Should You Kill Off Your Characters? (And When)

Not long ago, I was ask to participate as a panelist in the day-long event "Get Published! 2016" at the Herrick District Library in Holland, Michigan. The event was put on by MiFiWriters and was the first such event they've hosted. I spoke as editor of a small press alongside the editors of MiFiWriters and Caffeinated Press -- all Michigan-based small presses. I'm hopeful it was of use to those attending -- I know I was tickled to talk to a near-full room -- and I'm certain it will only become a better and stronger event if MiFiWriters choose to run another one in 2017.

The programming mainly focused on the mechanics of publication, so that's what I'd prepped for. But there were a couple of questions that arose from the interests of the audience that I hadn't prepped for and, consequently, really got me thinking.

One such was about killing off characters. Should you kill off characters or should you avoid it?

We live in a post-Game-of-Thrones world.

The immediate response from the panelists showed me one thing: We live in a post-GoT world.

We welcome Game of Thrones (GoT) being Game of Thrones, but anything else that's as savagely death-happy we're . . . well, we're over it. Which is funny when you consider that in Dexter (the TV show not the books) you had at least one murder per episode carried out by the protagonist and frequently another murder occurring under other circumstances. What Dexter didn't have was the continual, perpetual killing off of primary characters, characters we'd grown to care about, although many did eventually get the ax, it wasn't constant. That's pure GoT.

One panelist even said that he'd been all murdered out by GoT. So many interesting characters had been killed off on GoT that he'd lost the ability to bond with or care about any new character he met in that world. A perfectly normal coping reaction. If you're constantly being tragically abandoned, sooner or later you develop a defense mechanism and assume it's better to not get invested in anyone, because if you do, they're only going to leave you and hurt you in the process. Even if they're just a character in a book.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are the sort of stories where everyone lives no matter what.

Stories where, as ridiculous and implausible as it might be for a person to live through Situation X, the characters miraculously do. Further, they tend to survive these scrapes without a scratch on them, certainly not without the months or years of medical treatment normally associated with living through a physically brutal event. So much so that by the next episode they don't even have a limp or a sling or a residual pain that leads them to a pill addiction. Nope. Everybody lives. Everybody's healthy. No need for "scraped and bruised" makeup in the next episode even though it's supposed to just happen a few days later.

Dude. Let me just say, I've had bruises from running into the coffee table that have lasted longer than most lived-through-a-car-accident-on-a-TV-show bruises.

If the above examples represent the two ends of the spectrum, where should a writer try to fit his or her story? 

The simplest answer I can give is: Probably somewhere in between the two extremes.

Of course, the nuanced answer is . . . well, nuanced.

It depends on your plot, world building, and character development. Don't kill off characters willy-nilly just because you can, or because you don't know what else to do with an extraneous character.

True story: I had a friend in high school who, whenever we were asked to write a creative story in English class, would kill off every single character by the end of the story. She wasn't a terribly macabre person -- actually, she was quite bubbly and cheerful -- she just didn't know how to end stories, and admitted as much. If everyone died, then the story had to be over, so everyone died. Honestly, next to her, GRRM looks like a spring pansy.

If a character dies in a story, it needs to serve the story. Or -- what I probably said at the conference this past weekend -- the death needs to serve the plot. 

Then -- boom! -- the following infographic appeared in one of my social media feeds a day or so after the conference. (Or maybe it wasn't serendipity, maybe it came to my attention because I was looking for it, consciously or subconsciously. Or is that in and of itself a precondition of serendipity? But I digress.)

Nifty infographic from helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com on what's a good or bad reason for killing off a character.

The infographic comes from the K.M. Weiland article "How to Successfully Kill a Character," and opens with the utterly provcative statement, "I love killing people."

On the panel we discussed how a character's death can re-frame a narrative. [Hunger Games spoilers, this paragraph only.] How nearly reaching the end of Hunger Games only to have Prim die -- when avoiding Prim's death was more or less the inciting incident of the trilogy -- helps solidify the ultimate narrative outcome as not one of triumph or accomplishment but one of futility and the cyclical nature of human greed and suffering, power and rebellion.

Proving you've got the chops to mete out death.

