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.

Pick Yourself Up and Start Again

This essay (article, post, whatever you may call it) is going to be about writer's hope, direction, perhaps even the implementation of  some self-discipline. It's about embarking on a new project -- or more precisely, embarking on the finishing of a project, the project itself isn't exactly new just the stirring desire to finish -- with positive, patient persistence. (For hopefulness about writing, read on...)

How I'm going to convey that feeling isn't something I've planned out. Perhaps this is indicative of the fact that I've not much planned my project -- all I have is a feeling to spur me on. But I try to think of these posts as short essays (blog posts are always better when they draw some sort of conclusion that echos the opening, no?), and as I try to implore my writing students, essays are nothing more lofty than an attempt to communicate your personal thinking on some subject, the term "essay" coming from the French essayer (v), to try. Or essai (n) a try.

An essay is an attempt at expression. It may meander, it may be cut and edited, but it shouldn't be overly rigid in construction and planning, otherwise how can you make great discoveries of self and thought while you essay? Save your structure and fact and organization for editing, well after you've essayed your way to some truths.

And so I am trying.

At this precise moment, I'm trying to stay positive, not sick to my stomach as I watch the pest control guy spray just part of the nearby apartment building. Just part? I understand how that's cost effective, but not how that's get-rid-of-the-pest effective. Ug. Another great reason to keep cats: they find the pests before you do and, usually, eat it before you're the wiser.

But the man with a can of pressurized chemical spray isn't the only thing which should be dragging on my sense of direction and hope, yet isn't. For starters, the Attack of the Back has devastated my past week.

The non-compliance of my body to respond to my commands in a useful manner meant that on this past Saturday it took me twenty minutes to go from reclining to standing, unassisted. And then once I was standing it was less than twenty minutes before Attack of the Back protested so loudly that I was forced back into the previous, reclined posture. I am currently on the mend. Mend-ish. I may actually have to give in and go see a chiropractor. You know, get over that aversion/advice I was previously given that once you start going to a chiropractor you can't ever stop. Because hey, isn't that also true for dentists? And because hey, these Attacks of the Back are painful and they don't look like they're ever gonna stop coming to visit me either.

So I'm upright again. Sorta. I had big 2013 dreams of punching out a lot of words starting on January 1 and not stopping until ... okay, just not stopping. But the reality is that the punching out hasn't started. Half-way through the month and I'm still working to get my feet under me (figuratively) from the whirlwind end of 2012 and (literally) from the Attack of the Back. Newyness aside, there's no reason that my self-discipline and goals have to be pegged to calendar start and end points. So sally forth! I say. And tallyho! Cowabunga! And other similar cries which indicate a rush of activity!

No, no, that's not what I want.

If there's one thing I've learned about myself, it's that I am prone to manic writing. Followed by furloughs of no writing. Some of which is deadline driven -- oh baby, there ain't nothing like the sound of a deadline whooshing past to get me on task! -- but some of it is an intensity issue. Frenzied activity in general is easy  to get on board with. It's Day One of the exercise routine/diet where you're super good, followed by week two when you can't even remember that you're on a routine/diet because you just can't take the super good intensity anymore. You're like, dude, chill out with this craziness and get me a cupcake. I need moderation and discipline. Not a celery stick and ice cream pendulum. Not the frenzy that follows the cry of tallyho, but the deliberate fox-stalking which precedes it.

Instead, a gentle push to get me started:

Today I received a lovely, personal letter from a magazine which I respect telling me that my story was well written and interesting, and then telling me all the reasons why it wasn't going to be published by them. What a great big happy-sad feeling that produces. I adore the fact that they took the time to talk to me about the story. I'm pleased with their compliments. But I'm sad to have failed in the endeavor of getting them to publish the story.

"Bittersweet" doesn't really begin to describe the conflicting emotions this particular letter invokes. "Bittersweet" describes previous such letters I've received -- letters which I usually don't blog about because I don't usually feel the desire to make such things public. This time I'm far too happy and far too sad, simultaneously, to reconcile the two into any nameable emotion.

It is however a spur. A gentle push to get me started. Along with all the things the letter said, I take away this: they're eager to see what I send them next. So on to the next. A brilliant nudge to get me to complete edits on a short story I've let languish for eighteen months. And get it done now. Using the short goal to achieve a sense of action and purpose, to garner momentum, enough to pick myself up and start again.

---

Note: I couldn't find a way to work it into the above essay, though I did try, but I wanted to point out another lovely post on writer's hope, direction, and discipline that I read today. Rebecca Enzor's "Give Them a Chance to Say Yes" inspired by a beautiful tweet by Amalia Dillin. Her direction is more focused on submissions than creation, but still terribly hopeful. Autumn MacArthur's blog is also great for these sort of inner-looking hopeful-writer-rants which I love.
Top photo credit: "by Stik" By Feral78 via Flickr.

Grab Bag

My energy has currently been sunk into getting the Haunted October blog tour up and running and all the graphics settled and books out and ... whew. Well, I suppose it's too soon for a "whew," but I'll take any accomplishment as a small victory. So this Tuesday's blog post is a grab bag o' interesting stuffs, making it in just under the wire, minutes before midnight local time.

