Publishing "definitions" by Lynn Viehl

Check out Lynn Viehl (aka S. L. Viehl)'s The Devil's Publishing Dictonary (part 1) and (part 2). These are both hilarious, sadly accurate, and quite scathing.

Out and About Town

On Sunday, January 7, 2007 from 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm Other Me will be at the 2nd Foundation reading group meeting at O'Gara's Pub in Saint Paul. O'Gara's Bar & Grill is located at: 164 Snelling Avenue North, St. Paul, MN.

Monday, January 8, 2007 I will be at the Mall of America's Barnes & Noble romance reading group discussing Tall, Dark & Dead starting at 6:00 pm. The Barnes & Noble is located at 118 E. Broadway Suite 238, Bloomington, MN 55425. For directions or more information call: 952-854-1455

Jayne! Dude!

This is what happens when I wander around the internet with nothing better to do… (However, the best part of this test? Just like the show Firefly, the questions are surprisingly straight-forward. “Are you a cannibal?” “Have you ever had government tests done on your brain?” and “Do you like big guns? A lot?”):

Your results:
You are: Jayne Cobb (Mercenary)

Jayne Cobb (Mercenary) 100% Wash (Ship Pilot) 75% Zoe Washburne (Second-in-command) 65% Alliance 50% Malcolm Reynolds (Captain) 45% Derrial Book (Shepherd) 40% Dr. Simon Tam (Ship Medic) 30% Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic) 25% Inara Serra (Companion) 20% A Reaver (Cannibal) 20% River (Stowaway) 10%

Although you can be a good fighter and good at protecting others you are not very bright sometimes.

Click here to take the Serenity Firefly Personality Test

Happy New Year

Have you made a New Year's resolution this year? I usually don't, but this year one just popped into my head. Yesterday, while doing the dishes (we always have a lot -- we don't do a traditional party, but my mother's birthday is New Year's Eve, so we always celebrate that with her... and Mason gets his Christmas presents from the grandfolks then) I put on an ALBUM (yes, that old) that I used to love and found myself really enjoying singing along. So, I resolved this year to sing more. I think that's an easy one to keep, since singing is painless (at least for me -- I won't claim it doesn't injure the eardrums of anyone unfortunate enough to overhear) and it makes me happy.

So, how about it? Have you resolved to be a better person? A more diligent writer?

Astro Alert: Pluto Conjunct Galactic Center

Okay, here's a weird one from Astrology.com Apparently pluto and the galatic center are conjunct. How one calcuates that I'll never know, but here's what it all apparently means:

"Could there be a better time to access universal wisdom than when we end one year and begin the next? Recently reclassified Pluto has lost none of its power as it conjuncts the Galactic Center at 26 degrees of Sagittarius on December 29. At this time, you will have the opportunity to tap into the energy of the center of our universe."

"Pluto transits are often intense, and with this important conjunction you'll be ready to empower yourself and think more seriously about your destiny. On December 20, the new Moon in Sagittarius prompted you to put extra energy and intention into whatever you want to become stronger in your life. Moving beyond the familiar now will help you cultivate success."

"The Sun, Pluto and the Galactic Center are all occupying the same area of your astrological chart. That’s a lot of energy, wisdom and power in one place!"

Other Me News

Other me has some publishing news to report: Her short story “Indigo Bunting” a queer coming of age post-apocalyptic story is on-line as of today at Blithe House Quarterly.

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

Blithe House Quarterly : queer fiction lives herehttp://www.blithe.com/ Blithe House Quarterly invites you to browse its Winter 2007 edition (Volume 11, Number 1) featuring new short stories by:Victor J. Banis, Sias Bryant, Trisha Collopy, Robert M. Dewey, James Friel, Lyda Morehouse, Rick R. Reed, Ruth Sims, and Jessica Wicks

Guest-edited by Lori L. Lake

Associate editor: Eric Karl Anderson

Photography by Nicole C. Russell

Executive editor and publisher: Aldo Alvarez

"_The_ journal, online or off, for gay short fiction. Blithe House Quarterly is one of the best literary sites on the Internet. Period." ~42opus.com

