrote this? Was she actually intentionally making some kind of statement about gender and society? In many ways, our hero, Jerin, could just as easily have been a woman. Though I think there would be a fair number of feminists out there (probably including myself) who would have cried bloody murder if she had written this book with Jerin cast as a woman. The number of times he's threatened with rape alone would have pissed me off. The things that are vaguely titillating about his situation (the way women grope him, the words they use to discuss, crudely, having sex for procreation with him, how he’s treated like property, and the amount of money he’s "worth") would be completely offensive if he were a woman.

Then, I thought, well, Tate, you sexist pig. They're plenty offensive as they're written. And, that could could be the point. Pretty subversive on Spencer's part.

But, at the end of the thing, I decided that I was once again just thinking too hard. It seemed to be meant as a kind of science fictional Regency romance, all meant in a tongue-and-cheek, wink-wink-nudge-nudge kind of way. (The very last line in the book was my tip off.)

Yes, But What's the Hypothesis?

Do you ever wonder if someone is running a social experiment on you?

On my way to taking my partner to work the other day, I discovered, of all things, a plastic pot -- the kind you might, in a less inclement season, find an ivy growing in -- sitting on the last step in front of my house. I had a brief moment where I thought, "I could walk around this." But, I didn't. I picked up and threw it into the garbage bag I keep in the back of my car.

Today... there was a newspaper in the exact same spot.

Okay, who ever is out there, yes, I am compulsive about picking up what I perceive as garbage in front of my house.

Stop it all ready. You're making me crazy.

At Home in SF/F

It's interesting to hear Elizabeth Bear say she's also on the look out for queer folks in novels she reads. And that finding them is like finding home.... or at least suddenly feeling more welcome.

There are many reasons I read. One of the reasons science fiction and fantasy keeps me coming back is because it is one of the few places in which an odd duck like myself can reliably find a reflection on the page.

I think that's why this issue of diversity is so important to me.

I remember having my heterosexism kicked in the teeth by Elizabeth A. Lynn's novels, which I read in high school. She not only made me realize when I was fourteen that people of the same gender could love each other, but also she made me really take a hard, cold look at my gender assumptions, in general. Who says "soldier" automatically means "male"? Who says "artist" is more likely female?

These questions have haunted me my whole life. When I see a science fiction show with the ubiquitous male space ship captain, I ask myself, why? Why is the captian a man? Why is white (if he is)? Why is he straight (if he is)? What else is out there?

Of course, I ask these same questions when watching commericals, driving my friends and relations absolutely spare. A real quote from me: "Honey, did you notice the guy selling the matresses is the white guy with perfect teeth and the people who can't seem to find a decent bed are the black couple?" Real response from significant other: "Could you just not think for five seconds?"

I blame Elizabeth A. Lynn.

Don't Ink and Drive: Writing and Responsibility

Still thinking -- which is probably dangerous -- about my previous post. Zoe commented that a writer who includes queer folks in the background runs the risk of seeming ham handed in their attempts at inclusion (or diversity or whatever you might want to call it.) This is a conversation I've had with other people (and on this blog, see below "The Whiteness of Space") about race/ethnicity, too.

There's a lot of validity in her concern. I grew up in the era of television "tokenism," where every show seemed to have to include the hero (white guy), the sidekick (black or other color guy), and the girlfriend (not guy). It was annoying, if only because the formula wherein the person of color was still stuck on the sidelines was never, ever violated.

On the flipside, I find TV shows (and movies and books) where there's a homogony of color (or gender or sexual preference) to be deeply, deeply frightening. It's the whole "Friends" phenomenon. How is it that these people who lived in New York City never seemed to know anyone of color? Or gay? And what does it say about them that they don't?

And does it matter?

Sure, people live like that. I would be forced to admit that ninety-percent of my close friends are white and straight. The "Friends" phenomenon is its own kind of truth, but I've always felt that a writer's responsibility is to see the whole picture – beyond the assumptions. Like, for instance, before I worked at the University of Minnesota's Immigration History Research Center, I would have guessed that the majority of immigrants settling in Minnesota were Norwegian, and that Saint Paul’s (my home town) main settlers were Irish. Not true. Both of those are myths perpetrated by storytellers, like Garrison Keillor (and the later by our former governor Jesse Ventura.)

I'm not trying to imply that either of those men are racists, but my feeling is that sometimes by not going beyond what we *think* is true, we inadvertently paint a picture that's not complete.

So what? Fiction writing isn’t about the truth, is it?

I think it is.

I think, in particular, when writing about the future, we need to be awake and paying attention to our words on the page. Our silences -- the people we leave out -- speak volumes about what we think is true... and what we feel is valuable.

I say this as someone whose life was changed by reading science fiction. In 1953, Theodore Sturgeon wrote a short story called "The World Well Lost," and he taught me the power of thinking beyond our assumptions.

Oh Look, Honey, the Gay Hustler is Cruising the Martians

I woke up this morning thinking a lot about something Melissa Scott once told me in an interview. We were discussing GLBT/queer content in science fiction and she pointed out that, particularly in cyberpunk, GLBT elements are often used as scare tactics -- a way to show the seedier side of life. You know you're in the deep, dark place because Jo-Jo sitting at the bar is a transsexual cyborg. Oh look, honey, the gay male hustler is getting cruised at the space station by the Martians. We must be in the dark underbelly of the future.

Where are the non-threatening, happy gay couples in space?

Of course, as a writer I understand that happy = boring. There's not a lot of drama when everyone gets along famously. But, I'm wondering if science fiction as a genre still hasn't shaken that idea that Melissa suggested nearly a decade ago -- that queerness is inherently "scary."

In the last year, I read nearly every paperback science fiction novel published in the United States (this is not an exaggeration, I was on a SF award committee). And, I have to tell you that the GLBT community was woefully under-represented.

In Elizabeth Bear’s series, we find out in the second novel that the main antagonist is a Family man, and has a husband in Toronto. Kudos to Bear for blindsiding me since my gaydar didn't go off on that one, and she did make me ask myself, "Why couldn't he be gay? Was I being heterosexist?" Shame on her for introducing the husband (and his very nice parrot) and killing them off at the end (often the usual fate for gay folks in the media.)

