Ten Seconds...

...is reportedly the amount of time you have to grab the attention of an editor reading your slush pile submission.

Obviously, this varies by editor, but even if an editor is willing to give you more than a few minutes of their time, the idea is: DON'T WASTE THE OPPORTUNITY.

I've written about this on this blog before in "Hooking Like a Pro" and "Opening... A Can of Worms?"

I have only a few new insights to add to those, and they come after having re-watched IRON MAN (the movie, as opposed to the animated special, which I also have) last night. Those of you who have seen the movie -- or, like me, read the comic books first-- know that, in terms of a "sympathetic character," Tony Stark is a bit of a hard sell. He's a drunk (though not so obviously in the movie), a military-industrialist, a womanizing playboy, filthy rich, and arrogant. But those character defects are also crucial to the plot, i.e. Tony's transformation into a hero.

I noticed last night that those clever screen writers did something very sneaky. They didn't start in chronological order, instead, they very briefly introduced Tony and then had his convoy blow up. As viewers we didn't really have time to decide if we LIKED Tony or not, but we sure could sympathize with what is quite obviously a horrible plight.

Then they showed us what a jerk his was in a few short brief, and mercifully funny scenes. The funny deflected some of his jerk-itude, but, as they quickly brought us back to the NOW, those scenes served to really illustrate his change in character that takes place while captive in Afghanistan (which in the original comics was Viet Nam).

Clever, huh?

I was surprised, too, how effective it was. Frankly, I went to that movie not already not liking Tony Stark very much. I'd just finished reading CIVIL WAR and Tony is not portrayed as a very sterling good guy, shall we say. And, I was completely and utterly charmed by Robert Downey, Jr. (whom I normally don't like either) by this very clever and subtle writing trick.

So, it's Monday...

....So I'm talking all over the place.

I've got a brief post about Halloween over at Something Wicked: "Monday, the 13th", which includes a REALLY CUTE picture of Mason in the mummy costume that I made for him last year.

Also, I'm ranting about all the disrespect I feel I suffer over on SF Novelists.

and on Wyrdsmiths, I mention this item:

Tuesday, October 14 from 5:30 to 7:00 pm -- there will be a "RAKING THROUGH BOOKS" event at Keiren's Irish Pub in downtown Minneapolis, featuring Wyrdsmiths: Eleanor Arnason, Kelly D. McCullough, and Lyda Morehouse/Tate Hallaway. The event gives the audience members a chance to have a discussion with writers - about the authors' works, the writing life, etc. Kieren's Irish Pub is located at 330 2nd Avenue South in downtown Minneapolis. The event is sponsored by The Rake, The Loft, and, of course, Kieren's Pub. The event is open to the public. Call the Loft (612) 215-2575 for more information.

For all you local folks, think of it as an opportunity to get drunk AND talk about writing.

Nice Review on LiveJournal

Google Alerts found this nice review of Romancing the Dead.

"Where Are We Today, Miles?"

Like many families, mine has some odd catch phrases that come from our own shared experiences.

My parents used to always say, "Where are we today, Miles?" when we were driving somewhere and had gotten lost or even as an opening conversation gambit, ala, "How have you been? 'Where are we today, Miles?'" According to them, it comes from a radio show that used to run in LaCrosse. The show used to air in different locations which were also the subject of the show, and the announcer asked his co-host (presumably Miles) that question to get the show rolling. Miles would then answer, "Well, today we're standing at the Johnson's dairy farm...." or whatever the show was about (did I mention this was in Wisconsin?)

I always think of this phrase when I teach the class on setting.

Of course, that's usually what I call it in the syllabus: "Where Are We Today, Miles?" Creating Setting, which also might be the other reason I think of it.

But, at its simplest, setting answers the question: where are we? Though, it should also be noted that setting also defines WHEN we are (as in the "today" part of the announcer's question.) The when is much more important when writing SF than it is when writing contemporary romances because the reader assumes "today" (or now or modern times) unless given a clue to the contrary.

Setting is one of those things that your very first writing instructor also always told you needs to be in the first paragraph. I actually agree with him or her, for once! It does. Though, how you go about establishing that is a matter of much flexibility, IMHO.