"Internet-based fiction journals have become a significant force in publishing, especially for serious short fiction. In Web-only lit journals such as Blithe House Quarterly, the short-story form is alive and clicking." ~Baltimore City Paper

"Setting the quality bar [for gay and lesbian writing] is the phenomenal site Blithe House Quarterly. It's awash in awards and rightly so. Of all gay and lesbian sites, Blithe House is the golden child, the one to be entered in the Literature Olympics. None of the stories needs special cosseting as our fiction. Be skeptical and go see the site!" ~Gay & Lesbian On Line, 3rd Edition

"The central publishing arm of new queer fiction." ~OUT Magazine on Blithe House QuarterlyBlithe House Quarterly : queer fiction lives here: http://www.blithe.com/

**Winner of the Encyclopaedia Britannica's Internet Guide Award

** Featured in the January 2005 New York Times article on the literary magazine boom

**A GLAAD Media Award Nominee

Seeing Is Believing: Or Is it?

n my last class at the Loft, we ended up on a tangent about a book I’m currently reading which shall remain nameless. It’s a well known urban fantasy novel which has been receiving a lot of high praise. My partner Shawn read part of the novel and got so frustrated with it, that she threw it against the wall. She was so irritated that she actually suggested that I read it, so we could complain about it together.

Part of the problem with this book is the Big Reveal. The question of: when does your hero[ine] “come out” to other people about her magical power/the magic in her life/her magical boyfriend and how do the Uninitiated react to the news that there is magic in the world?

This issue Shawn had with this particular book is that everyone the heroine meets buys into the magic, without so much as a hiccup, in fact, they’re all eager to help despite the fact that their worldview should be shattered or at least upset a titch. That complete acceptance didn’t work for Shawn. (It’s still working for me, but I’m only a 100 pages in.)

Of course, as an author, there’s another tension, I think. Because you know the cover is going to show something fantastical and the back cover copy is going to hint at magic, you don’t really want your readers to have to wait for your heroine and the people around her to accept the magic the reader already expects. I’m having this problem in my current novel (Garnet’s third book: BLOODY CHARMING) because I have the opening where Garnet sees a wolf. One of my Wyrdsmiths’ colleagues is telling me that I’m over doing it with the werewolf “telegraphing,” even though I know that’s a bit of a red herring (I won’t say more for fear of spoilers.) My colleague’s point, however, is still valid. A SF/F/Paranormal romance reader is going to see a wolf and instantly assume magic is afoot. In this case, I want to play against that assumption, but I still have to be aware of it, and to not frustrate the reader so that s/he is shouting at the book, “Oh, for God/dess’s sake, Garnet, it’s a bloody werewolf! How dumb are you??”

The Nameless Book in question has a different problem. That is, I think the heroine accepts the magic in her life at the right pace, but the people around her swallow it far too quickly. “Oh, come on! It can’t be that easy!” was the complaint I heard Shawn mutter as she was reading. And, that’s the other issue a writer of paranormal/F/SF has to deal with – you don’t want your character’s friends to be instantly on board (unless there’s a pre-existing good reason, like s/he is also involved in a magical community of some sort) otherwise it feels like your heroine isn’t terribly challenged. If everyone buys into the magic and offers knowledge and help, then you start to wonder if the whole world isn’t actually magical and only the heroine is stupid enough not to have been with the program from the beginning. I think this author is actually aware that people might be thinking this very thing, because she has a spirit guide tell the character that she’s a brand new soul… thus excusing her for not knowing all this stuff about the magical world that everyone else seems to. As an author, I think that’s a bit of a cheat, because it’s also just as valid to have someone, just once, not know or not believe or tell her she needs to get back on her meds. Especially, since that can be done to humorous effect.

Still, I think it’s a tough question for all speculative writers. How do the other people in your heroine’s life deal with her magical crap? Do they buy it? Buy it skeptically at first? Think she’s crazy? Or, do you have them resist for a while until something magical happens that includes them? Obviously, you need to do what works best in your story, but thinking about how readers will react to other character’s reactions (will they see this as too easy? Too “hard” – as in they feel the magic is so obvious that it can’t be ignored no matter how cynical the character?) helps, IMHO.