Got a ghost story you're sharing on  your blog? Haunted October wants to hear about it!

A.E. Decker's fabulous "Viva le Macabre" is a glorious reveling in fall, "the season of dying." And Kristina Wojtaszek's series on Haunted Folklore at Enchanted Conversation magazine is an interesting start to a five part series running each Monday in October.

QR codes for bikes -- how smart is this? Stolen bike has easy to trace barcode dohicky that you can register with the police for free ... if you live in London.

Fifty Shades of Chicken is an honest to goodness cookbook/great Fifty Shades of Grey parody. Someone tried to shift my attention to Fifty Shades of Bacon after I mentioned the cookbook on Twitter. But Bacon is a novelized parody. And Fifty Shades of Chicken is a succulent feast of innuendo, from the "bound" and trussed chicken on the cover to the foodporn table of contents: "Dripping Thighs, Sticky Chicken Fingers, Vanilla Chicken, Chicken with a Lardon, Bacon-Bound Wings, Spatchcock Chicken, Learning-to-Truss-You Chicken, Holy Hell Wings, Mustard-Spanked Chicken, and more, more, more!" 

Mustard-Spanked, eh? I think "spanked" is a verb that ought to be used more in food description. Watch, in a year, it'll be on every high-end menu.

Beware the Highland werewolf. Rawr.

Mars Rover Curiosity finds evidence of water -- water! a Martian stream bed! -- and Honey Boo Boo gets more coverage on TV. Sadness. Good thing the wondrous nerds and geeks of the world (yours truly included) get their news online and from NPR. What will the Mars Rover find next? A three-fingered button that, when depressed, produces breathable air?

Bridging gaps and weaving worlds

Today I'm the writer of the guest post for Enchanted Conversation: A Fairy Tale Magazine. Read here to see me make the obvious connection between Rumpelstiltskin and starting a small press.

Meanwhile, writer and blogger Elizabeth Twist is visiting World Weaver Press. her guest post tackles the genre of horror and whether or not it's really a genre or something more pervasive. Her article may just have you rethinking how  you define "horror."

In this week's news

Cross-posted from World Weaver Press as "Books & Pieces" where I'm in charge of their weekly round-up of news and factoids.

If you enjoyed Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog there’s more Dr. Horrible in the works according to wired.com! Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion will both be returning for the sequel.

This is your brain on fiction. A New York Times article highlights recent research which shows the brain functions at a different level when reading fiction than it does when doing other types of reading. Particularly that it processes sensory details like sound and smell as if it was receiving real stimuli — all the more reason for to incorporate more and more awesome sensory details in a story!

Writer Jay Ridler gives us five reasons to love short story collections.

And speaking of short story collections, there are contests going on right now on two blogs for free copies of Susan Abel Sullivan’s first collection Cursed: Wickedly Fun Stories.  Check out Fang-tastic Books and I’m a Reader, Not a Writer to find out how to enter.

Last night, the Hunger Games movie took in an estimated $20 million just from its Midnight showing according to Publisher’s Marketplace (via). Even Weather.com's lead story is Hunger Games related this morning.

The top ten sword fight scenes  ever were  given to us by io9 this week (sci-fi and fantasy only). We have only one thing to say on the topic: My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die.

World Weaver Press answered the question this week: Just what is “speculative” fiction, anyway? 

World Weaver Press author Susan Abel Sullivan stopped by the UK-based Becky’s Barmy Book Blog to give a fun little post about first realizing that she was a humor writer. On her own blog, Susan crafted an insightful post about her early love of monster movies.

Lastly, these little robot-dudes are so cool. And supposedly Amazon is going to have a whole warehouse full of them along with Walgreens and a few other American companies that already employ the inventory-finding bots.

Burn out

Over on Parajunkee, a fantasy/urban fantasy book review site, they were talking about burn out during a Q&A post. Specifically about feeling burned out when you're a book blogger.

Then Parajunkee said something which really struck a chord with me, and I think it can be applied to many activities, blogging included.

She writes:

Being a creative person, I tend to be two steps away from being bipolar — high on creative thoughts one minute, in a complete low point the next. When I’m high on it I’m producing like a freight train, writing, drawing, designing…when I’m in a low I find myself watching re-runs of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. It’s a common problem and it runs rampant with those of us that operate at accelerated paces. From what I’ve heard from “those knowledgable types” burn-out is your mind telling you to settle down and stop pushing yourself so hard or maybe find a less rigid pace to operate on.

She goes on to recommend ways of dealing with the burn out. But what fascinated me was that I'd never even realized that the Buffy-coma was a symptom of my burn out. (But instead of Buffy-coma, I crawl into wondrously fluffy novels where I don't have to think, and I stay there until I feel better.) I only considered myself burned out when I started swearing and throwing things . . . and I mean that metaphorically. Sorta.

How do you know when you're burned out, and then -- bigger question -- how do you deal with it?

How story defines the self

I recently heard a re-broadcast series of radio-articles from NPR's Radio Lab that explored the question of what makes us ourselves. Not just what makes us human, but what makes us have the personalities that we do and, essentially, how we understand our own personal histories and use those histories to create identity.