I would say, though, however, that Valens and his husband (of the above mentioned Scardown,) were, at least, nice men. They had a typical upper-middle class life in future Canada. Valens was of squishy moral character, but then so was the hero of the series.

So, at least some GLBT people in the future are non-threatening... but, then it's easy to be non-threatening when you're dead.

Then there’s Karin Lowachee's Cagebird. A difficult book, though a worthy one. However, there's no question that the gay people (and they're all men) in this book are broken, and broken very badly. They're broken in a way that is, sadly, very true to real life -- at least in my experience, but none-the-less this is far from the feel-good GLBT book of the year. There's some serious sickness here, and the sickness is wrapped up in being queer, and, specifically, in knowing that often in society one man's expression of love is another man's kink. This leads to ugliness and heartache. The book is about that, and about what that does to people.

I can’t think of a single other instance in a paperback novel this year in which there were even queer people present in the background. I don’t know what to think about that. Maybe people have been Will & Grace'd to death, and no one wants to even imagine a future with gay people in it. Or maybe GLBT people are no longer scary enough to even sit in the background so that the reader knows that we're not in Kansas any more.

My First Web Listing!

Check this out!

http://www.eternalnight.co.uk/books/h/hallawaytate.html

I'm now officially part of the Eternal Night Science Fiction and Fantasy Horror Fiction Web Site.

Getting the Itch Again (Somebody Stop Me)

I woke up this morning with the desire to write another short story.

"So what," you say, "Sounds great. Go for it." No, you don’t understand. This is an incredibly bad idea. Why? I suck at writing short stories. Worse, to paraphrase Marlin from Finding Nemo, I think I can do these things, but I just can't.

I imagine myself a fairly competent novelist. Certainly, I've written my share of them. I seem to understand the process of writing a novel at least well enough to get to THE END. Starting a short story seems to be the best I can do. I usually stall out a page or two into the thing.

I suspect the reason I don't finish most of the short stories I've started is because of the way I write. I've written to outlines for my novels, but more often than not I feel my way into the story. I dilly-dally for several pages before I really know what the novel is about -- both in terms of plotting, but, perhaps more importantly, in terms of theme, as well.

This is the stuff I have to know when I start a short story. If I don't know what the theme or the plot (especially the ending) is going to be before I start, there's no way I can wrap the thing up in 5,000 words or less.

5,000 words is nothing to a novelist. That's not usually even my first chapter. I'm just getting revved up in those first thousand words, not even thinking denouement, for god's sake.

Plus, for me, writing a short story ends up being a weird kind of time commitment. It takes me months to write a short story, plus then I figure in critique and revision... and suddenly, four or five months have gone by and I haven't written a damn word on my novel due to the publisher in August, you know?

So, like I said. Stop me. For crap's sake, someone stop me.

What Makes a Hero?

I finally saw the last "Star Wars" movie Revenge of the Sith and I didn't hate it as much as I expected to.

This, I should point out, is a major admission from me. I once carried on a year long argument over e-mail with a guy I met at a friend's wedding about how betrayed I felt by Phantom Menace and the subsequent (and, in many ways worse) Attack of the Clones.

Yes, I know I'm a geek and I need a life. Listen, I write SF/F, this *is* my life.

But, I have to give He-Whose-Name-Should-Not-Be-Uttered-(Lucas) a tiny modicum of respect for what I felt he was trying to do in Revenge. For once in a Lucas film, what I liked was the political intrigue.

I wish, in fact, there had been a bit more of it. What was missing for me was a better sense of how corrupt the Jedi had become. When Mace Windu insists that they must kill Emperor Palapatine he says something about how the justice system is completely in Palapatine’s pocket. All we have at that point Windu’s word on that. So, there’s really no conflict when Skywalker-soon-to-be-Vader is horrified.

However, that’s a great moment. It suddenly makes the Jedi into the street wise cops who end up bent because they want justice so badly they’re willing to be unjust to get it.

If only that could have been set-up a bit more... there was even a perfect moment to insert it. One of the first scenes we’re given is the rescue of Palapatine where, when Obi-Wan is knocked out, Palapatine orders Skywalker to kill his captor. I’d have liked a sense of Skywalker’s outrage that that point. I would have liked to see him stand up to the Senator and say, "No, we take him to justice." And then have a small scene where the justice system completely fails Skywalker.

Because then, when the moment comes up, we would know. And, more than that, Skywalker would know. Yet, he could STILL be horrified to hear a Jedi say this.

Especially after having been asked to spy on his friend.

Which is another set of scenes I would have liked expanded. I wanted Skywalker to be a lot less naïve. I thought, in fact, it would have been interesting to see him become a true spy. Playing Jedi off Emperor and visa versa, and in the process discovering the wickedness of both sides and becoming more and more disgusted with the whole political game.

I could relate to that. It would make Skywalker much more sympathetic, in my opinion. And his transformation fairly believable.

On a similar note, I totally dug the way the Jedi treated Skywalker (sorry, I can’t call him Annikin, it’s such a stupid name). I loved the scenes were he’s left behind and left out. That really underscored how much they never trusted him... which again, I’d have played up by having Skywalker really turn spy against them (while also working for them).

The only major problem I had with all of this is that the guy who says he doesn’t want to kill Emperor Palapatine turns around and kills Windu (for wanting to kill Palapatine.) This is not a very consistent philosophy. He then, ten minutes later, goes off and slaughters children in the service of Palapatine, which, in my opinion, makes absolutely no sense given his character up to this point. (Which is why Lucas had to include the stupid subplot about Padme and necromancy -- another Knights Templar reference for those of you who are counting).

As a good counter, I offer you Bruce Wayne of Batman Returns.

I was really enamored of the whole issue of compassion in Batman Returns.

(Skip this line if you haven't seen the movie). There's a major scene when the young Bruce Wayne is learning the ninja arts from his mentor Qui-Gon Jinn, er, whoever Liam Neeson is character is... and the mentor says to Bruce, "Your enemies will show no compassion," and Bruce replies, "That's why it is so important to have."