In a podcast, Carrie Vaughn has described her killing off of a character in Kitty and the Midnight Hour as an act of proving it wasn't another happy-go-lucky world where everybody lived. Indeed, it was more serious than that, more deadly, more dangerous. Like some sort of literary hazing ritual, killing off a character can be a moment when a writer decides they want to prove themselves as someone not to be taken lightly.

But tread cautiously. Carrie Vaughn was still using the character's death in service of the plot. She could have reworked the plot to not need that death. It would have been a different book if everybody lived. And what she's talking about is making that choice to not be the book where everybody lives . . . [read the full blog post on eileenwiedbrauk.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 . . .

A Year in Reading, 2012 Edition

For the past couple of years, I've posted my end of year reading summary. It's not necessarily books published only in 2012, it's simply what I've read in 2012. It's not even the best of what I've read in 2012. It's simply a reading retrospective with a few words about each. Since I've read about 75 books or more this year, this list will be a bit more summary than in previous years. (Which will probably be a good thing because in 2011 I don't believe I finished my retrospective — oh my!)

The most awesome book series I read in 2012: Grave Witch by Kaylana Price (Series title: Alex Craft, Grave Witch, Grave Dance, Grave Memory). These are great, fascinating, urban fantasy novels featuring a witch PI in a world that's not really comfortable with the overt magic it's soaked in. The fae are omnipresent, but humans would rather believe the glamour they see than reconcile the creature beneath — ditto for the witch-made charms. Top that off with the personal struggles of Alex Craft — she's estranged from her family, barely making rent, and the only thing she's good at monetizing is her Grave Sight, an ability that leaves her night blind and sometimes worse. Oh, and there's a love triangle that gets more and more and more tangled as the series continues. The closer Alex Craft gets to accepting a relationship, the more alone she finds herself.

I actually read these books before I read Kim Harrison's The Hollows/Rachel Morgan series (more on that later) but once I had, I found Grave Witch extremely similar yet much more mature in world and premise. The Grave Witch world and character development leaps into the arena that the world of the Hollows only achieves in books six and on.

Favorite YA series of the year: I was surprised to fall in love with the YA sci-fi Cold Awakening Trilogy by Robin Wasserman this year. In this not-too-far-future dystopia, a rich, spoiled, self-centered teen ends up in a near-fatal accident that leaves her “skinned” — her brain is sliced, scanned, and uploaded into a synthetic body. I have a problem with whiny teenage characters (even if the whining is realistic) but the fascinating science and technology milieu pulled me through Frozen, and once we got into the larger social and political issues of Shattered and Torn, I found myself staying up way past my bedtime to gobble up this series.

Series that made me gain over 5 lbs. in a month: I read Janet Evanovich's One for the Money because the movie looked cute. Truth. I loved this book and snapped up Two for the Dough, Three to Get Deadly, Four to Score ... all the way through Fearless Fourteen before I stopped because I realized they were all awesome, but they were all the same. I have no doubt I'll go back and visit the Berg and the Plum family, Morelli, Ranger, and Stephanie Plum's inexplicable ability to destroy cars and read through the latest Notorious Nineteen. But I had to stop reading and take a break. Take a breath. Stop my constant reading about doughnuts, fried chicken, and pot roast — a devastating trio to have on the brain in the middle of winter.

Although the endless pot roast discussion did lead me to find a great, easy, pot roast recipe for crock pot: trim roast, place in a crock pot that's been lightly coated in PAM (for clean up), and then for every 2.5 lbs. of roast add one can cream of mushroom soup and a half-packet of powdered onion soup. Cook on low for eight hours. Don't add water! The roast will create its own gravy from this concoction. And it comes out super tender. The pot roast wasn't as debilitating a factor in my Evanovich inspired weight gain, it was more the doughnuts and fried chicken cravings that did me in.

So later, when I came across The Haunted Housewives of Allister, Alabama by Susan Abel Sullivan, I immediately recognized the protagonist Cleo Tidwell as a Southern, thrice-married Stephanie Plum. The humor's spot on, the crazy-but-lovable family is there, the zany problems that emerge in the course of solving the mystery and staying alive in the process — all the things that made Janet Evanovich's novels something which I felt like I read without breathing, were there in deep fried package from Susan Abel Sullivan. I highly recommend The Haunted Housewives of Allister, Alabama to anyone who's read and enjoyed One for the Money and the other Stephanie Plum mysteries.