But what struck me as the most memorable moment of the show -- and the whole thing was fascinating to me as a writer and creator of fictional people, and I think most writers would agree with me that the discussion is fascinating in a philosophical sort of way -- was when they boiled down what creates the "self":

The "self" is the ability to experience, then abstract those experiences into story.

They were talking mainly about the ability to tell people stories about your day, and dig up your war stories to rehash around the fire. But they also touched on the ability to fictionalize. And to imagine that which we've never seen. No one's every seen a man with wings, but we are able to abstract the experience of man and the experience of bird and then imagine an angel.

I think these radio articles are fascinating for any writer and a must-hear for fantasy writers out there.

April intentions

It's hard to think about April with its post-thaw mud, tender green tree buds and the unspoken promise of light jacket weather when each morning I open the blinds each wondering how many inches of snow will be on my car today. But it appears that many people already are. Maybe it's just, you know, planning ahead on their parts. I hear some people have been known to do that though I can't say I ever plan much beyond that night's dinner if I can help it. Or maybe it's that we all desperately need something to look forward to in order to get through this bleak time of year. Whatever the case, there are some interesting writerly things coming your way this spring.

• Angry Robot is throwing open its doors to unagented novel queries for two weeks in late April. They did this last year and signed three new authors. They're only interested in epic fantasy and YA sf/f. More information is on their website.

• April is also the month of Script Frenzy, NaNoWriMo's dramatically inclined little cousin.

• And there's already talk going on about the A to Z blogging challenge -- and yep, it's held in April too.

Of these three, I'll probably only get involved in the A to Z challenge. I tried it last year and it went well ... for a while. But since people and their online chatter have me thinking about it ahead of time this year, I've started generating a list of topics (and, gasp, even a theme!) and hope to succeed in making all 26 posts this time around.

Friday: Link love + life

A quick hello to those of you who've arrived at Speak Coffee to Me via Rachel Harrie's Blog Campaign! If you've not yet joined, you have til the end of the month to do so here.  The rest of this post is relevant writing links, irrelevant links, an a few snips of news from life at large.

Ann Vandemeer steps down as editor of Weird Tales, releasing a formal announcement earlier this week.   Vandemeer has edited the magazine for several years now along with multiple anthologies. She's won a Hugo for her editing work and while there's only a handful of powerhouse sf/f editors out there, there's even fewer female editors -- so why is she stepping down?  Because Weird Tales has been bought by someone who wants to edit it himself. Okay, fine I guess. You buy a cool toy you want to play with it. I understand. And hey, if you've got lots of money and you want to run your own magazine, why not buy the longest running speculative magazine in North America? Guess it sure as heck beats starting from scratch. Vandemeer is magnanimous in her open announcement of resignation, but she makes it pretty clear that she didn't want to leave ... makes me wonder if she's feeling terribly magnanimous on the inside. Maybe under the new guy's direction the covers will get less eerie; the Ann Vandemeer covered always skeeved me out.

Best coffee jewelry EVER! 

Recently, while encountering a problem for an e small appliance I found my new favorite for instruction in a long list of don'ts: CAUTION: do not incinerate. Thanks. Because I generally burn all electronic devices I purchase rather than, you know, use them.

I totally want moo.com to hire me. For what, I'm not quite certain. But I would be awesome  as a Moo employee. I love the ethic, I love the product, I love the face which Moo presents to the world. I'm a creative thinker and doer (though I have no design education beyond a bunch of high school art classes and a couple college art classes which I really should have taken pass/fail). I'm a college writing teacher and that means I engage constantly in critical assessment and redrawn definition -- if my audience is confused the first time, I reach outside the box for a wacky-pants means of making understanding. Okay, admittedly, that may not be synonymous with "teacher" to everyone, but it is in my world. Love the visual and tactile and the world of words. People who have no artistic talent look at what I can do and tell me I should be an artist; people who make their livings doing art look at what I can do and pat me on the head: I know my limitations. I have basic web design skills; this means I can't build you a new look from scratch, but I  speak the language of those who could. I'm a good organizer. When I have a task and a deadline, I see it through to the end.

Did I just pitch myself on my blog where no one with a job to offer will ever likely read it? Oh yes, I did.

Newborn mammals are cute no matter what they are: sloths!

I bought the cats "indoor cat food" which differentiates itself from the regular stuff by the same brand as having 10% fewer calories and more hairball-fighting fiber. I mixed it with the remains of their old food, as per food-changing-instructions, and they managed to eat ALL the old food and leave the new stuff. Picky bitches. Actually, I'm more amazed that they could isolate individual kibbles than put out at their eating habits.

On Facebook this week, people realized how many friends they had who lived on the east coast as status messages regarding the earthquake flooded personal news streams.  Meanwhile, Californian's snickered ... but they may have gotten snobby too fast. Because when an earthquake hits the East Coast unexpectedly, it's not the physical destruction that you have to worry about, it's the naked men with knives.