I have always maintained that a hero need to distinguish himself precisely in this way. The first Batman film shocked me when Batman killed the Joker. As a long time reader of comicbooks (though I'm mostly a Marvel girl, myself), I was very used to the idea that heros are not the killers. Villians (especially long time nemesises, like the Joker) come back and back and back because that's the line which is never crossed by a good guy... that's what makes our heros, well, heros.

Villians are supposed to live, stand trial, go to Arkham Asylum... just like Skywalker says they should.

Erotic Dark Fantasy: Things that Do More than Go Bump in the Night

Another stolen idea for a blog from Catherine Lundoff:

"Stories detailing the romantic and sexual relationships of vampires, werewolves and other critters have been popular for years and are only getting more so. What's the allure? Who does this well? Would you really want to do the nasty with someone who smells like a wet wolfhound?"

No, and I also wouldn't want to have sex with someone whose skin is dead... and cold.

I actually have my character in Tall, Dark & Dead talk about this. In Garnet's own words she says: "The fact remained that he was dead. As a doornail. And dating doornails was no fun. Trust me, I tried being with a dead guy once and it was miserable. I found that whole cold skin thing a big turn off in the bedroom. You can only do so many things in a hot bath or shower, and even then the heat didn't... well, penetrate, if you know what I mean."

This was one of those contemporary fantasy moments where the reality, if you will, of having sex with an animated corpse makes for a humorous reflection by the main character. I intentionally asked myself the question Catherine wants the panel to consider: what nitty-gritty, true-life details would you encounter if you took a supernatural being to bed?

I also have Garnet deal with the fact that vampires are nocturnal, and eighty percent (smaller? higher?) of the world is not. Like the majority of people, Garnet has a day-job. Dating someone who comes out after sunset is hell on one's sleep schedule. I know a lot of people who exist on very few hours of sleep at night, but I'm not one of those. Even though I can do short bursts of late-night living, I find I generally need to get eight hours of sleep (or more!) or I get really cranky. And, part of how I deal with writing contemporary fantasy is asking myself: what would it be like for me? Thus, Garnet ended up skipping a lot of work to nap.

The question is actually a gnarly one, because there is a kind of line you have to walk when you write fantasy. Getting the details "right" makes the story ring true, but if you were to say go into great detail about sleeping with a corpse you run the risk of losing a large percentage of your intended audience (minus, of course, the necrophilics.)

I guess the answer is to put in just enough to keep things real and willfully ignore the rest.

Van Helsing's Heirs

In keeping with my theme of 2006, this is another stolen discussion topic from the MarsCON programming ideas page. This one comes to us curtsey of Minneapolis/St. Paul writer Catherine Lundoff.

Catherine asks her panelists to consider these questions: Are slayers and hunters heroes or villains? Why do the vampires (or other critters) so often win in the end?

I think these are interesting thoughts because for me they tap in a question I asked myself at the very beginning of this blog: what on earth makes vampires so damned sexy?

Van Helsing should be the hero. I think when Dracula was first published in 1897, Van Helsing was meant a force of good in the novel. Dracula is a seductive evil that spoils the virtue of young Ms. Mina Murray (among others).

But when I review my memories of the novel, I can hardly give you any concrete impressions of Van Helsing's character. In fact I had to look up in Wikipedia to see if reading about him sparked anything. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Van_Helsing

Nope.

Dracula, however, is singularly memorable. The book is named after him, after all, and not for the slayer.

So, why isn't Van Helsing the hero?

I think that the problem comes from the fact that even at their most alien (when being cast as demons in "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" or even as alternate species or space aliens) vampires are often depicted as very "human." In a way, they're kind of uber-human because they've left all the mundane trappings of life behind and have been reduced to humans at their essence (blood?) as hunter/predators (which we all know we are, deep in our hearts.)

And, as I've discussed previously, I find that kind of Romantic (with the capital R) vampire to be the most successful. A good hero needs a good villain. And, if the vampires are just mindless, hungry beasts, then their hunters might as well be shooting quail or ducks for all that the story interests me.

So the hunters have to be morally ambiguous. They're killers. And one of the big questions vampire literature asks us is -- aren't we all?

That's why the critters often get away in the end. It's a big, fat morality play in which two sides of the same dark coin are being played out. Van Helsing representing the "moral" killer, the one who kills for "justice" and with the trappings of the Church (crosses, holy water, etc.) vs. the unrestrained beastial passionate killer who feeds on others for self-serving, self-indulgent reasons.

Both are evil. But I think the modern reader comes to the self-righteous killers with a lot more baggage, a lot less willingness to forgive. He is the Inquisitor, the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities....

The vampire is just our passion -- our lust for life -- gone a little too wild.

The image for this post came from http://www.olemiss.edu/courses/engl205/dracdeath.html

Contemporary Fantasy -- Where Elves are Sexy

... and Available.

The title of this blog is taken from a list of programming ideas for Marscon. This particular idea was submitted by Minneapolis writer Paula Fleming.

Paula asks the panelists to consider this question: Contemporary fantasy often juxtaposes elements of old mythologies with cell phones and fast food. What do we find so compelling in this mix?

I thought I'd answer it here (and hopefully also on the panel.)

For me, the answer is: who doesn't want to meet an angel at McDonald's

Part of the reason I find "contemporary fantasy" or urban fantasy or paranormal romances so compelling is that, when done well, they give the reader the illusion of "it could happen."

Plus, I don't know about y'all, but I've spent a large part of my life in the realm of make-believe. When I was a kid, I chased my share of imaginary villains through the very real forests of Grandad's Bluff. But, then there was also... yesterday, when I was waiting in the doctor's office and I imagined what it would be like to be an international jewel thief. My imagination didn't switch off after I reached the age when it was no longer socially acceptable to play pretend in the woods with your school buddies. So, I guess the contemporary fantasy element appeals to the part of me that would STILL like those fantasies to be real, here, in my world.

