You Should (Do Something With That)

I managed to terrify myself on Twitter today. I know what you’re thinking: that’s not that hard. But bear with me for a second and I’ll explain why this Squarespace ad had me spiraling down into a pretty dark place. 

If you live for your passion, you should share it with the world. Create a beautiful website for your photography. https://t.co/rL6xyZZKNs

— Squarespace (@squarespace) May 11, 2016

​On the surface, it’s a gorgeous ad. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s pretty freaking sweet graphic design. Take an awesome vista, in wide view, and frame the center of it with just the implication of a web browser (Squarespace is, after all, trying to sell you on making a website on their platform), coupled with the words, “You should.”

The design captured and captivated me. If it hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been nearly so disturbed by the message.

Writing What You Know and Researching What You Don't

Beginning writers are often given the advice "write what you know." It's not a rule, not by a long shot. It's advice.

And it's not even advice that applies  long-term.

It's training wheels.

When you're starting to write, you have a lot of brand new considerations to make. You're learning to balance craft -- storytelling, grammar, narrative, pacing, character, dialog -- and the best way to do that is to do. That is, write. And if you're spending the majority of your time researching, then you're not writing.

Further, it can become hard to parse if your story isn't working because of craft issues or because you're writing about something you clearly have no experience with. It's best to eliminate variables to help diagnose the problem. In this case, eliminating places, careers, time periods, situations, etc., that you're unfamiliar with, means that the problems that are left are probably craft problems.
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So once a writer reaches the stage where her writing feels solid enough to take on research . . . well, that's a brand new, fabulous can of worms.

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Research: it's like spinach for writers

You need to know what you're talking about. There it is. The reason we say "write what you know." You need to know what you're talking about. If you've experienced it, all the better. If you haven't, then you need to research it to make it something you know.

And there are three layers of knowing to consider: details/mechanics, emotions, and cultural/social structures.

Details and mechanics can always be researched. Start with a Google search. Read articles on the topic. Read books on the top (or the relevant parts of books on the topic). Visit the location. Visit museums or reenactments of the time period. Watch/read fiction with a similar setting.

You can find Writer's Police Academy events put on around the country -- very popular with mystery writers for obvious reasons. They walk writers through some routine procedures, let them learn what it feels like to be handcuffed, answer questions, and the like.

Of course, technical details can be gleaned from reading-research or watching-research, but nothing beats the real thing for the sensory experience. The smell, sound, taste, and feel of the thing/place can instantly make fiction real, regardless of how well we can "see" it.

Emotions. The way people react in certain situations and the ways they process information, grief, etc. -- those are much harder to do direct research on. The best research on this count is life experience. The more situations you've encountered in your life, the more you know about your own reactions and the reactions of others. Some can be discerned through people-watching, and some through really engaging with fiction, but nothing beats life experience.

Have you ever read something where the character's emotion seems totally off base and you just have to wonder, has the writer ever actually experienced the death of someone close to them? or falling in love? had their heart broken? been cheated on? lost a job? been told they had a life-changing diagnosis? been in combat? or whatever the situation is. Research/experience is important here too.

Not to mention social structures. Different social groups have different structures and rules that determine how people act. Be aware that characters from different backgrounds will act differently, whether it's a cultural, generational, or linguistic difference. I've seen good writers fail miserably while attempting space-based military science fiction. They love the genre and have a grasp of the science, but absolutely no experience with the military, and it killed the realism of the character interactions in that particular setting. Can someone who's never served write good military SF? Probably, but it'll take a lot of research and the help of experts.

Research makes writing stronger. Like spinach.

But like Popeye, you don't apply the spinach directly to the problem, you ingest it and let it work through you. Don't dump research directly into the writing, let it work through you. Let it become part of your character building and creative process. Let it become part of your body and brain until you use it unconciously.

And beware the infodump-disguised-as-dialog route. That's a bit like swaping coats and expecting facial recognition software not to find you. Savvy readers will be able to see right through that disguised research dump.

But research that's well incorporated can heighten the reader's sensory experience. Do you know what a morgue smells like? I don't. Not from personal experience. But a well-written scene could transport me there even if it's not an experience I really want to have firsthand.

Research: it's like entering the Fire Swamp

Do you know someone who's been "doing research" on their novel for years? When you ask how the writing's going, they tell you about this or that resource they've found and how it's inspiring them, but updates on the actual writing of the story are much more sparse.

Research, as wonderful and necessary as it may be, can become a Fire Swamp for writers that prevents them from reaching their ultimate goal: the writing.  Patches of lightning sand to suck you in and suffocate you. Spouts of flame. R.O.U.S.s that creep along in the shadows, tailing you, wiggling their ugly noses to stay on your scent.

The Fire Swamp is absolutely not someplace you'd like to build a summer home, but it is a place you could live quite happily for a while . . . so long as you get out before one of the three great dangers of the Fire Swamp does you in. Or rather, kills your chances of completing a project.

It's the twists and turns of research that suck you in so that you never feel like you've reached the bottom, that you know enough, and can stop researching. It's the spurt of flame that destroys one idea, so you move your feet quickly and start down a new path of research you didn't expect to go down in order to flesh out a second idea. It's the creeping doubt that you're not getting it right, you need to know more before you can proceed or the critics and experts are going to eat you alive.

You may have to traverse the Fire Swamp of research. Just remember, once you go in you can make it out.

But why bother doing deep research at all? Because Wikipedia is a wonderful place to start research but a horrible place to end it.

Moving beyond Wikipedia

Wikipedia, a horrible place for your research to end. Yep, it's worth repeating.

Wikipedia can't tell you what a morgue smells like. It can't express to you on a scale of 1-10 how itchy and uncomfortable a Civil War uniform is. It can show you pictures of the coast of Ireland or the Amazon rain forest or the Southwest, but it can't tell you how the air feels on your skin in those places or the wuzziness of altitude sickness in a desert is like. Nor is it going to differentiate between technical detail and day-to-day details of certain occupations.

Consider Wikipedia on par with asking your spouse or neighbor or co-worker, hey, have you ever heard of such-n-such, and then discovering that they have a good passing knowledge of the thing. Conversational knowledge. They can give you keywords and point you in the right direction as you continue to research and read things by actual experts that is more in depth than a Wikipedia article could ever be (and eventually you can contact those experts, more on that later). Whether those are news articles, journal articles, or books.