The series with the devastating emotional roller coaster: JC Andrijeski's Allie's War, Book Four Shadow. I've posted before about this series. Everything I know about fiction tells me this series shouldn't work, yet oh-baby does it work. I read the first three in a madcap dash then waited for book four — a whopping 200,000+ words in length — and kept biding my time to start it because these books are an emotional roller coaster. I have a copy of book five, Knight, but every time I go to start it, I take a deep breath and ask myself are you ready for this? So far, I've not been prepared. Part near-future dystopia with some aspects of a tech thriller, part paranormal romance. These books are — and this doesn't often get said about PNR — epic.

Holy hell, how did I manage to ignore this series this long? Actually, I know how. Book one of Kim Harrison's Rachel Morgan/The Hollows Novels, features cover art of a half-naked red head with handcuffs dangling off the belt loop of her hip hugging leather pants. Excuse me? You want me to believe your urban fantasy is a strong ass kicking chick when she's depicted wearing a bandeau bikini top on the streets of Cincinnati? Yep. That's the idea. Except the funny part about this depiction (and my subsequent reaction to it) is that Kim Harrison actually writes the character Rachel Morgan as dressing in precisely this fashion ... and then having people try to proposition her because they think she's a hooker. Oops! In later books in the series, Rachel's vampire friends and roommate try repeatedly to class her up. Her taste level is constantly in question and Rachel's not thrilled to hear it. So I zipped on through this great nine book series (book ten out this spring) starting with Dead Witch Walking of the bikini top infamy, then up through The Outlaw Demon Wails before I took a break from the series for a bit. Even then I caught myself saying "crap on toast" anytime something went wrong in my life.

After (not a spoiler) one of the main characters dies, Rachel loses a sense of focus, and I lost a bit of my interest. But after reading a half-dozen other novels by other writers, I started to wonder what happened next. So I happily turned back to the series and cruised on through to Pale Demon. These more recent titles bring Trent back more interestingly into the picture and I actually loved the cross-country road trip which allowed us to see just how different this post-genetic-crisis world is from our own — not something we were really able to see in the previous urban Cincinnati and touristy Mackinac locations. I'm looking forward to Ever After coming out January 22, 2013.

Because fairy tales are pretty. Opal is a YA fantasy by Kristina Wojtaszek that features multiple, nested fairy tales (some of which you'll recognize) within a fantasy world. The prose is lyrical and rich. Fans of Patricia McKillip take note of this new voice in the world of fantasy and fairy tale retellings.

Books I re-read. Elizabeth Vaughn's Warprize is just an absolutely stellar example of romantic fantasy (second-world setting). The rest of the books in the trilogy don't live up to the awesomeness of this first installment. I've not read the further books set in the same world, but might yet one day.

I also re-read the Others Series by Jess Haines as Stalking the Others was coming out during summer 2012 and I could remember that I liked the series but I couldn't remember what all the rules of that particular urban fantasy world were. Hunted by the Others (book one) was just okay. It took me two years before I bothered looking around to see if there was more in the series. Books two and three get more interesting. No longer does the main character think all vampires are Evil and most werewolves are okay but really the only species you can trust are humans — sorry, but that sort of thinking in a book is boring. Anyhoodle, book three ended with a doozy of a cliffhanger: the heroine might have been changed into an otherworldly creature against her will! So I was going to relish the fourth book, damnit, and that meant re-reading, re-skimming the previous three.

Promising beginnings. Silver by Rhiannon Held is an interesting, slightly grittier, werewolf urban fantasy. The two main characters aren't your typical heroine and heroine a la paranormal romance, rather they remind me of The Fifth Element's Corbin Dallas and Leelo. (My full review of the novel can be found on NewMyths.com.) Book two, Tarnished, comes out this spring. I'm hoping this series delivers on its promising beginning.

I used to love the Katie MacAlister series with the dragons. Actual, this is her third series of books featuring the same world/characters just switching narrators. But Sparks Fly completely lost me. Maybe I skipped over the previous book, because I constantly felt like I didn't know what was going on. Maybe it'll all make sense to me if I go back and re-read all ten books...?