Also, I think there's something inherently funny about an elf in a 7/11. I think that the format of the contemporary fantasy is one that allows us to look at both the mundane (the 7/11) in a new and possibly amusing way, but also to poke fun at all of the high fantasy stuff (the elf) we grew up reading. There's a lot of tongue-in-cheek that goes on in the works of, say, MaryJanice Davidson or Rachel Caine, like when your million year old djinn has to deal with... I don't know, pumping gas. It's not surprising to me that a lot of the popular contemporary fantasy is also intentially humorous and light.

It's funny because, in a lot of ways, the more ridiculous the situation, the more "real" the fantasy feels. This isn't always true, but I really enjoy it when, for instance, the vampires in the various chick-lit books I've read have to deal with the particulars of their existance. These kinds of questions (like how DOES a vampire get rich when he can only come out at night) obviously fascinate me (see several previous blogs). In fact, I find that the more those sorts of things are thought about and dealt with in contemporary fantasy the more the paranormal characters seem REAL.

And that appeals to my magical side, if you know what I mean.

If readers of this blog happen to be in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area on the weekend of March 3-5, 2005, they should check out Marscon's main web page for details.

A New Year of Reading

Instead of doing the usual post about books I enjoyed in 2005, I thought I'd put together a list of books I'm looking forward to reading this year.

WORLD-WIRED by Elizabeth Bear. I'm actually reading this book right now. It's the conculsion to Bear's Jenny Casey series that started with HAMMERED.

PLUTONIUM BLONDE and DOOMSDAY BRUNETTE by John Zakour and Lawrence Ganem. Both of which are the prequels to RADIOACTIVE REDHEAD, which I reviewed below. If you like fun, fast, and funny science fiction, then these books are for you.

WARCHILD and BURNDRIVE by Karin Lowachee. Dark SF. A worthy read, however.

POLARIS by Jack McDevitt. I don't know nothing about this bok except that Shawn recommended it to me.

And that's what's on the pile for now.

P.S. I resolve to be a better blogger in 2006.

I've been Tagged!

Michele Hauf tagged me, so I'm going play the game and her seven questions:

Seven Things to Do Before I Die:

(1)--Become a member of the exculsive University Club on Summit Avenue. (Really, all I need is money to join, so I guess "make some money" should really be the answer instead) and/or attend a "Renaissance Weekend."
(2)--Be a best-selling author.
(3)--Learn Gaelic
(4)--Win a Hugo
(5)--Punch or be punched by Harlan Ellison
(6)--Be asked to be a commencement speaker at my alma mater (either high school or college) and turn them down.
(7)--Edit my own science fiction/fantasy magazine.

Seven Things I Cannot Do

(1)--Spell "Cannot." (I always think it's can not.)
(2)--Read quickly. (I have mild dyslexia.)
(3)--Drive a motorcycle. (Though I'd like to).
(4)--Dance. (I do it anyway, but, really, anything that requires coordination is out of my league.)
(5)--Leave the table without one more taste.
(6)--Keep my mouth shut. (I love to argue. It's actually my religion -- I was raised Unitarian.)
(7)--Answer questions like this concisely.

Things that Attract Me to Men

(1)--The "ratio." (Shoulder to waist.) Like my character Garnet, I do so love that triangular shape.
(2)--A sense of humor. (Has to have one, to get along with me.)
(3)--Brains. I dated a "gnarly" California surfer boy once who was quite pretty in my opinion, but, really, at the end of the day I like them at least as smart as me, which isn't actually asking for a whole lot.
(4)--Hair. I'll admit it. I like a guy with good hair. It doesn't have to be long or short (or even there, a bald guy can be very hot), but I can't stand it when otherwise hot guys like Brad Pitt get what I call the stupid-boy cut. Do something intentional with your hair, guys. And for God/desses' sake, DON'T CUT IT YOURSELF. See a professional.
(5)--A sense of adventure. Even if he's an armchair warrior, I like that warrior.
(6)--Fearlessness. I want a man unafraid of love.
(7)--Fangs. Okay, not really, but I saw them, I'd be very, very intregued.

Seven Things I say Most Often

(1)--"Dude, get out of the way!" (While driving.)
(2)--"Oops."
(3)--"Wait, wait.... one more thing."
(4)--"Actually, if I may interject..."
(5)--"If I had a million dollars, do you know what I'd do?"
(6)--"Just once it would be cool to win." (While losing at Hearts or Mah Jongg or Scrabble or....)
(7)--"I love you, even though you vex me." (To Mason and my SO.)

Books or Series I Love

(1)--The Weather Warden Series by Rachel Caine
(2)--Wandering Stars: An Anthology of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction edited by Jack Dann.
(3)--Nueromancer by William Gibson.
(4)--The Retrieval Artist Series by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.
(5)--Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
(6)--The Marid Audran series by George Alec Effinger.
(7)--The Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evonivich.

Movies I Can Watch Over and Over

(1)--"Star Wars: A New Hope."
(2)--"Bladerunner."
(3)--"The Matrix."
(4)--"Pillow Talk"
(5)--"Ladyhawke."
(6)--"Lost Boys."
(7)--"Sprited Away."

People I Want to Join In (Tag You're It)

(1)--Naomi Kritzer
(2)--Peg Kerr
(3)--Any of the Vampire Vixens
(4)--Rachel Caine
(5)--Neil Gaiman
(6)--Sharon Stiteler
(7)--Will Clark

Another Good Book

I have another book to recommend. It's by Ann Tonsor Zeddies and it's called BLOOD AND ROSES: A JAYNE TAYLOR NOVEL. It comes out from Phobos Impact and it's a science fiction alternate history book, not unlike the Jay Lake book I talked about earlier. Only this one takes place in the Jazz Era. Bootlegging, Aliens, and "an insidious conspiracy involving the Empire of Japan." How can you go wrong?

You can't.

Remembering How to Write

It's the weirdest thing.

Every time I finish a novel, I go through a period -- usually a couple of months -- where I completely forget HOW to write. I remember that I'm supposed to put words down on the paper, but I forget how to make them "sing," you know? I usually try to eke out a short story or something (see previous entry about erotica, which I finished, btw,) and end up feeling like writing sucks and I wonder how the hell I'm ever supposed to be able to do this again.

