Constant Revision

A winner! Finally!

2012-01-12T00:01:00.003-05:00

Hey, remember that contest I ran a while back for a signed hardcover special edition of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods? Yeah? Remember it?

I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t. It was kind of a while ago. Like, before the holidays a while ago. And who remembers things after the holidays? Didn’t we all spend our holidays sauced to the hilt and surfeited on terrible-for-us food? Who can remember little things like blog contests after that?

(Actually, my holiday week was pretty drastically sober, since I was visiting with the in-laws and had to behave myself. I know, right? Sheesh.)

Anyhow, I’ll keep it short today, since all I have to do is give books away.

Mmm...vodka....

The grand prize of the signed American Gods, along with Neverwhere and Good Omens in paperback (and a random book from my library) goes to… *drumroll* …

Jessica Love!

Congratulations, good lady! Just because you picked up a copy of Tangled Tides by Karen Amanda Hooper, you are now the proud (soon-to-be) owner of a passel of Neil Gaiman books. Whoo!

(Sorry, I’m not shipping the vodka, though. Mainly because it’s long gone.)

Also, since I’m generous like that, I’ve randomly selected a second winner, who shall receive a random book or two from my collection. (But again, no vodka.)

And the runner-up is… *drumroll* … *eyeroll cuz drumrolls are overdone* …

Alexandra Shostak!

See, this is nifty because Alexandra did the interior art for Tangled Tides. Mad props to her for some really nifty imagery. Also, free books to her. Wins all round, baby.

And thus endeth the contest.

I’m exhausted now.

Who’s bringing me a martini?

The Cracked book launch of awesome.

2012-01-09T00:01:00.000-05:00

Last night, friends, I attended a launch party for a lovely lady’s debut novel. It was a marvelous affair, with champagne flowing freely, and despite the caviar hailing from the Black Sea as opposed to the Caspian Sea, the gustatory offerings were utterly delightful.

Hang on a sec. I think I just choked on my own pretention. *hack* *haaaack*

Okay. Better now.

And I was kidding about the champagne and caviar bit. The gal in question is entirely too cool and down-to-earth to throw a shindig that required a stick in the ass as part of the dress code. (The wine, cheese, crudites, and mini-cupcakes, though? Awesome.)

Whose launch party was it? Well, the wonderful Kate Walton’s novel, Cracked, just hit bookshelves around the nation, and in celebration of this fact, she threw quite a bash at the Chester County Books and Music Company. And by quite a bash, I mean 300 of her closest friends and family showed up to wish her a happy book release.

Yes, I asked her if she could mobilize her minions for my eventual book release party. She laughed. I should drop her a line and tell her I was serious. >.>

Anyway, I’ll give you the publisher’s blurb for the book, because seriously, it sounds fantastic. And damnably topical, too. Here you go:

In this gripping debut, a teen takes a bottle of pills and lands in the psych ward with the bully who drove him to attempt suicide.Victor hates his life. He’s relentlessly bullied at school and his parents constantly ridicule him at home.

Bull is angry. He’s sick of his grandfather’s drunken beatings. And he likes to take out his rage on Victor.

Determined to end it all, Victor takes a bottle of his mother’s sleeping pills, only to be disappointed when he wakes up in the psych ward. And his roommate? None other than Bull, whose loaded-gun effort at self-defense has been labeled as a suicide attempt. Things go from bad to worse, until the boys discover they might just have something in common: a reason to live.

If that sounds like a good read to you (and it does to me), why not hop on down to your local bookstore to see if they have a copy for you. You could even win a $25 Amazon gift card if you act in the next couple of days (details on that contest here).

And if you prefer teh interweb storez, I’ll give you the links. Don’t say I never did nothin’ for you.

Powell’s

Barnes & Noble

Amazon

Right. That’s my spiel for today. I’ll be back later on in the week with the winner of my signed Gaiman book giveaway, cuz I’ve been procrastinating that one for-EVAR!

Till then, friends.

Cheers!

Happy, uh, belated New Year! insert excessive cheeriness here

2012-01-06T00:01:00.007-05:00

Yeah, I know it’s been the New Year (are those capitals really necessary, though?) for a few days now. Five, if we’re being specific. Well, six, by the time this posts. Not that it matters.

Anyhow, I think January 5th (which is when I’m writing this) is a good time for me to put up my New Year’s resolutions post. It is, right? (Not that I need your validation. It’s my blog, after all.) (And in any case, I only just got back from my holiday trip to the West Coast on Tuesday, and I’m still jetlagged and sleep-deprived, so cut me some freakin’ slack, why don’t you?)

Where was I?

Oh. Yeah. Resolutions.

Hang on. I’m going to post a picture to liven up this post. Lemme go find a good one.

I resolve to have more of these in the new year....

Right. Let’s get this train back on the tracks.

See, it’s 2012 now. And not only is it a year in which I’m going to become, and feel (and strive mightily against getting) older, it’s a year in which I will be published.

You can mark that on your calendars, boys and girls. I’m getting published this year.

Was I published last year? Well, yeah. Once. I got the steampunk romance flash fic I wrote for a contest on Calista Taylor’s blog republished on my friend Matt Delman’s Doctor Fantastique website. (Matt’s awesome, he’s an independent publisher, and the dude cares about social justice. You should all check him out.)

But other than that, I didn’t publish squat last year. Perhaps I was resting on my laurels. (Laurel probably didn’t appreciate it, but y’know….) Maybe it was my focus on social networking and longer-format fiction. Maybe it was sheer laziness. But whatever the case, I didn’t publish much last year, and that’s a crying shame.

But in 2012? Baby, I’m gettin’ things done. I have two novella’s in progress right now, and two novels. All will be completed by year’s end.

Will I get an agent this year? I dunno. That’s actually not even on my list of goals, given the brave new world of digital publishing. No, I’m not even considering self-pub, but there are other ways to go. Small presses are a virtual font of publishing creativity nowadays, so for an aspiring author to overlook them as a potential market would be a tad foolish, at best, no?

I also resolve to find more symphonic metal ~~lead singers~~ bands to obsess over.

So that’s how things are going to be in the new year. I’m getting some long-format fiction published, and that’s all there is to it. Which, of course, means that I have to finish said long-format fiction.

Excuse me while I get on that.

Oh, and Happy New Year, everyone!

*raises vodka glass*

Cheers!

The No-Kiss Blogfest (3rd Ed.)!

2012-01-02T11:17:00.001-05:00

Yes, folks, it’s that time again. The irrepressible Frankie Diane’s hosting her annual tribute to almost-smooches, and since we’re co-hosts of our periodic Philly Lit Nights, she made it clear that in no way, shape, or form could I skip posting for a blogfest she’s hosting. (Like the rhyme there? I thought it was nice.)

And yes, I need to post the winner of my Random Monday Gaiman Giveaway. I’ll do that this week, I promise.

But in the meantime….

Here’s an excerpt from one of my works-in-progress. It’s the first draft, and completely unedited, but it’s the only thing I’ve got that fits teh blogfest rulez right now. So, for your delectation and delight, here’s an almost kiss between two characters who, shall we say, have a bit of a, uh, stormy relationship. Yup.

She tries to brush past me. I touch her wrist. She reacts.

In a sudden, convulsive gesture, she twitches aside, grabs my wrist, and twists. I grunt as my arm bends at an acute angle. Instinct kicks in.

I slam my knuckles against her forearm, yank loose from her grip. She throws a punch at my solar plexus. I block, counterattack. A flurry of close-range blows—fists, elbows, knees. We’re aiming for the cripple points. Arm-lock, break, head-lock, break, fist to the kidney, the neck. We’re in close and dirty. She shoves me backward. I grab her arm and twist. She cries out softly, spins, snatches my free hand, bends it to the breaking point.

We pause, our harsh breathing the only sound in the room. Pain throbs through my nervous system.

My back is against the wall. She’s got my right hand in a painful lock; I have her free arm twisted behind her back. Her knee is jammed against my thigh, the sharp toe of her boot grinding into my calf. Our chests are separated only by her arm, plunging diagonally between us to keep my right hand immobilized. Her face is very close to mine.

Strands of hair have fallen across her cheeks. Her eyes flash fire at me. Her breath hisses against my cheek. Moisture glistens on her forehead, in the hollow of her throat. Her lips are skinned back from her teeth. All I can smell is her skin.

“Enough,” I say through my teeth. “Drop it, darlin’.”

“Don’t you ever touch me again,” she hisses , pushing harder on my hyperextended fingers.

I gasp and yank her arm further out of position—her shoulder is near dislocation, now. She cries out softly.

“I said enough, T.” I take a measured breath. “I’m going to let go.”

Her body quivers with strain. I can feel her heat shimmering across the space separating us. Her gaze rakes my face.

After a silent three-count, I release her. Her lock on my fingers lasts a moment longer, then she lets go as well. She slides her arm from between us, flexes her stretched shoulder gently. But she hasn’t stepped back.

I stare into her eyes. This close, I can see every crimson crease in her lips, every mascaraed eyelash. Her breath is shallow. I reach up.

Her cheek is smooth beneath my palm. The air in the room is suddenly electric, humming with expectation.

“Tarja,” I say, softly.

Her tongue flickers out to moisten her lips.

I lean closer. Her lips part.

She pulls away. “No,” she says. “No.”

So you know, folks, that’s totally not how the scene ends in the manuscript. If you’re curious about how it really does end…well, you’ll have to wait till it’s published, then, won’t you? #tease

Anyhow, pop on over to Frankie’s blog and browse the other entries via the Mr. Linky, won’t you? ‘Cause what’s better than an epic tease to brighten your day? >.>

Happy reading, folks. Cheers!

Blog Tour: Spruce Knoll for Endangered Species!

2011-12-07T00:01:00.000-05:00

You may not know this about me, friends, but I’m a bit of a softie when it comes to animals. They don’t even have to be fuzzy, either. I’ve always had rather a surfeit of empathy for the downtrodden, and what’s more downtrodden than a species that’s in danger of becoming extinct? Not much, I tell you.

So when the lovely and kindhearted Heather McCorkle sent out a call for hosts for her Spruce Knoll for Endangered Species blog tour, I couldn’t say no. Yeah, yeah, I’m a sap. Go ahead and judge me. I’ll be over here in the corner brushing up on my not-giving-a-CENSORED*.

Anyway, a special edition of Heather’s The Secret Of Spruce Knoll is releasing from Compass Press this month and she’s doing a blog tour to go along with it. A percentage of the proceeds from every special edition sold by December 12th (in any format) will go toward Heather’s favorite charity that protects endangered species. Very cool, yes?

Of course, there are prizes during the tour (which started on December 1^st and goes through the 17^th). They include a symbolic adoption for the endangered species of the winner’s choice (a $50 donation by Heather), signed copies of her novels, and great swag (which I hear may include cute stuffed animals, but since cute stuffed animals have been banned on this blog since 1994, I can neither confirm nor deny this fact). For full details on how to enter, why not hop over to Heather’s blog?

Also, as part of the tour, Heather has asked each blog host to pick their favorite endangered species. I’ll tell you, the list was pretty long, but after careful consideration, I had to go with the Hellbender Salamander.

I mean, c’mon. The name alone? Awesome. It makes me want to write a short story. We’ve had The Last Airbender, right? Why not The Last Hellbender?

And Heather offers the following facts about this nifty creature:

This is one really cool near-endangered species. The hellbender salamander is over two feet in length and lives in fresh water such as rivers and streams. They have both gills and lungs (in different stages of their development) and they absorb oxygen from the water through capillaries on their side-frills.

So help a poor Hellbender out, won’t you, folks? Click on over to Heather’s blog for additional details, or just go ahead and pick up a special edition of her book at:

Amazon

or

Barnes & Noble

And don’t forget to tell her about it if you do. You’ll be helping out a poor, voiceless, two-foot long Hellraiser Salamander, yes? Yes.

Till next time, friends.

Cheers!

*Heather’s a classy gal, so I decided to avoid profanity in a blog post promoting her charitable efforts. But this is a footnote, and not the real post, so you may as well know I totally dropped the f-bomb underneath that CENSORED sticker.

Philly Lit Night, Part…Oh, screw what part it is. Just show up.

2011-12-06T21:25:00.001-05:00

It’s that time of…erm…month again, folks! (No, not that time of the month. That time of month. There’s a difference.) Time for another Philly Lit Night with the riotously boisterous and shockingly good looking crew of Philadelphia-area writer types, right?

Yep.

Now, Frankie already blogged the details, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt if I threw them up on the ol’ interwebz also. So. This is me throwing up the details: *hurk* *huuuurk* *cough cough* *huh-AAAHH-uuuurk*

Um…sorry. I mean, here are the details (shamelessly cut-and-pasted from the email I sent around to the group):

WHEN?

Sunday, December 11th, 4 pm or thereabouts

WHERE?

Barnes & Noble Rittenhouse Square, 18th & Walnut Sts., Phila., PA

WHERE NEXT?

The Irish Pub, 20th & Walnut Sts., Phila., PA

WHERE NEXT?

Home and bed, or the drunk tank, depending on how much fun we end up having.

WHY?

We need a reason? There'll be alcohol involved, that's why. *shakes head*

HOW?

Seriously, do I have to do everything!? Figure out how to get yourself there, you lazy sod, you!

WHAT?

Are you asking me to repeat myself?

As always, you can RSVP to me or Frankie, and feel free to pass the invitation along to local writer-types that might be interested in our particular brand of mayhem.

We look forward to seeing you there!

* * * * *

Oh, and one more thing before I sign off: you still have until December 15th to support small presses and win a chance at a Neil Gaiman prize pack, including a signed, hardback, special edition of American Gods.

Interested?

Check my contest announcement –> here.

Over and out, y’all.

Random Monday Gaiman Giveaway! Also, yay for small presses!

2011-11-28T00:01:00.000-05:00

So I went to WFC a few weeks back, folks. I haven’t posted a retrospective, and probably won’t, ‘cause people who actually took pictures and had cogent things to say have done better ones. (See Matt MacNish’s and Carolina Valdez Miller’s post for the lovely/incriminating pics, if you’re interested.)

But as many of you know, the guest of honor at WFC was none other than Neil Gaiman himself. He is, it goes without saying, very chill. I shook his hand at breakfast the last day of the con. I did a rather creditable job of not fanboying.

And, as things go around here, O readers, you get to benefit from my wallet-emptying trip to San Diego. How, you ask? Well take a look.

Exhibit A: Free Books

Exhibit B: A Free, SIGNED Book

See, I managed to get my hands on a signed hardback copy of American Gods. It’s not personalized or anything, because if it had been, it’d have been made out to L.K. Gardner-Griffie, whose nametag I heisted in order to be allowed into the signing. There was this great, semi-awkward moment when Neil looked at me, then looked at my nametag (with it’s sparkly purple bat stickers and hyphenated last name), and a microsecond of silence ensued. I filled it with, “You don’t have to personalize it. I'll be giving it as a gift.”

Then I smiled winningly. I think he bought it.

That’s a good thing, though, since now I can give the book away to one of you, and you can tell a similar story to all your friends and relations, and make yourself look daring and edgy and hip and such. Basically, all the things I wasn’t in that moment.

Oh, and I’m not giving away the vodka. That was just for decoration. Sorry.

So how do you win this lovely, little prize pack? Well, I may have prevaricated when I captioned those photographs as “free” books, because they’re not, technically, going to be free. But since I’m typing this up on Small Business Saturday, I thought I’d get in the spirit by making it Small Press Saturday as well (with the giveaway on Monday, natch). Cool, huh?

Therefore, to win the following:

AMERICAN GODS, by Neil Gaiman (signed hardback, 10th Anniversary Edition, mint condition)
NEVERWHERE, by Neil Gaiman (paperback, I-read-it condition)
GOOD OMENS, by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman (paperback, I-read-it condition)
SURPRISE RANDOM BOOK FROM MY BOOKSHELVES, by Someone-or-Other (probably paperback, I-read-it condition)

you must buy, or have bought, a copy of one of the following books:

TANGLED TIDES, by Karen Amanda Hooper (Rhemalda Publishing)
- buy from Rhemalda’s bookstore
- buy from Amazon
- buy from Barnes & Noble
MONARCH, by Michelle Davidson Argyle (Rhemalda Publishing)
- buy from Rhemalda’s bookstore
- buy from Amazon
- buy from Barnes & Noble
SEED, by Rob Ziegler (Night Shade Books)

buy from Amazon
buy from Barnes & Noble

THE WINDS OF KHALAKOVO, by Bradley P. Beaulieu (Night Shade Books)

buy from Amazon
buy from Barnes & Noble

CTHULHUROTICA, edited by Carrie Cuinn (Dagan Books)
- buy from Amazon

Once you’ve done that, all you have to do is prove it to me. Email me at simonclarter *AT* gmail.com with whatever you think counts as proof—purchase confirmation screenshot, receipt email, a picture of you holding or passed out on the book, etc.—and I’ll enter you in the drawing to win the Gaiman prize pack.

If you buy more than one? You get more than one entry. Easy, huh?

All in all, I don’t think it’s a bad deal at all. Even if you don’t win, you’ve still supported your friendly neighborhood small press, and that’s got to feel good. Also, you’ll get some good reading, yes?

So go get one of those books, won’t you? Neil’s waiting anxiously to see who wins.

Maybe.

THE FINE PRINT

- Contest ends 12/15/2011

- Open worldwide. Unless you live in Antarctica.

- Sending me vodka won’t help your chances any, but it won’t hurt them either.

- Any pictures you send should be at least marginally clean. Y’know.

- A random number generator will be used to pick the winner.

- If you followed my blog, it’d be nice, but only if you want to. I’m not whoring for followers over here.

- I wish Neil Gaiman would stop drunk texting me.

Tangled Tides Launch Party!

2011-11-25T00:01:00.000-05:00

I choose Sirens!

But you kind of knew I would, didn’t you, O readers?

Er…you’d probably like to know what I’m talking about, then, eh?

See, the lovely Karen Amanda Hooper’s debut novel releases today, and by way of helping her celebrate this momentous event, a group of us are choosing sides in the war between the merfolk and the selkies that features prominently in the novel.

Yeah, I know. Sirens aren’t technically part of the war. But they’re in the novel, and are hawt, so of course I chose them. Also, I wrote a flash fiction piece about a siren this year and placed it in an antho, so I have a soft spot in my heart for the boat-wrecking vixens.

Anywho, how about some details on the novel? Here we are, then:

The Blurb

Yara Jones doesn’t believe in sea monsters—until she becomes one.

When a hurricane hits her island home and she wakes up with fins, Yara finds herself tangled up in an underwater world of mysterious merfolk and secretive selkies. Both sides believe Yara can save them by fulfilling a broken promise and opening the sealed gateway to their realm, but they are battling over how it should be done. The selkies want to take her life. The merfolk want something far more precious.

Treygan, the stormy-eyed merman who turned Yara mer, will stop at nothing and sacrifice everything to protect his people—until he falls for Yara. The tides turn as Yara fights to save herself, hundreds of sea creatures, and the merman who has her heart. She could lose her soul in the process—or she might open the gateway to a love that’s deeper than the oceans.

The Links

Karen’s Author Website

Karen’s Blog

Tangled Tides at Amazon

TT at Barnes & Noble

TT at the Rhemalda bookstore

TT on Goodreads

The Pretteh

And there you have it, folks: Karen’s debut novel, on the shelves today! Swing by her blog and wish her a happy release day, won’t you? Or say hello on the Twitter. It’d make her day, I just know it.

So congratulations, Karen, on your debut novel realease! I couldn’t be happier for you, m’dear.

Now I’m off to see if those sirens are as hot as I hope they are. :)

Cheers!

Who’s up for doing a good deed today?

2011-11-15T06:50:00.001-05:00

I know, I know. “Simon,” you’re saying, “you’d trample an infant to get to the 50% Black Friday vodka discounts. What’s with the talking about good deeds?”