I'm reading Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke for the first time ever -- and I'm loving it! (no spoilers, plz! I still have another 100 pages to go) Clarke has such great, simple prose. As a writer, I'm totally in love with his style! That's not to say his sentences are all short, blunt, and uncomplicated. Not at all. The sentences themselves are often complicated in construction, and the man knew how to use a semicolon. But they stay clean and unadorned with poetic quirks that could trip up the reader, especially as Clarke is describing some mentally complicated situations such as explaining all the different ways of orienting and reorienting one's sense of "down" in a low gravity situation. That sort of imagining and reimagining of space had me thinking that this narrative would make a great film using today's technology and a sense of space and inversion akin to that we saw in Inception. And lo and behold! IMDB.com says there's a Rendezvous with Rama film due out in 2013! ... and apparently Morgan Freeman, of all people, is pushing for the project to happen/finish.

Post Secret is coming out with an APP this September!

I wrote several secrets and sent them in years ago to Post Secret. They didn't make the website or books (as far as I know). I wrote a few more -- real secrets this time not just the "barely a secret" items I had first sent).  But I never sent them.  I kept them in my apartment. And then I moved them. And now, I don't know where they are. I wish I knew. Because I would send them. Their absence both scares and excites me.

Edited to add: oh and if you were following from last weeks' linklove+life post, know that the foot is slowly getting better. I'm still annoyed by it, at times and it lets me know if I stress it out with too much walking, but it is much, much better.

Rachel Harrie's third writer's platform building campaign

Rachel Harrie's third writer's platform building campaign started this past Monday and runs until October 31. (Formerly known as a "crusade" Harrie has thankfully dropped that word and all its religious connotations which she never meant to invoke.)

The instructions are somewhat long and tangled, but once you've signed up, you take the time to follow all the other campaigners and spend time every week hopping around to the blogs of those in your "group" helping to increase their traffic but more importantly giving them feedback on their posts and ideally finding several writers who you'd like to follow after the campaign is over.

This spring's campaign, which I participated in, was insanely popular. Sign up for this round lasts through the end of August, so better hurry over if you're interested!

Workshop = you - your voice

Agent Kristin Norton has a short and sweet little post up on Pub Rants about voice being workshopped out of students. To which I wholeheartedly agree. When I left college I had a super-quirky but non-functional writer voice. Which the MFA has since beat out of me.

(I should of course admit that the voice I was left with was highly functional -- something I did not have before -- if not terribly interesting.)

I've also since realized that the MFA made me get super distant from my characters (and I used to love love love to be right up in their heads) because I had an instructor or two right at the beginning of my study who loved to dissect the character's neuroses and therefore the author's.  And yeah, okay, so she was normally right on the money with which neuroses my characters held were made up and which were my own.  But that sort of detective work -- and namely, announcing that detective work to my peers -- made me not write characters like me.

I got super-distant from my characters. And then I got despondent. I tried, flailed. Thought about focusing solely on nonfiction without the veil of fiction to obscure what I was saying, then hit on the notion of folklore as the lens to focus my fiction writing through. Thus my big break.

While folklore in the MFA workshop was its own sort of uphill battle, no one stopped to suggest that it was a poignant narrative and if you made it up then all the more poignant.

So I dropped the closeness of my narrative voice in favor of the fairy tale voice. I dropped the quirky wondrous sarcastic voice that had been my signature as an undergrad. A voice that would give me my first fiction publication. And after a 2-3 year hiatus, only now am I slowly attempting to regain that voice.  But certainly not in all  of my works.

Voice is something I struggle dearly with. My writing teachers and peers like to tell me that "I think you've found your voice" whenever they see the writing come together for me.

I've been told, so far, that I have "found my voice" on three vastly different projects. Possibly four -- my memory is faulty.

I've also been told that my voice often waffles within a single piece. Little wonder, all things considered.

I've been told my quirky voice was "it"; that my fairy tale voice was "it"; that my contemporary folklore voice waffled too much but my high fantasy voice was spot on, (read: "it").

Is this a matter of an author having a "soft ear" and therefore being able to pick up many voices? Is it a matter of my own fear closing off avenues? Or is it simply workshop workshopping the voice out of individuals in favor of craft? (which if you read the linked post above,  you'll see is no bad thing so long as craft is learned and voice is regained).  I don't know. I really don't know. But I'll keep trying on new voices for as long as I can. Writing voices fascinate me, much like speaking with accents/dialects fascinate me. Please, don't ask those who knew me in middle school about the Irish accent I adopted after watching The Secret of Roan Inish; the accent came easily to me, and I used it to annoy the crap out of everyone around me.

Friday: Link love + life

This post is exactly what the title implies: I give a bunch of love to links, hopefully make a few witty, scathing, or adoring comments about said links, and drop in a few little anecdotes about my life. You've been warned.

There's a mild bit of buzz in the sf/f community about NPR's list of 100 Top Science Fiction, Fantasy Books. To which I say, meh.  I've not read the entire list but I've read a lot of it and I'll probably read more of it (intentionally) but I'll probably die before I read all of it.  Okay, let's drop the scary mortality-thoughts b/c they totally screw with my twenty-something brain.