The simplest option is just to say so. "The year was 1778..." or "2778," as the case may be.

But that can be awkward and clumsy.

Because I teach SF/F on a regular basis, I must have a thousand books lying around my office with the oh-so-clever title "Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy." In one of those books -- the one by Brian Stableford (which is much more cleverly titled "Writing FANTASY and Science Fiction and Getting Published"), in fact -- is this idea: use a "distancing move." Stableford then goes on to define a distancing move as some event or physical description that makes it clear to the reader that this story is taking place somewhere outside of the norm. His example is the clock striking thirteen in the beginning of Orwell's 1984. But it can be something as simple as describing a double sunset in a binary star system (my lame example, not his).

Stableford goes on to talk about how effective a "distancing move" is to alert the reader to pay attention to the rest of the words that follow, which makes it that much easier for you, the writer, to use subtle clues (as opposed to a two-by-four) to let the reader in on the setting of your world.

He doesn't say this (I don't think), but the fact of the matter is that, thankfully, most science fiction readers have been conditioned to be rather careful readers. A skillful writer can use this to their advantage. It can also be the bane of the not-so-skillful, in that we (SF readers) tend to take everything at the beginning as not only important, but LITERAL.

So if you say "he was an animal" at the beginning SF readers tend to believe you mean that literally. He's non-human. A romance reader reading the same sentence might think he was merely a nasty person with a beastial attitude. These are the pitfalls of writing for SF readers.

That's not to say you can never use that kind of a metaphor when writing SF. You simply have to establish a tone before you do (and, even then, it's wise to make it as clear as possible in context. Otherwise, we're easily confused.)

Setting: set it up early, and say it clearly (or via a distancing move.)

Those are my inital thoughts. More later.

Oh, So That's Your Excuse, Eh?

Like much of America, I watched last night's VP debate and posted my comments over on LJ. Unlike most Americans, I don't *get* "folksy." I have never, in my entire life, wanted to vote for the guy (or gal) who I'd sit and have a beer with. Fine for beers and peanuts, but, when it comes to governing a superpower, I want someone smarter than me in charge (or second in charge, as the case may be.)

Meanwhile, I haven't gotten much writing done because we have contractors doing work on our downstairs bathroom. That's my excuse, anyway. Speaking of writing, though, my editor sent along the electronic version of my copyedited manuscript of DEAD IF I DO (which now has a fancy new cover) for me to start work on. So it's not like I don't have anything that needs doing.

Also, I've kind of been left in charge over at Wyrdsmiths, so I'm sparse over here, it's probably because I'm busy over there.

Uh,yeah, that's why I haven't had much to say lately. Yeah, that's the ticket.

What's in a Name?

The topic of last night's Loft class was the creation of characters, which I've talked about here before. However, at the tail end of the class, Keri asked, "How do you pick the names for your characters?"

I kind of pulled a Neil on her and answered, "magic."

So I thought I should probably elaborate on that.

Naming is a very strange process for me. I love names. I really do think they have a lot of power. Getting a character name exactly right is something I spend a lot of time on.

First of all, I usually start by combing through my various baby name books. I have a ton, which I had even before I had baby, as it were. I have books that just list names alphabetically, and ones that divide names by ethnic origin. There are TONS of on-line sources for names, if you're so inclined -- all you have to do is plug "baby names" into Google and you'll get about a million hits.

But then the process starts to become really... personal.

I say names that seem interesting out loud. I try to imagine what a "Max" might look like compared to a "Matyas." And I can't tell you why I might go for one over the other, except that one will "FEEL" right.

A lot of it is rhythm or how it flows from my lips. Some of it is practical (ala, "oops, I've already got three guys whose names start with "M.") Some of it is flights of fancy (I've always thought the name "Constantine" to be sexy. I have no idea why, and it's not from either the movie or the Hellblazer comic book). I just like imperial names, like that, I think.

Magic, I guess.