Well, they’re not my good deeds, are they? They’re someone else’s. So I can talk about them. Loophole. Duh.

And the good-deeder in question? None other than my lovely, longtime friend Carolina Valdez Miller. C’mon. Is anyone surprised? You all knew she was saintly already. (Really, it’s a wonder she hangs around, virtually or otherwise, with a reprobate like me.)

See, she’s had it a little rough in the ol’ net-o-sphere recently, what with getting hacked and locked out of All The Social Media by some douchebags of such epic douchebaggery that they make standard-issue douchebags look like mere jerks. And what sucks most is that she has this good-deedery that she really could use some help with, and wasn’t able to blog about it until today.

She’s going on a medical mission to Haiti. Remember it? Earthquake a year or so ago? Crushing poverty? Cholera epidemics? She’s going there. As a volunteer.

Go read about it. Like, now. You really don’t have to come back here.

But if you do happen to wander back, or if you finish this post before clicking over, I urge you to do what you can to help her. You don’t have to donate money, though seriously, that’d be fantastic. But at the very least, could you help spread the word?

Link her up on the Twitters, on the Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, and anywhere else you might maintain an online presence. Everything helps.

Friends, we write fiction because, on some level, we want to connect with readers, to affect other people’s minds and lives with our stories. Carol’s taking it a step farther. She’s going right to where the need is greatest.

Help her out, won’t you?

Thanks.

One step at a time will get you there

2011-11-14T06:06:00.003-05:00

Since I’ve started running, friends, I’ve found my perception of distance has changed somewhat. There’s something about the ability to cover good distances on foot, in not-so-great amounts of time, that makes everything seem…closer, somehow.

See, if you hop in your car for a four-mile drive through a residential neighborhood with stop signs and lights, it can seem like that four miles takes forever to cover. We might find ourselves saying things like, “If I were on the highway, this would only take four minutes! And why the hell is this idiot doing BELOW THE SPEED LIMIT!?”

Or maybe that’s just me.

But when you run, when you lose yourself in the rhythm of your footsteps and measured breaths, time and distance seem to blur a little. That four miles fraught with vehicular interruptions, when you run it early in the morning, is now a free and clear path for your feet. It’s a half-hour’s light jog.

I first noticed this in San Diego a couple weeks ago, when I was there for World Fantasy Convention. (No, I didn’t do a post on that. Yes, I may yet. What? I procrastinate! Or perendinate, as the case may be. Sue me.)
When I woke that first morning in California I was still on East Coast time, so naturally it was at 4 am. I tried, I really tried to get back to sleep, but after an hour I gave up, got up, dressed, and went for a light breakfast before my run.

The hotel was four miles from the Pacific Ocean, a straight shot, essentially. I decided I wanted to see the Pacific Ocean. So four miles there and back it was. Off I went.

The first leg was fairly easy. It was cool, but clear (aren’t all fall mornings like that in San Diego?), and the air felt richer, somehow, than what I’m used to. And after I’d wiggled my fingers in the ocean and collected a few shells to bring back for the kids, I headed back to the hotel.

Now, as you might assume, the run back is always a bit harder than the way out, so when I crested a small hill and saw the hotel towers in the distance, perhaps a mile and a half away, I got this sinking feeling of holy-crap-that’s-so-far-my-legs-are-going-to-drop-the-hell-off!

I swear it looked farther away than this....

What do you do at this point? What can you do but keep running?

So I did.

And despite how far away that hotel looked, I put one foot in front of the other, took one breath at a time, and in no time flat, I was jogging back through the hotel grounds toward my room. It hadn’t been that far at all. It just looked it.

You can see where I’m going with this, right?

As with running, so with writing.

Right now I’m struggling to finish a novella, with an expected 25k or so wordcount. But it doesn’t have to be so hard to finish, does it? Focusing on how far away 25k is won’t help anything. What will help is simply writing the words down, one after another, following the story to its (bleak, depressing, apocalyptic) conclusion (hey, it’s me—what did you expect?).

That’s how I’ll get there. One step at a time, one word at a time. The thing is to keep the legs going, keep the words flowing, and trust that, if you persist, push through, eventually you’ll reach that destination.
So that’s what I’ll do.

That’s how the magic happens.

Write on, friends.

I don’t write happy endings.

2011-11-08T22:51:00.001-05:00

You heard me right: I don’t write happy endings. I just don’t. It’ s not me. It’s not, quite frankly, how I see the world.

I’ll explain.

I know there are stories out there of people overcoming insurmountable odds to reunite with their lost loves/families/pets/computer games. I know there are high school sweethearts in the world who’ve stayed happily married for 60 years. And I know that, every once in a while, the good guys actually win.

But I don’t give a shit.

It’s probably a character flaw.

The thing is, in the stories I write, I’m not seeking resolution. I have absolutely no interest in bringing everything to a neat conclusion. My characters are always in process, never complete, never satisfied. Even if they get what they think they want, it’s not going to be what they expected or hoped for. Because that’s how life is, in my experience.

It’s messy. It’s complicated. We make major decisions with incomplete information, never really knowing, really knowing whether we’ve chosen the right thing. Every silver lining has a cloud. There’s a yin to every yang.

I’m about to choke on cliches.

My point is, in fiction, what calls to me isn’t the happy-ending, oh-god-that’s-just-so-right shite that ends up as Lifetime movies. In real life, people do the right thing for the wrong reasons, or vice versa. Love isn’t, actually, enough. Sometimes conflict—internal or external—is the only constant.

So I write about that.

And so did most of the authors in the Western canon. (Shakespeare, anyone? Dostoyevsky? Hemingway? Woolf?)

Hell, I don’t have to like that this is the way things are. But it sure does make things interesting for the ol’ fiction. Because people hurt. They make daily choices between bad and worse. They stumble in the dark, and sometimes the only glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train. Sacrifice isn’t always noble.

Here’s your happy ending.

That’s what I know. It’s what speaks to me.

It’s what I write.

Deal.

Bryan Thomas Schmidt: THE WORKER PRINCE

2011-10-25T00:01:00.000-04:00

Hey, y’all. Remember that time I said I would be leasing blog space to friends with announcements and such to make. Well, here’s another installment in that series, this time featuring Bryan Thomas Schmidt, whose novel, The Worker Prince, debuted just a few short weeks ago.

Bryan was kind enough to let me post an excerpt from his novel for your perusal, so I’ll get right to that, shall I? Here goes!

Tela ordered a Tertullian Hammer and settled into a booth at the pub to wait for her drink. Through the dome overhead, she watched the sky fade from purple to gray as the planet’s two moons started their nightly climb.

As the waiter arrived with her drink, she spotted Davi behind him, coming in the door. Oh damn! She reached for her drink and took a long swallow. The ice cubes stacked in the glass held their position until the very last minute, then conveniently decided to collapse against her upper lip, sending a trickle of virulent green liquor down her chin to drip onto her clean, white jumpsuit.

God! Seriously? She swallowed hard and reached for a napkin, but it was too late. Glancing down, she saw a faint curl of smoke rising from the spreading stain on her collar as the drink melted the synthetic fibers. Oh, hells.

“Tela? What are you doing here?”

She looked up to find Davi standing across the table from her, smiling. He looked handsome in his flight jacket, his hair still wind-tousled from the training runs in the forest earlier. She blinked and offered a crooked grin.

Her head felt light all of a sudden. Was it getting hot in here?

A look of concern flashed across Davi’s face. “Is that a….Tertullian Hammer you’re drinking?”

Tela nodded. Her head was strangely wobbly on her neck. “Yez,” she said. Yez?

“Do you even know what’s in one of those?” Davi asked, shocked. “They’re almost pure, 160-proof Regallian vodka, mixed with spent fuel rod particles and synthetic alcohalgae! One sip is enough to knock a Vertullian yak on it’s hind end!”

Tela’s nose had gone inexplicably numb. She—

Bryan Thomas Schmidt: Excuse me!

Simon C. Larter: Um…yes?

BTS: That is not a scene from my novel!

SCL: *coughs* Are you sure? I distinctly remember a bar scene. There was a bar scene, wasn’t there?

BTS: Not like that, there wasn’t.

SCL: Oh.

BTS: ….

SCL: Perhaps I should copy directly from the text, instead of going from memory, then?

BTS: That might be a better idea, yes.

SCL: I think I can manage that.

BTS: Good. And, um…thanks for hosting me on my blog tour. I think.

SCL: You’re welcome! Wait…what?

Davi nodded. “I know. I’ve been spending time in the Library learning the history of our people. I really believe in what we’re doing.” Tela couldn’t help being impressed by his effort. “That doesn’t make it any easier to think about sending kids to their possible deaths.”

“Some of them may surprise you,” Tela said.

Davi nodded. “I hope all of them do.” He took another sip, savoring the fruity taste a moment.

On impulse, she placed her hand on his atop the table. “Me, too.” She fought the urge to yank it back when she realized what she’d done. Yet he hadn’t tried to pull his hand away. Did he like this? She hated being so transparent, but then touching him like this felt so nice.

She slowly withdrew her hand. “We’ll have to work harder with them.”

Davi nodded. “I’ve been thinking the same thing.” He took one last long sip of his smoothie, and then set the empty glass back on the table. “I guess I should head back and start working up a more intense lesson plan.”

Tela joined him as he stood. “Do you want some help?”

Davi gave her a puzzled look. “Really?”

She shrugged. “Sure, why not? I can come up with some decent ideas.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.” She smiled. “

I know.” He nodded and tossed some credits on the table. “Okay, let’s go.”

She had an impulse. “Wait.”

“What?”

“One more thing.”

Without thinking, she rushed around the table, and, before either understood what was happening, she kissed him.

After a moment, she pulled away, straightened her clothes and headed for the door. “Let’s go.”

Davi stood there stunned and watched her go.

She turned back in the doorway. “You coming?”

He nodded, moving toward her.

Oh my God! She fought to control her expression. Why did I do that? This is just what I need. But then she realized, she hadn’t wanted to stop.

Erm…sorry about the technical difficulties there, folks. I think we finally got the real excerpt there at the end. :)

Anyway, if you’re in the mood for some good, old-fashioned space opera, leavened with love, faith, and gunship battles, why not give The Worker Prince a look? More excerpts, and signed copies, are available on Bryan’s website, and the book is available at your friendly neighborhood online retailers. Links below!

Powell’s Books

Amazon.com: Kindle and Paperback

Barnes & Noble

Get your ass out of bed.

2011-10-14T06:45:00.001-04:00

I get up early, y’all.

This may surprise you, given the regularity with which I talk about alcohol and all-night benders and crushing hangovers and such, but it’s true: I’m an early riser.

(And if you’re thinking that an early alarm puts a little crimp in the drinking schedule…you’re right. But don’t tell anyone. I wouldn’t want to tarnish my drunken reputation.)

Anyhow, for those of you writerly-types who don’t make a habit of getting up with or before the sun, I’m here to tell you you’re missing out a little. Not only does it allow you to get things done before the majority of the world has woken up, it also opens you up to a whole range of sensory experiences most folk just don’t get.

I run, see. And I ride my bike a lot. And if I want to do those things and still get to work before 7:30, I kind of have to get up early, don’t I? Yup.

Ergo, a list of things you can discover if you rise before the dawn. You’re welcome. (You can thank me later. After you’ve had a few cups of coffee, that is.)

1. The light is different at dawn.

In terms of the physics, there’s not much difference between the light at sunset and the light at dawn. When it comes to feel, though? They’re worlds apart. Thomas Hardy made mention of it in his Tess of the D’Urbervilles, back in 1891:

“The gray half-tones of daybreak are not the gray half-tones of the day’s close, though the degree of their shade may be the same. In the twilight of the morning seems active, darkness passive; in the twilight of the evening it is the darkness which is active and crescent, and the light which is the drowsy reverse.”

Don’t believe me? Try it. Get up before dawn and watch the light infiltrate the dark east. You’ll understand.

2. Your local 6-lane highway is deserted sometimes.

Y’know all those apocalyptic movies and shows where people wander down a deserted superhighway? Like this*:

Well, if you get up early enough, you, too, can see the nearest 6+ lane highway sans vehicles. I got up at 4am to run a few weeks ago (I had to be at a work appointment VERY early that day), and there were precisely zero cars on the roads. Even the very big roads. It’s something to see, I can assure you.

3. Your tracking skillz will improve.

One time, back in summer when it was actually light when I got up, I tried a different route on my morning run. I had doubled back, and was retracing my steps toward home, when I noticed something in the dew-wet grass. As it turned out, when I had run through the grass earlier, my feet had shaken loose the dew that had been clinging to the vegetation, so while the still-dewy grass was silvery in the morning light, my footsteps were visible as matte, green scars in the glimmering meadow.

And, having read a thousand and one fantasy novels in which tracking skills are used, my mind naturally jumped to the implications of my discovery: you can’t hide your tracks in grass at dawn.

4. New scents and sounds.

If you get up early enough in the summertime, the birds aren’t awake yet. The only sound you’ll hear is the crickets, scraping out their rhythmic call en masse, and the scrape of your own footsteps. (The rabbits rise before dawn, however. And that crane by the pond down the street is awake, but not talking.)

Wait a while, though, and the birds will begin to call as the cricketsong fades.

Too, in the still air of the morning, scents linger. The stain of diesel exhaust, the tang of algae down by the water, the odor of must and unwashed human from that house up the street that doesn’t get cleaned enough, the rot of garbage in the humid summer—all smells you might not catch in the busyness of the day.

5. A different community.

In my neighborhood, around 5:30 in the morning, three women wearing ballcaps and sweaters walk the track around the pond almost every morning. A slight, aging, Asian woman walks it too, but in the opposite direction. The lanky woman with the chocolate lab jogs through the park on the way to my street.

I greet them as I run, because it’s what you do at that time in the morning. You don’t ignore them; they’ve made the effort to be up early as well, so the least you could do is say hello.

Everyone I see before 6am has a certain amount of discipline. Our good mornings are both greeting, and tacit acknowledgement of that fact. It’s a self-focused, taciturn community, but it’s a community nonetheless, and a different one from that of the Starbucks at 8:30 am.

None of this, I realize, is necessarily inducement for you to drag your tired bones out of bed first thing in the morning, writer-friends. But if elucubration is your thing, you might want to try, just once, turning your schedule the opposite direction. Pretend you’re taking a friend to the airport or something. Y’know.

Set the alarm. Prepare the coffee maker. Resist the urge to hit the snooze button. Then get up. Go.

It’s a whole new world out here, folks, made fresh every day for those with eyes to see it.

Why not join me?

*Image ganked shamelessly from season 1 of The Walking Dead. Which is awesomesauce. I stayed up all night to watch the entire season last week. (I didn’t get up early the following morning. Sometimes it’s just that way.)

Making Waves After You.

2011-09-11T22:43:00.001-04:00

Right, folks. Remember what I said, about 30 years ago, internet-time? (Really only a couple weeks, real time. The ‘net moves fast, dunnit?) Well, here’re a few more announcement-link-type-thingies I’ve been sitting on.

Let’s get right to it, shall we?

Debut! After You!

This particular announcement makes me happy, because it’s about someone whom I’ve actually met in real life. See those Philly Lit Nights I occasionally blog about? The ones Frankie and I organize? Well, Jessica Corra’s a Philly area writer, and when she came to her first PLN, her book wasn’t even out on submission yet.

And now? Well, I’ll let the images do the talking.

Yes, that’s the Publishers Lunch Weekly email.

Yes, that’s Jess’s debut sale announcement!

So why not click through to her blog and congratulate her, eh? Or, y’know, follow her on Twitter, since she’s there too.

Oh, and just for fun? Here’s a book trailer. Because I like you.

Waves. Making Them.

And speaking of debuts, someone else I know has a book on the shelves right now. She’s not particularly YA, and nor is the book. What she is, though, is funny.

Also, she loves a good double entendre. Or even a bad one. And dirty jokes.

Also, also, I impersonated her a while back. Except sans heels and lacy underthings.

Who am I talking about? Why, the (almost) inimitable Tawna Fenske, of course!

I swear she’s not paying me for this. Alas.

Y’know the best thing about Tawna’s debut, though? It’s been getting killer reviews. Seriously.

I couldn’t be happier for her, writer-friends. Not only does she have a great sense of humor, she’s also one of the most encouraging writer-bloggers around. It’s always awesome when a genuinely cool person achieves success.

So go check out her book, her blog, and her Twitter feed, y’all. (Those of you who don’t already know her, that is.) Just be sure to put down your beverage before reading her stuff. You and your keyboard will thank me.

Okay, that’s my good deed for the week, people. I’m off to kick puppies and take candy from babies to make up for this unwonted act of generosity.

Be sure to check back next week, though. My karma bank’ll be in dire need of replenishment by then, I’m sure, so I’ll talk up a few more friends with new book releases.

Now where’s my vodka?

Marybeth Smith: FALL GIRL

2011-08-30T22:14:00.001-04:00

Right, folks. ‘Member that series of promo posts I talked about last time? Well, here it goes. And first in line is the gal who induced me to abandon my non-YA policy, Marybeth Smith!

I mean, look at that face. How could I not host her?

You may be wondering what Marybeth did to change my mind. No, she didn’t bribe me with vodka (though perhaps I should’ve asked). Rather, it’s that somewhere beneath my calloused, stony, alcohol-soaked shell, I have a soft spot for people who’re passionate about worthy causes. And if you’re curious which cause Marybeth is passionate about…read on. You’ll figure it out soon enough.

Now, then! On with the interview.

So, Marybeth (I totally dig that your first name is two names in one, btw), why'd you decide to write FALL GIRL?

I wanted to make a point that mental illnesses affect more than just the person suffering from it. I wanted to show that it affects the entire family. Especially the siblings.

Your main character doesn't suffer from bipolar disorder, but members of her family do. Is there a reason you chose to write the story this way?

Well, I kinda tried to consider what it will be like for my daughter as a teen. I wondered how my son's bipolar would affect her and her social life.

The YA writer mother was awesome, but you can come clean: were you poking fun at yourself a little when you wrote her? ;)

Um ... I may or may not ... okay totally may have based the mom around me. The first scene I ever wrote was the kitchen scene in chapter two. The one between her and her mother. I totally pictured my daughter as a teen and what she would think of me with my Harry Potter T Shirt and my awesomesauce talk. I couldn't help but play it up a bit. To be honest, every family member of the Jones' family is a bit like each member of my own family. It's what keeps me entertained as the writer!

Admittedly, it's been a while since I was in high school (er...way too long, actually), but one thing I noticed was that all the drama felt very real, very adolescent. How much of your own personal experience went into the writing of this story?

Is it possible for me to plead the fifth on this one? Alright, admittedly, there are certain scenes and certain characters similar to those of my (way too long ago) high school days. Each character has a wee bit of of my past weaved into them. That's probably why I like them so much though!

How do you feel about the self-publishing experience so far? D'you think you'll follow that same path for future books?

Ah ... self publishing ... there's a whole tale in its own. Well, it's had its ups and downs. I started out with the agent route ... but when the agent I REALLY wanted and really fit my story said, "I love your writing, but I just signed someone with a similar story," I kinda decided to make my own path. I didn't really care if the book sold, I just wanted to get it out there. I needed to make my story known and let people going through these things know that they are not alone.

However, after my sales hit almost 50K, I'm not gonna lie, I was a tiny bit giddy!

As I am currently working on the sequel, I keep going back and forth on the agent vs. self publishing bit. I've learned so much through this experience, made tons of mistakes, fixed them and learned more ... I feel a slightly overwhelming (yes there is such thing as slightly overwhelming ... it's my interview, right?) urge to do it even better this time. However, I know it will be easier to get my books in actual stores if I go the traditional route.