There was apparently an open voting period which I did not participate in but many of my friends and acquaintances did.  They complained that there was no write-in option for books that did not make the NPR short list for voting. They claimed there were obvious oversights -- Lois Bujold McMaster for one -- and that the list was skewed toward science fiction and away from fantasy (which is always hilarious in my eyes because fantasy now outsells sci-fi but sci-fi is still considered more "classic" and therefore more "literary."  Ah well, that's fine, if I live long enough I'm certain I'll see fantasy move closer toward the accepted canon anyway.  And there I go with more scary mortality-thoughts.

There's much spatting going on in internet circles about who is and isn't on that list. Me? I'm not going to engage in any spats. Perhaps you have to be a cog in machine of academic standardization before you realize that any "canon" is all arbitrary and none of it matters. Perhaps that is the greatest argument for attending grad school. One way or another, it's just a list.  Moving on.

I sprained my foot this past weekend and the resultant injury has colored my life for the past six days.

Yes, sprained my foot not my ankle.  My ankles are surprisingly hearty, having been rolled many times during years of field hockey practice and never injured until trying to catch the bus to the train station for the 2009 AWP Conference. Odd. Anyway.  Missing the last step of the flight has caused a week of sitting, elevating, and wrapping with an Ace bandage.

The cats, btw, love the Ace bandage. They find the wrapping/unwrapping fascinating. And the tiny little metal clips beg to be batted to the floor -- and they have been, repeatedly, even though they've only left my foot for a few hours total over the past week.

Oh, and the cats think that all the pillows i'm placing on the table/desk/etc for my foot are there for them.  Of course.

Stay true.

Margaret Atwood has been announced as the 2012 AWP Conference Keynote Speaker. This makes three out of four years where the keynote speaker has straddled the lines of literary and the Other for an organization where most of the members (if not the official organization) is conflicted in its feeling toward comic books and speculative fiction.  Sure they could say that Art Spiegleman wrote in the exciting new vein of the "graphic novel" and that Michael Chabon was a literary maverick who indulged our interests in the supernatural, but inviting Margaret Atwood to be THE speaker should be a brilliant slap in the face meant to wake up those who do not believe genre can be literary.  Don't believe me? Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale just made number 22 on that top 100 all time science fiction, fantasy list from NPR.

I always find it strange that literary types claim to have "forgotten" that Vonnegut and Orwell and Le Guin and Atwood are science fiction.

I had thought about going to the 2012 AWP conference just because it will be in Chicago, a city which is within easy traveling distance and, thanks to my brief stint living in the windy city, easy for me to navigate.  Even in fucking February.  Burr.  With Atwood as the keynote ... I think I really will have to go. 

On the Odyssey Workshop blog, bestselling author Carrie Vaughn discusses how she knows when a story will be a novel or a short work.

100 Year Star Ship project + conference.  Need I say more?

I helped plan part of a bridal shower this past weekend. And frankly, I fail to see the point.  Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to have done it for my friend and really excited to make super cute flower vases, except for the part where I was carrying a giantassbox, missed the last step and fell funny on my foot/ankle resulting in much pain and limited mobility -- but that could have happened for any reason.  But I fail to see the point of bridal showers nowadays.

My friend was astonished and flattered at the gifts she got.  She didn't expect or desire the level of gifting that occurred.  She was afraid that by inviting people to both the shower and the wedding she's making them feel like they should provide two gifts. Of course, there are people who feel like they should celebrate the union of two young people and if that means purchasing Corning Ware and Pyrex sets, then so be it.  But she and her fiance are not nineteen-year-olds who've never moved away from home.  They both have places and kitchens and kitchenware of their own.  Do we need to continue the social practice of giving showers? Particularly I ask, do we really need to gather all our female relatives for three hours of small talk, mediocre food, patronizing games, and gift opening wherein we speculate voraciously over how many ribbons the bride will break thereby determining how many children she will bear in this union?

I find the whole "bridal thing" dubious.  And I am in favor of not having one should I ever find myself in the throes of imminent marriage.  Or at least I'd rather have a co-ed "open house" rather than an all-chick shower.

Goat + duct tape + Chuck Wendig.  If that was not enough to entice you (and it should be) consider clicking through to his writing advice as well as the equally crude and wondrous birth and life of a novel.

I've realized that I have to change most of what I do this semester when I go back to teaching composition.  Okay, not most of what I do, but the big projects.  Partly because the textbook was ordered for me and the textbook supports either a gender studies or a cultural studies approach rather than a genre studies with a pop culture studies flavor.  That's okay.  Attempting a gender/cultural bent will make me more marketable. It will also be good for the students. A nice dose of spinach. I'm not entirely sold, eh?   Guess it's time to cultivate multiple talents other than teaching comp.

Ira Glass on what nobody tells beginners:
 
Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

Miracle Whip wants to give you $25,000 for your wedding or divorce -- so long it's a Miracle Whip kind of romance.

And lastly, take a look at the night sky tonight.  The moon and Jupiter are teaming up for a particularly bright Jupiter tonight.  Oddly enough, I dreamed last night that I could see Jupiter.  Not Jupiter how it really is, but a nice little graphic of Jupiter with all its rings pasted onto the night sky.