I imagine what it's really about is my brain begging for a break. Science fiction writer Alan Steele talked about it once as needing time for input, (as opposed to output.) So, I took Mr. Steele's advice and read a lot of stuff... and walked around in the snow with my son.

It seems to have paid off, last night, for the first time in what seems like forever, the floodgates opened and words poured out. I actually had to tell myself it was time to quit, since it was getting late and my son wakes the household up at 5:00 am every morning.

I like writing again.

Hooray.

Recommended Books

It's Thanksgiving break and I should be writing.

Instead, I've been reading like crazy. I just finished a great book called RADIOACTIVE REDHEAD by John Zakour and Lawrence Ganem. As they say in my hometown, it's a hoot. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves a good romp and silly, over-the-top humor. According to amazon.com it's not out until December 6, 2005, but order it now. It'll make a great stocking stuffer, IMHO.

I'm now onto Jay Lake's ROCKET SCIENCE. A complete shift in gears (going from a futuristic PI with a transexual AI implanted in his head to a period piece involving NAZIs and alien space ships), but I'm also really enjoying it. I'm a relatively slow reader thanks to mild dyslexia, but I picked up Lake's book today and I'm half way through with it. If it sounds like your sort of thing, I'm going to recommend it, even without having read to the end.

On that note, however, I'm off to write.

Blog Guilt

Father, it's been almost a month since my last confession... er, blog.

I have sinned.

I wish I could say that I've been off doing something IMPORTANT, but, no, not really.

I have been trying to write some science fiction erotica, though. I can't imagine that it's going well, as I have ten manuscript pages written and so far... no sex. Although my friend Bill Stiteler suggested to me in a letter that "someone once described erotica as porn that wants to separate itself from the boner of the common man." So maybe I'm on the right track. God(dess) knows, I have a _story_.

What's funny about this to me is that I was struggling and struggling with the concept I'd come up with and finally I sat down and decided to take my own damn advice. I've been teaching a class at the Loft and I have told my students a million times that the most important question you need to ask yourself before you begin writing is: "What's at stake for the main character?" I realized that my previous stops-and-starts happened because I had no idea. I was meandering my way into the character (and the plot, really,) and coming up with dead ends.

So, I sat down for a few minutes and came up with the answer. And, for erotica, it's kind of a deep issue. The main character, Edie, has lost her faith because her prayers weren't answered. The whole story is kind of her journey back to faith... uh, through sex.

Well, it *is* erotica, after all.

Banker's Hours

I was a weird teenager.

In high school, I used to love to get up well before dawn, make the family pot of coffee, and head out for a walk. My favorite time of year was right about now -- mid-October, when the air was cool and the mornings dark.

Being up before anyone else was cool. I liked the solitude of the pre-dawn, the lack of hurry. And in some ways, I enjoyed observing the morning stretches of town -- the Perkin's waitstaff arriving at work, lights flicking on in various houses I passed, the whiz of a bicycle out delivering morning papers.

I don't have much to say about all that, except that I think having that early, early morning experience made me very aware of how strange it would be to have your existance be the opposite of 80% (or larger) of the world. Think about it. For that vampire to have a simple banking account where s/he is gaining compound interest, they'd have to have found a bank that was open after 5 pm (or before 6 am in the winter -- in the Midwest, anyway). I know, in this 24-hour economy, there are more and more banks that offer late night or even all-night services (on line), but that's changed *in my lifetime. * I remember when having "banker's hours" was a slur.

Normally, to open any kind of bank account you have to show up in person (no proxy, unless you're a minor) with some form of actual cash. When would our hero get a chance to put his/her money in?

Of course, in early America bankers would make house calls to collect on debts, etc. (I know this because when I worked at the Minnesota Historical Society, one of my various duties included transcribing letters from a German banking family, and they often commented on business interactions.) I don't know, however, how many of those family banks still exist. I'm not even sure if that family bank dealt in whatever passed as dollars in pre-Civil War era (though I do have a vauge memory of discussions about the gold standard), but instead may have used German marks, which was the currency of that particular immigrant group. Which wouldn't have to be a problem for our hero, until the NAZI occuption of Germany, because I believe the NAZIs changed the money system. (I say this because I have somewhere in my possession what appears to be a NAZI coin.)

Of course, one way to solve the problem of getting our vampire into a bank is to have him/her be from somewhere close to the artic circle -- Finland, Iceland, etc. There, at least, our vampire would be likely to experience part of the year when s/he could wander about during 9 am - 5 pm hours.

I don't know what, if anything, happened to Finnish banks when America had its Crash on October 29, 1929. I do know that American banks were not insured for loss before the Depression, so I suspect that most European banks were not either. This was important during the Crash because banks ran out of money. Banks foreclosed. Even people who did not invest, but people who had saved wisely found themselves locked out and out of luck. So, our vampire who is depending on compound interest could still have lost a fortune if they had their money in an American bank before 1929.

Not that our vampire could have done much about it, sleeping the day away.

I still want to know where this vampire got his/her money to START with.

Cover Art & More

I got the cover art from Anne, my editor at Berkley. What do you think? As I predicted, it's _very_ chick-lit. Which, as far as I'm concerned, is a bonus. The cover was designed by Monica Benalcazar and the artist is Margarete Gockel. Great work, ladies! Also, I noticed that the book is available for pre-order on Amazon.com. If you don't want to miss it (or if you want to boost my first week sales figures) please consider placing a pre-order. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0425209725/qid=1129053067/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/104-5294262-9652720?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 Other important ordering information -- the book's "street date" is May 2, 2006, and the ISBN is 0-425-20972-5. Of course, all of this stuff serves to make me completely nervous. Excited, yes, but also deeply freaked. The closer we get to the street date, the less "potential energy" the book represents. It's getting real now. Sales figures are going to start to matter. And, because of my previous life as a failed science fiction author, sales figures make me want to throw up.