I suppose I will know more once I finish the first draft, but as of right now, I'm leaning toward self publishing. It's the ambitiousness that is pushing me to do it bigger and better than the first book. I'm kinda crazy like that ;)

So...do Annabelle and Tony end up together for the long haul? C'mon...you can tell me. I won't tell anyone else....

Wouldn't you like to know! :D Well, they are definitely in for some VERY large challenges in the near future. I'm not even sure how I am going to come to terms with everything that happens next. But yeah ... um ... totally ... they find a way to make it work ... maybe.…

Oh, fine. Be coy like that. Pfft. ;)

So that’s Marybeth, folks. Nice, isn’t she?

And, because I’m technically competent like that, here’s an image of her book cover that links to her author website. Why not go see what she’s about, huh?

Oh, and if you’re curious about her book (yes, I read it—I’m allowed to read YA every now and then, even if i don’t write it, aren’t I?), you can find links on Marybeth’s author site. Or, y’know, just follow the ones I’ve posted below. That’d work too.

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Powell’s

There we go, folks! My very first YA-promoting post. Whaddya think? Should I do more in the future? Should I insist on Skype interviews next time? With tequila shots? I bet that’d make for some interesting viewing, ne? Do tell; I’m waiting with bated breath for your thoughts.

Till next time, y’all. Be well, and have an extra vodka for me.

Cheers!

Take my blog. Please!

2011-08-24T23:04:00.001-04:00

Okay, no. I don’t mean you. And not you either, so quit salivating over the URL. It’s not waterproof.

No, what I mean by that title is that I’m starting a series here on the ol’ blog, in which I highlight and promote the book releases of some of my favorite people around the interwebz. I mean, I know you’re going to miss the regular humorous and helpful content I’ve been posting these past few months (:cough:), but you can deal with it. I have faith in you, dear readers.

See, a lot of lovely folk around the blogosphere have accomplished wonderful writerly things recently, from agent signings to sales to book releases, and I’d love to introduce you to these hardworking folk, and perhaps entice you to sample their wares, yes?

I’ll warn you in advance, though: some of my bloggie-friends write YA. I know, right?

“Simon,” you’re saying, “you’re…not a YA kind of guy. What with the alcoholism and stories about sex and violence and all that.”

Case study in why my blog isn’t YA, part 1. Also, hai, Cristina.

And I totally agree. I don’t do YA. However, that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the work of those who do.

I used to have a policy for the blog, I confess. I wasn’t going to review YA, since I haven’t made any particular efforts to make the blog YA-friendly. But then I realized that, despite my non-YA-ness, I have a lot of YA-writing and reading readers, if you follow. So why not promote my YA-publishing friends?

Thus it went.

So. You can expect a series of indeterminate length over the next few weeks, promoting my friends’ stuff. Why not, after all? What’s the good in having a blog if you can’t help people out every now and then? It’s good karma.

And my karma needs all the help it can get.

Now where’s my vodka?

Oh. There it is. Anna stole it. Give it back, you vixen!

On Self-Flagellation

2011-08-03T06:47:00.001-04:00

I’ve been doing a lot of running and cycling recently, writer-friends. (That, incidentally, is a partial explanation for the lack o’ activity on the ol’ blog, but we’ll leave that alone for the time being.) Why have I been doing this, you may ask? Well...I’ll try and unpack that for you, eh?

Sure, there’s the fact that it’s simply beneficial for my health. It feels good to be able to drop a 5k run or 20 mile bike ride on any given day. But, as with most things when it comes to my psychology, it’s not that simple.

So let’s talk body image, shall we? Yup, I’m going there. Y’know this constant bombardment we’re all subjected to from TV, movies, the internet, and magazines? Those oft-photoshopped images of bodily perfection? Well, you ladies in my readership may or may not know this, but we men are susceptible to their influence too. (Some of us, anyway.) How can we not judge ourselves when the covers of men’s magazines all too often promise the secret to chiseled abs and a sculpted body, as if that were the sole measure of masculine worth?

Also, I’m getting old. Yeah, sure, 35 isn’t old, per se, but it’s moving in that direction. Every trip to the hairdresser shows the years in the sprinkle of grey on the black plastic shawl. If I train hard enough, drive my body mercilessly enough, can I defy time for a while?

On an intellectual level, I can see these hidden motivators, and even understand the unhealthy thought processes that feed them. Yet they’re still powerful.

And I think many of us do the same kind of thing with writing.

We make unrealistic comparisons (OMG, I just finished Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, and how much do I suck!?); we buy the media’s messages about our work (OMG, I heard vampires are SO last year! Why am I writing UF anyway? Every agent I query’s going to personally come my house and punch me in the kidney!); and we—even those of us who’ve been at it a while—often receive critiques of our work as though each flaw in our manuscripts is indicative of deep flaws in us as human beings.

We intellectually understand that these attitudes are both wrongheaded and unhelpful, yet they still hold power.

Yes, exercise is healthy, but six-pack abs and triathlon-caliber cardio fitness won’t make me happy in the long run if those are my primary criteria for self-worth. Similarly, an agent, a publisher, and a six-figure book deal (ha!) won’t buy me long-term satisfaction either, because that public...she’s awfully fickle; heartbreak’s only a single failed book away.

Ultimately, a balanced perspective is healthiest. Exercise for fitness, but don’t judge yourself according to the impossible standards beamed into your brain by the media. Write because you love it, but don’t “mount your merit on the masses” (as J.S. Chancellor says, and Michelle Davidson Argyle likes to quote).

I’m still going for a bike ride tomorrow morning, though. >.>

(What? I never said I was consistent....)

(Also, do as I say, not as I do.)

(Now where’s my vodka?)

There is yet good in the world. (Surprise!)

2011-07-05T22:40:00.001-04:00

I just got back from vacation, writer-friends.

Okay, fine; I use the word “vacation” a bit liberally, since my “vacation” consisted of getting up at 4am for an early flight down to parts southern, then spending several days with teetotallers and then driving back from Alabama-ish overnight with three young children, only to find that our above-ground pool had bred three new species of algae and that the giant pumpkin plant my wife planted a month ago had taken over approximately 92% of our garden. But still.

I realized something, though, while I was traversing the Bible Belt, and it’s this: there are still good people in the world.

I’ll explain.

See, there’s this strange, fucked-up world that exists in my head. It’s rather consuming, and it’s what I’ve lived with for a couple of decades, so it goes with out saying that such a mode of being becomes ingrained—habitual, so to speak.

But there’s a problem with habit: you begin to think it’s the norm. Except habit is not the norm; it’s only in your head that it’s writ large and applied to the whole world.

There really are decent people out there.

So what if my daily existence oscillates between mind-numbing work and a seething morass of self-hatred and judgement? Not everyone is like that. Some people actually understand balance and stability.

It’s hard, sometimes, to comprehend that fact.

My habit, friends, as a writer, is to take things to a fundamentally awful end of the experiential spectrum. I look at any given situation and find ways to make it worse. I brutalize my characters, bringing them as close to the edge as is possible, grinding them down, mercilessly crushing their spirits to find the hard, unbreakable, diamond center where they finally, irrevocably meet the unavoidable truth of their existence. I tend to see the worst. My stock-in-trade is the worst.

But if you spend long enough doing that, you lose sight of other points of view. There really is another way of looking at things. A perspective from which everything really isn’t dark, dismal, painful, and hopeless.

I know, right?

There’s a different way of looking at the world, is all I’m saying. There are actually people out there with well-adjusted children and a distinct lack of internal conflict. And, strange as it may seem, some people have achieved happiness sans chemicals.

I…I guess I’ll have to account for that somehow in my fiction, now, won’t I? Weird.

(I don’t get it either.)

(I may have to have another drink to deal with this little revelation.)

(Who’s with me?)

What’s Your Excuse?

2011-06-23T00:01:00.000-04:00

Hey, remember that story about how Beethoven completed the 9th Symphony but never got to hear it, on account of being deaf?

Yeah.

Oh, hey, remember the bit about how John Milton went blind before he finished Paradise Lost, but went on to finish that and then another edition and some other genius-level writings too, before he died?

Yeah.

Oh, and another thing, remember that story about the kid with the perfectly normal brain locked in a spastic body, whose mother held his head still so he could tap one key at a time on the typewriter with a pointer thingy strapped to his forehead and he wrote an entire novel that way? One with words your average 40-year old intellectual might have to run to the dictionary to look up?

Yeah.

So here I am, struggling to get the words down on paper for my current novella project, and feeling all sorry for myself about how hard it is to write and balance home projects and family responsibilities and a rapidly-escalating dayjob workload, and I’m thinking…I should just STFU about it and get shizz done.

Others have done it before me. With worse situations. With more demanding responsibilities. People have written novels while in labor camps, or prison, or hospital. They’ve written while having more kids than I do, or longer dayjob hours, or larger home projects.

I think…I think I don’t have much of an excuse. Tiredness? Sure. I’m beat. A lot. Stress? Yeah, I’ve got that.

But I’m not in a labor camp, I’m not blind, and I’m not disabled. Excuses be damned. I’m getting this friggin’ project done.

So what’s your excuse?

Announcements! (Not annoying ones, I promise.)

2011-06-07T00:01:00.000-04:00

This, writer-friends, is unprecedented! Astounding! Jaw-droppingly amazing! Hyperbolically outrageous! And not exaggerated in the least!

That’s right: I’m posting two days in a row.

I’ll take a minute to let you fetch the smelling salts.

Back? Good. ‘Cause I have two contests for you to go enter. I like both of the hosts, and you probably will too, so go on and visit, huh? Well, after I give you the details, that is.

Triplicity

My lovely friend and critique partner, Laurel, is hosting a contest to celebrate her reaching the 333 follower milestone. You can vie for either a $30 Amazon gift certificate, or up to 50 pages of Laurel’s editing genius for your manuscript. And to pick Laurel’s brain, all you need to do is come up with the worst metaphor ever. Easy as pi, right? >.>

Hop on over to Laurel’s blog, post haste, though, since today’s the last day to enter. Clicky on the image, won’tcha?

Spread the Word

One of the good folk over at The Literary Lab, a blog I’ve frequented for quite some time now, has published a collection of short stories. Davin Malasarn’s a dude who knows his writing, people. I can guarantee the stories in this collection will stretch your conception of what fiction can do.

So to promote the release, Davin’s hosting a spread the word contest, and all you have to do is…well, I’ll let him tell you.

To enter the contest, tell a friend about my book and ask them to e-mail me at dmalasarn (at) gmail (dot) com with the following message pasted in the body of the e-mail:

Dear Davin Malasarn,

I heard about your collection The Wild Grass and Other Stories from (have them write YOUR name here) on sale at Amazon (http://amzn.to/kwfpap). I understand that this collection includes your most emotional work and will take readers to exotic locations all around the world.

Signed,

(have them write THEIR name here)

Easy, right?

And the prizes? Well, you could choose gift cards, but the top prize is a seriously in-depth full manuscript critique from Davin, with additional critiques from the other LitLab bloggers. That’s a little bit of gold right there, y’all. The LitLab brain trust poring over your manuscript? That’s good stuff.

So go ahead and click the image for details. And don’t forget to put my name in that email you send to Davin, yeah?

Till next time, folks!

Difficult. Necessary.

2011-06-06T00:01:00.000-04:00

“There’s a squirrel in the pool again, daddy!”

The two older children had their noses against the glass of the screen door, and were almost vibrating with the energy only the very young can have first thing in the morning. I sighed and shuffled to the doorway.

Sure enough, a bedraggled, gray form was paddling back and forth in the water, trapped by the slick, blue plastic of the pool’s inflatable rim. Muttering curses, I padded out the back door and down the steps.

As I approached, pool skimmer in hand, I saw the squirrel floating, motionless, just its nose above the water. I watched as it rolled, slowly, until its face was submerged, then, with a convulsive movement, it began to paddle once more. When I scooped it from the water, it lay still on the flat mesh of the skimmer, staring at me with bright, black eyes. It didn’t move even after I laid it on the ground next to the porch wall.

Figuring it’d recover after a bit, I headed back into the kitchen and went on with getting the kids’ breakfasts ready.

But later, after the family was fed, the squirrel was still huddled on the end of the skimmer, its head resting on the concrete, eyes half-shut, its small, limp form twitching occasionally. The knowledge began to sink in, then; I knew what I was going to have to do.

I dug the hole near the compost enclosures. I dug it deep enough so the children couldn’t disturb the body with their dirt play. Then I carried the skimmer, with its soaked, shivering load, over to where the moist earth showed dark against the green grass.

The squirrel lay on its side, whimpering and pawing feebly at the dirt after I tipped it off the skimmer. It’s tail was a limp mat of grey, and its small hands and feet were curled and shaking. It looked much smaller wet than it had as it perched on the porch roof the day before.

It wasn’t going to recover from it’s near-drowning, that was clear. The only mercy I could offer it was several sharp strokes with the shovel blade and a decent burial. It was over quickly.

I’ve known people who were casual about killing small animals. I cannot be that way. It smacks of cruelty to me, of disregard for life. What I did this morning I did regretfully, out of pity, and knowing the necessity of it did not make it any easier.

But I did it. I had to.

And then the analogy occurred to me.

See, sometimes as writers, we drag our characters through some horrifying situations, some seriously brutal, soul-crushing trauma. They bleed, inside and out, and often we find ourselves right down in the muck with them, scouring ourselves in the process of finding the truth we want to portray on the page. It’s not an easy thing to do.

Yet we do it. Because in the catharsis of our characters, we may be giving hope to readers who struggle with the same trauma. Because we speak, others may find their voice.

Sure, it’s not always that way. Sometimes fiction is just entertainment, diversion. But the right story, written truly, can change lives.

We writers shed light on the secret things, those dark places we’d prefer not to acknowledge, the old wounds that have never fully healed. Sometimes we have to yank memories kicking and screaming into the light so we can write through them, transform them so perhaps someone, somewhere, won’t feel so alone someday when they read our words. Sometimes it’s like peeling pieces out of our souls.

It’s difficult. It can be agonizing. But it is also necessary.

We do it. We have to.

Hemingway kicks me in the face. Again.

2011-05-30T00:01:00.002-04:00

So it happened again, writer-friends. There I was, minding my own business, happily reading For Whom the Bell Tolls and sipping a Corona Light (with a wedge of lime, natch), and I get to the end of this one chapter, and—I joke not, folks—I simply had to put the book down, get up, and start pacing. So I did.

But that wasn’t enough. I had something in my head, see, and I needed to work it out, to get it sorted, to grave the lesson into my neural pathways so that when I’m writing, perhaps struggling with characterization, I have this moment to fall back into, to recollect, to inspire me. I needed to talk it out; I needed another writer. I called one.

We chatted for probably twenty minutes, while I paced my kitchen and gesticulated as though I were suddenly Italian. The realization, the understanding was so powerful, so moving, that I couldn’t let it pass without digging into it, sharing it, feeling it anew.

This is why I read the greats, folks.

Here. Check this passage.

Then, having washed him and covered him with a sheet, she would lie by him in the bed and he would put a brown hand out and touch her and say, “Thou art much woman, Pilar.” It was the nearest to a joke he ever made and then, usually, after the fight, he would go to sleep and she would lie there, holding his hand in her two hands and listening to him breathe.

He was often frightened in his sleep and she would feel his hand grip tightly and see the sweat bead on his forehead and if he woke, she said, “It’s nothing,” and he slept again.

Okay, you may need more context to feel this the way I felt it, but can’t you taste the intimacy? The longing? The complexity of the characters? Can you even glimpse it?

I tell you, writer-friends: it’s stunning. It’s nothing short of breathtaking.

Look, I know Hemingway can be spotty. In this same novel, he’s already meandered through several seemingly-unnecessary digressions and political ruminations. But his characterization in For Whom the Bell Tolls, especially in the characters of Pilar, Pablo, and Robert Jordan, is magnificent. What depth he’s infused these people with! What twisted, tortured, pasts! What feeling!

Which, friends, is what it all comes down to. Write literary, write urban fantasy, write erotic comedy, write whatever you want—but by God, make your characters feel something! If they’re not feeling anything, how will your reader?

It’s precisely Pilar’s depth of feeling for the bullfighter Finito—who, incidentally, is merely a tertiary character in the novel, but who’s drawn with such intense clarity that he seems shockingly immediate—that sucks the reader in, that lets us see the man through her eyes, to empathize with her, and with him.

So, yes. This is why I read the great novelists. It’s not so I can sound pretentious when I talk about having read X book by Hemingway or Y book by Faulkner or Z book by Woolf. It’s for moments like I had last night, when the clarity and brilliance of the words transport me, teach me, make me want with every fiber of my being to be a better writer, to reach people the way I know they can be reached if only I can write truly enough.

Above all, I want to feel. And then, if I learn well enough, I can make my reader feel.

That, my friends, is what fiction is for.

A few (possibly opinionated) words about prose style.

2011-05-19T00:07:00.001-04:00

I know. It’s going to shock you, writer-friends, but I’m about to go all opinionated on you. I think you can handle it, though. I believe in you. (Except you. You know who you are.*)

I’ve discovered something about myself, see? About my writing style. And it’s this: poetry is important.

Oh, shut up. I heard that eye roll from all the way over here. Let me explain before you express your skepticism, why don’t you?

Here’s what I mean by “poetry is important”: the sounds of words are a major factor for me when crafting sentences. It doesn’t matter what genre I’m writing in, or what style, I need the words to sing.

I’ll give you a couple examples. And understand, dear readers, I’m not sharing this prescriptively. You go ahead and write however your heart desires. This is simply what works for me, in my brain, in my writerly imagination.

The examples, then.

It is probably because he is staring at the crimson crescent of her painted thumbnail that Frank fumbles the offering plate. He barely grasps the edge with his fingertips, and as Aksana releases it, the plate tilts, spilling bills onto the floor at her feet before Frank can grab it with his other hand.

Right. This is an unedited paragraph from a flash fiction piece I wrote a couple days ago. Let’s take a look with an eye to deconstructing the prose, shall we?

First, we have “crimson crescent”. It’s alliteration; both words begin with the same consonant sound. This makes me happy. In the same sentence, we also have the assonance (similar vowel sounds) of “painted thumbnail” (repeated in the last word, with “plate”), and more consonance (similar consonant sounds) with “Frank fumbles the offering”. And in the next sentence, we have all the l- and i-sounds in “plate tilts, spilling bills”, and more f-sounds in the floor-feet-before-Frank sequence.

It’s poetry, people.

I’ll give you one more. This is from my published short story, “Silence Like Deep Water”.

You cannot rest, and lie at night listening to the ticking of old timbers cooling and the soft scratching of mice behind the walls and the sounds from the street outside.

Here, again, we have multiple repeated consonant sounds in ticking-timbers-street, and rest-listening-timbers-soft-scratching-mice-walls-sounds-street-outside. Do you see what I’ve done? How my mind works?

If I’m going to use an adjective-noun sequence, it’s more than likely I’ll choose an alliterative combination: soft scratching, crimson crescent, faint flutters. Where I have the option, I’ll almost inevitably choose words whose sounds reinforce one another. It’s just how my mind works.

So how does this apply to you, O reader? Funnily enough, it may not apply at all. Your brain may work in a different way entirely. Your imagination may trend toward anapests or iambs as opposed to rhyming word combinations. Who knows?

My point is, I’ve been at this game long enough, and written enough words that I can speak with some confidence about how I like my sentences to lie. It takes time to get to that place, writer-friends. It takes effort, and self-analysis, and, ideally, a wide swath of reading outside your own genre. It doesn’t come easy.

But when the knowledge does arrive? It’s priceless. Suddenly, you’ll know what makes you, you—what makes your style distinct from every other Tom, Dickens, and Harriet out in the writing world.

Get out there, writer-friends. Get out there and write your hearts out. Write until you know yourself, your style, the way you like words to sit for you. And then keep on writing.