New Cover Art: DEAD IF I DO

I just got this from my editor at Berkley:

And here's how the back cover copy reads:

I’ve finally found Mr. Right. Sure, he might not have a pulse, but coming from a girl who’s sharing a body with a short tempered goddess, I’m not one to judge. Sebastian is the vampire of my dreams and I’m dying to walk down the aisle. Everything couldn’t be more perfect.

Well, except for the fact that the awesome band I hired for the reception has been replaced by some guy with an accordion and lederhosen. And the bridesmaids’ dresses somehow got switched to salmon pink taffeta with butt-bows. And that’s not even mentioning the fact that Sebastian’s ex-lover, the zombie-slash-vampire-slash-witch who just happens to be the mother of his undead son, wants the both of us six feet under. Now I know why some girls turn into Bridezilla…

So... What do you think? Are you excited??? It comes out in May 2009!!!

You Know What I Hate...?

I hate how hard it is to lose weight. I know I sound like such a girl, but I've been regularly working out at the gym for over a year now and I think I've lost all of five pounds. The worst part? If I don't work out regularly and decide, "Oh what the hell" and have a peice of pie, I INSTANTLY gain a pound that it's taken me months to walk off.

Mother bluther.

On the flipside, my friend and fellow writer Naomi Kritzer gave me the latest DVDs of "Battlestar Galactica" (the new one, of course,) and I can now catch up on all the comings and goings of my favorite SF TV show.

Yum, Jamie Bramber.... All he had to do to lose weight was jump rope for a couple of episodes, goll dang it. Why doesn't that work in REAL LIFE (tm)????!!

Now I'm off to go have some bread and water....

Grumble, grumble.

Urban Fantasy and Real Life (tm)

In class last night, I ended up talking about... well, a lot of things, but one bit I thought amusing enough to share here is about where FANTASY ideas come from.

I've yakked on here at this blog a lot about where to get good science fictional ideas, but not so much about fantasy. One of the things I ended up writing on the chalkboard last night was: "notice weirdness."

I do think that's really fundamental to being a good speculative fiction writer. If you notice the weirdness of every day life, you begin to articulate ways you can describe that. I remember a class many years ago (or maybe it was the MarsCon panel on "plot" with Walter Hunt, in which Kelly McCullough and my alter ego got seriously wound up about how "every scene needs to be in SERVICE TO PLOT!!!" and I'd had so much coffee, Walter worried my head was going explode.) Anyway, the point is, that I remember explaining to someone that writing good exposition/narrative is like imagining that you (the character) are traveling with an invisible foreign exchange student (the reader) through you fantasy/science fictional landscape. When you stop to buy a soda, you might turn to him/her and explain, "In this country, we use credit cards for everything. Money isn't real here, it's just electrons, which represent debt...."

How this relates to "noticing weirdness" is that you can't really distill concepts like our economy into little, entertaining sound bytes unless you spend some time noticing just how absurd it all is, you dig?

And it doesn't have to be something so complex as our economy, it can be noticing other small, random weird bits that then mushroom into full-blown story ideas. The example I gave last night was from a real conversation I had with friend and fellow writer Sean M. Murphy on Tuesday night. He said, "Hey, I've got this great idea for you to steal!" and then proceeded to recount his drive over. Apparently, he was behind this truck that had one of those business decals on the back. It was for a tattoo parlor called "Monster Ink," which was cool enough in itself because it very easily lent itself to any number of urban fantasy ideas in which tattoos have magical/totemistic powers, but the best part, he said, was the phone number: (651) ***-DEAD, which automatically made him ask one of those central to story generating "what if" questions: What if a vampire ran a tattoo parlor??

So there you go.

My advice to all you writers out there: Notice Weirdness!

Nature Walkin'

Today St. Paul Public Schools have what they call an "early release" day, which has always sounded to me like some kind of prison term, but you know... what it means is that in not that long now I'll be picking Mason up from school. Our plan is to go somewhere for a nice, long nature hike. Both Shawn and I worry that Mason doesn't get to go outside very much now that he's a full-day kindergartener. The truth is, he could pretty much count on almost a half-day of outside adventure when he was in Pre-K. I loved to, (when weather permitted, of course, I mean, this IS Minnesota) spend the afternoon with him at the beach, in the park, walking in the woods, or just running around (or even just sitting and reading) in our own backyard.