Addendum: The Hugo Awards Ceremony will be streamed live tomorrow (Saturday) starting at 8:00 PM Pacific Time.

Author Identity

As a follow up to the identity post from last week -- well, it's less a "follow up" and more like "tangentially related content I found recently and thought I would share with you" -- this post from Writer Unboxed on author identity and social media. They ask a couple writers about how they handle their social media presence as authors, and post links to a handful of other writers writing on the same thing.

For the love of the link

Some thoughts from the past few days, all mashed into one blog post.  Like a salad.  With croutons.

Kirk arm-wrestles Kirk -- yes, he's kicked the living shit out of himself in The Undiscovered Country, but never arm-wrestled before.

I spent the holiday weekend (yes, last weekend, not this weekend) in a book coma.  You know, read-it-all-night, can't-put-it-down, dawn-breaks-and-you-look-out-the-window-and-just-turn-off-the-lamp-and-keep-reading, book coma.

Decided that, someday, I really wanna go to Mythcon.

The book that kept me up all night was Warprize by Elizabeth Vaughan.  The book had great bones.  I fell in love with the characters -- that sort of love is the only thing that can keep me up all night.  Indifference puts me to sleep.

Wicked & Tricksy totally amuses me.  Again.

What surprised me about Warprize is that it was originally published in 2005 (TOR), its sequels in 2006 and 2007, and all three are already out of print.  Warprize, the first book, was picked up by another publisher, Berkley, and reprinted.  But I couldn't get the sequels in book format.  I had to download them Nook-for-PC style.

Is this  the legacy of Amazon?  Not the deletion of legacy publishers as middleman or the ebook revolution, but the inability to get a "new" copy of a book that was only printed four years ago?

Camp NaNoWriMo = totally fallen by the wayside.  Maybe in August?  Maybe ... November?

Then again, maybe Warprize isn't the best example to use to start making claims about what anyone's "legacy" is.  While I fell in love with the characters, I should make note of the fact that after reading, I wanted to request edits.  The series had the stuff to be epic -- a thousand pages, easily, not three volumns of 200 pages each (650ish when all is said and done).  It needed to take its time, really delve into the world.  Take it out of first person, and let all the interesting things the author created really blossom.

Also of note: It was also published by TOR, who from all my research, is great to their big name authors and really miserable to all their other authors -- more so than other big publishers in the fantasy genre.  Also, this was a TOR Romance.  Romance has a high turn over.  It's bought faster and more frequently than any other genre (I think it still outpaces YA but by a shrinking margin).  And this means that publishing house want to keep a fresh supply of new books, new life blood, for all the romance genre junkies to come snack on.  It's the last true pulp jungle left in publishing.


Kansas City Public Library, I heart you.  Hey, and this dude, too -- I also heart you ... erm, your blog that is.

And while I was busy reading all night and into the day, my neighbors were busy setting off cheap, illegal fireworks.  You know the kind: big bang, little spark.

Perhaps firecrackers would be a better term.

In the evening, late at night and -- of all times -- mid-afternoon.  I don't get that one.

Now, I find fire as fascinating as the next person.  But that's why I play with candles.  I can't say that fire crackers have ever held any entertainment for me.  Although all the banging and popping had my cats on edge for 72 hours straight.  My irregular sleep pattern didn't work to sooth them either.

Wondrous and creepy thoughts on victimization and tarot cards.

You'd think that there would be better amateur fireworks this close to the state line.  Take any road into Indiana -- any road: expressway, country highway or two-track -- and the first thing you see beyond the Welcome to Indiana! America's Crossroads sign, is a cinder brick building selling fireworks.

One night, perhaps Monday, I got to see part of the city's fireworks display right from my desk.  It was a pleasant surprise but, let me put it this way, I'm glad I wasn't waiting around for it.

Is there a trick to writing a series?

I'd often wondered about how or how not to "grow" a protagonist in a series.  There are many series out there that just lose "it" -- that unidentifiable quality that makes me desperate to turn the page and know what happens and how. On the Odyssey LiveJournal, author Lane Robins discusses her take on growing a protagonist over a series of books and the considerations an author must account for as she attempts such things.  She brings up something that I often feel like I see: you have an idea for two books and then your editor wants three. Or you sell the first three together -- you know how the story and the character flow -- and then they do so well that the publisher wants more. And, well, what the hell do you do now? More of the same? Why not. So often it's book four that gets episodic and breaks the camel's back -- or, in this case, my desire to read more.

Books one through three of the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs were just awesome.  Book four was necessary because the scene at the end of three remains unfinished until chapter one of book four!  (a cheap shot ? I think it was more like Briggs realized she couldn't end it where she ended it and took book four as an opportunity to rewrite the action by altering the "ending.")  But the plot of book four was abysmal.  Books four and five sort of wash together in my memory because of how unspectacular they were compared to the tight, directed plots of books 1-3.  Thankfully, book six got interesting because it solved some of the unsolved mysteries brought up as early as book one (why Mercy is the only coyote skin walker she's ever met).  Book five sort of did the same thing with Samuel. But book four? Yeah, still don't see the redeeming value there.