It’s the only way your stories will be told.

*I wasn’t really referring to anyone in particular, here. You can stop worrying now.

Philly Lit Night! New, Improved, and in the Suburbs!

2011-05-12T13:54:00.000-04:00

That's right, folks, it's that time again. Time for us Philadelphia area writer-types to get together and commiserate, celebrate, or inebriate--whatever makes us happy.

I know. Posting's been scarce on the ol' blog here. But that's just because I've been holed away planning the epic evening of epicness for this coming Saturday. (And if you believe that, I have a lovely bridge for you, cheap. Connects Manhattan and Brooklyn. Bit of a fixer-upper, but it's got good bones.)

You want to know the details? Oh, fine. Here they are.

Location
Barnes & Noble Booksellers

Address

102 Park Avenue, Willow Grove, PA

Time

4:00 pm (or thereabouts)

Dinner & Drinks

6:00 pm (or thereabouts)

Stumbling Home

3:00 am (or thereabouts)

I can't give you any more details about the dinner and drinks part of this, since we're going to play that by ear. But if you can't make it to the B&N portion of the evening, hit me or Frankie up via DM on Twitter, or a quick email, and we'll give you our cell numbers so you can get the details as they develop.

Seriously, why would you miss this? Look at all these smiling faces from an earlier PLN!

Irish Pub, I'll miss you! *sniffles*

Hope to see you there, folks!

Publication awesomesauce! I mean, er…publication news. Yes, that.

2011-04-29T17:28:00.001-04:00

Right, folks! I have a few announcements, of the publication variety. I have a bit of steampunk flash fiction out in a journal today, and the short story I published last year is now included in a hardback anthology! I know, right?

Here’s the details.

Winding Down

My longtime readers might recognize this piece, since I posted it on my blog last spring, or thereabouts. But I thought to myself, ‘Self, why would you let a good story languish on the ol’ blog, when you know a fella who runs a cool steampunk zine? Why not see if he would like the piece?’

So then I responded to myself, saying, “Why not indeed!”

I deleted my old blog post, saved the story in standard manuscript format, and sent it off via normal submission channels. And wouldn’t you know, it got picked up!

If you haven’t read “Winding Down” before, won’t you surf on over to Doctor Fantastique’s Show of Wonders to read it? And do let me know what you think!

Silence Like Deep Water

This one many of you may have read also, but I thought I’d announce this little slice of awesome here anyway. My biggest short story sale to date, to Short Story America last November, came with a few additional perqs.* Sure, I got paid for the story, and got the publication credit, which is gold for us writers, don’tcha know? But the story was also slated for publication in the end-of-year anthology put out by the SSA publisher.

And now the anthology is available for purchase at the Short Story America website! I gotta tell you, people, I’m pretty excited about this. I’m in hardcover! That’s a milestone of sorts, right?

So if you’d like a nicely bound copy of the best story I’ve ever written, click through to check it out, eh?

Oh, and another nice surprise? When I got a peek at an image of the book’s dust jacket, I checked the list of stories on the inside flap, and…um…mine is listed third from the top!

To quote Rachel Zoe: I die.

Y’know, maybe I should start sending out more of my work to journals. Yes, I should. I like making announcements like this. *nods*

Happy weekend, everyone!

*Yes, it’s perqs. It’s short for perquisites. What? Look it up if you don’t believe me! :)

Regrets

2011-04-20T21:41:00.001-04:00

The man across the bar winks and motions for a refill. She bends for the bottle, feeling the old pain grip her lower back.

He leers at her as she sets the drink before him. She smiles back, emptily, thinking of the feel of ballet flats, of how it felt to soar.

The stories…they won’t stop!

2011-04-11T00:01:00.000-04:00

Writer-friends, I won’t lie to you: I’ve been in a writing-funk recently. And by recently, I mean the past couple of weeks. It sucks.

Sure, I could make excuses like my dayjob’s been stupid busy and stressful, and the impending spring means that our garden needs tended to pretty urgently, and the kids are demanding, and the house is falling apart at the seams and needs renovating, but the fact is, I don’t feel quite right unless I’m writing. If I haven’t produced some fiction by the end of the day, I don’t feel as though I’ve been productive, no matter how many dayjob tasks I’ve completed, or how much child-corralling I’ve done. (I may have mentioned this before.)

So there I was last week, on the road for work, sipping sake, reading Hemingway, nomming on sushi at a Japanese restaurant near the hotel I was staying at, and feeling fairly crappy about my writerly output over the past couple weeks, and then it hit me.

Mmm…sushi….

See, I would read a few paragraphs of Hemingway, then look up to take a bite of nigiri, a sip of sake, whatever, and I’d see the other diners in the restaurant. I’d see their expressions, their body language, their mannerisms, and the words would appear in my head. What I was seeing would translate instantly into words, into sentences, scenes.

I think you know what I’m talking about.

I discovered that we can’t turn it off, writer-friends. It doesn’t matter how bad we feel about ourselves, our writing, our commitment to the craft. If the words arrive unbidden, without our asking for them, we are writers! We cannot help ourselves.

Experience, for me, now, is filtered through the medium of writing. I can’t see something without thinking about how to describe it, how to set it down in words. Even the stuff that hurts turns into words in my mind as I experience it. It can’t be undone.

So what if I felt shitty about my writing, my talent, my commitment for a while? It happens. Doesn’t mean I’m not a writer anymore. It just means I’m in a lull, a low, a funk, of sorts. I’ll come out of it.

Because the stories don’t stop just because I’m feeling bad. The stories never stop.

I am a writer. I must own that.

Now, I shall write.

A Reason to Enjoy Monday! (Well, for one person, anyway.)

2011-04-04T00:01:00.000-04:00

So it’s the 4th of April, folks. Normally, this wouldn’t be a particularly auspicious day in my calendar (despite it being the day when John Tesh married Connie Selleca back in 1992—’cause seriously, who can forget that?), but today’s a good day for one of my blog readers, ‘cause I’m giving away some books in celebration of Carolina Valdez Miller’s agent signing!

In case you’d forgotten, I’m giving away copies of the following:

Stephen King’s On Writing

Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird

Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing

I know. My generosity astounds even me. It’s shocking, sometimes.

I’ll take a minute while you recover from your shock.

…

Good? Good. Let’s get this thing back on track, shall we? You’ll want to know the winner, then, I presume. Yes?

Well, okay then. I had a little chat with Random.org, and they assured me that their randomly-generated results were completely random and not at all fixed and utterly unreplicable (that may not actually be a word, fyi, but I think you know what I mean). But despite their protestations of randomage (and that’s REALLY not a word), I still think something screwy was going on. I’m not complaining though, ‘cause a longtime reader and erstwhile critiquer of mine is taking home the prizes.

“Who’s that?” I hear you asking. I’ll tell you.

Right after I go refill my beer.

…

I’m back. *sips beer* *sighs*

Now I’m really back.

So the winner, good people (and here I’m making the assumption that you are good, and not notorious reprobates masquerading as upstanding blog citizens), is…

Nicole Ducleroir!

Let’s all give Nicole a round of applause for successfully buying off the Random.org number generator, shall we?

*applause*

*cheers*

This is, incidentally, also rather convenient for me, since I already have Nicole’s email address, and I forgot to tell everyone to leave me an address at which I could reach them, and was planning on bugging Carol for the email address of whoever won, since I presume she collected them for her contest, being generally much more organized in these things than I am. That would’ve been embarrassing.

Anyway, congratulations, Nicole! And thank you everyone for celebrating Carol’s agentry with all of us!

And now I’m off to finish my beer.

Cheers!

I don’t write for everyone. Just those who’ll get it.

2011-03-28T00:01:00.000-04:00

So I took second place in a flash fiction contest, folks. ‘Twas a small one, run by Shock Totem magazine, and the assignment was to write a piece based on the following image.

Evocative, no?

I had a lovely little idea, explored it in around 500 words, ran it past a few generous critiquers, and sent it in. It was just the way I wanted it, and I wouldn’t change a bit of it.

But here’s the thing: not everybody gets this piece. Even my critiquers didn’t quite catch all of it, the way it was originally written. Sure, once I elucidated for them, they said things like, “Oh! It’s so obvious now you’ve explained it!” But it’s a very oblique, subtle, indirect story.

Exactly the way I intended.

Those who understood the story, loved it. Those who didn’t understand? Here’s a couple of quotes (and believe me, I take none of these personally, they’re used here only as illustration):

“Imply if you want, but imply directly.”

“I love the writing! But what in the hell happened?”

“I think if details had been provided it would have made for a more harrowing tale.”

My beta readers are very intelligent people. I’m also quite sure that those for whom this story didn’t work are intelligent people as well—it’s just my writing didn’t connect with them. I went a bit too far out from the mainstream with this story.

What’s my point? I think it’s this: I have to accept, flat out and right up front, that my writing won’t work for every reader.

Look, you’re never going to please everyone anyway. So why not just write the best story you can, in a way that’s true to your vision and your gut, and send it out into the world to make its way? If people hate it? So what? Let them hate it. You didn’t write it for them. You wrote it because the story clawed its way out of your imagination and sweated itself onto the page. You wrote it for those select people who’ll comprehend it and love it for what it is.

I think we worry too much about people’s potential opinions of our work, writer-friends. Sometimes we just have to write for ourselves—screw the reviews.

After all, that’s how art is made.

A haiku for my morning bike ride to work.

2011-03-24T10:21:00.002-04:00

Swan glides on mirrorglass pond

Snowflakes melt on skin

It is now; I am alive

And, for the purists:

Snowflakes melt on skin
Swan glides on mirrorglass pond
Now, I am alive

Sunday. Philly Lit Night. Be there or, um, don’t.

2011-03-18T00:01:00.000-04:00

That’s right, folks. The third installment of Philly Lit Night’s coming up this Sunday in Center City, and you don’t want to miss it. Why? Because you just don’t. ‘Cause I said so.

Um….

Oh, okay, fine. I’ll give you a few more reasons. Here:

Reason #1

We actually booked the meeting space in the Barnes & Noble on Rittenhouse Square, from 4 – 6 pm, so we won’t be kicked out on the street to wander in search of a new space in which to hang. See? Progress!

Reason #2

It’s St. Patrick’s Day week! Which means that our planned sojourn to the Irish Pub at 20th & Walnut after we leave B&N is about as apropos as it’s possible for an evening of carousing to be. Also, you’ll be taking part in a long and storied literary tradition of writers meeting in pubs. DON’T LET YOUR LITERARY FOREBEARS DOWN!

Reason #3

Writer-friends! We understand you. We won’t think you’re weird. We’ll laugh at your writer jokes. You will leave with a wonderful sense of bonhomie. There will probably be hugs (Frankie’s going to be there, after all).

So there we go. Three reasons to show up this Sunday. And if you can’t make it? Well, we’ll just have to talk about you while you’re not around. *shrugs*

Hope to see you on Sunday, Philly writer-friends.

Cheers!

In which I croak. (The Delusional Doom Blogfest)

2011-03-15T00:01:00.000-04:00

Yes, folks, it’s the Ides of March. Not such a good day for Julius Caesar, I’ve heard, but I’ve got nothing against it, myself. (Neither does Julius, incidentally, what with being dead and all. But I bet he had some serious issues with the day somewhere in between the first stab wound and the 43rd.)

Anyhow, the ever-entertaining Hart Johnson decided to host a blogfest to coincide with Caesar’s miserably unlucky day, and what better theme than DEATH!? Um…yes. And so, since it’s one of the options Hart gave for an entry was writing our own obituary, I’m going to go ahead and take a stab at mine. (Get it? Stab? *snarf* Oh, never mind.)

Here goes….

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

Simon C. Larter, Author, Dead at 47

Those who knew him are surprised he lasted this long. The writer and world-famous inebriate, notorious for such exploits as mooning Oprah, stripping to his skivvies on the red carpet at the Oscars, and riding a Segway with the bulls at Pamplona, passed away this past Saturday night of complications from vodka.

The American Bartending Association immediately called for a national day of mourning; jukeboxes in every bar in America were played at half-volume through Wednesday night.

Though his novels were runaway bestsellers, their graphic content and startling irreverence earned the author the condemnation of every major religious organization in the world, and won him the dubious distinction of being the first person ever to be excommunicated from the American Atheists.

Once described as “the drunken lovechild of Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway, if each of them had been given to consuming staggering amounts of LSD,” Larter’s direct, vivid prose style and unremitting use of sarcasm garnered him numerous awards, including the Nobel, the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, the Man Booker Prize, and the Caldecott Medal (for his children’s book, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Lay).

In his will, which firsthand accounts indicate was scribbled on a bar napkin, the author leaves his vast estate to his wife and three children, who could not be reached for comment, although the sigh of relief from the family’s home upon hearing the news of Larter’s demise could be heard as far away as Sheboygan.

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

And there we have it. Hopefully this isn’t prophetic as far as the age of demise is concerned. I wouldn’t mind hanging on to about 57. We’ll see if any of the rest of it comes true. :)

Oh, and as per the usual blogfest rules, do swing by Hart’s place and check out some of the other participants, won’t you? I promise it’ll be more fun than a barrel of monks!

LINK! –> The Delusional Doom Blogfest

In which we congratulate someone who damn well deserves it.

2011-03-14T10:00:00.000-04:00

Somebody I know just landed an agent.

You may know her too. She’s a spectacular writer, and a lovely person. She’s probably smarter than me, and she’s definitely a damn sight nicer than me.

Who am I talking about? Well, if I told you she’s a Bookanista, writes amazingly-thoughtful book reviews, films hella-hilarious vlogs, posts super-encouraging thoughts on writing and life, and manages to help raise two genius daughters while still maintaining a writing schedule that’d cripple a lesser human, would you be able to guess? Of course you would. It’s…

Carolina Valdez Miller!

See? I met her before she was famous.

Seriously, this is no surprise to anyone who’s read Carol’s work. She’s a natural storyteller, with a phenomenal grasp of language, pacing, tension, and attraction. She’s very, very good, people. And also? She’s willing to work for it. She has worked for it. There’s a reason the majority of her blog posts have a time stamp of somewhere around 2:30 am, yeah?

So! In honor of Carol’s signing with Vickie Motter of Andrea Hurst Literary, I’m joining in the Blog-Party-of-Awesome hosted by a group of Carol’s friends. And I’m giving stuff away!

Here’s the deal: in order to win the prize pack of books I’m giving away, all you have to do is leave me a comment letting me know the answer to the question below. I’ll let a random number generator choose the winner, but I totes reserve the right to honor the top 10 most amusing responses in the prize announcement blog post.

So what’re the prizes? ‘Cause I’m nice, I’ll send the lucky winner one copy each of:

On Writing, by Stephen King
Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott
Zen in the Art of Writing, by Ray Bradbury

Also, be sure to stop by and congratulate Carol. She’s giving away a Kindle, and you know you want it. Hell, I want it. Am I eligible for this giveaway…?

And don’t forget the other awesome folk participating in the blog party! (You kinda have to follow them in order to be eligible for the Kindle prize. What? Not like it’s hard to click that button or anything….)

Heather’s Odyssey

Critique Sisters’ Corner

J. Koyanagi

L. K. Gardner-Griffie

Right. There’s your marching orders, folks. Get on it, and go help Carol celebrate this milestone in her career.

And one more time, just because.

Congratulations, Carol!

P.S. The contest ends at midnight on 4/1, and the winners’ll be announced on 4/4. So get clicking!

Work harder, people.

2011-03-08T23:01:00.001-05:00

Look. I know you work hard already. You’re a writer—it’s what we do. We sweat tears and crap blood for our art already (sorry for the abominably-mixed metaphor—it had to happen), but I’m tellin’ you now (because I’m egregiously opinionated) that you have to push it that little bit farther. No joke.

What am I talking about? Cliches, people. Cliches.

We all know them, and we’ve all used them: fast as lightning, stick-thin, black as night. Except, here’s the thing: everyone’s read those before. It’s been done. People expect them.

You write, black as, and your reader’s mind will automatically jump to night, pitch, or the pit as a completion for that phrase. Do you really want to do what they’re expecting? Really?

Work harder.

Take a close look at that simile or metaphor. Push it farther. Make it new, interesting, different…yours. Own it. Transform it.

Instead of black as night, perhaps it’s ebony-black, black as a devil’s heart, or blacker than deep space. Instead of yellowed with age, why not make it ivoried with age?*

Anyone can use an old simile. Anyone can use a hackneyed metaphor. Not everyone can transform one.

Be that writer. Push it farther.

It’ll pay off for you. I can almost guarantee it.

*I used ivoried in a flash fiction piece recently. You can use it too. I don’t mind. Just try to use it less elegantly than I did, or I’ll have to hunt you down and beat you with a rattlesnake.**

**Okay, I’m not the jealous type, really. I’d only beat you with a python.

In which I am a slut for charity.

2011-03-02T20:54:00.001-05:00

It’s true. I’m easy like that.

“Wait,” you’re saying, “what charity? You did what to who? And why?”

Calm down. It’s just a figure of speech, okay? *eyeroll*

Anyway. You know the good folk over at The Literary Lab? (If you don’t, you should swing by and check them out. They’re nice. They tolerate my snark. They like Dostoyevsky.) Well, they ran a contest last year, the prize for which was 10 pages in an anthology, to do whatever we wished with.

I entered. I won. I had 10 pages to fill. I filled them.

And it’s all for a good cause, see? All proceeds from the sale of this anthology (which was released yesterday, which is why I’m blogging about it today, naturally) go to the American Society of Journalists and Authors Writers Emergency Assistance Fund. It’s a good cause, yes? Yes.

So they released the book yesterday! *waits for applause to die down* And here’s the cover.

Iz teh classy, yez?

I’m pretty sure what’s inside is good stuff. No, scratch that, I know what’s inside is good stuff. (Mainly cuz I had an advance PDF proof to read over for final changes.)

You want this. It’s for a good cause, and there’s some great fiction in there. There’s even some of my crap in there. So go buy it!

You can do it one of three ways (and I’ll blatantly steal LitLab’s copy on this, since I can’t be arsed trying to improve on it):

==================

PRINT COPIES through CreateSpace Store
$10 each (If you subscribe to our mailing list you will receive a 15% discount code to use in the Create Space store. We will email this by the end of each day to new subscribers until the 8th of March when the discount expires.)
click here

PRINT COPIES through Amazon
$10 each
click here

KINDLE COPIES through Amazon
$4.99 each
click here

================

Note that they make the most profit from the CreateSpace store, so that’s the best way to maximize your charity dollars.

And there we go, writer-friends. My wanton act of charity for the year. Whaddya say? You up for some warm fuzzies? Go pick up a copy. And then one day you can point to my name in the table of contents and say, “I knew him back when he was prostituting himself for charity!”

Or something like that.

*attempts a winning smile*

*probably just looks creepy*

*wanders off to find some alcohol*

…

A Conversation Between Two Writers

2011-03-01T20:30:00.001-05:00

“It seems like writing’s how I process.”

“Me too. It’s as though I don’t know how I feel about something, really, unless I’ve written it out.”

“Yeah, something about processing emotions into words crystallizes them for me, you know?”

“Absolutely!”

“I have too much empathy, sometimes. I have to tune certain things out.”

“I know, right? Like I can’t watch true crime shows about child disappearances. I hate the pictures they show of the kids smiling, ‘cause then my brain starts thinking about what happened to them, and how horrible it must have been.”

“Me too! But I think that’s a common thing for writers. We have to be able to empathize in order to create great characters.”

“You ever think sometimes, when you’re driving down the road, what it would be like to just slam your car into a bridge abutment at 70 mph?”

“Haha! Oh, yeah, totally! I’ve asked my husband that question before, and he’s all, ‘Um…no.’ And then I’m all, ‘Uh…well, me neither.’”

*laughing* “I’ve had those conversations.”

Lookit! So tempting! (Or not….)