And no, not all those resources are going to be free.

Well, not free on the internet. But if you have a library card, you can bet your ass they're still free. You just have to do some work and carry your butt down to your library.

Only have a popular library in your town? No access to a research library (usually a university library)? Actually, you do have access to huge libraries even through a tiny little small town library. Most public libraries are connected to a state-wide network that connects both city and university collections. In Michigan it's called MeL Cat, the Michigan eLibrary Catalog. What you can do with that website catalog is take your library card, the one from Podunk Town, and use it to check out books from the University of Michigan or Michigan State University or whoever has the book you want. And best of all, those libraries will deliver the book to your local library for free. You pick it up and check it out using your regular old library card.

If you have access to a system like this (and again, in Michigan you almost always can get access and I have to imagine other states have similar systems), you can get access to serious, vetted, in depth resources, some of which would be expensive -- or impossible, if they're out of print -- to purchase on your own.

All you have to do is be patient and wait for them to be delivered. Use that time to write the next scene. You know, avoid feeling like you're building a summer cottage in the fire swamp.

When/how to consult an expert

In the Roundtable Podcast interview "20 (more) minutes with Jeanne Cavelos, the host remarked that Jeanne Cavelos had several appeals for help listed on her website's front page. One of which was for experts in scientific fields she was not herself well versed in, and another appeal states, "My main character is bipolar (manic-depressive). If you are bipolar and don't mind sharing some of your experiences..."

I agree with the Roundtable Podcast host Dave Robison about the absolute remarkableness of reaching out. As writers who are creating whole worlds in our minds or who are perhaps hard pressed to carve out time alone to do the writing, the idea that we then need to reach out to others is . . . tough sometimes. Such an easier route is to just jump on Wikipedia and call it done.

Jeanne Cavelos urged writers to do research, "whether to make the setting more real, the science more real, or the magic more real." And divulged that when she started writing she didn't want to ask for expert help because she felt embarrassed to not know.

She also shared what she's found to be the best way to approach an expert: gather as much information about the subject as you can before you approach the expert -- asking them to give you a crash course in the topic isn't useful or polite -- so that by the time you're reaching out to them they know you "just have some questions that only a person can answer." Even mentioning the time she contacted an expert in manhole covers after reading the book the expert had written.

Yes, an expert in manhole covers. There are all sorts of people out there with specialized knowledge.

It reminds me of an Anne Lamott essay in Bird by Bird where she recounts becoming obsessed with figuring out the word for the wire thingy on top of a champagne bottle. It's called a wire hood, by the way, but gaining that knowledge led her down a path that eventually had her on the phone with a monk who worked in a vineyard. Her point in the essay was that researching by reaching out to speak to experts makes writing more communal (which Wikipedia cannot do -- although  admittedly, she was penning the essay before the rise of Wikipedia).

"Sometimes I think I know the answer and I just want to confirm it," Jeanne Cavelos says in her podcast interview. "And many times they [the experts] volunteer details that are incredible that I want to incorporate in some way into the book. That's one way primary sources and experts can really help you, providing these details that you can't imagine and you can't find in a book. As writers, we tend to believe we have pretty good imaginations, but really the truth is often way stranger and more interesting than we can imagine."

I once heard from a paramedic who said he'd been prepared to see weird stuff when he'd worked in New York City, but hadn't truly seen weird shit until he started working the same job in Cleveland. And no, I couldn't imagine the details. Not without asking someone who'd actually been there.

Changing of the Guard

Last month, I announced that I was stepping down as Editor-in-Chief of World Weaver Press, the speculative fiction small press I founded in 2012, to be succeeded by Sarena Ulibarri.

I am thrilled with what I've accomplished as Editor-in-Chief and by how far we've come in just under four years. My time as co-founder of the press has been fantastic, primarily because I've had the chance to work with such great authors crafting intensely interesting novels. I think that every reader of speculative fiction should pick up a World Weaver Press title, not because I published them, but because they are such damn engaging stories crafted by truly artful storytellers, each working in her own idiom.

I'm happy to be handing off the creative direction -- both for continuing the series we've started and to seek out new ones -- to someone who shares our vision and passion for speculative fiction and who can continue to drive World Weaver Press forward.

In her welcome post last week, Sarena Ulibarri writes:

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Ever since I became aware of World Weaver Press in 2013, I’ve known it was a special corner of the publishing world, brimming with talent. The gorgeous covers and professional presentation of these books made it clear the publisher truly cared about them, and the colorful, creative, and passionate stories between those gorgeous covers always exceeded my expectations. Each World Weaver Press book is a gem, and I am grateful Eileen Wiedbrauk was able to shine each of them up and put them on display.

I joined the World Weaver Press team as an Assistant Editor in late 2014, shortly after I had finished my MFA program and attended the 6-week Clarion Writers’ Workshop. For a few months after Clarion, I felt like I was in a constant freefall. World Weaver Press gave me a place to land — a place where all my skills and passions mattered. I’m a writer too, of course, but editing, whether at the developmental level or the copy editing stage, is deeply satisfying work for me. I have learned so much about great storytelling from Eileen and from the other World Weaver Press editors and anthologists.

Over the last couple of months, I’ve had the opportunity to interact with the World Weaver Press/Red Moon Romance authors and editors at a deeper level while we prepared for this transition, and let me tell you: these are amazing people. The stories we've published and will soon publish are stories that take you far from the mundane and weave bright and interesting new worlds. Our editors are fiercely in love with the projects they’ve chosen to work on, and that love comes through in every step of the publication process. ​

In a twist that may only appeal to me, I have to mention the absolutely adorable new graphic she's chosen for her "From the Editor's Desk" posts. It still features a cup of coffee, but it now has a tiny potted cactus -- appropriate as the press's management is now moving from the Midwest to Southwest. The original "From the Editor's Desk" graphic (above) was a shot of my actual desk at the creation of WWP. A lovely IKEA feature that has since been retired after extensive, shape-changing use. The pictured moleskine notebooks, Lamy pen, and coffee mug are still very much a part of my life, however.

But isn't that the crux of life? That we are more like shape-changing IKEA desks than quality fountain pens? That the course of use changes our shape, and shape changes our intent, and eventually, our use.