Another solution a lot of urban fantasy writers have employed is the magical universe. If, for instance, the existence of vampires is common knowledge, then you don’t really have to deal with the issue of the Big Reveal – at least not where it concerns magic, anyway.

I also think this is a matter of taste. I tend to prefer my urban fantasy just this side of reality, which is to say, the more like the here and now, the better I tend to enjoy the book. I want that feeling of “this could happen to me,” if I could just side-step out of the mundane. So, I prefer incredulous friends.

How about you?

Kudos to Other Me

Other Me announces that she has an interview with Karin Lowachee at The Internet Review of Science Fiction. You have to be a subscriber to view IROSF, but if you are (or if you want to sign up for the privledge of reading this particular article,) go to: www.irosf.com.

Writing Under the Influence – The Embarrassing Bits

For my birthday, Shawn bought me the DVD of Rick Springfield’s pilot for “Forever Knight.” Though I’ve carefully kept the video cassette tape I had of it in good working order, I hadn’t really re-watched the movie since sometime last century (probably the mid-90s.) I had always vigorously defended it against the people who preferred the remake, because to this day I think Rick Springfield has a certain kind of sexy charm (which I never really got from the other blonde dude) and because of the overtly homoerotic scene with his master/Blood Sire (which, to my understanding, was changed to a woman in the remake). Given that this pilot was shot in the late 80s (pre-Ellen, pre-Will & Grace, pre-Tom Cruise/Brad Pitt’s Interview.), the homoeroticism of that scene should be considered pretty groundbreaking.

That said, it was pretty painful to watch.

I don’t understand movie-makers’ need give vampires the whole Klingon-bumpy forehead make-over when they manifest their powers. (Even Buffy did this). I suspect, however, this has something to do with the fact that we like our Dark Siders to be made ugly by their evil. White hats for the good guys and ugly, bumpy faces for the bad guys. God/dess forbid evil should be sexy and seductive, the way Dracula was written. Monsters have to be clearly monsters or we dumbwads out in TV-land won’t be able to recognize them.

Yet, despite how hard the show is to watch now – I think Forever Knight profoundly effected me as a vampire fan. I still love the metaphor of vampire as junkie. The way Nick Knight struggles with his will versus his desire for blood really still works for me, despite the bad 80s hair. The vampire bar scene was also one of the first of its kind (at least on screen) and, though it became overused in fiction (loved Buffy’s reversal of it, later) it’s still kind of cool after all this time. Also, I think that Forever Knight really was my first exposure to what urban fantasy could look like on TV. Nick Knight has a job; he’s a homicide cop – a perfect job for a vampire in some ways (though no explanation is given in the pilot as to how he managed to go to police academy during the day.) There’s also that great scene near the beginning where he tries to tan, and then goes home to close up the curtains and watch the sunrise via webcam, as it were. It was also the first time I thought about how vampires would probably like their blood slightly warm, as he sticks his in the microwave. A bit silly, but still nicely done.

It all seems so commonplace after years of Buffy, but Forever Knight really, for me, at least, put the vampire squarely in modern times and let him be a hero.

Yeah, I’m still a Rick Springfield fan. Embarrassing, yes, but I’ll still admit it.

Ya wanna make something of it??

Astro Alert: Saturn Turns Retrograde

Because you NEED to know (from astrology.com):

Saturn is often considered the taskmaster planet. And when it goes retrograde? Well, there're no two ways about it: Issues of authority come to the fore, and a conservative attitude toward responsibilities creeps into even the most free-spirited souls. Whether consciously or not, you will probably experience the effects of Saturn's retrograde -- which will last until April 19, 2007 -- as a time to reflect on past decisions and learn from your mistakes ... and definitely not a time to charge easily toward your goals.

That said, Saturn's energy, which rules issues of control and organization, lends itself well to making sound judgment calls as well as wise investments, if both sense and sensibility are properly utilized.