It's a beautiful day out today, and I've never visted the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Reserve, which is just south of the international airport and a short drive from the Mall of America. The information on their web site looks cool. Plus, if it turns out not to be to our liking, we're not far from Minnehaha or Hidden Falls at that point.

I need to go if I'm going to get any "real" writing done. See ya all on the flip side!

Happy Belated Mabon

For our Mabon celebration last night, Mason and I baked cookies in the shape of fallen leaves. We decorated them with frosting in fall/autumn colors: reds, yellows, oranges... and even some green and brown (chocolate!) We also made moon shaped cookies, of course! I made several dozen because we have a very tiny maple leaf shaped cookie cutter that made bit-sized cookies I thought would be nice for Mason to take to his kindergarten class for snack treat.

Mason has been very anxious to start his "magical training," so we also did a very small ritual that we usually do on Imbolc, but have been forgetting... which is that every year we add a bead to our life necklaces. Mason's was started at his Wiccaning, and this year he added beads for the cats. It wasn't a very harvesty thing, but as we beaded we told Mason about why we celebrate Mabon and about how the days will start getting darker until we finally reach the darkest day: Winter Solstace.

For my own harvest things, I've been baking a lot of bread to save on food costs this year. I make a single sandwich loaf every other day now. I got a really good recipe from one of our thousand of baking books that I've been slowly perfecting. The bread is perfect for sandwiches, but Shawn has also been craving some "artisan" bread, like French baggettes, which I'm going to try to make now and again as well.

At any rate, Happy Mabon!

It's Monday...

...so I'm writing about ideas over at Something Wicked. As I say there, I'm not one of those writers who can come up with really cool ideas at the drop of the hat. I believe this is one reason why I'm a novel writer rather than much of a short story person. I guess I feel like if I'm going to invest all the energy it takes for me to come up with a cool, viable* idea, then I want to milk it for all its worth.

Ironically (or perhaps synchronicity-ly,) my Loft class subject on Wednesday is: "'Where the Heck is Schenectady' Finding SF Ideas." I've write about this subject here on this blog before, but every time I teach this class I come up with a new answer to this age old question. Tune in on Thursday to see if I've got a different insight after talking about it for two hours at the Loft.

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*This is the hardest part for me. It's one thing to come up with an idea, another thing for it to be well-suited to hang a story on, you know?

Today, I Was A Parent

Which is my big excuse for not getting any writing done so far today. Instead of writing, I visited my son's kindergarten class. Mason has been having a little trouble adjusting to the new teacher/new routines. In art they did a project about their favorite part of the day, and Mason drew a picture of going home. After that, I thought, "Hmmm, maybe I should check things out," and since the teacher made an open invitation for us to stop by any time....

It was fun, and honestly, I'm glad I did it because it assaged many of my fears.

I still have concerns, but now I have more concrete information to base them on, which will help when it comes time again for parent/teacher conferences.

Then Shawn and I went home for lunch, and I'm only now getting around to "starting" my usual day as a writer.

So, I Guess I'm Teaching...

By chance, I happened to log-in to LJ last night around 6:30 pm and one of the readers of my blog casually wrote, "Hey, see you tonight! I'm taking your class at the Loft."

As A. A. Milnes might write: "!... !!... !!!"

The last thing I had heard from the Loft was two weeks ago, when they very kindly informed me that my class VERY LIKELY would be cancelled because they only had four people signed up at that time. My assumption (and you know what you get when you ASSume) was that they would give me a call or an email telling me if it WAS a go. Guess not. I'm just really, REALLY grateful for LJ right now and the chance that someone made an off-hand comment, or, as I told my students last night, I'd have been sitting home in my pajamas watching "The Closer."

Feeling Old...

... because I just discovered that Mason's kindergarten teacher is on Facebook.

You Say TV Like That's a Bad Thing

Over at the Wyrdsmiths blog, Kelly McCullough is talking about how he has been without a TV since 1983 and how this confuses people.