It was a fascinating journey, my time as Editor-in-Chief. Some of that time was indeed spent editing, but as any editor or small business owner knows, your primary job is project management regardless of the title you hold. I'm grateful for the experience. I'm met some great people. Grown through tackling the challenges. And I'm ready to face the next chapter of my life with great vigor and determination.

One thing I'm doing in the immediate present (as opposed to the near-future present, which is totally a thing -- I swear), is freelance book design. I am available on a for-hire basis to individuals and small presses to design cover art, format ebooks, and design interior paperback layouts. Information here.

Remember how I said an editor's job is a "project manager"? Well, at a small press that's only a few year's old, it's also book formatter and cover designer. I am responsible for crafting all of the books for WWP from early 2012 to the end of 2015. The move to doing this on a for-hire basis is a natural one for me. I'll even be continuing to do the occasional cover project or other project for WWP.

Later this spring (is it spring yet? I'm ready to be done with snow) I will be rolling out pre-designed book covers for purchase. I'll post another announcement when that happens. I'm really looking forward to the gallery of all the pretty covers!

Korean Drama Review: Splash Splash Love

Splash Splash Love is a two-part 2015 Korean web drama (I watched it on Viki). Yes, just two episodes. Totaling just under two-and-a-half hours, it's meatier than most feature films but briefer than most TV dramas. Consequently, the focus stays tightly on the lead character without much visual "down time" or delving into secondary characters. But you walk away from this absolutely delightful drama feeling like you've just watched a 12 or 16 episode story.

Dan Bi (Kim Seul Gi) is a nineteen year-old student who hates math more than anything. On the day of her big exam -- one she's certain will doom her to a dismal future because she has no shot at passing math -- she runs away from the testing center. Wishing to disappear to someplace far away, she jumps into a puddle . . . and falls through the puddle into the courtyard of a Joseon king. Her sudden appearance is witnessed by not just the king, but the entire court. Desperate to be seen as someone worth not killing, Dan Bi tells the progressive king she's exactly the person he's been searching for: a mathematician. [Read more . . .]

Oh My Venus!

Are you watching Oh My Venus? If you kdrama, you absolutely should be watching this show!
About a month ago, I gave my reaction to the first two episodes, I thought it was going to be awesome, and ten episodes in, it is still freaking awesome. The romantic relationship between the leads (1) does not involve fat shaming and (2) deviates from the majority of kdrama I've seen by being more grown up. The female lead is scripted to be 32, the male lead is . . . older but I couldn't say by how much. They don't do that awkward love/hate thing, or the oh-so-sweet-no-hand-holding-because-that's-skinship thing.

Love it so much!!! The first two episodes aired this week and I found myself immediately rewatching them. Oh My Venus (also titled Beautiful Lady) strikes exactly the right note.

Premise from DramaFever: 

In an effort to support her family, Kang Joo Eun (Shin Min Ah in her first drama since Arrang and the Magistrate) has become a workaholic lawyer without any regard for her personal well being. Overweight, unattractive and depressed at the prime of her life, Joo Eun comes across Kim Young Ho (So Ji Sub in his first drama since The Master's Sun), a renowned personal trainer who considers health a deeply personal calling. Can Young Ho and his stubborn perfectionism whip Joo Eun’s body—and heart—back into shape?

Want to know more about my assessment of the show? The heroine with a backbone, the mystery of the hero, the gorgeous tub time? Read on here. All my hopes and fears are coming and not coming to be in a way that's making me very happy. Let's hope it holds until the show's final episode!

Does it hurt? Not your feelings, your shoulder.
I don't care about your feelings, I care about your shoulder.

Giftmas Blog Tour -- Now with More Krampus

All month long Rhonda Parrish and her helper elves are hosting the posts of other people as part of my 2015 Giftmas Blog Tour. All the guest bloggers are welcome to write about anything they’d like so long as their post touched on a December holiday in some way, no matter how tangentially. This website will also host several Giftmas blog posts throughout December. Share them on social media using the hashtag #GiftmasTour. But wait! There’s more! ​We’re also giving away a whole whack of prizes (check out the list here) which you can enter to win using the Rafflecoper code below. Whatever December holiday you celebrate (or don’t) winning a stack of books will make it better! Krampus - in search of delinquent children, approaches a little boy during Krampusnacht in Neustift im Stubaital, Austria, on November 30, 2013. And a Very Merry Krampus to You For the past two years, whenever my friends, family, or the authors/editors I work with at World Weaver Press see a Krampus related article online or hear a Krampus bit of news, they immediately send it to me. My social media accounts floweth over with Eileen, have you seen this? Krampus links. But in early 2014, when editor Kate Wolford (Enchanted Conversation, Beyond the Glass Slipper,Frozen Fairy Tales) pitched to me the idea of World Weaver Press publishing an anthology of Krampus stories, I admit, I had no idea what she was talking about. But a bit of Googling and a few conversations later, I was in love. Okay, I wasn’t quite in love—yet—but I was fascinated. Krampus (also called Perchten or Tuifl) is a monster out of the Germanic Alpine tradition, and he’s been around for at least a thousand years—some sources say well over two thousand years—and specifically as a companion of St. Nick since the 16th century (or so the internet tells me). “His name comes from the German word krampen, which means claw. Some say he is the son of Hel from Norse mythology. Others say his physical features or even the chain and rusty old bells he wears come from other demonic-like creatures of Greek mythology” (source). Called by some “the Christmas Devil,” he’s not actually demonic in the religious sense of the word, at least no more than any other monster, troll, yeti, or other pagan-roots creature from folklore. Although Krampus certainly has the horns and chains and sometimes hooves associated with depictions of the devil. He’s also coated in shaggy fur and his most defining feature after the horns is a very, very long tongue. Take a quick look at any Krampus and you have to wonder what sort of influence this critter had in the design of Orcs in Lord of the Rings. In fact, the differences between Orc cosplay and Krampus cosplay are subtle. Yes, I just said Krampus cosplay. There’s a tradition in Europe—particularly in Austria but it’s done elsewhere and is catching on in North America—of holding Krampuslauf or “Krampus runs” on December 5, also known as Krampusnacht, or Krampus Night. Here’s my favorite YouTube video of a Krampuslauf, this one is from Graz, Austria, in 2010 . . .  . . . and if you want to watch the video and see the rest of the article, you'll have to head over to Rhonda Parrish's blog, host of the Giftmas Tour. You can also find and enter the rafflecopter giveaway there. There's three prizes all huge stacks of books.