Saturn turning retrograde puts a challenging spin on achieving success, but the planet also rules issues of leadership, making this the ideal time to establish your own boundaries, strive for self-improvement and unleash your creativity on the world. Furthermore, when your goals have been met, you'll be that much more satisfied at having cleared this astrological stumbling block! On the way, you'll also have learned a lot about yourself and clarified your perspective.

How Stupid Am I? No Wait…

...Don’t answer that.

It’s a very good thing that I’m hiding my face in the picture below, because guess what? My reading was _not_ last night. No, in fact, it will be on the date listed, which is to say NEXT Monday.

Worse, all my SASE students showed up at my house while I was calling Shawn trying to figure out how badly I goofed (did it start later than I thought? Different day?) because we’d arranged to practice our pieces ahead of time.

In the words of the immortal Homer: D’oh.

Other Me About Town

TONIGHT!

On Monday, December 11, 2006 from 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm I'll be reading as Other Me at Intermedia Arts, 2822 Lyndale Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55408. The reading is in conjunction with the SASE Mentorship program. For more information call, (612) 874-2815.

Even though the reading is in a matter of hours, I still haven't decided what I'm going to read. According to the preliminary schedule I'm on dead last, so my thought was to read the "Second Coming of Emily" which I just started, and is no more than two pages long (I officially have fifteen minutes to read). The other option is "Tutivillus," which was published in Wyrdsmiths, but only a portion of that one since it's 4,000 words long.

I have no idea what to wear either.

Sigh.

Time to Lean, Time to Clean

When do you write? (and it’s corollary: How do you find TIME to write?) are questions I get asked a lot.

When I first started writing, I wrote on the job -- which I can’t actually recommend since I could have lost my job because of it -- and that spoiled me. I could write when I wanted to – which, it turns out, is mid-morning. I’m at my peek creatively from about seven thirty to eleven o’clock. When I became a stay-at-home parent, I was completely screwed up, since I discovered that the only time I had to myself was in the evening. Bio-rhythmically, I’m a zone-out-in-front-of-the-TV sort anytime after six. But, I had a paying deadline, so I couldn’t “wait for the Muse” or even my intellectually peek time. I learned to just start whenever, and write as much as I could.

Yet, when talking to fellow Wyrdsmith, Sean, I came to the startling realization that I don’t actually write very often these day, if you calculate actual hours spent. When I’m teaching, as I have been for the past three months, I write even less, because my scheduled time to work on fiction is post-Mason-bedtime (8:00 pm, reliably. While his official bedtime is 7:00 pm, we tell the story of going to sleep, and then he usually drifts off around 7:15 and then *I* wake up sometime before 8:00 and stumble out, bleary-eyed.) As you can perhaps tell, this is kind of a sucky arrangement, because I tend to end up with a half-hour nap right before I sit down to compose. The nights I teach, I usually don’t write at all because I don’t get home until after 10:00 pm and, given that Mason and company is up and out around 5:30/6:00 am… I need a few hours sleep.

Anyway, factoring in two nights of teaching, I write four or three nights a week for three or four hours. Maximum, I’m getting 16 hours/week writing time. But, on average, I’d bet it’s much closer to 10 - 6 hours/week. However, I don’t let myself go to bed unless I’ve written 1,000 words, which is how it is that I think I manage to make deadline (I missed one publishers’ deadline in my entire career, and it was because of a family death.)

Sometimes, however, like last night when I was struggling with a sex scene I spend my whole three hours pecking slowly at the screen, until I finally just give up because I can’t keep my eyes open any longer. BTW, I ALWAYS struggle with sex scenes, which is why when Shawn suggests I consider writing erotica as my next sub-genre, I told her no way. My writing would slow to a crawl if I tried to write more sex.

I’m writing about this, not to complain, but because I think people usually imagine published authors having unlimited amounts of time to write. They look at their busy lives and think, no way -- I just can’t make time to write. Granted, I’m the sort of person who is highly motivated by a deadline (oh, and honestly, a the paycheck that comes with book delivery), but I think that six hours a week is really very do-able. Keep in mind, I often take the weekend off from writing (although I wrote last night to make up for a particularly lax writing week) – so you really don’t even have to sacrifice family time for your craft. I don’t, anyway.