The above snippets are loosely based on things that may have been said when I got together with the lovely Mercedes M. Yardley last week. I do so love meeting fellow writers.

Although, while stilettos did make an appearance, shirley temples did not. And in any case, I deny everything.

(Especially the bridge abutment bit. I just made that up.)

*shifty*

Get out and have an experience, friends. Seriously.

2011-02-18T00:21:00.001-05:00

Writer-friends, I had an experience last night. It wasn’t an out-of-body experience or anything like that. It wasn’t even inappropriate, as shocking as that might seem to some. But it was awesome.

See, I was on a brief, out-of-town trip for work, to the Washington, DC area, and my younger brother just happens to live in DC. So, naturally, I made plans to hang out and have dinner with him. As one does. And he made reservations at this Thai place that he and his roommates swear by. I had no idea how cool it was going to be.

I’ll break it down for you.

The restaurant’s located on the ground floor of a three-story row-home in a rapidly-gentrifying former near-ghetto in the NW area of DC. You walk down a few steps, under a wrought-iron stairway and porch, and in a nondescript door. The neon OPEN sign isn’t lit. The menu board has no menu in it.

Okay, yeah. The neon sign wasn’t lit when *I* was there.

Once inside, there’s a hostess’ desk and a curtain separating the dining room from the kitchen directly ahead of you. To your left—and I mean DIRECTLY to your left—are a couple of tables with low stools. Take one pace to left, and you can look back around toward the front of the building to see perhaps three more tables with stools. Dark drapes and hangings line the walls. The dining room is miniscule. It looks like a man-cave, with seating for 15.

The thought runs through your mind: This is supposed to be a restaurant?

My brother told the hostess about our reservation. Every downstairs table was full, but in broken English, the hostess told us to follow her. She walked back out the basement door, up the steps the sidewalk, pulled a sharp u-turn, climbed the wrought-iron steps to the front door, and led us inside. Immediately inside the door, a blond-wood staircase led upward. We kicked off our shoes in the foyer and went upstairs.

On the second floor, a larger dining room is laid out, with three tables and a bit more space than in the basement. Prints of engraved tigers hang on the walls. A darkened bathroom and kitchen are off to the rear of the building. It looks as though someone cleared out their living room and threw some tables in for people to eat at.

There is no menu.

Instead, the chef just gives you whatever he’s cooked that day. $30 a head gets you a five or six course meal, and everything is flat-out excellent. Seriously.

It was on of my most unique dining experiences in recent memory.

I live for this, writer-friends.* It’s just that kind of hole-in-the-wall, experiential-dining restaurant that makes me happy to live near big cities. When you walk into that tiny place, you’re smacked in the face with the fact that you don’t need cavernous ceilings and crystal chandeliers and Michelin stars to create great food. All you need is a space, and a clientele willing to eat a little outside the ordinary, and you can make magic.**

My point is this: every now and then, we need, need, NEED to step outside of our everyday lives and try something new and perhaps a little intimidating. It’s how we grow as writers, as human beings.

If we want to create an experience for the reader in our fiction, I can think of few things more crucial than to pursue experiences of our own. Not dip-your-toe-in-the-water-to-see-how-cold-it-is experiences, but full-on-backflips-into-the-freezing-river experiences. Once in a while, it’s okay to go all out. To feel. To live.

Your manuscript will be there when you get back.

*Okay, if pressed, I’d say I live to provide for my wife and kids, and to write as often as I can, and to be a reasonably decent human being, but for the purposes of this post, couldja just shut up and humor me?

**If you’re in the DC area, and want to see what I enjoyed so much? Here. You’re welcome. http://www.yelp.com/biz/thai-x-ing-washington

Mais oui! C’est le Blogfest de Bernard Pivot!

2011-02-16T00:01:00.000-05:00

Yes, indeed, folks. Nothing brings me out of blog-hiding like an easy blogfest hosted by someone I like. And it just so happens that today is the Bernard Pivot Blogfest hosted by Nicole Ducleroir. James Lipton of The Actor’s Studio asks his guests these questions at the end of every interview, but the questionnaire was originally created by French journalist Bernard Pivot, “for the cultural series he hosted on French television from 1991-2001, called Bouillon de Culture.”*

So here goes with the questions. And once you’re done reading my answers, do surf on over and bounce around the blog links in the Mr. Linky widget on Nicole’s announcement post. I promise it’ll be more fun than a barrel of overcaffeinated marmosets!**

What is your favorite word? Right now it’s a tie between righteous (as in, “Dude, did you see the righteous smackdown John Cena laid on The Edge last night? Whoa.”***), and languid (which is just a lovely word, let’s face it).
What is your least favorite word? “I’m sorry, but we’re all out of vodka.”****
What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally? Deathless prose, symphonic metal, and other beautiful but slightly incongruous things.
What turns you off? Intolerance and arrogance. Also, skunk-breath.
What is your favorite curse word? I like to concatenate cuss words when I’m steamed, but more often than not there’s f-bombs liberally sprinkled in there.
What sound or noise do you love? A symphony orchestra at full crescendo, or a choir at full voice.
What sound or noise do you hate? The sound of someone chewing with their mouth open why would you do that where the hell are your manners YOU MAKE ME ILL WITH THAT SMACKING DON’T MAKE ME CHOKE YOU!!!!11!!1
What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? Since writing’s currently an avocation, and not a profession, I’d like to be a writer. Ha! You thought I was going to say Vodka Taster, didn’t you? Well, you were WRONG! Suckers.*****
What profession would you not like to do? I have a friend who once had a job catching racehorse urine so they could test the animals for banned substances. Racehorse-piss Catcher is just one of the many jobs I’d prefer not to have.
If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? I’m actually planning a long-ish stint in Purgatory. Doesn’t the road out of Purgatory go in the back door to Heaven? I’m not sure I’d even be seeing the Pearly Gates….******

And there we go, folks: everything you ever wanted to know about me, and a few things you probably wish you didn’t know. Now go say hello to the other 100+ (!) participants, eh?

*The quote’s from Nicole’s announcement post. And Bouillon de culture is French for small, dry, savory, cube-shaped, individually-wrapped nuggets of culture.

**I’m working under the assumption that a barrel of overcaffeinated marmosets would be fun, though I’m open to the possibility that it’d actually be rather horrifying.

***I apologize for the gratuitious WWE reference. That was totally unnecessary.

****Yes, I consider that all one word. Wanna make something of it?

*****Though, now I think of it, Vodka Taster would be an AWESOME job….

******Using asterisks as footnote markers starts to look silly when you get up around 4 or 5 footnotes, doesn’t it?

Things I Believe, No. 1: Who Needs Them Grammar Rules?

2011-02-10T07:14:00.001-05:00

You don’t need to know all the rules of grammar.

I’ll say that again, writer-friends. You don’t need to know all the rules of grammar.

Right, I know Stephen King said, in On Writing, that you must know your tools before you can write effectively—meaning, you should know your parts of speech, the proper uses of punctuation, etc. But with all due respect, Steve…bollocks.

See, the rules are broken all the time in fiction. Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner severely abused punctuation. James Joyce cracked the fictional form wide open with Ulyssses, and then the nigh-unreadable Finnegan’s Wake. Chuck Pahlaniuk and Cormac McCarthy seem to have lost the quotation mark key from their keyboards. And who cares? Those writers crafted some seriously awesome books. Bestsellers, even.

Unless I miss my guess, writing is an instinctual affair for most people. I know it is for me. When I sit down to write I’m not thinking about correct conjugation or whether em-dashes or parentheses are the proper way to offset that thought, I just do it. Sure, when editing, I might pay attention to things more closely, but during the act of creation? All instinct, baby.

Don’t get me wrong, I kind of know when I’m breaking the rules. I have the notion, somewhere in my head, that I’m doing something that’s not technically correct. But I don’t care. If what I write communicates what I want it to, I’m not going to worry whether it’s following the rules of grammar 100%.

So far it seems to have been working.

And how did I develop those instincts? Did I slave through a creative writing degree? An MFA? Ph.D in English? Did I do the workshop circuit? The Writer’s Digest courses?

Nope. I took one, three-month fiction writing class two years ago, and all that did was light the fire under me again.

No, I developed my writing instincts by reading. Good, bad, indifferent…I’ve read whatever I can get my hands on. I was the kid turning the cereal boxes around to read the back, the marketing materials that came in my box of new shoes, magazines, catalogs, my mother’s collection of books from her childhood, the fantasy novels in the bookstore. Reading made me the writer I am today.

Will it work that way for you? I can’t say. I only know how I came to this craft. But I do know that before you get all hung up on THE RULES –ULES –ULES –ules –ules –ules –ules…, you might want to consider sitting back, relaxing, and following your instincts for a while.

Who knows where they’ll take you?

You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby….

2011-02-05T00:01:00.000-05:00

Right, well, see, y’know, I had, like, the, um, best of, um, intentions for this, uh, blogfest, and stuff. But then life got all up in my shizz and here I am at 5 till 11 on a Friday night, realizing I should’ve scheduled a post for Christine’s blogfest tomorrow. Um…yes.

I really did intend to go out in the garage to my box-o’-memories, and pull out my binder of high-school fiction efforts, so I could post one here and laugh at my own naivete. But it’s cold, and the garage is, like, 10 steps from my back door, and so I didn’t.

But y’know what? I dug up a very early exercise from the fiction writing class that got me started back on this writing journey. It was one of those prompt-type assignments, something along the lines of: use a first line of the form, “the first time X heard X, he/she was X doing X.”

So this is what I came up with. You probably won’t be surprised to find it’s a tad bit dark. What? A tiger can’t change his stripes or his favorite breakfast cereal, can he? *shifty*

The first time she heard Grieg’s piano concerto, Sandra was face down on a concrete sidewalk trying to breathe through a punctured lung. As the surging strings of the second movement spilled into the damp air from the open car door, she fought mutely against the sickening, suffocating feeling in her chest and incipient unconsciousness. It had happened too fast for thought, too fast for any reaction other than a paroxysm of fear and a sharp intake of breath.

Through jagged agony she sensed footsteps approach. Black shoes, wingtips with a swirled pattern punched into the leather, halted in front of her face. The man knelt, bending toward her, and a maroon-slashed tie fell into view. “Miss...” The word arrived on bourbon vapors, edged with panic.

He stood, and the black wingtips took several uncertain steps. In the background, the chime of the car’s open door clashed with the piano’s plaintive chords. Sandra’s mouth was filled with the taste of blood and exhaust. Against her will, her eyes were closing.

Footsteps receded, and the car door slammed. Renewed shock forced her awake. The brightness of the taillights pierced her brain, bolts of red stabbing at eyes blurred with tears, then the tires shrieked and she was left gasping in the wake of a rapidly-receding Mercedes.

A light rain was falling, cool on her skin. Shards of glass from the ruined bus shelter lay scattered around and beneath her, glinting beneath the streetlights. The distant sounds of evening in the city drifted over her like a breeze: a car’s horn, the faint rumble of a passenger jet above the clouds, the ubiquitous hum of traffic. With a monumental effort, Sandra turned her head, searching desperately for help. The street was empty.

She was too tired to weep, now; the pain was dragging her down. As her eyes slipped shut, the last thing she saw was headlights slicing across her vision as a car turned toward her at the end of the block.

Overwrought? Perhaps. It’s an early effort.

I could get extra points in Christine’s drawing if I rewrote this in my current style, but I don’t think I’d do much to it other than a few line edits. I’ll just chalk that up to a lack of creativity late on a Friday evening, shall I? Yes, I shall.

Now go visit the other lovely people participating in the blogfest, won’t you? The linky’s here.

Happy writing, friends!

…stumbles into Blogland, blinking blearily….

2011-02-02T22:40:00.001-05:00

Dude. Seriously. I’ve been ankles-deep in writing for the past couple of weeks, y’all. And when I say ankles-deep, I mean I dove in headfirst, so it’s been pretty deep.

I haven’t forgotten about you all, though. I still lurk and occasionally comment and have flashes of inspiration for blog posts that then get filed away in the drafts folder for later, but what with work being epically busy, and the children mainlining espresso* in the evenings, it’s been difficult to spare any brain for anything other than the WIP-that-is-currently-eating-my-frontal-lobe.

I’m sure you know how that goes.

Anyway, I’m resurfacing to make a couple brief announcements. They’ll be short, I promise.

Announcement #1!

Christine Hardy, who blogs over at The Writer’s Hole, and whom I’ve had the distinct pleasure of meeting a couple of times in actual, real life, and stuff, is hosting the You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby Blogfest this coming Saturday (2/5). To participate, just post a sample of your early writing on your blog, and if you like, rewrite it with all that hard-won skill you’ve worked so desperately to attain. Yes? Yes. Sign up using the Mr. Linky on Christine’s blog.

Announcement #2!

Nicole Ducleroir, my go-to gal for verisimilitude in all things French (I’m not sure that even made sense, but I’m leaving it that way ‘cause I like the sound of it), is also hosting a blogfest, on the 16th. It’s pretty easy: all you have to do is answer a few questions about yourself. And really, we writers are all narcissists at heart, aren’t we? (Wait…you’re not? Never mind, then. *cough*) Sign up at Nicole’s blog here!

Announcement #3!

This is less of an announcement and more of a thank you. In fact, it’s two thank yous, since I recently won two blog contests. Random number generators love me, after all! W00T! *weeps*

So! A big thank you link to Sarah at Falen Formulates Fiction, and Denise at L’Aussie Writing for their generosity and general loveliness!

Announcement #4!

I owe a recap of the awesomesauce that was Philly Lit Night a week and a half ago. Really, I should get on that, before I drink away all memory of the event. But in the meantime, here’s a few pictures to incur jealousy in you poor, geographically-challenged people that live in other regions of the world. Yeah. I’m merciless like that.

Frankie Mallis, Christine Danek, Kelly Lyman, and some random dude.

Christine Danek, Kelly Lyman, Shveta Thakrar, Jessica Tudor, some random dude, Kate Walton, Debbie Cassell, and Krista Magrowski

Announcement #5!

I’m tired now.

Zzzzzz….

*Kidding. We don’t let the children mainline espresso. They drink it from sippie cups like civilized people.

Allison Pang's A Brush of Darkness Released!

2011-01-26T14:16:00.000-05:00

Yup, that’s right, folks. The lovely and talented Allison Pang (and if you don’t believe me on the “talented” thing, perhaps you’ll believe Janet Reid?) saw her debut novel hit the shelves yesterday. Y’know, the one with the pretty, ripped-fishnets, blue-streaked-hair gal on the cover. (It’s over in my right sidebar, in case you missed it. I’ll wait while you look. Go ahead.)

It’s pretty awesome.

Don’t believe me? You can read the first chapter online here.

And then, when you’re done laughing and being intrigued, you can hop over to Bitten by Books and enter the release day contest to win an 8GB iPod Touch! (Note: it’s a regular iPod, not an enchanted one like Abby has that knows what songs you want to hear before you even think of them and has pretty much every song ever made magically loaded on it. I know you wanted one of those, but you can’t have one. They’re imaginary. I think.)

So go! Visit Allison’s blog here, her official author site here, and the official book page here.

Oh, and buy it. Unless you don’t like snark and miniature randy unicorns. In which case you should buy it and give it to someone who *does* like snark and miniature randy unicorns. (And if you don’t like snark, what the hell are you doing reading *my* blog…?)

Happy (day after) release day, Allison!

In Which I Learn That Imitating Another Writer’s Voice is Harder Than I Thought

2011-01-21T00:01:00.003-05:00

If you didn’t stop by yesterday, writer-friends, you might not know that I secretly posted on Tawna Fenske’s blog on Wednesday, to see if anyone would cotton to the fact that it wasn’t Tawna who wrote the post. Yah, it’s true.

See, it all started with Jami Gold tweeted about linking to “the inimitable Tawna Fenske” in a blog post. I retweeted Jami’s announcement, but as I did so, I wondered whether Tawna really was, after all, inimitable. I said to myself, “Self, I bet you could imitate Tawna. After all, you’ve been reading her blog for months now. You could totally fake it.” (It’s possible I still have a little Oppositional Defiance Disorder left in me….)

So I asked Tawna if she’d be willing to run the experiment, and, like a good sport, she was happy to let me hijack her blog for a day. She even turned it into a contest!

Now, the amusing end result was that no one guessed Tawna didn’t write the post. Plenty of people pointed out things that weren’t quite Tawna-ish, but no one came right out and played the guest-author card. Kind of a win, right?

Well, yes and no.

One of the commenters on yesterday’s announcement said:

“Shoot! Now that I read this post before the last one, the weird post doesn't sound like your writing voice at all!”

And she’s right. I couldn’t believe no one pegged it as an impersonation, frankly, because the moment I saw it up on Tawna’s site, with that lovely pink background, I knew it was just flat wrong. Sure, I approximated her voice, but I certainly didn’t nail it (though she was kind enough to say so in her write-up yesterday).

Here’s what I did right:

Metaphorically related the wine industry to the writing industry. (Tawna’s an unabashed wine lover, so this was a fairly simple approach.)
Added a few parenthetical acknowledgements of possible double entendres.
Referenced and linked one of Tawna’s earlier posts.
Closed with a characteristic “I’ll be doing X” comment. (This one’s easy too—Tawna does it quite regularly.)

Not terrible, I guess, for a post I hacked out in an hour or so with minimal surfing of her archives. But had I done better research and spent more time on it, I could’ve gotten much closer. How? Here’s a few of the ways I went wrong with the post (and this list is by no means exhaustive):

Tawna’s openings are short, punchy, and to the point. Mine wasn’t. I tend to write longer opening sentences. (She tells me it’s her journalism training that makes her write that way.)
When she parenthetically acknowledges a double entendre, it’s not with a (heh), it’s with a (snicker).
Carrie (CKHB) noted that Tawna doesn’t talk about drinking as an avoidance technique. This is true. (I offer exhibit A as proof.) I implied otherwise. That’s a fail.
Tawna doesn’t use LOLcat images (or LOLbunny images, as the case may be). She takes all her own photographs.
As some commenters noted, there weren’t any real sex jokes, other than the double entendres. Tawna almost always has one or two giggle-worthy zingers.

What’s the takeaway from all this, then? It’s this: yes, it’s possible to imitate another writer’s voice, but holy avocado-cilantro-lime dip, it’s friggin’ difficult to get it just right without a lot of work! It’s just not worth it, writer-friends.

A writer’s voice is unique. You can’t force it, you can’t copy it, you can’t fake it. Well, you can, but it’ll always be harder to do that than it will be to write in your own natural style. So why bother?

I’m not implying that writing prose under the influence of great authors of the past or present can’t be fun, useful, or good. I’ve written stories in approximations of several voices—mainly Hemingway’s and Woolf’s, since I admire both of them so intensely. But it’s a tough job.

And in the end? The only thing that’ll develop your own voice, dear reader, is the writing. The more you write, the more your individual prose style will coalesce. You can’t force it; it just happens. It’s awesome.

Speaking of that, I’m off to work on coalescing mine. :)

Write on, friends.

P.S. Thank you so much to Tawna for being open to the experiment. Do watch for her debut romantic comedy novel, Making Waves, this coming August!

Blog Shenanigans. Again.

2011-01-20T09:45:00.000-05:00

So I wrote a blog post yesterday, writer-friends, but it wasn’t published here. Why didn’t I tell you this, maybe post a link for you to follow and read and enjoy? Well, because it was a secret. Shh….

But now all has been revealed! If you’re curious what I was up to, why not hop on over to Tawna Fenske’s blog and see what she has to say about writerly voice today, huh?

And I’ll be back tomorrow with my own thoughts on voice. Be sure to check back then! I’ll be more fun than a barrel of…fun stuff! (For the record, I find the idea of a barrel of monkeys rather horrifying. Just the sanitary issues alone make me cringe.)