Bring on the Boys (Over Flowers)

I’ve been watching Meteor Garden as well as the live action Japanese version of Boys Over Flowers, which I’ll refer to as Hana Yori Dango for clarity’s sake in this post. This brings me to three viewed adaptations total. While I’m not finished watching either of the above, and I’d really like to take a look at Let’s Go Watch Meteor Shower the Chinese version filmed after the more widely known Korean remake, I’ve come to three realizations:

1. Boys Will Be Flowers. Boys Will Be Assholes

The South Korean remake, epitomizes the shiny, saccharine side of kdrama—no swearing, no drugs, no drinking, no sex. Even when the plot involves attempted rape, roofies, and sex scandals, the characters behave as if everyone in the world is equipped with a chastity belt, so no big deal.

The F4 are such perfect little-boy-dolls that I struggled (and failed) to wrap my mind around two of them as supposed rampant womanizers who, at eighteen, were regularly seducing women in their twenties. Where Joon Pyo (leader of the F4) remains a violent, destructive force, the rest of the F4 is portrayed as a moderating influence on him (my experience with teenage boys is the exact opposite—usually a group of teens tends toward the lowest common denominator) as well as a gentlemanly shield to Jan Di (female lead). Except that the F4 is, in the school, a violent force of feared and revered, untouchable bullies. The idea that they immediately melted into upstanding young men upon closer inspection was, to me, TV magic—acceptable in a scripted drama but not at all realistic.

And not workable in an American scripted drama. At least not without a deeper exploration of the psychology behind these beautiful-but-damaged boys.

I couldn't imagine an American F4 ever being produced in a way that stayed true to the manga while appealing to American TV appetites and expectations.

Then I watched the Japanese and Taiwanese adaptations of the story.
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The Taiwanese F4 are drunk selfish assholes. They heckle and harass each other and Sancai (the female lead). They continue, throughout the length of show, to use other students as punching bags. They absolutely cannot stop ragging on Si (the leader of the F4) for his perpetual state of virginity.

Ooohh. Now I can totally picture an American adaptation.

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2. America Already Has Its Boys Over Flowers

No, not that ill-fated Boys Before Friends adaptation cancelled after a few episodes because the leads and director all hated each other. I'm talking about Veronica Mars.

Think about it.

If you don't consider the mystery-solving aspect, Veronica Mars is about a working-class girl in a love/hate relationship with a clique of uber rich “It Boys” in a high school rife with class conflict. It has the deeply damaged boys who act out, the hateful mothers, the love triangle, and of course the strong, scrappy teenage girl who holds it all together and changes the lives of everyone around her.

Of course it has a strong Girl P.I. premise and plot. But in American TV there are no compelling scripted series that are solely romantic comedies the way there are in Asia. Oh, there are comedies with romances, family sagas that rely heavily on romantic relationships, but in just about every Amercian show I can think of it’s the comedy aspect that comes first (The Mindy Show), or the family drama (Gilmore Girls), or themystery (Castle), etc. Maybe there are some teen dramas that seem to be only focused on who is getting with whom, but their scopes are much larger than a single couple. I’ve yet to see an American TV show that directly correlates to the romance novel genre: a plot focus solely on the coming together of a single romantic couple. With the possible possible exception of True Blood, which let’s face it, is based on a novel. On television, the sort of romance-only plot we see in romance novels is the purview of made-for-TV movies. (Ex: just about every Christmas movie on the Hallmark Channel.) Which is all to say: I’m willing to overlook the main premise of Veronica Mars, the mystery to be solved, for the sake of this comparison. ​

And maybe you still don't agree with me. That's fine. It makes sense to me. But no big deal. Let's carry on.

3. I’m Itching to Write My Own Adaptation

While watching Hana Yori Dango, I started to see glimmers of how this storyline could be realistic enough to be set in a US high school. Little plot bunnies started gathering on the edges of my perception, and their furry, twitching ears suggested it be set in Grosse Pointe, Michigan.

If you’re not familiar with south-east Michigan, Grosse Pointe is one of several ridiculously affluent suburbs of Detroit. Yes, the city of Detroit declared bankruptcy, and it’s considered one of the poorest, if not the poorest city in America. But don’t for a second think that this means there’s no money in the area. As a high school athlete who lived about 30-minutes from even the farthest suburbs of Detroit, we traveled into many of the suburbs for games. Some were surrounded by 8’ chain link and a sense of gloom. Some, like the private schools in Grosse Pointe were not only ridiculously shiny and well-equiped, they were remarkable for the fact that oldest, ugliest cars in the parking lot didn’t belong to the sixteen year-olds. No, those were found in the faculty lot. The student lots were full of brand new luxury cars, and VW bugs surely bought for their “cute” factor, and SUVs (frequently tricked out).

Sounds like the perfect place to set a Boys Over Flowers adaptation.

As eager as I was, it didn’t take much for me to realize that this is not what I want to spend my time writing about. I struggle to care about teen drama long enough to write or read it. I’m usually only able to take one book in any YA series before I’m over it. The exception to that not-really-a-rule are the sorts of YA that have such high tension and world-shattering impact that I must know how the world changes! Such as inHunger Games.  I got two books into Divergent, but don’t know if I’ll ever pick up the third. Cinder, City of Bones, Graceling, Throne of Glass . . . they’ve all fallen victim to this one-and-I’m-outta-here malady. Thankfully Salvage, which is an amazing YA sci-fi novel, is a stand alone. There’s a second book set in the world, but it’s not a direct plot continuation. So go read Salvage by Alexandra Duncan.

But you know, says I to myself, because if you’re a writer, all you really do is talk to yourself and sometimes put it down on the page, you know how you could both stay interested in the writing, Eileen, and make allowances for even the least-realistic plot points? Bring it into your wheelhouse. 

That’s right. I’m now hankering to write a Boys adaptation set in a paranormal Grosse Pointe private school.

I'll leave you with that odd little nugget.