The True Power of Netflix

In that much referred to previous life, I used to be a movie reviewer for a regional newspaper. During my short stint working there, I discovered something very important about myself. I suck as a reviewer. Why? Because if I receive something -- anything -- without having to pay for it my brain does this math: free = good. The year I was reviewing movies was the same year that such doozies as the remake of Godzilla and the remake of the Avengers came out. I hold the dubious honor of being likely the only print reviewer who actually enjoyed both movies and recommended people to see them. Shortly there after I stopped working for that paper. Though probably not for the reasons you might think. The paper stopped paying for my movies. When I stopped getting comp tickets, I found the job deeply tedious and went diva on my editor, insisting that I should only have to see movies I WANTED to see if I had to pay for the damn things out of my own pocket. I give you this preamble because I just saw Constantine through Netflix. Netflix isn't exactly like seeing a movie for free, but it's not unlike the experience. Netflix is cheap and easy. I've watched dozens of movies I would NEVER have considered spending good money on, and, consequently, found them mildly enjoyable. I found Constantine mildly enjoyable. I was a fan on the comicbook on which the movie was based, Hellblazer. I long ago advocated for a movie version of this comic, if only because I really craved Cheezy Voice Over guy booming out: "John Constantine is.... Hellblazer." They did not give me this moment in the film, alas. Anyeay, I believe I own Hellblazer #1 (as well as the first Swamp Thing in which John Constantine makes his appearance.) The fact that I was a fan of the comic probably saved me a lot of head-scratching. I also tend to enjoy Keanu Reeves, which is a guilty pleasure of mine. Yes, he's stupid. Yes, he's a terrible actor. But he's damn fine to look at, and, frankly does "uncarved block" very well. (I was not at all surprised he was tapped to play the Young Buddha.) Which is to say, he was the worst choice in history to play John Constantine, the world-weary, smart ass, uber-mystic. What made the movie mildly enjoyable to me was the character of Gabriel, the archangel. He ruled. Partly because the director of the film cast Gabriel as a manfully beautiful woman, and really VISUALLY pushed the whole angels are both and neither gender thing with her appearance. Then, of course, in the way of Hellblazers, Gabriel is clearly insane. And, as it turns out, abandoned by God... which, of course, totally fascinated the old me -- the one that used to write about angels all the time. S P O I L E R S In fact, for me, the last, oh, twenty minutes of the film was almost worth sitting through the first hour and a half -- because John Constantine is dead, and the action is happening between Lucifer and Gabriel. I just love a good theological debate, especially when you throw two angels together. In this case both were insane, one fallen and one who doesn't realize "no one has his back." There's this great moment where Gabriel reaches out to punch Lucifer, and Lucifer stops his hand. It's filmed in such a way that you sense that the punch should be an unstoppable force, but Lucifer's will is an unmovable object. Only the fact that Gabriel is no longer in God's grace keeps the world from shattering with that impact. I'm probably -- as usual -- reading to much into it, but the visuals were cool. If I were the director/writer, I'd have ended it with the scene that follows in which a fallen-human Gabriel dares Constantine to kill him. Gabriel's last line to Constantine is something like, "You only hit me when you could have killed me. You're doing so WELL!" It was, honestly, a funny and vaguely touching scene. And it could have summed up what was the theme of the film, if the rest of the film was worth mentioning. So. Don't spent any money on it, but I enjoyed moments of it. Maybe if you can get it for free (or nearly so), you will too.

Cute Writing-Related Stories

So... this is actually a cross-post from the Vampire Vixen's site, but it's such a cute story, I wanted to share. Okay, so, my son, Mason, who is two, recently discovered that certain paperback novels have author photos in them. In my other life, I published four books, each of which have my ugly mug on the back page. When I showed Mason these, he was delighted. "Ima!" (pronounced eee-ma) he told me with a great, big smile. And, I nodded, feeling really proud, "Yes, ima wrote these books." Now, whenever he picks up a book -- even if it's the dictonary -- he quick flips to the back page to see if ima wrote this one. More often than not, I have to disappoint him and say, "No, honey, that's Neil Gaiman." Speaking of which, Mason has also, for reasons known only to a toddler's brain, bonded with a photo of Neil Gaiman that he found in one of the many LOCUS magazines lying around the house. He can actually say, "Gaiman! Gaiman!" and will present us with the magazine and want us to play a strange sort of peek-a-boo with Neil's photo. Mason wants to go hide behind the radiator, and then have us whip open the page of his favorite Neil photo, at which point Mason squeals with delight and says, "Gaiman! Again!" He's such a little fanboy, already. I'm so proud.