Another promising beginning that's petered out, is Thea Harrison's Elder Races novels. Romances set in a modern world with were-creatures that can shift into giant animals like dragons, griffons, and thunderbirds. Dragon Bound, the first in the series, was awesome. Loved it. Read Storm's Heart, the second in the series, and it was okay. Read a novella out of order that I really had no idea why I finished. Sadly, I'm done with this series that had previously shown so much promise.

Matriarchal fantasy world — a bit like Scott O'Dell meets Anne McCaffery. Shards of History by Rebecca Roland is a fresh new fantasy world where the main civilization puts one in mind of southwest Native American cultures. The heroine, Malia, finds out a truth about the hated and feared creatures that live on the fringes of their civilization, one that can save them from the dragon-riding army that's poised on the edge of the valley, waiting to kill, capture, and enslave Malia's people. Of course, if she can't get her people to believe this newly discovered truth, it'll be their destruction. Time is running out before the sky — literally — falls down on them.

A return to Jeaniene Frost. I adored the first two Cat and Bones books. Halfway to the Grave was so good it made me want to hate Jeaniene Frost for her storytelling ability coupled with her writing skills. But as the series wore on, the spin-offs and one-off novels appeared, and the vampires become and and more powerful (an annoying problem that means they have to go to extreme lengths not to have other vampires in a half-mile radius overhear their conversations), I sort of slipped away. Since Cat became a vampire, I let the series go on without me. But then along came Vlad. And more importantly, Leila. I like Leila. And I like that she's not becoming an all-powerful vampire. She doesn't know much about the vampire subculture she's been sucked into, so we get to go on the journey all over again. I'm down with that. Once Burned brought me back to the Night Huntress franchise. I look forward to Twice Tempted coming out in late-March.

Non-fiction. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is a fabulous braided narrative of Skloot's research and her research process into the life of Henrietta Lacks — the African American woman from whom HeLa research cells were derived — and her surviving family. Henrietta never knew that she was "donnating" cells, and it would be decades before her family knew that their mother's cells had been instrumental to 20th century health science, having been key to producing a functional polio vaccine among many other advances. Skloot keeps a human interest angle to her book even when she's discussing science and legal precedents. Eminently readable and jargon-lite in spite of its science rich content.

Books I picked up for free and was happy to have found! Delilah S. Dawson's Wicked as They Come is vampire, steampunk romance FTW. The dialog is quick and witty (sometimes too quick as I love a good angsty brood), the heroine is spunky and capable, and the world of Sang is fascinating. An alternate dimension where the reasons for steampunk are simple: there's magic and vampireish Bludmen so you better lace up that stiff collar and cover your neck! Not to mention the hero is equally fascinating as our tour guide through the world. I'm willing to forgive this book its trespasses because reading it was just plain fun. The teaser scene from Blud Book #2 shows us a different first person protagonist in a different city, which saddens me only because Criminy and Tish's storyline did not feel finished. I'm holding out hope for Criminy & Tish the Sequel! I've also picked up the novella in this series, The Mysterious Madam Morpho, which is a cute, brief tale of the traveling caravan show that Criminy runs. Liked it. Will likely pick up Wicked as She Wants this April. Bludbunnies — now there's something I can't get out of my head!

The Scottish historical romance, Claire Delacroix's The Beauty Bride, was a free ebook download (I think it's still free at most major retailers and is the first in Delacroix's series). I admit that I judge books by their covers, especially in the age of free and cheap ebooks, a shoddy cover is often a sign of shoddy writing within — but don't let this cover fool you! Delacroix's writing and historical research are fabulous. I believe this ebook version is a reissue of an earlier title which was published by a major publisher, and since it went out of print the author has brought it back on her own (that's my speculation at least). I didn't expect to enjoy this book as much as I did. I didn't expect to stay up reading all night only to look at the clock and say, "How the hell did it get to be 5:00 AM?" I'll likely be seeking out the rest of the series in 2013 when the historical mood strikes me.