Small Press Publishers, the Tiny and the Mighty

Recently I've had the pleasure of appearing on the Odyssey Writing Workshop's blog in a "Graduate's Corner" post, discussing the merits and might of small press publishing. The small press doesn't necessarily have the reach or the flashy . . . well, the flashy anything, but it can take risks on niche titles that might not be as well-represented by large publishers.

You can read the whole blog post on the Odyssey Writing Workshop blog, where I praise Chizine and Small Beer Press (of course I mentioned SBP, because I'm a total Small Beer Press fangirl), as well as discuss some of what was important to me as I built World Weaver Press from passion into press.

The Kale and the Fury

Detox shakes. Health shakes. Drink your veggies courtesy of your blender. Sounds good in theory. Sounds so damn healthy that you can't completely ignore the possibility that the effort might be worthwhile--the effort of hording said veggies, blending them, and holding your nose as you choke them down.

I'm not a big fad dieter, but I've been known to dip my toes into a fad or two, maybe even wade in knee-deep.

That "Sacred Heart Diet" was one of the longest weeks of my life and it didn't even do that much in spite of the pounds my sorority sister claimed to have lost while eating only the prescribed veggie soup.

And I'm not EVER going to gulp down a raw egg, blended or otherwise. But the concept of a fresh, good for you, homemade beverage can lure me in like the glowy antenna of some deep water predator.

I chose the least scary detox shake recipe I could find on the internet. Okay, the second least scary as the one that called for dark chocolate powder and coconut milk I couldn't finish because I didn't have any strawberries . . . or coconut milk, actually.

So here I am blending frozen blueberries and soy milk and a bit o cucumber with water and probably something else, and I'm thinking how hard can it be? It's not like I'm doing a freaking kale infusion here.

So wrong. I was so wrong.

Read the rest of "The Kale and the Fury" #HiddenKaleFTW . . .

Cat and the Internet

You know how there's software that can block your access to the internet for a fixed amount of time, supposedly to increase your productivity by keeping you off Facebook or other time-suck sites? Well, this is what I have: She may not be software, but she is soft. And she does keep me off the internet, but I don't think she's increasing productivity.

 

But this whole train of thought has gotten me looking into RescueTime and WriteRoom/DarkRoom programs. Although to be completely honest, I'm going to start with this writer's-hack of Microsoft Word (because why should I give up the word processing features when I don't have to?) I've followed the instructions and for my experience, it turns Word into a notebook. No, not a computer-notebook, but it tricks my brain into thinking it's writing in an honest to goodness notebook-notebook. As long as I don't over-analyze the fact that I'm typing not writing by hand, I can forget for a time that I'm on a computer.

Now. If I can just wrangle the cat.

Kdrama: a Primer

Kdrama or k-drama is the abbreviated form of “Korean Drama,” by which we mean mostly those TV shows produced in South Korea since the early 2000s, but it also can encompass TV shows (and movies) produced in Japan, Taiwan, and mainland China.

The whole thing intersects sometimes with KPop or k-pop.  K-pop can sometimes encompass kdrama and sometimes it’s used to refer exclusively to the South Korean music industry. Of course, there is huge cross over between the music industry and the drama industry in South Korea, far more than there is in America. In the States, most of us can name the Big Stars who’ve successfully crossed from music to acting or vice versa—Timberlake, J Lo, Will Smith—but in Korea these talents don’t hire their own agents who work for them; no, the talent works for an agency that shells out a lot of money to train and raise up the future star, ideally in as many entertainment fields as possible. Because if a member of Girls Generation is on a drama it guarantees a certain male audience, and if your favorite drama oppa sings you a song, you’re gonna buy his CD.

This may sound obscure to many Americans, but we’re not talking “cult classics” here. This is a finely honed money making machine that in under 15 years has come to rival Samsung* among South Korean exports. An utterly addictive, completely consuming, why-can’t-any-one-else-hit-on-this-formula, unique TV watching experience.

*(It so happens I’m watching kdrama on a Samsung TV. Totally coincidental.)

No, I don't speak Korean.

Whenever I explain to people what it is I’ve been watching lately, their first question is, “Is it subtitled?” This is uttered with confusion, perhaps concern, not inquisitiveness.

Yes, they’re subtitled. After five years of public school administered French lessons I could barely order at a French delicatessen, why anyone would think I suddenly had functioning foreign language skills was beyond me.

Most of the shows with US/worldwide licensing are subtitled in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. The reallypopular ones are dubbed into Spanish. I’ve yet to see an English dubbing, and I don’t think I’d want to at this point.

Of course, I understand the tension here: “Subtitled” has come to be a code word for stuffy, pretentious, European art house films. And what I’m discussing is pure candy, fabulously low-brow, insanely addictive TV shows . . . but subtitled.

We call it what it is: an addiction.

What I’ve found striking is that when people (online, English speakers) refer to their kdrama viewing habits, they call it “my kdrama addiction” or “I’m a kdrama addict.” And that is the long and short of it: Something about this type of entertainment breeds rabid fandom.

I can’t say I’ve ever heard someone describe themselves as an “HBO addict” or say they have a “sitcom addiction.” They express some form of like.  Dislike, mild like, really like. Occasionally (rarely) love. But really, the “love” status is usually reserved for one show—I love True Blood!—rather than applied to an entire channel or genre or country’s output of TV.

Most addicting is the kdrama storytelling. Namely the lightheartedness. Dire things may happen. Horrible things may happen. But the show always resolves in a lighthearted way. “Antiheroes” aren’t really a Thing in kdrama. All the better. American and British film will only show a character alone with their emotions (particularly if those emotions are happy in nature) if it can serve as juxtapositioning for what comes next. A character alone in a car smiling is not a happy situation, it is a situation of utter dread because the absolute worst is about to unfold and a smart audience knows it--Downton Abbey, I'm looking at you. In Korean drama, a character shown driving down the road smiling, is shown to the audience to convey that he is happy, not to make more notable his eminent death.

I watch kdramas for the same reason I read romance novels: I know I won’t be depressed when the story is over, which is something no other genera of novel promises in every book.

Further addicting is the format... Read the rest of this post...