He doesn't actually say that thing you often hear from English and creative writing instructors say, which is "Turn off your TV" with the corresponding implication that people who watch TV waste their brains and all their creativity pools on the floor at their feet, but this implication lingers in between the text.

And I want to refute that.

If it weren't for TV, I wouldn't be a writer.

Let me say that again so that I'm perfectly clear: if it weren't for TV, I wouldn't be a writer.

I was inspired to write Archangel Protocol (under my other name) after watching an "X-Files" episode and watching the entire run of "American Gothic."

If the TV eats your brain, you should turn it off. But it's not all the evil-to-creativity that people imply that it is.

That's all I'm saying.

Foiled by Faeries!

So I wrote my usual Monday morning blog over at "Something Wicked," but let me tell you, girl, it's hardly worth the re-direct. I'm very uninspired today, and I blame that on my inability to drive through Minneapolis without getting lost.

A little background to explain the above: I'm currently a Saint Paulie, and have been for over a decade now. I lived for six years on the OTHER side of the river in Minneapolis (think Oakland vs. San Francisco. St. Paul = Oakland), but apparently the faeries of the place no longer recognize me as one of their own.

St. Paul and Minneapolis have a long and sordid rivalry. At one point, I'd hoped to write a novel that "explained" the profound differences between the two cities via magic and/or faeries. (Turned out the research overwhelmed my ability to make forward motion.) The thing is, Minneapolitans always complain about St. Paul -- they think it's impossible to find things in our town. Our former governor/former pro-Wrestler Jesse Ventura once infamously snarked that he thought the streets of St. Paul must have been planned by "drunken Irishmen." St. Paulies often feel the same way about Minneapolis (only I supposed we'd have to insert "drunken Norwegians"). After all, it's not a joke that in Minneapolis you can stand on the corner of Hennepin and Hennepin (it turns a ninety degree angle under the highway) and parallel streets will sometimes cross and flip sides.

After moving to St. Paul, I've become a rabid supporter of my town, and I think that the Minneapolis faeries are on to me. Because, I SWEAR, every time I have a reading gig in Minneapolis I get lost. (With the notable exception of gigs at either Uncle Hugo's or Dreamhaven, but both are located on the evil lay line of Lake Street, which may negate the faeries' ability to excert their magick on me.)

To this end, I spent much of my usual writing time this morning driving aimlessly through the southern suburbs of Minneapolis trying to find a Home Depot I've been to a thousand and six times.

It's definitely a Monday. Damn faeries!*

--------------------------------- * Note: before you alert my doctor that I'm apparently off my meds, this whole St. Paul/Minneapolis faerie thing is the product of my well-documented overactive imagination.

My First Day as a Writer

I think this whole writing thing is going to work out for me. I got up and got my family off without too many hitches, and then I hauled my a$$ to the gym and worked out. I cleaned the house a bit (I mopped the kitchen!) and did the usual maintenance things like sweeping and dishes, and then...

I wrote.

I didn't get a huge word count in yesterday, but it was well over a thousand words and, more impressive to me, I managed to work on two DIFFERENT projects. And most importantly to readers of this blog (if there are any) I started BETTER WED THAN DEAD/HONEYMOON OF THE DEAD, the fifth Garnet Lacey book. I'm really pleased how quickly I picked up Garnet's voice after having spent most of the day's writing energy working on my science ficiton novel.

Garnet is so fun.

Whoot!

So in about three minutes, I'm going to take Mason off to all-day kindergarten. Then I will be a full time writer. I'm sure I'm going to squander some of my time, plus there are things I need to get done, like grocery shopping and housecleaning... but even so, I suspect I'm finally going to have a whole lot of time to just WRITE. I'm so excited I could barf. I've go so many projects that have been waiting for today. I'll probably run around trying to do everything at once, but it's going to be great to finally have the time.

New Review: Writers Are Reads. com

If you want to know what I've been reading lately check out my review of Tobias S. Buckell's SLY MONGOOSE on WritersareReaders.com.

So... what are YOU reading these days?