Books I picked up for free ... and sort of wish I hadn't. Waking Up Married. Harlequin is promoting this book as the banner carrier of their new KISS line. From all the hype I expected something youthful and fresh, like if the KISS line was a dessert, it would be a crisp and sassy, low-cal dessert. With citrus. Instead I got a Diet Coke. With lime. At the very least I expected it to feel more "youthful" because that's how it's being promoted. But except for the fact that the heroine isn't in a work/family position where she's subservient to the hero (he's her boss, etc.), this felt exactly like the PRESENTS novels I used to read. The heroine has a career. Bravo. But she didn't feel any more like a modern twenty-something than any other Harlequin heroine does (Harlequin's selling point for KISS). And I happen to be something of an expert on modern twenty-somethings: I am one.

Nora Roberts. Yes, Nora Roberts is her own category of reading. Her shelves are my go-to section of the library whenever I'm feeling glum or overwhelmed by life. I know that I can escape into her worlds and that the books are always satisfactory — they'll never rock my world, but I know they'll never disappoint me either. In 2012 she wrapped up her Inn BoonsBoro trilogy with The Last Boyfriend and The Perfect Hope. The cool part about these books? A hefty component of each is running a small business (bookstore, pizzeria  bed-and-breakfast) and decorating/building the inn. So it's a bit like reading a romance and simultaneously leafing through a home fashion magazine. Still not as cool as the Bridal Quartet which was like reading a romance and leafing through a bridal magazine.

Also in the Nora Roberts category this year, I read the Key Trilogy and most of the Dreams Trilogy. The Key books involve three women helping otherworldly creatures free three women who are sort of trapped in a sleeping beauty spell and was among the more memorable of Nora Roberts stuff (although when it comes to her novels with paranormal elements, my favorite is still The Jewels of the Sun trilogy).

The unmemorable odds and ends. I picked up The Wrangler as part of a free promotion. I'd never read a western romance before. It's not likely to become my genre of choice. Marked by Elisabeth Naughton is another title that I only know I read because I wrote it down on my list of finished books. I vaguely recall something about the Greek gods. Another paranormal romance that's selling well that didn't catch my fancy. Ditto for Goblin King  and Kiss of the Goblin Prince by Shona Husk. I will give these goblin books props for choosing a more original  paranormal creature (the goblin) than the majority of casting for paranormal heroes and heroines out there.

There were other books I read in 2012. I've recently started but not finished Clean by Alex Hughes which seems promising. I can't forget to mention all the ghost stories I read in 2012, published and submitted for publication, as I worked on editing the anthology Specter Spectacular: 13 Ghostly Tales. There are books of poetry such as Jay Nicorvo's Deadbeat and the poem a day I get to open courtesy of NPR's Writer's Almanac, along with numerous short stories from Daily SF and other magazines and anthologies.

What of note have you read in 2012? 

All Shook Up

I've never been an Elvis fan -- I should preface this post with that -- but I've also never been an Elvis hater. In fact I never really thought about the King of Rock and Roll except for the passing mention in The Outsiders where the uptown kids love the Beatles and the greaser boys think that Elvis is way better.

So when the manuscript came across my desk for The Haunted Housewives of Allister, Alabama, a tale of an upper-middle class housewife who has a haunted Velvet Elvis forced into her possession, I didn't entirely know what I was getting into Elvis-wise. But the writing was fabulously witty and the main character, Cleo Tidwell, was enchanting. In fact, Cleo Tidwell quickly put me in mind of Stephanie Plum, a character I'd consumed with ravenous speed one winter. So I dove on in to the world of ghost Elvis and possessed Velvet Elvis. And it was a riot.

I've learned so many wacky Elvis factoids in the process of editing and publishing this book. When you finish the novel and realize how much true Elvis stuff falls in the realm of the strange, it's hard not to imagine it as the perfect basis for this kind of fun, witty, cozy mystery with a paranormal twist. Susan Abel Sullivan did her research -- fried peanut butter and banana sandwich, anyone? Apparently there's a knack to making these sandwiches. If I'd have tried, I'd have not thought to make the paste, so the result would have been ... different, I'm sure.

If you enjoy Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum, or more generally cozy mysteries, Southern humor, and witty writing, you can grab the ebook of The Haunted Housewives of Allister, Alabama today (early release) or the trade paperback on October 30. Or perhaps just warm up to the novel with the sneak peek of chapter one on the publisher's website.