A Love Letter to Sci-Fi & Paranormal Romance

[Originally posted at redmoonromance.com]

I love speculative romance. Loving something is always personal, so I suspect the reasons you love it may be different than my own. And I want to hear those reasons in the comments! Until then, here's my love letter to the sub-genre:

Speculative fiction, whether sci-fi or fantasy or paranormal, is all about the what if? questions. Those wonder and awe inducing daydreams that have been a part of the stories we've heard and read since we were kids. What if we could fly? What if there are unicorns in another realm? What if there's a big red dog that wants to be my friend? What if there's something hiding in my closet, and does it want to eat me or play with me? What if I could command magic? What if aliens landed on Earth . . . and they looked like smoking hot men?

Read the rest of my love letter to speculative romance at RedMoonRomance.com . . .

Where Fairy Tales Come From

First off, I have done A Thing: my short story "Candy, Shoe, and Skull; Sallow Flowers Plucked Like Chains" appears in this month's issue of Niteblade Fantasy and Horror Magazine.

And yes, it's the dark fairy tale issue.

If you know me, you understand why that is perfect.

I've read the magazine and there are some delightfully wondrous and oh-so-dark retwistings of fairy tale in these digital pages. So far my favorites, other than my own story (because: of course), are Eric J. Guignard's "A Kiss and a Curse," a Beauty and the Beast retelling of dire consequence, the narrative poem "Et je ne pleurais jamais les larmes cicatrisantes magiques; c’est seulement un mensonge joli: Arne-Thompson Index No. 310" by Elizabeth McClellan featuring a Rapunzel with agency and engineering on her side, and Rhonda Eikamp's "The Men in the Walls," which is also very, very dark. Well, they're all dark. This is, after all, the dark fairy tale issue. But there's a delight in these dark stories that my brain keeps turning over and over. I love the twists and shapes of these tales.

My piece, "Candy, Shoe, and Skull; Sallow Flowers Plucked Like Chains,"really came about because I kept picking at the notion of where fairy tales come from, then applied that to the modern world.

We're all just dark and twisty beings who don't understand what's going on.

There are two main theories in folklore studies about the origins of these stories of the people and the fact that so many cultures developed the same basic tales seemingly independent of one another. One notion is that these tales arise from the collective subconscious.

Read the rest of this post . . .

Hibernation 2015 - wherein I discuss stashing food supplies and what I achieved of my pre-hibernation goals, and perhaps, the dreams I will dream during said winter incubation period

I recently got asked to do a Thing in another city, and I very seriously replied that I was, in fact, in hibernation until the end of February. A conservative estimate. In truth, the end of hibernation depends on the end of Snow Season, which is different from the end of Winter. Although the two are not wholly unrelated.

Northern Michigan winters are not something I take lightly. Yes, there are places where winter is worse and/or more persistent. But this is nothing to be sneezed at. Unless you have the flu on top of being trapped in your own house and really we all should have just gotten flu shots. No, I'm not completely cut off from civilization -- see, I have the internet, I have all the civilization I need -- but when your means of getting to the grocery store or anywhere else in town is a tiny compact car, you reevaluate your ability to fight the terror in white.

And damn if road slush didn't nearly do me in the other day. It wasn't even snow! Or ice! Just the goofy slush! Argh.

So I don't travel between Christmas and the start of March. Not if I can help it and certainly not for any distance.

The cupboard shall not run bare.

I have a December through March worry, which becomes a full on January and February neurotic maxim, to always have several days worth of food on hand -- food that can be turned into meals, not just a box of Cheerios and a pound of butter. Shudder. Because we never know when the next big snow is going to hit.

Last year the weather forecasts were dead on. Then again it seemed like we got 2-5" every day last winter, so I guess it's not that hard to predict. But this year they predict 3" we get none. They predict 6" we get none. They predict 5" we get 12." Sigh. And even when a mild 5" fell earlier this week, and I had diligently shoveled out all the requisite paths -- clear sidewalk for school kids, clear steps for mail man, clear driveway for me to get the car out -- I slipped and slid all over the place courtesy of aforementioned slush. So I try to stay off the roads the day of snowfall if I can. (A home office is a brilliant thing.) But if it snows for three days . . . I'm screwed. Or at least stranded.

Which is fine. Because I prepare.

I like to have enough on hand that I could, if needed, wait it out for a week until a clear day afforded me passage to the market that did not land me in the ditch or making new friends and acquaintances of the let's trade insurance information variety. At the very least I can stretch things out by eating rice and kimchi until I realize that I'm not Korean enough -- even in my own mind -- to eat kimchi with every meal. (It should be noted that technically I'm not Korean at all, I just watch too much K-drama and it's been rubbing off on me.)

Read the rest of this post...

Rate Your Festive Feelings on a Scale of 1 to 10

Last year, my relations expressed their upset that I had no plans to erect a Christmas tree in my living room. I was finally living someplace that had the space for a tree. Actually, I had the space for an ungodly monster tree. And having the space meant I should do it, of course. But I couldn't justify the expense of it, even for a small tree that would look like a ridiculous toy tree in said monster-sized space. See, if you've never put up a tree there are start up costs; at the very least you have to get a tree-stand even if you get super creative with your decorations and string popcorn like Laura Ingalls Wilder and hang cat toys on the boughs.

But I wasn't hosting any parties or celebrations that year, and more importantly, I didn't have kids. Trees are for people who have kids. Little kids, grown kids, kids at home, kids coming to visit, grandkids. Not only does tree trimming take an army or a ton of patience, it's a bit like cooking a whole turkey -- even if you get the small one, what's the point if there's only one or two people to enjoy it?

I still decorated. I hung garlands in the windows and ran some strategic strings of lights, stuck a couple nutcrackers on a shelf where the cat almost couldn't knock them down.

This year, not so much.

I asked my also-not-living-with-kids girlfriend if she had decorated:

Me: I have done zero decorating
Friend: Me too.
Me: And have only slightly more than zero impulse to do it.
Friend: I'm kind of pretending Christmas isn't happening. If I got a tree I think my cats would destroy it. Plus, what, I'm going to decorate a tree myself and then just look at it? what's the point?
Me: That's what I tried to tell my relations last year: trees are for people with offspring. I did get festive last year. Put up decorations. No tree, but knickknacks.
Friend: I have a cute wooden advent calendar up.
Me: Oh!!! I have a festive jar of candy canes! #TakeThatMarthaStewart Friend: LOL! Not just a jar of candy canes, a FESTIVE jar of candy canes!