Cheers!

Philly Lit. Night, Part Deux! (Well, more like afternoon, but whatever.)

2011-01-17T22:09:00.001-05:00

We interrupt this series on writing techniques to announce the second annual (well, hopefully not annual, but given my procrastinatory nature and how hard it is to nail writers down to any kind of serious freakin’ schedule, it may well turn out to be triannual, the way things have been going) Philly Lit Night!

(Okay, I admit: that long parenthetical aside kind of stole the momentum from that opening sentence. Sorry.)

Anyhow, our local writer cum belly-dancer cum psychology professor, Frankie Diane Mallis (cum is Latin for “with,” is pronounced “koom,” and can be used to join two descriptive nouns when they apply to the same person, you sickos—don’t act like you weren’t thinking what I think you were thinking) and I are putting together a Philly-area writers’ meetup for this coming Sunday, Jan. 23rd, from about 1pm on.

(Okay, I should just quit with the parenthetical asides. They’re kinda distracting, aren’t they?)

Er…yes. So here’s the deal: this coming Sunday, from 1pm on, any and all writers in the Philadelphia area are invited to swing on down to Center City, anytime you want, to hang out, talk writing, play card games, drink coffee, do vodka shots, whatever.

To wit, the agenda:

1 pm: Brunch at the Marathon Grill, 16th & Sansom Streets.

2:30 pm (ish): Chillin’ at the Barnes & Noble on Rittenhouse Square, 18th & Walnut.

5:30 pm (ish): Adjourn to a nearby location, chosen by mutual consent, for snacks and possibly an alcoholic beverage or two.

The reason it’s spread out over the whole afternoon is so that people who don’t have all day to spare can pop in for an hour and chat if they feel like it. I’ll be hanging around the whole time, and Frankie gets back from NYC later in the afternoon, and should show up around 4 pm.

And don’t worry if I’m hanging around by myself at the B&N for a while. I’ll bring a notebook and/or my laptop, and can write to my little heart’s content while I wait for people to show up and prove I’m not a total loser. :)

Interested? Curious? Have a free hour or two this coming Sunday afternoon to chat with fellow writers in the area? Let Frankie or me know, eh?

Email me at simonclarter AT gmail DOT com, or DM me on Twitter (*points to button in sidebar for Twitter-link*), and we’ll coordinate. Yes? Yes.

Hope to see you there, Philly writer-friends!

The Neil Gaiman Master class in Writing*—Part 2: Headhopping vs. POV Shifts

2011-01-17T00:01:00.000-05:00

So there I was, minding my own business, doing my usual blog-surfing thing, when Livia (everyone’s favorite YA-writing neuroscientist), wrote a post about how the proliferation of writing advice found on writer blogs might be obscuring the subtleties necessary in fine writing. In her words:

“The risk is that we internalize sound-bytes like “avoid cliché beginnings, “dialogue tags suck,” “and don't use adverbs.” In the meantime, we forget that The Graveyard Book headhops between points of view, The Hunger Games and Newberry Honor Book Princess Academy start with a character getting out of bed, international bestseller Pillars of the Earth starts with a prologue, and Harry Potter contains a whole lot of adverbs.”

Well said, good lady! It’s a fact that the bog-standard, creative-writing class tropes must be left behind at some point, or one’s writing will stultify.

However!

I did take issue with her Graveyard Book “headhopping” comment. Why? Because “headhopping” is a bit of a pejorative, no? Isn’t this something we’ve been told we should avoid in our writing? Well, yes…and no. Because in my opinion, it’s only headhopping if it’s done poorly. Otherwise it’s simply shifting POVs.

An example, from The Graveyard Book:

“I’ve got a bus to catch,” she said. Scarlett walked up the hill toward the bus-stop and the graveyard, and did not, resolutely did not, look back.

Bod walked beside her. Even to Scarlett he seemed shadowy in the deepening dusk, like something that was almost not there, a shimmer of heat haze, a skittery leaf that for a moment had seemed to be a boy.

“Walk faster,” said Bod. “They’re all looking at you. But don’t run.”

…

The four men stood at the door to number 33. “I don’t like this,” said the big man with the bull neck.

“You don’t like this, Mr. Tar?” said the white-haired man. “None of us like it….”

I redacted a bit there, so you’re not getting the full effect, but you get the idea. We’ve switched from Scarlett’s perspective to that of the men at the door to No. 33. And to be clear, the majority of the novel is written in close 3rd person, from Bod’s point of view, so a jump to anyone else’s perspective (even Scarlett’s) could be termed head-hopping, if it weren’t done so elegantly.

But how is this done? Strangely enough, it’s a very simple technique, and easily learned. The trick is this: when you intend to switch perspectives, introduce the new perspective with one line of scene-setting or action that places us in the new character’s proximity. Yes, it’s that simple.

I’ll demonstrate with another Graveyard Book excerpt:

[Starting in Bod’s POV] A flicker, and Bod was alone in the room once more. He heard a rumble of distant thunder.

In the cluttered darkness of Bolger’s Antiquities, Abanazer Bolger looked up suspiciously, certain that someone was watching him, then realized he was being foolish.

Yup, it’s done that quickly. In the space of one sentence, we’ve switched from Bod’s to Abanazar’s point of view. All it took was a single action.

And an example from my own writing:

She took the book from the shelf and brushed the dust from it. She walked to the chair once more, sat, and began to read.

Just at the moment she opened the book to the page on which her favorite poem was printed in fine, flowing script, Errod Halstaff rolled over in his sleep to find his wife’s side of the bed cold and vacant. He blinked himself angrily awake.

Here we start in the woman’s POV, and, with a single sentence, we transition to Errod’s.

Simple, isn’t it, writer-friends? Once you see how a master like Gaiman does it, you can start to apply it to your own work. (As long as your work’s written in 3rd person, that is. This one’s tough to pull off in 1st person present.)

So what do you think, folks? Have you used this technique? Plan on using it? Neil’s waiting with bated breath for your comments.**

*Neil Gaiman has not authorized this series, but I’d be happy to let him guest post. If he asks nicely, anyway.

**He’s probably not. Sorry.

In which I hook the Query Shark (but she broke the line and swam off)

2011-01-14T08:11:00.001-05:00

I didn’t win, but I’ll take it. I think my work here is done.

(You can read the winning entries and congratulate the winners here.)

The Neil Gaiman Master Class in Writing* – Part 1: Openings

2011-01-12T00:15:00.001-05:00

I do this now, writer-friends. I can’t read a novel anymore without analyzing it. And I bet you’re a little bit the same way.

See, once you’ve spent a while trying to learn the craft of writing, racking your brains day in and day out to put your own stories together, then take them apart to find what really works in them, you can’t help but do the same kind of thing with published books you happen to pick up. I’ve done it with Hemingway, Woolf, R.A. Salvatore, Mary Shelley, Faulkner, and, most recently, Neil Gaiman himself. And, not content to post reviews over at Goodreads, I figured I’d go ahead and share my thoughts with you here on the ol’ blog.

(You’re welcome.)

Let’s look at the beginning of American Gods, shall we? Here’s the first paragraph:

Shadow had done three years in prison. He was big enough and don’t-fuck-with-me enough that his biggest problem was killing time. So he kept himself in shape, and taught himself coin tricks, and thought a lot about how much he loved his wife.

And that’s it. That’s the opener.

So you might be thinking at this point (if you haven’t read the book), Where’s the action? What’s happening here? Shouldn’t something be exploding? WHY ARE WE NOT THRUST RIGHT INTO THE MIDDLE OF A COMPELLING SITUATION!? To which I say, shut up, sit down, and listen. Gaiman’s more subtle than that. (And anyway…prison’s not compelling? Don’t you watch movies?)

See you can start a book with action, or you can start it with character. American Gods starts with character. It starts well with character. How’s that work? It works in four ways, and here they are:

Shadow. The main character’s name. And what kind of name is “Shadow,” anyway? A good one. Why? Because it’s not normal. It makes you sit up and wonder, take notice, start asking questions. You’ll find out over the course of the novel that it’s an appropriate name on more than one level. It’s also the first word of the book. That’s a pretty good start.
He was big enough and don’t-fuck-with-me enough…. Though it may have been mentioned at some point in the novel, I still have no idea what Shadow’s actual height, hair color, eye color, and complexion are, and I don’t care. I know he’s big, and looks like he’s not to be fucked with. Bam. Character description done. That’s the second sentence.
…and taught himself coin tricks…. Right, now this seems like a throwaway detail, but it’s not. Coin tricks and prestidigitation come up again and again in the novel, so this opening line, seemingly innocuous, takes on resonance as the story unfolds. Win. And the 3rd sentence isn’t even finished yet.
…and thought about how much he loved his wife. Yeah, and now our main character has some depth. Sure, he’s big and badass, but he loves his wife, so the man has an emotional core to him that we can all pretty much relate to, whether we’re married or not. This assertion, by the by, also sets us up for a couple of pretty severe kicks in the nuts in the next couple of chapters, as the plot reversals kick in and the sh*t hits the fan.

So the lesson in this first Neil Gaiman Master Class in Writing? Your openings don’t have to be big, they don’t have to be flashy, and they don’t even have to have an obvious hook, but they sure as hell have to be interesting. Don’t underestimate the power of a fascinating character as your book’s opener.

And as the title promises, this is just part 1 in a small series I plan on writing lessons from Neil Gaiman. Stay tuned, folks! I’ll be back with more opinionated musings before you can recite the complete works of Shakespeare in English, French, and Latin!**

*Neil Gaiman has not authorized this series, but I’d be happy to let him guest post. If he asks nicely, anyway.

**If you’re fluent in English, French, and Latin, please don’t recite the complete works of Shakespeare in all three languages just to see if I’ll be back before you can finish. I don’t post on any regular schedule here, and it’d be better if we both didn’t have to deal with that kind of disappointment.

An Issue of Style….

2011-01-07T08:58:00.001-05:00

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, O (semi-)loyal readers, but I have a few stylistic tics in my prose. It kind of depends on what style I’ve adopted, but I have this habit of dropping sentence fragments here and there, often sans verb. What am I talking about, you ask? ~~(Shame on you for not noticing! Bad bloggie friend. Bad! *swats with rolled up newspaper*)~~ I’ll demonstrate.

Here’s a little example from that little web serial Mercedes and I wrapped up a couple months ago (it’s collected here if you’re interested in reading the whole thing at one shot):

She raises her head, glares at me through the curtain of her hair. Flutter of eyelashes.

See that? A sentence with no verb. (I highlighted it for you, ‘cause I’m helpful that way.) And let’s not quibble about whether a sequence of words without a verb actually constitutes a sentence. I think you get what I meant, yes? Yes.

When I realized I had that habit, I patted myself on the back a bit, writer-friends. I admit, I thought I was all special for discovering a new way of writing. I had a moment in which I imagined all the literary prize boards of the world piling into my living room at once, clamoring for me to take the money and prizes and can’t we create a special award just for you, you staggeringly creative linguistic genius…? (It got a bit silly.)

Aaannd then I read Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book. Surprise, surprise…he uses the same technique now and then! ZOMG! (There goes that literary prize they were going to name after me.)

Aaannd then I read Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses. Guess what technique he uses quite regularly? [insert multiple cranky curse words here]

Boy, I’m not quite as original as I thought.

My point is, no matter how creative you think you’re being, someone—probably someone famous—has already done it, or something like it. Clever we may be, writer-friends, but there have been plenty of clever writers in the history of literature.

So what can you do to stand out? Well…maybe we shouldn’t be trying to stand out, huh? Maybe it’s just that we should focus on what is uniquely ours, and polish that till it shines. That’s not stylistic tricks or clever phrases (‘ cause someone, somewhere, has used that one before, you may be sure). I think, rather, each of us is unique in the way we look at and process the world. No matter how similar two human beings might be (identical twins, anyone?), they’ll still have differences on the inside, views and imaginations that are tied to their particular personhood.

Tell your stories, writer'-friends. You’re the only one who’s ever had an imagination precisely like yours, and only you can tell your stories they way they’re meant to be told.

I’m not worrying about uniqueness anymore. All I can do is tell my stories to the best of my ability. And that’s enough.

So…it’s a New Year

2011-01-03T00:01:00.000-05:00

I survived the holidays, y’all! I managed to make it through last-minute Christmas shopping, the end of the year cash-crunch, and what I’ve dubbed The Week of Overstimulated Children, and all it took was a bottle of Sobieski vodka.

Did pretty well, didn’t I?

And now we’re into that lovely time when we’re expected to stumble blearily out of bed (nursing an epic hangover) and, while we sip our first coffee of the new year, make a list of all the things that, come February, we’ll be feeling guilty about not doing. (Resolution #1: Write less rambling sentences.)

This might have helped me a couple days ago.

Which, now I think of it, isn’t something that should be reserved for February alone (feeling guilty, that is). I’ve got plenty of things stacked up in my real-life and writerly to-do lists, and I certainly won’t get to all of them this year, so why not just keep that nagging guilt simmering merrily in the background all the time? Hey, it’s been working for me so far, right? (Resolution #2: Consider a few realistic goals for myself, as opposed to multiple impossible ones.)

One thing I do know is that I need to be writing more. Like, seriously writing. Because apparently tweets and Facebook status updates don’t count toward your daily goal. (You wouldn’t believe how irritable I was when I found that out.) I wrote one really excellent short story last year, and then sold it, but most of the rest of the time I spent screwing around with two different novels, only one of which is a worthwhile story. So I kind of need to write more, and more focusedly, and muck about online less. (Resolution #3: Realize the obvious a bit sooner this year.)

And so, despite the I’m-going-back-to-work-this-week-and-don’t-feel-as-though-I-got-enough-done-on-my-vacation funk that’s come over me this weekend, I’m going to soldier on into the new year, write as much as humanly possible (while still tending to a wife and three small children and home renovation projects and the small matter of a full-time job), and see if I can’t make a go of this author business. (Resolution #4: Have some stuff published.)

Boy, this post was crankier than normal. Hope I’m not setting the tone for the entire year…. (Resolution #5: ~~Adopt a positive attitude~~ ~~Be happy~~ ~~Enjoy the little things~~ ~~Self-actualize~~ STFU and get to work.)

Oh, and happy New Year everyone! :)

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-25T00:29:00.001-05:00

Every now and then, a man has to pour a cold glass of vodka, wrap presents, and watch movies like The Santa Clause 2 and White Christmas. When this kind of thing is done, there’s a distinct chance that something maudlin will come of it, but sometimes that’s a risk a man has to take.

‘Course, it’s hard to be a cranky old bastard when one’s 5 year old is singing Christmas songs to himself in bed because he’s too excited to sleep. Another rendition of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer? Why not?

*calls from bedroom* “Did you hear that, Daddy?”

“Yes, now go to sleep.”

“Wasn’t it pretty?”

*heart cracks into several hundred small pieces* *smiling* “Yes, honey.”

“Okay, I’ll sing you another one now, okay?”

*dies from cuteness overdose*

All this to say, sometimes it’s worthwhile to see Christmas through the eyes of a child. So in that vein, I’ll wish you all a Christmas filled with wonder and delight, friends.

And now I’m going to set the ol’ cynicism aside for a while so I can enjoy my children’s enjoyment of the holiday. I expect loveliness.

See you next year!

In which I grovel…. >.<

2010-12-21T00:01:00.000-05:00

It is time now, yes, for me to grovel, it’s true.

And admittedly grovelling’s long overdue,

Since I failed to do something, like, two months ago:

To send out 10 submissions to markets, you know.

So why should I grovel? Well, I blame Mercedes.

(So convenient for me to blame things on the ladies.)

See, way back in September? I think it was, yes.

On the Twitter, a nice group of writers confessed

That they hadn’t submitted to markets in ages,

And that’s just no way to treat fictional pages.

(Mercedes gets blame because she instigated

This stuff. So this jam of mine? Yeah, she created.)

Thus the #10bythen hashtag was born. Off we went

To submit work to journals! The emails were sent.

But what happens if we can’t fulfill these demands

And let manuscripts sit in our hot, sweaty hands?

Well, at that point, the consequence, sadly, must be

That we grovel and snivel obsequiously.

Then the folk who got off of their asses and subbed

Can laugh at us losers whose asses they drubbed.

And so here I go with the grovelling thing

And I hope it’s appropriately snivelling.

Mercedes, you win, like you usually do.

I guess it is my fault for challenging you.

And Cate? Dear, you win. I salute you, good lass,

For submitting ten times, thereby beating my ass.

Then, Kaolin, sir. Did you win? I forget.

Just in case, here’s a grovel. Am I done? Not yet.

I think Kate was in on the madness as well,

So she gets a miserable grovel, by hell!

Now who else was in on this thing? Oh, how sad

That I cannot remember the crew. I am bad.

But I guess with this memory-lapse thing I should

Cut this short, cuz my rhyme scheme’s not looking so good.

And so if I forgot you? Forsooth! Please just yell

In the comments and I shall include you as well.

And now that I’ve rolled Dr. Seuss in his grave,

I’ll desist from this rhyming, return to my cave,

Where I’ll write and submit and get back on the tracks,

So that I don’t end up with more virtual smacks.

So congrats to the #10bythen crew. You all rock!

(Now I hope you get coal in your Festivus sock.)*

This godawful poem brought to you by the #10bythen challenge on Twitter, which I lost about a month and a half ago, but never got round to apologizing for. I left a boatload of people out, but I’m sure a few will remind me of their participation and demand revisions to this thing.

Oh, and Merry Christmas, everyone! :)

*I don’t really hope this. It did rhyme nicely, though, didn’t it?

The never-ending to-do list….

2010-12-18T09:21:00.001-05:00

Saturday morning. I woke to the sound of small feet pattering toward the precipitous drop down the attic stairs, levered myself out of bed, and, clutching a happily-squeaking toddler, stumbled down to the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee. As the caffeine trickled into my nervous system, I began to catalog the list of things that could be done today. It looks kind of like this:

Drive a new electrical ground and hook it to both the new and old panelboards.
Finish the scroll cuts on the toy refrigerator I’m building for my daughter for her birthday (a couple of weeks after Christmas), and glue the front frame of the fridge together.
Run to Lowe’s to return an extra piece of HVAC ducting and scout for small hand tools I don’t have yet so I can drop hints regarding stocking stuffers. :)
Run to Target to return a toy, then to BJs to get credit for the spoiled quart of soymilk we found in the 3-pack.
Pick up baby wipes somewhere.
Take apart two wood pallets and build another compost pile enclosure for the back yard.
Figure out some kind of casserole for dinner.
Pick up a stocking stuffer or two for my wife.
Put away my laundry.
Hang a bit more sheetrock in the upstairs closet.
Try to prevent the kids from destroying the house with small arms fire and improvised explosive devices.

It’s kind of a lot.

But we’re not done yet, friends. Why? Because I’m a writer. Not only do I have all the usual family and home responsibilities, but I have multiple writing projects in various stages of planning or execution. Let’s see…there’s:

Two short stories to polish/rewrite for submission to journals.
Two short stories needing the first draft completed.
One flash fiction piece needing the first draft completed.
One novel outline to be completed and more writing on the already-outlined portions.
Two novels in the brainstorming/pre-planning phase.
One novella project, recently acquired, in the back-of-the-mind, idea-generation phase.
One tiny contest deadline coming up just after Christmas.
Finish reading The Scene Book, since it’s always good to keep developing one’s craft.
Finish reading As I Lay Dying, since it’s always good to see how literary geniuses played with form and storytelling.

Yeah.

I don’t think I’m alone in this, either. Most writers I know have families or significant others or, at the very least, dayjob responsibilities. Makes carving out writing time hard, doesn’t it? (And, sadly, many of us carve out time at the expense of sleep, which ain’t necessarily the healthiest of choices.)