Review: Silver by Rhiannon Held

My review of the new novel Silver is up at the magazine New Myths. And yes, there's a few typos, but hey, at least it's just a few. Here's the first half of the review:

Writers like Patricia Briggs and Kelley Armstrong have taught us that wolf pack politics is a tricky thing—one part subtle machinations and two parts brute force. Rhiannon Held continues in this tradition with her debut novel Silver.

The urban fantasy Silver has a certain grit and intelligence to it which is apparent from the get-go. Someone has performed unspeakable acts of experimentation and torture on an entire pack of werewolves, systematically burning them with silver and injecting it into their veins. The only werewolf to escape is a young woman who’s retreated so far into herself, she can’t recall her own name and adopts the moniker Silver. Andrew Dare, a pack enforcer, tracks Silver down when she crosses his pack’s territory. Andrew expects to have to meet the stray werewolf with violence and threats, instead he meets the half-crazy, rambling, injured Silver, which sets Andrew down the track of finding the person who hurt her and killed her pack. But first he has to find out who Silver really is and where she came from. Read the second half of the review...

Short version: I liked Silver. Is this novel going to revolutionize urban fantasy? Probably not. But it's an interesting new chapter in personable-but-aggressive werewolf fiction.

[Silver by Rhiannon Held came out from Tor, June 2012. I received a complimentary advanced proof via New Myths to complete this review.]

To collect or to novel?

When fiction writers get to the end of their MFA they're expected to produce a project that is "book length," but they face the decision: do I make a collection of short stories or do I write a novel?

The short story collection tends to be the favorite in practice while the novel is what everyone says they'd like to do until they face having to do it.

There's points in favor of each.

Short Story Collection
The reason I say the short story collection tends to be what most people do is because it's what MFA workshops have set you up to do. In workshop you write and submit short stories, you get feedback, you find things to change and you make them better. Now, all you need to do is edit those stories on your own and you're halfway to a collection.

For people whom revision is easier than drafting, this is a the option of choice.

For people who can't get their minds around the length or structure of a novel, then the collection is, without question, the way to go. Often MFA programs don't have coursework on writing novels, or it's not as in depth as the course work on writing the short story.

Often, the collection seems like the ready-made option. Particularly when you have that moment of realization where you realize that the path of least resistance to your degree is to brush off a group of desperate stories whose only connective tissue is that you wrote them and call them "collected." It seems like a cop out to me, but a reasonable cop out. Particularly if your style/subject matter hasn't changed much while you've been in the MFA program. Then your stories are probably much more cohesive than mine as I tried a bunch of different styles and then switched gears from realism to fantasy.

Also, the "MFA project" asks you to present the fruits of your education. It is not specifically designed to ask you to produce something that anyone would ever want to publish as a book.

Which brings me to: short story collections are hard to sell.

There are three main ways to get a short story collection sold. (1) You win one of the short story collection contests that have publication attached to them like the Flannery O'Connor Award, the Iowa Short Fiction Award, or the AWP Award Series (there are a couple others but they don't come to mind). (2) You get a contract for a novel in which your agent convinces them to buy your collection as a "bonus"--mostly this is a "bonus" for the writer and a grudgingly accepted ultimatum for the publisher, and another reason why agents are so cool. (3) You get 3-12 stories published by The New Yorker and some publisher wants to collect and reprint them. There are other ways, but those are the three big ones. All other ways are extremely hard sells.*

Now consider how many MFA thesis collections are out there in the world and you're suddenly wondering why you'd want to put energy into a collection when you could be putting it into a novel -- or at least that's what I'm wondering.

The Novel
The big thing the novel has going for it is that it can be sold. That is, it's likely that (all prose being considered equal) someone will want to publish it. All that time, effort, and editing will result in a bound, typeset version of something with your name on it. Even if the cover sucks it's still your book.

The big downside to writing the novel as MFA thesis is that the MFA is not geared toward getting you to produce a novel. As mentioned above, it's the short story that's the perfect size and shape for weekly workshops, not the baggy monsters. Therefore, you'll likely be generating new material and editing it in a shorter span of time.