Hopefully, you feel inspired now. Go write. :-)

Naming Names

The question of authors that inspire you came up on fangs, fur & fey and I thought my response might be interesting to people here.

William Gibson, and the all the various and sundry spawn of his “Movement” cyberpunk – I think everything I write is tainted by my first real sub-genre love affair. My fascination with Gibsonesque dystopias clearly imbues my gritty urban settings (because Madison, Wisconsin is the epitome of dark, urban grittiness… okay, maybe I was thinking of Other Me.) But, I think a case could be made that even in Tall, Dark and Dead, one can see the swirls of cyberpunk fingerprints smudging the edges of my worldview. There are a lot of punks in my writing – people who are a bit outside of the system. Plus, my vamps aren’t of the fluffy variety, they tend to fall on the darker side.

Katherine Kurtz – A major teen influence. I read every book of hers I could find and then spent hours writing fan fic and fantasizing that I was Alaric Morgan (among others.)

Eleanor Arnason – The first professional writer I ever met was Eleanor Arnason. I’d seen her speak at various science fiction conventions previously, but we bonded at a membership meeting for the National Writers Union over being both speculative fiction writers and writers of fiction (both rarities). She was the first person who made me think that it was possible for real people to become published authors.

Sandra Hill – The first funny romance I read was her Last Viking, a book that changed my mind about the romance genre in general.

Then in no order in particular: Fredrick Pohl, in particular, his novel Gateway. Star War the movie for me, but also the Han Solo books, particularly Han Solo’s Revenge. Ray Bradbury, George Alec Effinger, the Thieves’ World books, School House Rock, Sesame Street (especially the lovable, furry Grover), John Milton, X-Files, Marvel Comics and probably dozens of others that I’ve forgotten.

Who inspires you?

Bragging from Other Me

Other Me insisted I share the cover from the Japanese edition of Archangel Protocol (Hayakawa Publishing, Inc.)

And, in doing so, I am reminded of a question that a student of mine asked last night. It was the lecture I like to call in my head the depressing reality of publishing money. With horror in her eyes, my student asked: “How do writers make a living?”

My answer was simply -- they don’t.

Most writers that I know have full or part-time jobs. A surprising number of us in Wyrdsmiths are living as writers, but majority of those are actually stay-at-home parents who are trying to make ends meet on the salary of our spouse (or spousal equivalent).

I can't speak for the others, but my ends don’t always meet.

Writing money – even after five published novels – is what I refer to as my “latte money.” It’s extra, not really even enough to count as supplemental. I teach to make more money, and I write the occasional bit of nonfiction to make more money. But none of it really adds up to a living wage.

This could depress me deeply, but I knew when I started trying to do this professionally that I’d never make a living writing and that only one percent of all writers really make major money from their writing. Writing is something you have to do because you can’t not do it or because if fulfills some deep inner need (or, if you’re a weirdo like me, it brings you enough happiness that the rest doesn’t matter.)

Writing doesn’t help me make a living, but writing makes living worthwhile.

Sappy, but, for me, true.

The Difference between Urban, Dark and Contemporary Fantasy

There’s a discussion going on fur, fey and fangs about what the difference is between the categories above. I realized in replying to someone else’s post that I don’t really have a good sense of what separates urban fantasy, for instance, from dark fantasy.

Urban fantasy, as I understand it, ought to take place in a city. It was postulated that the moniker “urban fantasy” also promises grittiness. One commenter suggested that it implied stronger language, which I found kind of fascinating. Urban fantasy is going to give you f-word uttering, urban-dwelling faeries in leather, apparently. It’s also going to take place in the modern world with modern sensibilities. Urban fantasy is *not* going to involve castles and knights, unless somehow they’ve been transported to today. Urban fantasy may or may not include vampires in its metahuman denizens.