It’s something they don’t tell you when you sign up for this profession: you will never, ever feel as though you’re done. Complete one book? There’s another one waiting in the wings. Sell one short story? Time to resubmit others. You’re never finished, never quite content with what you’ve accomplished thus far. And I wouldn’t want it any other way.

So how do I plan on getting through my writerly to-do list? Same way I’ll be getting through my regular to-do list. One thing at a time. One written word at a time, writer-friends.

How about you? How’s your task list looking these days? Any time-management strategies you want to pass along? (‘Cause I could sure use ‘em.)

Social Networking Awesomesauce

2010-12-13T00:01:00.000-05:00

Friends, bloggers, countrypeople (I’m all about the gender inclusivity here): lend me your eyeballs. This is a random-ish post to sing the praises of this whole social networking thing that all the cool ~~kids~~ writers are doing these days. Yes, perhaps I’m preaching to the choir, but perhaps you’ll indulge me a moment? I’ll be quick.

See, some of you may already know Donna Carrick. She and her husband, Alex Carrick, are about the nicest writer-couple I know. They’re talented, too! Donna’s had three books published already (you can find ‘em on Amazon), and Alex, who specializes in short fiction, garnered an honorable mention in the 2010 Lorian Hemingway Short Story Contest.

So why am I mentioning them? Well, Donna’s novel, The First Excellence: Fa-Ling’s Map, was selected as The Sunday Book Review’s top read of 2010.

So of course, as the top-slot author, Donna was interviewed. And wouldn’t you know, when she was asked about new authors who’d grabbed her interest, she mentioned Jeremy C. Shipp, Gint Aras, and…me! Say what?

Needless to say, I’m unbelievably honored that Donna enjoyed my most recently published short story enough to mention me in her interview. Seriously. Floored.

So how do I know Donna?

Twitter. For the win.

Oh, and one more thing before I go: THANK YOU, DONNA!

Write on, friends.

It's Carrie's Birthday!

2010-12-07T08:58:00.000-05:00

And by Carrie I mean Carrie Kei Heim Binas, whose lovely blog you can find right here. So in celebration, she’s encouraged her bloggie friends to post pictures of themselves at age 16. I believe it has something to do with there being an entire person of legal drinking age (in the US) between her and her 16-year-old self. I’m not far behind her, either, so I figured I’d play along.

(On an unrelated note, should a man of my age even be considering writing things likes “totes” and ZOMG in blog posts and on Twitter, even if only ironically? Probably not. Ach, hell, I like to buck convention. Screw it. LOL! ROFL! *cough*)

Funnily enough, one of my friends from high school has been posting pics of the old crew on her Facebook account, which is quite handy, since I don’t have to go digging up printed photographs and scanning and cropping them and such. W00T! So here’s me around age 16.

This makes me look SO much cooler than I actually was....

I think my favorite part of that pic is the rayon jacket. I mean, Nicole hanging on my back is cute and all, but those jackets are for the win.

Anyone else playing? Do tell, peeps! And even if you’re not playing along, swing on by and wish Carrie a happy birthday, won’t you?

Cheers, all!

Everything I know about collaboration I learned from Stilettos & Shirley Temples....

2010-12-01T09:25:00.002-05:00

So Mercedes and I finished up our collaborative web serial last week. It was a helluva lot of fun, and I think both of us learned a few new tricks along the way, so I’m quite happy to classify that project as a success. And, since I learned how to collaborate better, I thought I’d ruminate on that for you, O loyal ~~minions~~ ~~stooges~~ ~~flunkies~~ blog readers.

*cough*

Where was I? Ah, yes. Collaboration.

Stilettos & Shirley Temples hasn’t been my only chance at collaboration, mind you. I had one opportunity fall through, and understandably so. See, the other writer’s methods just didn’t jive with mine, so after a few exploratory conversations, it turned out the collaboration got junked. This is perfectly fine. Not everyone’s cut out for collaborations. Or perhaps it was just this project. Either way, that story’s getting written solely by the other writer, and it’ll be awesome.

(See how coy I’m being? You totally don’t know if the other writer’s a guy or a gal, do you? I’m clever like that.)

And, to be sure, Merc and I weren’t collaborating much for most of the serial. We were competing, mainly, each trying to see if they could write the other into a corner. Neither of us succeeded. Which was awesome.

But the finale? Total collab. See, we divvied up the writing duties on that one as follows:

Mercedes decided that Craze had a bunker in the desert, and got us out there.
I got us into the bunker and up to the confrontation with Leo.
Merc wrote the confrontation with Leo, then handed it back to me.
I wrote the final shootout and evacuation, and then
Merc brought it home with the hospital scene.

Working this way accomplished a couple things. First, it allowed Mercedes to set up the main action (she’s exceptionally good at dreaming up plot twists, fyi). And second, it played to one of my strengths, which seems to be writing action sequences. (Incidentally, I had no idea I had a knack for that until we started this project.) Then we both went through and rewrote the sections the other had written to create a consistent POV in both versions of the finale.

Really, I’m rather pleased with how the whole thing turned out. And the whole shebang was arranged via emails, the occasional Twitter DM, and one brief Google chat. Cross-platform collaboration FTW!

But were we to collaborate in future, say on something we intended to submit for traditional publication, there are a few things we’d have to change. Namely:

The project would have to play to both our strengths;
Pantsing would be right out. An outline to keep us both on track would be pretty much mandatory;
We’d both have to be flexible enough to adapt and change as the project grew, and
We’d need to respect each other’s opinion enough to take any critiques needed to make the work stronger.

I’m sure Mercedes and I have items 3 and 4 in the bag. We both managed to roll with whatever the other came up with on a weekly basis, and I sure as hell respect both her writing and her work ethic. Numbers 1 and 2? That’s the tricky bit. What kind of project would play to both our strengths? How would we come up with an outline together, since neither of us has worked that way before?

Those are questions for the future, methinks. We’ll keep you posted!

What about you, dear readers? Ever collaborated on a project? Any lessons for the rest of us? Have you ever thrown a live rattler into a corridor full of gunmen with itchy trigger fingers? Do tell, won’t you?

Write Drunk, Edit Sober (Also, TURN OFF THE INTERNET!)

2010-11-17T00:01:00.000-05:00

Okay, Hemingway said that. Not the TURN OFF THE INTERNET thing, but the write drunk, edit sober thing. He had a point, honestly, since sometimes loosening up a little (not a lot, mind you) helps silence the inner editor and get us past the blocks that stifle our creativity and turn our prose all stilted. And who wouldn’t want to sit in a cafe in Paris drinking cafe creme and then switching to a nice Pernod sometime around midmorning? Nobody, that’s who.

Except…the times they have a-changed, haven’t they? I bet Hem wouldn’t get nearly as much done if he had an iPhone on the table next to his notebook. Just sayin’.

So. Here’s a comparison of Hemingway’s drunken writing and my drunken writing. Or put another way, why I should turn off the internet when I write.

(This post is for educational purposes only. Don’t try this at home, kids.)

One Drink

HEM: Now where did I leave off last night? Ah, yes. In the middle of a sentence. As usual. Crap. I forget how I was going to end that sentence. I’ll just make another ending up and keep going.

ME: Let me just clear my Inbox and make sure I’ve responded to all my @ replies on Twitter and then reread the last few paragraphs of what I wrote last night and line edit them, and then I can get to the writing.

Two Drinks

HEM: Oh, look. That’s pretty damn good, if I do say so myself. Six pages of new writing. I’ll call the first page “A Very Short Story.” The rest of this stuff I’ll fit into A Farewell to Arms, I suppose. If not, it’ll go in A Moveable Feast. Oh! Pretty lady just walked in. I’ll watch her for a moment before getting back to writing.

ME: 500 words! W00T! I should go tweet about my progress. I’ll use the #amwriting hashtag so everyone knows how serious I am about my writing. *nods* And look! Someone responded to one of my earlier tweets. LOL! Just a quick @ reply. And oh hey! An email! Blog comment notifications FTW! Okay, I’ll mark that as unread so I remember to respond on the blog. I should start writing again now. Hey, who’s pinging me on chat?

Three Drinks

HEM: Well, that story ended up shorter than I expected. Ehh…that’s life. Hey, that’s what I’ll call it! “The Short Life of Francis Macomber.” No. Needs something else. “The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber.” Yes, that’s the trick. I think I need another martini. Then I’ll write about fishing again, perhaps.

ME: Well, that chat conversation went on longer than expected. I should get back to the writing now. Where was I? Uh…hm. No idea where I was going with that sentence. What’s happening on Twitter? And oh! More comments on my FB status. Nice! I should be a good Facebooker and “Like” some people’s statuses, huh? That looks like an interesting link…. *clicks* Now that was interesting. I should blog about that. Let me just start a new file in my blog authoring program to remind myself….

Four Drinks

HEM: Dammit. I’ll have to fix this in the morning or I’ll never win the Nobel Prize for literature. Another pretty lady. Well, hello, mademoiselle! I shall write about you. What if you were rich and we went on safari together and I got an infected cut on my leg and we were waiting for a plane to come rescue us before I died. That’s it! I'll write that, then go home. Let’s see…I’ll have to mention Kilimanjaro. It’s not a real story about Africa without a mention of Kilimanjaro….

ME: Meh. I’m getting tired. Let me check Twitter one more time before I quit trying to write. Ha! That’s a good one. I’ll respond to that. Hang on. Let me finish this sentence in the WIP. I totally know where to start up again tomorrow. Dude, I love this song! *turns up volume on iPod* *headbangs* I haven’t watched the video to that in a while. YOOUUU-TUUUBE! Oh, awesomesauce! *headbangs more* Hey, who’s pinging me on chat?

Five Drinks

HEM: Well, that’s enough writing for one morning. Wonder what Ezra Pound’s doing tonight? I should have him over for boxing practice. We can strip to the waist and punch one another in a totally manly, non-homoerotic way. That’s the ticket. Maybe Scotty Fitzgerald will come over too. Hope he leaves that wife of his behind…. *exits cafe*

ME: ZZZZzzzzz….

* * * * *

Yeah…I should totally turn the internet off when I write. I’m distractable after a couple drinks.

Of course, I could always just not drink while I write. But that would seem like too drastic a step at this point. I’ll get back to you on that one.

*cough*

"Silence Like Deep Water" goes live!

2010-11-12T09:07:00.001-05:00

Just a quick note to say that my story, Silence Like Deep Water, went live this morning over at Short Story America! Surf on over, writer-friends, and don’t stress about having to register to read; it’s free, and you get access not only to the SSA archives, but a whole host of classic, public-domain fiction in a nifty, virtual-book type format (everyone from Louisa May Alcott to William Carlos Williams).

Go click on the Story of the Week tab at the top of the main page, won’t you? I’ll totally heart you a bit for it if you do. :)

(And I promise I’ll stop shamelessly self-promoting after this blog post. Well, at least until I sell another story, that is….)

How to sell a short story in 44 easy steps.

2010-11-11T16:30:00.003-05:00

Write a story.
Think to yourself that this is the best damn thing you’ve ever written.
Reread the story, editing as you go.
Think to yourself that this is still the best damn thing you’ve ever written.
Decide to submit it to paying markets, ‘cause by hell, someone will buy this puppy, right?
Think perhaps you should get some feedback on it first.
Email it to your former fiction writing teacher and ask for her thoughts.
Have a half-hour phone conversation with your former fiction writing teacher (despite having graduated almost a year earlier) about the story and possible edits.
Think to yourself that your former fiction writing teacher is a pretty awesome lady.
Send the story to Nicole Ducleroir to make sure your French is good and that you haven’t made any insensitive cultural assumptions, since you’ve never set foot in Paris and were only in France for one afternoon 9 years ago (she did offer to crit for you that one time, after all).
Heart Nicole a bit when you get her excellent comments back.
Send the story to Michelle Davidson Argyle because she owes you a crit after you won one of her blog contests and anyway you like her.
Heart Michelle a bit when you get her excellent comments back.
Send the story to Carolina Valdez Miller because you’ve been critiquing for her recently and damn she’s good and you’d love for her to take a look at it as well.
Heart Carol a bit when you get her excellent comments back.
Send the story to Harley May because she asked to see what you were working on.
Heart Harley a bit when you get her excellent comments back.
Submit the story to the first seven paying markets that spring to mind.
Think that mailing submittals is for the frackin’ birds, since it’s a major pain in the nether regions.
Wait.
Wait more.
Write other stuff.
Have your RL critique group look at the story, just to make absolutely certain you’re not deluding yourself as to its quality.
Heart your RL critique group a bit for their excellent and supportive comments.
Keep waiting.
Wait a bit more.
Get rejected by the first set of markets.
Read too much into a major market’s typed note saying “despite its evident merit” they’re rejecting your story, trying to convince yourself they don’t write “evident merit” on every form rejection, do they?
Submit the story to more markets because Mercedes and the #10bythen crew on Twitter are pushing to submit 10 stories a month, and you’re not one to be left out of that kind of fun.
Take a month off submitting cuz you’re suddenly feeling hella lazy.
Start to see personalized rejections on the story, encouraging you to submit again.
Get a rejection slip in an SASE you addressed to yourself over six months ago, which feels oddly like you’re rejecting yourself.
Think the best response to rejection is to send the damn thing out again, since that policy seemed to work for Tawna Fenske.
Send the damn thing out again to some more markets.
Get a call on your cell the next morning from an unfamiliar number.
Proceed to have a 25 minute conversation with one of the editors of Short Story America, who was apparently reading his slush pile WAY out of order, since you just submitted to him last night.
At about minute 14 of the conversation, hear him say he’d like to accept your story.
Strive mightily to keep from doing a happy dance, since you’re at work and the customer whose facility you’re inspecting is standing not too far away, and might wonder what’s wrong with you.
Agree to retitle the story.
Tweet the news as soon as you get online.
Heart everyone who congratulates you, just a bit.
Retitle the story, and send your short bio and headshot to the editor.
Facebook the news on your personal and author accounts.
Blog to tell people they should go register for free at Short Story America so they can read the archives and all the classic short fiction they’ve reposted, and can read your story when it’s published.*
Wait for this Friday, when your story will appear online!
Pour a celebratory drink and plan on running around screaming when the story’s published.

*Yes, writer-friends, if you go register at Short Story America by tonight, you’ll get an email from them announcing the publication of Silence Like Deep Water when it goes live. Which I believe is tomorrow. I hope you check it out! After all, it’s free, yeah?

And if you don’t happen to catch this and register by tonight (Thursday night, 11/11), you can always register whenever. My story’ll be the featured Story of the Week for the next 7 days, and then will live on in the Contemporary Archive indefinitely.

The moral of the story? Submit, submit, submit! Also, get smart readers/writers to critique for you. This story went from 3,600 words to 2,400 words, based on some really, really good feedback from my betas. It wouldn’t’ve been nearly as good if I hadn’t had my lovely critiquers give it the ol’ once-over.

Write on, friends!

There’s nothing to writing….

2010-11-05T17:21:00.001-04:00

“There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”

- Walter Wellesley “Red” Smith

Well, it wasn’t a typewriter, and it wasn’t a vein, but I cut my pinkie finger the other day and bled all over my notebook as I was writing.

See how I suffer for my art?

And yes, my handwriting really is that bad. I’ll prove it again next week, perhaps, since Alex Cavanaugh tagged me in the handwriting meme. Till then, the above will have to suffice as proof of my godawful penmanship. :)

Erm…can you tell NaNoWriMo is leaving me with very little brain to blog?

Oy.

Things I said on the elevator at WFC…

2010-11-03T00:01:00.000-04:00

I gotta tell you, writer-friends: World Fantasy Convention in Columbus, OH was pretty damn awesome. Not only did I get to meet some long-time blog and Twitter friends in actual, 3D, technicolor, real life, but I got to meet and place faces to some authors I’ve read or known of for years.

Maybe when I have a bit more time on my hands and a brain that’s not caffeine-fuzzed with my attempts to compensate for insane amounts of sleep loss, I’ll recap some of the highlights of the conference. In the meantime, I’ll just be all random and rambly with shout-outs and inane comments and such.

Online friends I got to meet and have drinks with

Carolina Valdez Miller, Sara McClung, and Karen Amanda Hooper. Yes, they’re precisely about as nice as you’d expect them to be from their online personas. Also, they put up with my silliness a lot, and not one of them smacked me, so apparently they have the patience of saints.

Livia Blackburne and her husband came out with us for sushi on Friday night. Livia keeps posting amusing snippets of conversation between she and her husband in her Google Chat status, so I informed them both that if they didn’t have at least one funny exchange over dinner, I’d be mightily disappointed. I forget whether they did or not, but I don’t recall feeling disappointed, so there you go.

Bryan Thomas Schmidt recognized me from Twitter, and introduced himself at one point on Friday, and we chatted on and off for the next few days. Awfully nice fellow, he was.

Jaym Gates and Erika Holt, editors of the Rigor Amortis zombie love anthology, were very cool. I learned more about horse diseases from Jaym than I wanted to. No, don’t ask. Just don’t, or I’ll send you the YouTube link. You’ve been warned.

Ricki Schultz and Gina Penney also joined us for sushi on Friday. Gina was the only other person at the table who wrote adult fiction, making me feel a bit less alone. And Ricki made me choke on a California roll with one of her stories.*

There were more…oh, but there were more people I met, and to list them all would take forever. But I figured a few representative shoutouts would do it.

Authors I got to talk to/insult/entertain

I developed a slight crush on Esther Friesner, despite her being my grandmother’s age or thereabouts. She’s really, really funny on panels.

I told Nancy Kress she didn’t look a day older than 19. She didn’t believe me.

Stephen R. Donaldson was signing books, but I didn’t have anything for him to sign, so I just told him he was awesome. He gave me a button.

I missed Travis Heermann’s reading, despite having met him the first night in the bar. This is me offering a guilt-link as propitiation.

Blake Charlton’s grandmother is Scottish, so clearly we got along well. He also likes scotch. Another point in his favor. He withstood Jaym’s death stare quite manfully, too, I must say.

Again, there were tons more, many of whose names I don’t remember. I do recall David Drake being entertainingly curmudgeonly on a panel, and Peter Straub being bald, though, so there’s that.

Things I said on the elevator…

(To Karen Hooper beside me): Karen, that’s not your pocket.

(Loudly, to no one in particular): I’ve been a lifelong Republican.

(Medium-volume, to no one in particular): This would be a really bad time for the dysentery to flare up.

After that, no one wanted to get on crowded elevators with me. Not sure why.

Other things that happened a lot

Awkward hugs
Me talking about awkward hugs
Awkward handshakes
Vodka refills
Saying, “Oh look, there’s [insert author/editor/agent name here].”
Saying, “Who’s that?”
More vodka refills
More awkward hugs
Sara McClung pointing out that I say “awkward” a lot
Ricki Schultz pointing out that I say “awkward” a lot, but it’s okay, because she says “weird” a lot

Things that didn’t happen very much

Sleep

And that, writer-friends, is my hazy recollection of WFC as it stands. Anyone who was there can feel free to correct me on any essential details.

And now it’s time for NaNoWriMo.

*I didn’t choke on a California roll. I think it was a tuna roll.

Gah! I caved! NaNo…facepalm

2010-10-28T00:01:00.000-04:00

That’s right, writer-friends, I caved. I signed up for NaNoWriMo.

Yes, I know I’m already in the middle of a novel (okay, the beginning). And yes, I know my novel’s totally going to be more than 50,o00 words. But here’s the deal: I’m starting over with a new outline.

You heard me. I’m starting over.

See, I was trying to be a pantser, writing scenes as they came to me, sketching a few scenes ahead at all times. Except I don’t think I’m a pantser.

Look, I’m an engineer. Well, I have an engineering degree, anyway. I have a logical, orderly brain, and I like things to make sense. So just writing without any real idea of where I’m supposed to be ending up simply wasn’t natural for me.

There’s no shame in this. It’s just the way I’m wired.