Read the rest of this post...

Moving to a new site!

I'm continuing to blog sporadically at eileenwiedbrauk.com -- same address, new look. Hope you'll update your feeds and join me there!

Also you can catch me once a month at World Weaver Press, writing my "From the Editor's Desk" column.

Oct. 2 Green Man Event with Prizes

Bitten By Books is hosting an Urban Green Man anthology par-tay on Wednesday, October 2, 2013, starting at Noon CST. Drop by to chat with the editors, illustrator, and the many, many contributing authors of this great anthology of new fiction any time during the day or evening of October 2.

Oh, and did I mention there are prizes? Because there are prizes.

First off, if you RSVP that you'll attend before the event (here) and then you actually attend, you'll have 25 entries toward the $50 Amazon electronic gift certificate, provided by the publisher, EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing. More entries can be earned the day of the event.

We'll be answering questions that you submit and discussing how we took this old myth and made it new -- yes, I said we. Because I'm one of the contributing authors! [inserted excited-but-not-annoying-and-completely-professional-noise here]

I'm trying to finish reading the anthology by Wednesday. I'm not sure if that's going to happen, but I'm excited to give it a go and at least finish the stories alongside my "Breath Stirs in the Husk" in the Earth section.

On Tuesday, the day before the event, I'll be posting here on Speak Coffee to Me how location, location, location really shaped my story ... and then creepily enough turned around and affected my real life. And for those of you who remember the days when I still posted bits of fiction here on the blog, it's the same location as The Trees (Jud, you're probably the only one still around from then who'll recall it).

The Putty-Theory of World Building

As a teenager, I attended a local day-camp for writers with several friends in what would turn out to be my first creative writing workshop ... workshop-ish. The lead instructor was perplexed (and yet fascinated) as to why my three friends and I all wanted to write fantasy, only occasionally dabbling in realism. None of the other workshoppers dallied across genres that summer, and he'd never seen teens so adamant about fantasy fiction. (Note: this was the universe pre-Harry Potter.)

We told him that the fiction we enjoyed reading the most was fantastic in nature, but this answer didn't appease him as we all admittedly read across many genres

It wasn't until I told him why fantasy was, at the time, easier for me to write that he seemed enlightened. At sixteen, I had (perhaps) half-a-clue as to why people behaved the way they did. Oh, I was engaged in social groups, but half the time I wasn't able to predict how I would react in a situation let alone how other people would. I didn't understand fully what motivated people or how they expressed those emotions, but I cared about getting it right in my fiction. And I just wasn't able to. But when I wrote second-world fantasy, I  could make up some cultural/magical reason for my character's behavior. Having a malleable world let me fill plot holes with fantasy putty.

I've since come to what I hope is a more sophisticated understanding of plotting and world building than I had at sixteen, but the putty or plaster-and-paint-over of fantasy writing was necessary to keeping me writing for years as I came to understand better how humans worked and how the adult world worked. I suppose I could have solved the same problem by setting all my stories in a high school, but that approach brought its own risks (and still does): anytime you write about a setting that too closely resembles your day-to-day life, people assume that you're writing about yourself / people you know. Getting caught in such a situation in high school can be the end of the world. Post-high school it's still pretty damn annoying.

Recently, a discussion came up about which genre was more "freeing" for a writer, science fiction or fantasy. As in, in which of these speculative sub-sets does a writer have more freedom to "just make stuff up." The initial question was posed with a predisposition toward sci-fi as freer, which given my experience, struck me as a goose of strange feathers: I would have never been able to use fantasy as putty if it hadn't been freeing.

As as teen, I also tried writing sci-fi, but like urban fantasy, sci-fi rests on the presupposition that our current society has developed into the story's society. So I'd still have to understand people to build the story. Unless the story was full of aliens, then rock on. But for fantasy set in a secondary world, even if it was pseudo-medieval, it was never actually "earth," so I could wend as I wanted.

Classic (i.e. mid-century) science fiction was open to a lot more possibilities. Recent trends in sci-fi suggest that it should be bound by known physics ... which has led us to lots of post-apocalyptic Earth-based stories since so many scientists believe that faster-than-light travel was impossible (although that opinion might be changing), so we couldn't have space operas or alien encounters (the odds of humanoid life developing independently on another planet are ... minuscule), or space federations or Death Stars, or ray guns, or living ships ... in short, it got serious about its science, which curtailed the freedom of writing sci-fi while sucking the fun out of reading it.

Similarly, there's been a movement in second-world fantasy fiction to make the worlds more rule-based and harshly criticize any novels that don't make rigid physics-like rules for their worlds. Destroying the freedom of bending fantasy into any shape you want and -- to make a personal appraisal -- giving us fantasy novels like Game of Thrones which has a pseudo-medieval setting but very, very few traces of magic and speculative wonder in it. And what magic there is, is disapprovingly scrutinized.

Anecdote: I once heard that a reader, upon meeting George RR Martin, questioned him on why he had a giant wall of ice in his novel as it was physically impossible. GRRM (not pleased by the question) responded, "it's magic."

Personally, I think it's a question GRRM set himself up for by having a world that was so rule based, so seemingly real that the presence of magic sat with the reader as ... odd.

But the notion that science fiction should be bound by physics and fantasy should be bound by a rule system as rigorous and rigid as physics is only one school of thought.

There's another school of thought out there that writers should reclaim the fun and freedom of science fiction and fantasy. That says let magic be magical, not so rigorously studied and understood that there could be a Wikipedia page on it. See N. K. Jemisin's beautiful piece where she asks "Why Does Magic Have to Make Sense? A piece she opens with the Arthur C. Clarke quote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." There's a revival of this fun and freeing fiction going on. I feel it's more noticeable in science fiction as editors and writers take a stand against the dark depressing overtones and produce works like Far Orbit: Speculative Space Adventures, which is coming out in spring 2014.