Is the lesson here to plant mysteries in book one?  Non-urgent mysteries, of course, that can be solved much, much later?

That might work, so long as the series keeps producing new mysteries to be solved later and doesn't give in to the temptation to become episodic jaunts.

I haven't read enough of the Harry Dresden novels by Jim Butcher to know how Butcher handles the series character.  But he's got at least 13 of these novels out and the popularity only seems to grow.  Book one drew the reader into the world and left us with more than we started with, but my feeling was that Harry Dresden was roughly in the same place as he was before.  That's what I mean when I say "episodic": things happen but the world returns to the way things were without permanently altering much.

Although, maybe all you need in the first novel of a series is to draw the reader into the world.  And the rest of the changes can come slowly.

TV shows are often episodic -- they air in episodes, so you can even say it's a given. And perhaps it's why the season finale is the most dramatic of all the episodes: it's when something irrevocably changes in the character's world or in his world-view.  So when the TV adaptation of Dresden Files aired on the SciFi Channel, it got even more episodic feeling and accidental feeling -- characters would accidentally run into Harry or Harry would brush up against their world without seeming to have any reason to -- so it's not all that surprising that it didn't last long on television in spite of how much fans loved the show.  The Harry Dresden I watched on TV encountered a lot of creatures and characters and nothing changed him or made him grow.  He was passive.  And I was bored.

A lot of paranormal romance embraces the episodic nature of the series.  Writers such as Sherrilyn Kenyon, JR Ward, and Gena Showalter have married the idea of the series with the "completeness" the romance genre requires of its novels -- each novel shows the trials, tribulations, and eventual success of one couple's romantic journey.  So they base a series of novels in the same world, and the main characters of the first novel become secondary characters in the next.  Then for the third novel, other characters who've been in the background become main characters.  And so on.  When these novels work well, the series world has some growing tension that each novel must deal with as well as "complete" the romance.  When these novels don't work so well, the "growing tension" feels more like a background game of Farmville where we're just waiting for the next Mystic Egg to be collected.

The other was to approach paranormal romance (and these often straddle the line between paranormal romance and urban fantasy), is to have a focus couple who remain the main characters throughout the entire series like Jeaneine Frost did in the Cat & Bones books (technically they're called the "Night Huntress" series).

This is a situation where I'd almost be willing to put money on Frost being offered a contract for the first two books with no idea if she'd ever get to write a third.  The first two books are brilliant.  The first one plunges us into a fascinating world and ends with a wild series of events that makes us want to read more.  The main character, Cat, grows tremendously.  But the character arc isn't finished -- neither is the romance story line -- until book two.  Then we get into book three, which is more of the same.  Book four felt like the author struggled to come up with a realistic challenge to the main characters' relationship, so she created a former lover from the past which Cat can't remember because the vampires wiped it from her mind.  Vampiric amnesia.  Convenient.  And not terribly intriguing.

This leads me to another series problem: ever growing powers.

In an attempt to up the stakes in each new book, the character discovers new super powers. The author must then explain why no one told the character (or the reader) about these powers in previous books -- a minor irritation that the author must solve.  The big irritation? The new extremes the characters must go to to avoid other characters using the same super powers on them.

A few books in, Frost introduces the notion that vampires can hear conversations a half mile away. Now all of our super-secret strategy sessions must happen in whispers while a TV is blaring so other vamps can't eavesdrop.  Next, vampires can fly. Next, vampires can alter memories. Next, some vampires can hear all human thoughts. Next ... next? I don't want to know what the next super power will be.  The contract with the finite world has been broken (tomorrow's post), and instead of the character growing and changing, her powers are growing and changing.  While it may keep some readers reading, it's not the reason I feel in love with the series back in the day.  One upping ones self becomes a dangerous business.

Four ways to amuse yourself on Monday

I found a kindred spirit over at Ass Over Tea Cup: someone else who fell in love with Anne McCaffery books as a teen/pre-teen and consumed them relentlessly.  Our favorite?  It was and remains Dragonsinger.  Erin posts about Dragonsinger illustrator Elizabeth Littman, whom you will instantly love for her heart and care.

10 simple ways to write faster started off really nice.  Maybe I found it nice because I'd already converted to the Church of the Outline and the article writer was preaching to the choir.  Then as it went on, I sorta wanted to deck the preacher.  Probably feeling pugnacious because I've been sitting too long at my desk.

Your life in photos: your life, that is, if you lived at IKEA.

From xkcd -- read it on its original page

Grab-bag

Iconic face of Rosie the Riveter poster died recently. I really wish I'd known this story, ya know, before she passed away.  She was a Michigan factory worker and seeing as her service is being held in Lansing, I'm betting she lived in Michigan all her life.

Odyssey Workshop has a new podcast up online from editor David Hartwell's 2010 Odyssey Workshop lecture on titles, titling, and using pseudonyms (Podcast #43). It was great because I find that a lot of writers worry about how to title or when to use a pseudonym and it seems like something the knowledgeable people in the industry don't want to talk about--perhaps it is more tedious than other aspects, but here we have a guy who's been an editor in the SF/F industry for over 40 years and he's willing to talk seriously about the small stuff.