Then there's the whole has anybody taught you how to write a novel? question which seems to trip people up. I've heard quiet a few people say that they won't try to write a novel (including well published short storyists) because they just don't know how to put one together. Although if you look outside your MFA you can almost always find someone to teach you or materials to use to teach yourself. (Screenplay structure, as I understand it, is where to start looking.)

Then there's the not to be overlooked notion of having an idea big enough to fill a novel.

Where I'm at
See, I thought I had a plan (a novel). Then I had another plan (a story collection)--a plan I put in writing this time! And now I don't know if that plan is as good as the new-new plan (a novel, different from the first novel which I now know I couldn't sustain).

The new-new plan is, albeit, new and shiny. But I might be in the throws of saying hey, if my short story collection idea is going to be as much work as my novel idea then why don't I write the novel, have more fun, and end up with a more viable product at the end?

My advisor recently asked me to crunch numbers and find out where I'm at so that we can think about how best to spend my time. She didn't commit to one side of the debate or the other, but the mere suggestion of number crunching had me thinking all weekend.

The question is not as easy to answer as one would think. I've known a lot of people who said they were going to write a novel for their thesis project. It was only logical, and when it came down to it, logic changed and the logical thing to do was a collection. And now I don't know where I'm going to land with four months until it's due.


*This, of course, makes me laugh. Like any of those three are particularly easy.

Books I'm looking foward to this fall

I seem to remember hearing something about Fall being the prime time for book releases.  October, maybe?  Maybe I'm making all this up.  Anyway, here's what I'll be getting my greedy hands on this fall.

Blameless, Gail Carriger, coming out September 1.  Set in late Victorian England, book three of the Parasol Protectorate promises more vampires, more werewolves, more commentary on fashion and a well made treacle tart, and -- something we haven't seen in the previous novels -- more insight into the Soulless, or preternatural, individuals who have the ability to neutralize vampires, ghosts and werewolves.  Book one, Soulless.  Book two, Changeless.  Both one and two are out in paperback.  And don't forget to take a look at the awesome making of the cover video for Blameless at the bottom of the post.

Coming out October 26, is the fifth and final book of the Tairen Soul series (no cover out yet), Crown of Crystal Flame by C. L. Wilson. Set in a secondary fantasy world that is both familiar yet unique to fantasy readers, this series was originally planned to be a four book story arch chronicling an epic romance, the dreams of an unimposing craftsman's daughter, the rise of an old evil, the self-sacrificing love of parents, court intrigue and espionage, and an ancient magic civilization on the brink of extinction.  No wonder she couldn't fit it into four books.  Book four, Queen of Song and Souls, was a bit of a let down but when you consider that it was originally meant to be the first half of the final book instead of a book that stands on its own, then you're willing to forgive it ... so long as the release date for book five is not pushed back any longer.  Book one, Lord of the Fading Lands; Book two, Lady of Light and Shadows; Book Three, King of Sword and Sky.

And, believe it or not, Happy Ever After, book four of the Bridal Quartet by Nora Roberts, coming out November 2. Book one, Vision in White, was something that I grabbed off the library shelves three minutes before closing in a desperate attempt to cobble together weekend reading.  I grabbed probably six books that Friday, only one of which I had thought about reading before I got to the library.  The reason I picked up Vision in White?  Because I had never read a Nora Roberts novel and the packaging was pretty and -- important for a library book -- clean.  I walked out of the library with a half dozen books that day, only two of which I read.  And went back immediately for book two, Bed of Roses.  If you've ever watched Say Yes to the Dress or Whose Wedding is it Anyway, you'll love these novels.  The main character of each book is one of the four best friends who run an all inclusive wedding planning business. Parker Brown's old family estate serves as the backdrop for almost 100 weddings and vow renewals a year; she and her staff (her friends) live on site, doing the photography, making the cakes and fixing the flowers.  Planning weddings are the focus of these books -- planning other people's weddings that is!  All in all, they're a lot of fun, and I have to say that over the past thirty years, Nora Roberts has learned her craft on the job, so to speak.  If you've not read a romance novel before and are afraid of drecky prose turning you off, start with Vision in White; this series has perhaps the cleanest prose I've seen in a mainstream romance.

Blameless, The Making of the Cover video