Eat the Rich

I resist the idea popular in immortal fiction (not fiction which has become immortal, but fiction about people who live forever) that the longer you live the richer you are. There's this idea that any vampire who "invested a penny in 1776" is now sitting on a tidy nest egg. Granted, I know jack about the stock market. When I hear someone talking about an IRA, I assume they're discussing Irish nationalism. Everything I know about the early stock market comes from fiction -- specifically from David Liss and his books Conspiracy of Paper and Coffee Trader. But, my sense of the very early stock market is that it was a much easier place to lose a fortune than to gain it with any kind of permancy. Even with an amazing broker (since our investing vampire can't go out in the daylight, aka bankers hours), the moment Johann's ship sank on its way back from the Golden Triangle or Black Monday hit everything would be lost, like it was for so many. Maybe the assumption is that our investing vampire is psyhic. He can see into the future and know that investing in some crazy start-up called "Microsoft" is an excellent idea. Before his broker Igor shows up, our vampire casts the bones and they tell him "Coca-Cola," "IBM," and "Plastics." And the bones are NEVER wrong, and he also has some kind of early warning system that causes him to sell at a profit before all the various crashs and bursting bubbles that plague most people deeply involved in the financial world. Or maybe we're supposed to assume he's a member of the Illuminati, and so he actually orchestrates all of these financial ups and downs for his own profit and amusement. The other thing that irritates me about the whole penny in 1776 scenario is this sense that money itself -- and what is valuable -- hasn't changed drastically throughout history. You can't spend that 1776 penny today at the SuperAmerica (--hell, my SuperAmerica barely likes the Susan B. Anthonys and two-dollar bills I occassionaly try to spend there). I charge you to even dig through your pockets and find a penny minted before 1945. Unless you're a numismatist, you probably have never even seen that 1776 penny. I haven't. I'm not even sure a "penny" even existed as such in 1776. The earliest ones I've seen are from 1911. So maybe our vampire is, like some dragon, sitting on a pile of gold. So then there's the gold standard. That's changed too. If someone on the street today were to offer you fifty bricks of gold or a million dollars (US) cash, the choice -- at least for me -- would be simple. I'd take the cash. I can spend it right away. My bank takes it. Gold -- okay, it might actually be worth more than the cash, but the logistical problems alone would stop me... how could I even carry that all the way to the bank? Can the bank take gold and give me money? SuperAmerica isn't going to take a brick of gold in echange for a full tank of gas (although that's about how much it costs). Our vampire also has to have a place to keep all this gold of his. I guess this is why so many vampires own castles. You'd have to keep up that castle and protect it from invaders throughout time, and as the Windsors know, all those servants and such cost money. If you don't have new money coming in, even sitting on real estate like Buckingham Palace isn't going to amount to squat. Your gold is going to get spent just keeping your gold safe... because even safe deposit boxes cost money (and money kept in banks only started being insured AFTER the stock market panic of 1929.) All, but what about all those antiques laying around the castle... surely those are worth a small fortune? Well, with the assumption that our vampire has exquisite and rare taste and the money to buy the stuff in the first place, he'd still have to be pretty psychic. He'd still have to have a moment of brillance to say to himself, wow, this Tiffany lamp is the one for me... as opposed to this equally intesting Bob Smith fixture. You've all seen Antiques Roadshow. Doesn't it seem like the ugliest stuff is worth the most? Can't you just see a vampire watching that show saying, "D'oh! I had that, but it was so ugly I gave it to my buddy Elias for two bucks." And there's Elias grinning out of the screen saying, "It's worth how much???" The other way antiques get value is if they come from the right moment in history. That would involve our vampire making sure he was in all the historical hotspots throughout time. I'd love to see a vampire who laments his bad luck... "Oh, crap, I spent the American Civil war vacating in Iceland." Or, "Elvis music? Who would listen to that crap? It's so damn loud." So, the point is... I don't buy it. Being alive a long time isn't going to make anyone rich.

Vampire Appeal

I actually started thinking about this question over at the Vampire Vixen's blog, but no one there seems as interested in it as I am. So, I thought I'd talk to myself. Out loud. Which is what I've decided blogging is. Anyway, the question is this one: why are vampires still so popular? I'm going to go out on a limb here, but I'm going to suggest that, beyond the obvious answers (power = sexy and la petite mort and all that jazz), there is an element of class. By class I don't mean a sassy attitude and Prada handbags (ie being "classy"-- although in some of the chick-lit books like Davidson's Undead series that seems to be part of the appeal), but like, hard-core social, economic class. Like upper, middle, and lower. I suggest this based on a personal experience I had. I used to, in the late 80s, belong to a listserve that focused on vampires. A group of us also posted what was called "fluff," aka fiction. Anyway, I wrote about a vampire who had, as a human, been a heroin-addicted male prositute. He was identifably ethnic -- although well within the traditions of vampirism, as he was Ukrainian. I didn't get a lot of feedback about the story as I posted it, but I didn't really think about that much (after all, why write, if not for yourself?) Until I posted a story that featured a much more traditional vampire -- that is to say, he identified as being way-way back of Eastern European stock (though "lightly" eastern, being as he was from Vienna, Austria), but he was currently living in London and was landed, British gentry. The people on my list loved the story. That got me thinking about vampires and class. Why are so many vampires in literary tradition rich? I mean, I get the appeal on basic levels. Rich people have more toys. More toys = more fun. Generally, rich people -- even those allergic to sunlight -- have more mobility. That's more interesting than a vamp stuck in the projects because he doesn't own a car (or as in a story I tried to write, a vampire stuck in a gold mine in the 1800s because he needs a job he can do in the dark so he can afford a place to live and clothes for his back). Plus, for most of us being rich is a completely foreign experience, which we assume we'd enjoy immensely given the opportunity. If I had a million dollars, etc. So, that's fun. I get that. But, I think there's more to it. I think it has to do with the roots of the literary vampire. I've read exactly one book that traces the literary tradition of the vampire. It's by Clive Leatherdale and is called Dracula: The Novel and the Legend. It was probably his English literature dissertation on Bram Stoker's Dracula, becuase the bulk of the book is fairly detailed literary criticism -- but, one of the reason I read and re-read the book for the sections about the history of the vampire as a folk tradition and the rise of the literary vampire in Europe. One of the things that Leatherdale suggests is that, while the folklore vampire has existed probably since about the time that humans realized blood kept people alive, the literary vampire never really took off in popular culture until the Romantic period (as he puts it, "the second quarter of the 18th century"). Shelley, Keats, and Byron all wrote poems about the vampire. The Romantics really used the undead the way we modern writers do. That is to say, they took the folklore vampire, who was an ugly, smelly, stupid, scary corpse, and made him youth and beauty undying. Their themes were all about vampire love -- the young, murdered lover returning from death to persue his unrequited passions. These were upperclass dead guys, who had a lot of tragic angst about their lust for blood. The vampire is kind of uber-human in terms of his intellectual naval-gazing about the state of his humanity. He's the gentleman scholar who is burdened by his immortality. As opposed to the stock horror mosters of Bloodsuckers who relish the sucking and eating, this is a "hero"/antihero who feels really bad about draining the life out of his victims. Oh, woe is me, I am so horrible... yet I'm compelled to continue to be horrible. This is not to say that I believe that the lower class vampires aren't as equally interested in the intellectual naval-gazing. I just think that the popular mindset is such that we're more willing to allow that the idle rich may have more time for such persuits, and we perceive the lower class already engaged in a fight for survival that doesn't seem to lend itself to the same sort of angst. The idea/prejudice is -- if you've killed someone for bread to eat, killing them for their blood isn't going to keep you awake at night bemoaning your lost humanity, you know? I'm woefully off track here, I think. But, there may be something more worth persuing on this. I've talked enough to myself for today, though.