Dark fantasy, then, can happen at any time in (meta)human history. It most certainly includes vampires, because, as was pointed out by someone the “dark” part is really just a stand-in for the word “horror,” in a lot of ways. Dark fantasy is a story with fantastical elements that gets ugly, in the horror sense. There’s going to be blood spilled in dark fantasy, probably lots of it.

Contemporary fantasy takes place in the now, has a modern sensibility, includes any number of metahuman creatures, including vampires, but is usually more light-hearted in tone than any of the above. It can take place on a farm or a city, and isn’t necessarily “gritty.” My books probably fall into this category most strongly, though because of the strong romantic content, my books are labeled “contemporary romance” or “paranormal romance.”

Paranormal romances, of course, can take place in any time, in any place and are only distinguished from other romances by the fact that the heroine or the hero are metahuman. Most of paranormal romances, however, I think don’t tend to be particularly gritty or dark, though there are probably exceptions to this… as there are to all the “rules” I’ve tried to outline above.

I think that most fans of one of these categories will read all of them, although I found it fascinating that there were a lot of people on fur, fey and fangs who came down strongly in one camp or the other. I suppose if you prefer dark and gritty, silly romantic paranormal isn’t going to jive -- I myself, personally, read according to mood. I tend to prefer to dark, but silly can be a lot of fun when I’m in the mood for it. I tend to enjoy humor, even gallows’ humor, in everything I read.

What about you? Any preferences or quibbles with my definitions?

Hippo Birdy To Me

Saturday, November 18th was my birthday. It was a good day. I got to have breakfast out with a friend AND dinner out with the one I love. I also got some fantastic presents, the best of which was a long, hot bath alone (without Mason.)

I always love to read the Star Tribune's yearly horoscope on my birtday. Here's what mine said about me:
"Your birthday today: You approach this year with great imagination and wonder. Therefore what occurs is much larger than is usually expected of thought possible. Figure out exactly what's needed to make a deal work and you'll pull it off in January. Love is lavished on you, and you go into the new year feeling whole. Aquarius and Virgo are your allies."

So what do you think it really means? Another book contract? Fame? Fortune? Or...?

The Question of Beginnings

[Cross-posted from Fur, Fey & Fangs.]

Tall, Dark & Dead actually starts with a two sentence question and answer:

“What’s the best way to keep Vatican witch hunters off your scent? Dress to kill.”

Dead Sexy also begins with a question:

“Who knew there were so many dead things in Madison, Wisconsin?”

The book I’m working on right now (tentatively called Bloody Charming) begins with:

“I was on my bicycle five miles out of town and thinking about what it might be like to settle down, really settle down with a vampire, like forever, when I saw the gray wolf on the side of the road.”

...which is clearly not as snappy as the other two, and may explain a bit why I’m still struggling with this sucker. I’ve started Bloody Charming three times now and can’t quite get things into focus. I’ve decided, in fact, to abandon perfection for the moment in order to keep moving forward.

I agonize over first lines. I’m convinced that they’re critical in hooking (hoodwinking?) your reader into buying your book. I know that when I’m thinking about book buying I often judge a book first by its cover, its back copy, and then by the first page or so of the author’s writing. Given that usually only one of those is in the author’s complete control, I figure I need to make my first page a real grabber.

How do you buy a book? How important is that first page (if you even read it)?

Astro Alert - Mercury Direct, Uranus Direct, Jupiter Enters Sagittarius

An update from astrology.com:

Enough review -- take action! As Mercury turns direct in Scorpio on November 17, it's time to incorporate everything you've learned during this Mercury retrograde period, which began October 28. Hopefully, you’ve done your research and are ready to forge ahead. Independent Uranus turns direct on November 19, bringing change and a desire to be totally true to yourself. Just what is that magical mixture that makes you unique? As you are contemplating that, Jupiter enters philosophical and travel-oriented Sagittarius on November 23 for the first time in 12 years. A new course must be mapped out -- are you ready?

Cute Mason Pictures

Here are a few cute pictures of Mason(and Shawn) at the Rockford Barnes & Noble. These pictures were taken by our friends Besty and Warren Urbik. Isn't Mason just darling?