The Kenyon Review Writers Workshop is now open to applications. As is the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop (early admission deadline: Jan. 31; regular deadline: Apr. 8). Both are great workshops.

One of my Odyssey workshop classmates (or Odfellows, as the alums are called), put out a novella (40,000 words) for Kindle titled Nocturne: Son of the Night.  I haven't read the whole thing, but my understanding from the first chapter is that it's a high fantasy vampire world.  40k is an awkward length to sell to a publisher -- it's about half as long as a novel and a about 20k too long for all but a couple magazines to deal with (though as I understand it, it might be the kind of thing BlackGate would serialize).  You can read the first chapter on Smashwords or buy at amazon.com.  And maybe even buy at Samshwords if you need non-Kindle formating.

I got my cats a "cat bed" so that they would stop sleeping on top of my cloth suitcase. They seem to have mixed feeling about the bed, so I doused it in cat nip and now Rosie's all about it. Ash is currently sleeping in the old box lid on my desk. I guess they'll never be happy until they have the ultimate house for cats.

Kristen Lamb has had a great series of posts of the last week about dealing with "Crappy Excuse Trolls and Procrastination Pixies." The posts are long, but it's worth scrolling back to her Dec. 31 entry to catch the entire week's notions of how to behave better beyond the New Year's Resolution.  This awesome picture is from her blog as well.  It's a "Rare Photo of Actual Procrastination Pixie Disguised as a Hamster Cage that Needs Cleaning Instead of Doing Edits on Novel."   Love it.

Over at Third Coast, Nathan Norton posts his thoughts on Resolving to Remain Resolute with Regards to Writing Resolutions.  Nathan's post, as always, is insanely witty.

Speaking of which, my New Year's Resolutions are sorta holding. I've already finished reading one novel--another freebie download from eHarlequin. What can I say? I'm a sucker for free books that you can read quickly. And the writing 500 words a day goal? ... well I have written everyday, which is a start. Haven't really broken the 500 mark every day though and that's worthy of a demerit.

In the spirit of all of the writing is what I love posts I've read and *ahem* written myself, I bring you this from The Onion:

I guess you could say I have always had a love affair with the written word. The simple, solitary act of contemplating the white expanse of the blank page, and then putting pen to paper and seeing where the words take me, is my one constant solace in an otherwise turbulent world. Yes, I must admit it: I am only truly happy when I'm writing.


Or if I'm having dinner with family and friends, or a new and interesting acquaintance I happened to meet that week and hit it off with. I'm pretty happy then, too.


But for me, it always comes back to the writing: the discipline, the stamina required, the unrelenting determination to give voice to my innermost thoughts, thoughts that illuminate the cracks and crevices of the human condition. That is my only satisfaction. That and watching a really good movie on late-night TV, like Suddenly, Last Summer. That's a great feeling, especially when you haven't seen the film in some years, and you discover anew just what it was that you loved about it in the first place. I also enjoy canoeing and windsurfing when I get a free weekend down at the beach.


And Frisbee. I love Frisbee. (read more)

The more I read about the publishing business the more I think ahead. This is good, right? Maybe. It's hard to tell when your tell your friend, "hey I'm thinking about this and this, what's your advice?" and her advice is to stop thinking so far ahead and write the damn book. Then there's things like this very interesting guest post about author branding on Sierra Godfrey's blog. And the post says yes! think about it now!

I know, I know. Those of you out there who are plugging away at writing your book or maybe just sticking your toe in the writing waters are probably thinking...look, I just need to get this book written, find an agent, get a book deal, etc. etc. and then I'll worry about a public image. I've got time for that. Publishing is a slow business.


You're right. The book should be priority number one and publishing IS slow. I got my book deal a few months ago and my book won't hit the shelves until 2012. But let me tell you, when all the good stuff starts happening, it can happen fast. And you'll be thrust from "writer" to "Author" with a capital A in a moment's time.


That's great news. You won't really feel any different (though you'll be excited) and writing will still be just as difficult (believe me.) But the change means your blog, website, twitter, facebook, etc., you know all those things you've been doing to build your platform/presence, are now your brand.


So if you've spent your time on your blog bashing books you don't like, cursing like a sailor, or only posting pictures of cats in doll outfits (or even *gasp* not blogging/tweeting/pick your poison at all), you may have to do a major overhaul or start from scratch. You don't want this stress when you're going to be facing the new stress of being contracted, editing and writing against a deadline, and figuring out all it means to be a paid author. So why not get your brand in place NOW?

And then I'm like, aha! gotcha Roni Loren, I comprehend now. (read more of her guest post).

Lastly, I am in love with Lightspeed magazine!  All SF, all online (although they have other formatting options if you're interested).  They have a really intriguing layout/look--both clean and enticing.  And they're publishing a range of writers, lesser known folk and then, last month, Ursala Le Guin.  Though I could tell it was a Le Guin story because I finished it and went huh?