I say hurrah! to putting the fun and freedom, the mystery and magic, the awe and wonder back into science fiction and fantasy. A novel should, of course, always make sense, but I say that having a malleable world is a beautiful thing, and so long as a writer is willing to sand and paint after they've plastered some strange magic into their world, then bravo!, it need not be one continuous, unblemished piece of drywall. Why take some beautiful, wondrous, unexplained but unblemished creation like an energy field created by all living things that surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together ... then go and kill the wonder and restrict its freedom by quantifying it into a threshold number of midichlorians?

Top photo credit: "Students' notice board, 1973," LSE Library via Flickr.

Good Cat, Bad Cat

And now to indulge in the internet's favorite past time, Cats. Recently, Good Cat went in to see the vet for some regularly scheduled feline maintenance.

She was quite vocal in her objections to going in the box, leaving the house, going in the car, leaving the car, and sitting in the vet's waiting room. The fuzzy brown puppy in the waiting room thought she was fascinating. But he was a very well behaved fuzzy brown puppy and just stare from across the room. Good Cat does not hiss. She cries. Short, plaintive bursts of noise that struck just the right acoustic balance to fill the entire waiting room and draw the attention of all three of the reception workers ... who were all more interested in how well the fuzzy brown puppy was handling everything. Sometimes cats can't get no love.

More vocal protests accompanied our move into the exam room. When I opened the door of the carrying box, she turned around, presenting her butt to the door. Clearly stating that while she by no stretch of the imagination did she want to be in the box to begin with, she would not be departing at the current locale. I'll get off at the next stop, thank you very much. So when the vet-tech up-ended the box, the result was a graceless but surprisingly funny rear-end first exit. More meowing. And some army crawling to the safest looking positions.

Vet examination proved that Good Cat is a Good Cat with no noticeable health problems, unlike Bad Cat who has had a bad tooth, urinary crystals and infections, eosinophilic granuloma complex, is so allergic to hard water that she'll lick the fur off her stomach if she gets too much, and last summer, got pneumonia. Oh and when she was a kitten she got a ball of infection pressing between bone and skin (there's a name for when an infection makes itself into a ball so that antibiotics don't work on it but I've forgotten it) which caused her paw to explode. Bad cat is expensive. But friendly. Everyone at the vet's office loves her.

Good Cat only ever sees vet for vaccinations.

I did however need to run by the vet my one concern about Good Cat's habits: she eats spinach. Loves it. She hears the baby spinach bag crinkle and she's there waiting next to me to see if I'll throw her a leaf which she then sniffs then hauls off to a new local to play with and eventually consume.

Of course, in fear of being considered an awful Pet Parent, I must downplay my enabling of Good Cat's spinach addiction. So I tell vet that Good Cat will steal spinach and snag dropped leaves off the floor ... which yes, she totally does, the fact that I regularly throw her a leaf is not mentioned. Vet nods. Asks if Good Cat might have a little bit of vomiting post-spinach-snag. Nope, no vom.

Vet nods again. Tells me, "If she wants to enjoy the occasional leaf then I don't see any harm in it."

Best. Vet. Line. Ever. The occasional leaf, said the same way a doctor would explain the benefits the occasional glass of red wine. 

So I head home in pretty good spirits. But hey, I'm not the one that just got stuck in a little box, uncerimoniously dumped from said little box, then given a rabies vaccination in my hip. I let the cat out, take out the trash, run to the post office, come home and find Good Cat is happy but sleepy. More than willing to let me pet her. Bad Cat is under the bed.

Bad Cat is usually an attention whore. Needy. In your face. Friends with everyone. Pet me. Love me. Feed me if you must but I'd really rather you dangle a string for me to pounce on. Nope. None of that. Not today. Today she is under the bed. Try to pet her -- gone. Dangle string -- she eyes you suspiciously. Bad Cat knows where Good Cat has been and Bad Cat is waiting, waiting for her turn to be shoved in the box and carted off.

For the rest of the day she waits, waits for the other shoe to drop. Meanwhile, Good Cat gets her "occasional leaf."

Krampus Anthology to Take Submissions

Gorgeous Krampus art from a book
I have absolutely no association with
other than drooling over the art:
Krampus: The Yule Lord by Brom.

Specter Spectacular II: 13 Deathly Tales closes to submissions on Saturday, but don't despair you writers of the macabre! Also on Saturday, June 15, Kate Wolford will start reading submissions for a Krampus based anthology as part of a joint venture between World Weaver Press and Enchanted Conversation: A Fairy Tale Magazine.

Description: 
You know the Jolly Old Elf of Christmas, right? Of course you do. You can’t avoid him. Yet, Santa Claus isn’t just a kindly old expert at breaking and entering and leaving gifts he didn’t actually buy for the children of a house. At least he isn’t in Austria and many other parts of Europe.

In these ancient places, where, perhaps, the old, old gods still add a touch of mischief, Krampus is the angry, punishing sidekick of St. Nicholas (Santa’s counterpart in much of Europe). Known for his willingness to punish rotten children, Krampus might even be considered Santa’s dark side or evil twin.

Krampus is the sort of guy more and more North Americans want to explore. He’s definitely having a moment this side of the Atlantic. To that end, World Weaver Press and Enchanted Conversation: A Fairy Tale Magazine are pleased to announce a joint venture: An anthology of Krampus short stories.

Although the book is yet to be named, we hope you’ll explore every possible Krampus angle via short stories. He’s a nasty old dude, and we hope your imaginations will get the better of you.

Anthology editor Kate Wolford ran a mini Krampus story contest for Enchanted Conversation last Christmas where there was lots of interest -- it was certainly the first time I'd heard of the Krampus! -- and gives her insights on what she's looking for in the upcoming anthology: “Krampus taps into a kind of ancient darkness that captures the spirit of winter. He also seems to lend himself to humor and horror and maybe, a bit of magic. I think the story possibilities are endless and intriguing.”

Guidelines and instructions for submission.

Kate Wolford is editor and publisher of Enchanted Conversation: A Fairy Tale Magazine at fairytalemagazine.com. She teaches first-year college writing, incorporating fairy tales in her assignments whenever possible. World Weaver Press released her annotated anthology, Beyond the Glass Slipper: Ten Neglected Fairy Tales to Fall In Love With, in April 2013.

World Weaver Press is a publisher of fantasy, paranormal, and science fiction, dedicated to producing quality works. As a small press, World Weaver seeks to publish books that engage the mind and ensnare the story-loving soul.