Ideas that Die

After finishing the revisions on TDD, I've been taking a break. The idea was to get a few short stories written, and to generally do a lot of "in-take" (a.k.a. reading.) It's time now to get back to novel writing, and I find I've completely forgotten how. Actually, I should also say that during this hiatus I managed not to get much done in terms of short story writing, either. I think part of the problem is that, with the short stories, I've been attempting to write to market -- something I very rarely do. While looking for a market for existing stories of mine, I came across John Scalzi's call for submissions for his themed issue of Subterranean Magazine. He's looking for stories, as he puts it in his guidelines, which feature "Big Honkin' Science Fiction Cliches." For some reason that idea totally appealed to me, especially when I followed some of his links to lists of SF cliches. I started a story about the last man on earth, but I haven't gotten farther than a few paragraphs. I guess the idea didn't quite grab me as much as I thought. Also, as most writers know, it's one thing to get fired up about an idea, and another thing to craft a living, breathing, publishable short story out of one. The other market I got interested in submiting to was Lynne Jamneck's Erotic Lesbian Science Fiction Anthology. Part of the appeal of that one was that I was thinking that I could set a short story in a world I used to write in. I have another great idea, which even satisfies the guidelines request that "both the erotic an science fiction aspect are crucial." But, once again I find myself writing a few lines and then petering out. This is one of the great mysteries of writing, as far as I'm concerned. The few short stories that I've sold, all came to me in a flash and were written quickly (albeit over the course of a few weeks, but the words poured out without much struggle.) The stories I've finished but haven't sold were written with more struggle. And, then there's the multitude of Ideas that Died. Half the storage space in my fiction directory is full of these half-starts. Some of them are several pages long. Some, when I open them again, I diddle a few more lines on to them, but they never seem to light a spark under me for whatever reason. Why do some stories spring from my head like Athena, fully-grown? And why do some of my "coolest" ideas fail to germinate? Well, let's think about that. Obviously, one of the issues is what I mentioned earlier. Ideas do not a complete story make. Ideas and characters sometimes aren't even enough. Let me think back to one of my most successful stories. The idea, world, main character and basic conflict hit me one day after talking about the idea with a writer friend of mine over lunch. I started writing that afternoon and had a completed draft by the end of the week. I don't remember having a clear idea about the ending, but I did have a strong sense of conflict and world. Maybe those are the crucial items for me. If I have a conflict, the resolution comes over the course of writing the story. If I know the world I'm writing in, the story begins to feel alive. I think, as a writer, part of what gets me going is having something to say. Theme, I guess. I know for a fact the story I'm referring to above, had a strong, definite theme. I had something I wanted to say about a certain segment of the population. I had a gripe with an ex that needed airing. But, that's not always true. I have written published stories that didn't have that thematic fire in the belly. I can think of one, my first published story, which really was just a cool idea. Of course, it was flash fiction, so maybe that was part of it. I don't know. This mystery is probably deeper than I can handle in a single blog.

One of THOSE days

Attitude is everything, I've decided. Like today. It's 11:00 in the morning, and today should suck. On my way to taking my partner to work, the car died. Just ran out of gas. The gas gauge has been wonky for some time now, but I usually keep a careful watch on the miles I've gone on the odometer. Except today. Today I spaced. So, we rolled to a stop ten blocks from my partner's work. She hoofed it in high heels, and I entertained Mason, our two year old, while waiting for Triple-A to show up. Entertaining Mason is ridiculously easy. I should mention that the place we broke down was a gorgeous part of Saint Paul called Summit Avenue. We were up at the "top" of Summit, which also known as Cathedral Hill, because the Saint Paul Cathedral is right there. The houses are mansions -- grand, grand mansions. The lawns are expansive and expertly maintained. Huge, ancient oak trees line the broad boulevards. Flowers bloom in profusion. Birds sing on every branch. It's like paradise in the middle of the city. Not a bad place to have to sit and wait. And today is simply gorgeous. It's one of those amazing end-of-summer days where the sun shines brightly, sky is crystal blue, the clouds are fluffy and white, and the air holds a touch of autumn chill. Mason and I strolled around near the car, picking up fallen Maple leaves and arranging them according to a toddler's sense of order, which in this instance meant we moved the leaves from the sidewalk to on top of a retaining wall. Then the big truck came and loaded up the car and took us all for a ride to Grand-Wheeler Sinclair service station. I had them tow us because it would bring us closer to home, and I had other things I wanted my mechanic to tune-up on the car. Then, we wandered home -- toddler pace. Lots of stopping to chase squirrels ("icicle!" For some reason the way Mason says "a squirrel" it comes out more like "i - cicle!"), lots of clambering up on to my shoulders so we could read the pine cones in the various pine trees we passed, we even stopped at our local park ("ding-ding" park, so named because it's near a fairly active rail road crossing) for a romp on the monkey bars. We got home after a few hours, and I discovered that I forgot my house keys in the car back at the service station. Luckily, I live in a old house -- it was built in 1911 (Taft was president), so it's actually fairly easy to pop a window screen and shimmy in. I left Mason on the front porch with some "bon-bons" (his word for candy), and I broke in. Because I'm usually pretty good about closing the windows so someone else can't do this, I had to clamber in the small kitchen window, which is actually a few feet off the ground. To this involved climbing up the gas pipe and throwing myself at the screen. I wish someone had been around to film it. I'm sure I looked hillarious trying to wedge my big butt in through that small window. I managed to get in and not fall on my face. Triumph! All this without my first cup of coffee. I should be grouchy. I should be pulling hair or gnashing teeth. But, I was in the right frame of mind, and we had nowhere to go and no time we had to be there. It's been a beautiful day.

Vampire Vixens

I recently joined a group of vampire authors, known as the "Vampire Vixens." Check out their web site, at http://www.vampire-vixens.com/. The Vixens are also doing a joint blog, which I thought I would attempt to post to occasionally (though I'm having trouble keeping up with this blog.) If you want to check out that blog, you can find it at: http://vampire-vixens.blogspot.com.