So…yeah. I signed up for NaNo tonight. I’m giving it a shot. Wish me luck, y’all!

Oh, and I’m SimonCLarter, if you want to buddy on up. I guess the more people I’m buddies with, the greater the mortification if I can’t make the wordcount, right? Right? Yeah.

It’s going to be a long November….

The Publishing Industry Knows What It’s Doing. (Mostly.)

2010-10-26T00:01:00.000-04:00

OH MY HELL DID THEY REALLY JUST GIVE SNOOKI A BOOK DEAL!?

Yes. Yes, they did, to the collective dismay of tens of thousands of aspiring authors. But let’s get one thing clear: Snooki ain’t writing the book all by her lonesome, you can bet your sweet cream-filled donuts on that one. Unless our shockingly-unwidely-read reality star is a natural writer with the instincts of an MFA grad and the market-savvy of a J.A. Konrath, there’ll be editors involved, and likely a ghostwriter.

Simon & Schuster’s Gallery Press is buying the name, and the publicity, hoping to cash in on Snooki’s destined-to-be-short-lived fame before it expires. And y’know what? They might be successful. They might make money on the deal.

Which is the point.

See, it’s popular for us fledgling writers, hoping and praying to break into the big time, to dog the publishing industry. And it’s true, the old blockbuster model of making the big money (or taking the big chances) on a few flagship titles and letting the midlist and entry-level simmer along at break-even or less is crumbling under the onslaught of eReaders and the democratization of the publishing process (read: self-publishing). But by and large, the people who work in publishing really do know what they’re doing.

Eric, over at Pimp my Novel, wrote a post on this issue a few weeks back. “You know what?” he says (in my paraphrase of his post, anyway). “We in the publishing industry have been doing this a while, and we’re pretty good at it.”

Y’know all those ranks of books lining the walls of Barnes & Noble and Borders and Powells? Publishing industry professionals shepherded those to print. They’re good that way.

Now, some of you may know Allison (@allison_pang on Twitter) is coming up on publication of her first novel, A Brush of Darkness. And maybe you also know that she’s under contract for two sequels. Perhaps you don’t know, however, that the delivery schedule for the first draft of the second book is INSANE.

I kid you not. She’s had to seriously buckle down to get this draft together in time and I found myself wondering why her publisher set such a tight deadline. But on reflection, I’m pretty sure they have their reasons: urban fantasy is still hot, they want a second book coming out quickly so people that loved the first are still hot for it, they’ve got other books in the pipeline that dovetail nicely with the series, whatever.

Point being, the publishers think they’ll sell more of Allison’s books by pushing a bit with the deadlines. And in the end, it should be a win for her, too, because she has professionals supporting her and guiding her book toward optimal sales.

Look, we writers are in the business of understanding people. We have to in order to create believable characters. So next time you hear about The Situation getting a book deal, why not extend a little understanding to the people working in the biz? I’m pretty sure they’re not happy about it either, but they’re pros. They’re going to do their job. Which is to make money for their publishing house.

After all, when you get that deal, don’t you want a competent team working their asses off to sell as many copies of your book as they can?

Yes. Yes, you do.

Even genius has its off days….

2010-10-21T00:01:00.001-04:00

Yes, writer-friends, even I have off days with my writing.

…

BAHAHAAA!!! *snort* *snarf*

Er…okay, no. I wasn’t talking about me. I’m thinking of Cormac McCarthy, actually, since I just finished reading All the Pretty Horses.

Now, while I was absolutely flattened by some of McCarthy’s prose (starting with the first paragraph, even), I did come across some spots where it fell flat for me. These were often the spots that, for whatever reason, the writing took a bit of a literary or philosophical turn, and it’s not so much that they’re poorly done, or that the images aren’t brilliantly concrete, more that I was jarred out of the flow of the narrative by the “literariness,” if you get what I mean.

Examples are always good. Here’s a couple. The first one describes John Grady Cole and Lacey Rawlins riding out into the starry night. It gets a little, uh, high-flown.

They heard somewhere in that tenantless night a bell that tolled and ceased where no bell was and they rode out on the round dais of the earth which alone was dark and no light in it and which carried their figures and bore them up into the swarming stars so that they rode at once jaunty and circumspect, like thieves newly loosed in that dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing.

Aaannd…WTF? Okay, I love the “swarming stars,” and “that dark electric,” as they’re lovely, evocative word choices. But what the hell is with the literary, writerly stuff about young thieves and ten thousand worlds? Does it even make sense? If it does, I certainly don’t get it.

And the thing is, McCarthy’s prose is otherwise so spare that you can’t help but notice passages like this. He must have written this, edited it, made the decision to keep it for some very specific reason, but to me, for all its beauty, this kind of sentence falls flat.

Don’t worry, the next example’s short.

He lay a long time listening to the others breathing in their sleep while he contemplated the wildness about him, the wildness within.

Here again, I was pulled out of the narrative flow. It sounds awfully deep, doesn’t it, to “contemplate the wildness within?” But up till this point (this is on p60), we haven’t really been shown John Grady as much of a deep thinker. Sure, we know he has thoughts and feelings, but he’s a quiet one, not given to expressing them. The parallels between Cole’s inner landscape and the wildness of the country in which he’s travelling are already pretty clear by this time, so to directly state that connection seems a tad inelegant.

Now, I know each reader’s experience of a book is different, and I’m just spouting off right now about what didn’t quite gel for me in a National Book Award winning novel, but I believe this kind of exercise can be helpful in our own work. Reading with wonder and admiration is a sheer pleasure, and I love, love, loved All the Pretty Horses. But I can never turn off the writer/editor brain. I’m always, on some level, looking for what works, what doesn’t, what I could emulate, what I could avoid. It makes the experience of reading richer for me, somehow.

Or maybe I’m just a cantankerous little bastard who likes to tear down great works with nitpicky comments. It could be that too, I guess.

But I don’t think so.

Anyone else have similar experiences with top-notch literature? Tell me I’m not the only one to pick apart award-winning books like this.

Alex Cavanaugh’s CassaStar Release Par-tay!

2010-10-19T00:01:00.001-04:00

Right, folks. Y’all may or may not know who Alex Cavanaugh is, but if you read my comments section, his name’s likely to crop up pretty regularly. Well, Alex’s debut novel, CassaStar, releases today from Dancing Lemur Press, and since I’m all about promoting my fellow authors, today’s post shines the spotlight on CassaStar.

And, according to the Library Journal, it’s pretty good!

“…calls to mind the youthful focus of Robert Heinlein’s early military sf, as well as the excitement of space opera epitomized by the many Star Wars novels. Fast-paced military action and a youthful protagonist make this a good choice for both young adult and adult fans of space wars.”

- Library Journal

Well, what’s it about, you ask? I can’t tell you, ‘cause I hain’t read it yet, but y’know what? I’ve got a synopsis right here. Check it:

To pilot the fleet’s finest ship…

Few options remain for Byron. A talented but stubborn young man with a troubled past and rebellious attitude, his cockpit skills are his only hope. Slated to train as a Cosbolt fighter pilot, Byron is determined to prove his worth and begin a new life as he sets off for the moon base of Guaard.

Much to Byron’s chagrin, the toughest instructor in the fleet takes notice of the young pilot. Haunted by a past tragedy, Bassa eventually sees through Byron's tough exterior and insolence. When a secret talent is revealed during training, Bassa feels compelled to help Byron achieve his full potential.

As war brews on the edge of space, time is running short. Byron requires a navigator of exceptional quality to survive, and Bassa must make a decision that could well decide the fate of both men. Will their skills be enough as they embark on a mission that may stretch their abilities to the limit?

And if that’s not enough to pique your interest, maybe a book trailer will be?

Pretty nifty, huh?

If you’re interested, why not check out Alex’s blog here. Seriously, anyone who shares my ~~epic crush on~~ appreciation for Kate Beckinsale is all right in my book.

Oh, and ‘cause I’m cool like that, I haz links to places you can buy CassaStar online. You’re welcome.

Amazon.com

Barnes & Noble

Books-A-Million

Powells (independent bookstores FTW!)

I have seen the future of publishing, and it is the Bookanator 10000

2010-10-14T05:53:00.001-04:00

Welcome to the Bookanator 10000. How can I assist you today?

Let’s see…I’m in the mood for something exciting. Maybe a thriller?

Thriller. Check. please select sub-genre. Examples include: international conspiracy, government cover-up, murder-mystery—

I think international conspiracy.

International conspiracy. Check. Select story pacing: leisurely, standard, or breakneck.

Standard, please.

Protagonist male or female?

Male.

Male protagonist. Check. Romance elements?

Yes.

Romance. Check. Love interest male, female, or other?

What the hell would “other” be?

Error. Please rephrase question.

Um…what is “other?”

Love interest category: Other. Encompasses animal, alien, robot, paranormal entity, self, park bench, automobile, cypress tree, ironing board, no. 2 pencil, credit ca—

FEMALE! I’ll go with female, thanks. (Erm…that was weird.)

Heterosexual romance. Check. Please select level of sexual explicitness: none, mild, medium, heavy, full-on freak, or ZOMG.

Hang on, who programmed these choices?

Error. Please rephrase question.

Um…. *looks around* *whispers* ZOMG.

Level of sexual explicitness, ZOMG. Check. Select level of violence: none, mild, medium, gross, shocking, or vomit-inducing.

Er…medium?

Level of violence, medium. Check. Select story length: novella, novel, or Michener.

Novel, please.

Story length, novel. Check. Please specify any additional story elements you would like. Examples include jewels, antiques, fast cars, scuba diving, dogfights, torture, theme parks, zombies, literary agents, staplers, Monty Python, intravenous drug use—

Geez! No thanks. Just the book, okay?

Selection process complete. Stand by for book generation. *beep* *boop* Book generation complete. Please select book format: electronic, hardcover, or paperback.

Paperback, please.

Luddite.

Pardon me?

Error. Please rephrase question.

Um…can I just get my book now?

Printing book now. Please enjoy, and thank you for using the Bookanator 10000.

Thanks.

*takes book*

*goes home*

*reads*

ZOMG!

~~~~~

This not entirely serious post inspired by the following article in the Wall street journal: William Gibson on the future of publishing.

On Respect

2010-10-12T00:01:00.000-04:00

Let’s talk a little about respect, writer-friends. I don’t mean the kind we’re supposed to owe politicians and pastors and police offers and such—I don’ t hold much truck with respecting people simply for their profession or social position. My respect is earned, not granted because you just happen to be an M.D. or Ph.D or whatever.

No, the respect I’m talking about is simple human being to human being respect, the kind earned through quiet strength and integrity. And nothing earns my admiration faster than grace in the midst of suffering. Nothing.

This has been on my mind because of the recent fracas over Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak. Many have written about the issue of book banning more eloquently than I could, and I appreciate them for it. But what hit me on a deep level was the soul-shredding honesty some writers displayed. Like CJ Redwine. Lord, but what that woman wrote took courage! I respect that.

Then there’s Mercedes. We tease each other mercilessly, sure, and she’s a wonderful sport, but spend some time on her blog and you’ll quickly realize that she’s much more than just a writer playing the femme fatale. Her son has Williams Syndrome, a genetic disorder so rare that when he was born, there were next to no resources for parents with Williams children. She and her husband have had to deal with some pretty severe medical emergencies with their boy, which—to drastically understate the case—totally sucks.

If you’re not a parent, you might not have any idea how much that hurts (you may…who knows?). If you are a parent, and you’ve suffered through a night in the ER or ICU with a sick child, maybe you’re getting close to understanding. Naked fear and helplessness and love and pain and weariness all wrapped together and twisting in your chest. And yet what do we see of Mercedes in the world of social media? A dedicated, driven writer, a supportive friend, a wonderful sense of humor. She’s suffered, yes, but she’s done it with grace, and still extends herself to help others in the Williams community. I respect that.

And my friend Bryan. Catch up with him nowadays, and it’s rare that he doesn’t have some fantastic bit of news about his career and new writing opportunities. But I’ve known him for years, and remember a time when part-time night jobs were his only source of income while he volunteered an insane number of hours running a drama ministry for our church.

He’s now a two-time Harvey Award winner, but it took almost 20 years to get there. That’s 20 years of grinding away in the trenches of the comic book industry, accumulating writing credits the hard way. It pains me now to think that I at one time judged him for “not getting a real job.” His job is writing. It’s what he does best, what he was born to do. And he’s kept at it with a dedication bordering on ferocity, even when other people have looked down on him for it. I respect that.

Not everyone’s really suffered in life, I know this. Not everyone’s called to. I can’t say I’ve suffered all that much, but I’ve had enough of a taste to admire those who bear up under infinitely worse pressures and still have the grit to stand and look the world in the eye. We’re all going to get knocked down in this life, friends. The thing is to keep getting back up, keep fighting, keep standing up for what we believe in. Now that’s living. That’s being human. Hell yeah, I respect that.

I could relate this all to writing, I suppose, but screw it—I’ll save that for another day. I’ll just leave you with a few more links to posts that I respect the hell out of. Enjoy. Maybe I’ll have something funny next time.

Tabitha Bird, whose passion and soul are inspiring, speaks out.

Janet Reid is not always snark. When it counts, she cares.

The Rejectionist continues to rage against institutionalized racism in the publishing industry. Long live The Rejectionist.

Another mother of special needs children, with an attitude the size of Alaska, and heart to match: It’s you and me against the world, kid.

A Slightly Skewed View of the World

2010-10-07T00:01:00.000-04:00

Writer-friends, I’ve been ruminating on the nature of excellent prose. I do this because, well, I’m me, and I’m an insanely picky reader. Not that stolid prose will utterly scuttle a story for me, just that it’s far easier for me to lose myself in a narrative if the writer’s prose is rock-solid and occasionally startlingly lovely.

I’m thinking about this because a friend recently passed on Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses to me, and boy howdy, does that man know how to write! No joke, he puts you on notice with the very first sentences, which I’ll share here so you can get the full effect.

The candleflame and the image of the candleflame caught in the pierglass twisted and righted when he entered the hall and again when he shut the door. He took off his hat and came slowly forward. The floorboards creaked under his boots. In his black suit he stood in the dark glass where the lilies leaned so palely from their waisted cutglass vase. Along the cold hallway behind him hung the portraits of forebears only dimly known to him all framed in glass and dimly lit above the narrow wainscotting. He looked down at the guttered candlestub. He pressed his thumbprint in the warm wax pooled on the oak veneer. Lastly he looked at the face so caved and drawn among the folds of funeral cloth, the yellowed moustache, the eyelids paper thin. That was not sleeping. That was not sleeping.

Holy hell, but that’s a tour-de-force paragraph! I’ll unpack that for you a bit. Here’s why it’s phenomenal.

Check that first sentence. Now, McCarthy could’ve said something like, “The candleflame flickered in the wind as he opened the door, stepped into the hall, and closed the door behind him.” But no, we have a single, concrete image now in our minds of a candleflame twisting in a mirror as someone enters a hall. The slight skewing of perspective makes the image immeasurably more effective.

Then look at the rest of the imagery: lilies lean palely (note the adverb [put that in your pipe and smoke it, adverb police], and the assonance of the repeated “l” sound), waisted vase (alliteration), guttered candlestub (technically not even correct, since guttered is a past tense verb, not an adjective, but we accept it nonetheless), the thumbprint in warm wax, and lastly, the caved, drawn face and the paper-thin eyelids. You see it all. It’s presented in slightly oblique language, but I think it’s because of the obliqueness that the visuals are so effective.

And don’t even get me started on the repeated last sentence. Just that simple device, a sidewise slide into the point-of-view of the main character, tells us so much. There is confusion, and loss, and sorrow, and a sense of being adrift, all encapsulated in a four-word sentence, repeated.

I think the power of this prose consists in McCarthy’s taking a view askew. He takes a series of fairly conventional images and twists them a bit, giving them a freshness and vitality. You can learn to do this too.

Because I’m self-aggrandizing like that, I’ll give you one example from my own work. In my Bad Girl Blogfest entry, I depict the shooting of the antagonist thusly:

The bullet sent chips of asphalt flying behind Hector’s head. He choked, staring at Ana with wide eyes as blood spurted from the hole in his throat.

Notice I didn’t mention the bullet entering or exiting, or brains splattering across the sidewalk. All of that’s a bit bog-standard, no? Instead, I chose the image of the bullet chipping asphalt, and a quick bleedout from a throat wound. A bit skewed, but I feel it’s more effective that way.

And you know what? I think you can do this too. It just takes some retraining of the brain to think a bit differently about what you want to convey. Instead of bitter cold, perhaps it’s an Antarctic blast. Rather than a character slipping quietly through an archway, perhaps they scuttle, cockroach-quick and cat-silent, beneath the arcing doorway. It’s all in how you look at things.

Why not give it a try? I know you have it in you.

Write on, friends.

Really? An Actual Work-in-Progress Wednesday?

2010-10-06T00:01:00.000-04:00

It’s a short one today, writer-friends, mainly because my progress on the novel has been completely pathetic. Mock me, please. I deserve it.

What did I write? Well, there was that Three-Minute Fiction contest for NPR, a Stilettos & Shirley Temples episode, a night or two of complete distraction trying to submit fiction before October 1st for the #10bythen challenge, and, um, I’m now about two and a half weeks advance posted on the ol’ blog.

I’m hoping that all those advance posts I’ve made will let me ignore the blog for a while and concentrate on some serious wordage.

I don’t even have the heart to update the progress meter. *sighs*

But today I’m driving down to DC for work, so I’ll be on the road a LONG time. Maybe I can get some solid brainstorming done on the way, or get stuck in traffic so I can write some actual words down!

I have to redeem myself somehow, after all.

In which I attempt a strained analogy between cycling and writing….

2010-10-05T00:01:00.000-04:00

I started bicycle commuting last week, writer-friends. It’d been a while since I last rode, so it took a while to get back into the swing of things (i.e., for my ass to stop hurting). And since now I have extra time in my commute every morning and evening, I’m at liberty to think up fun things to write about on my blog. Or, y’know, brainstorm the novel or short stories and things. That too.

So in honor of my return to cardiovascular health and fitness, I present to you five cycling-writing analogues. (Shaddup, they’ll totally make sense once you read them. I hope. Oh, stop pre-judging me and just read, wouldja?)

1. You will look silly at first…

…because the helmet seems kind of dorky and those bike shorts make you feel a tad exposed and if you get those clip-in pedals you might come to a stop light and be unable to clip out to put your foot down and consequently fall over in what seems like slow-motion to sprawl inelegantly on the asphalt to the amusement of nearby motorists and pedestrians and then you have to get up and just keep on riding and hope the wind will cool your flaming cheeks.

Kind of like when you first tell people you want to be a writer and they look at you with a pitying expression and you want to shrink into a very small and hard-to-see ball and roll behind the bureau and you feel stupid but the stories won’t let you alone and the characters fill your brain and despite the fact people are skeptical you decide to keep on writing anyway.

2. It will stink…

…because you’re sharing roads with cars and trucks and sucking exhaust fumes into your lungs and despite your longstanding support for public transit you discover that being stuck behind a slow-moving, diesel-smoke-belching bus is somewhat less than enjoyable when you’re on a bike and then there’s the squirrel that got flattened on the road last week and no one’s shoveled it up yet and every day it smells a little worse so you try to hold your breath when you go down that stretch of road but that’s tough to do when you’re exercising so you usually get a noseful of rotting rodent and have to spit when you get a particle of stank in your mouth.

Kind of like that first story in which you hadn’t quite gotten the hang of showing not telling and adverbs crop up like pernicious dandelions* and you actually did use “insinuated” as a dialogue tag one time and your critique group ever so gently pointed out that you might need to work on your prose style and you flush beet red in mortification but promise yourself you’ll do better next time.

3. It will hurt…

…because unless you live in one of the plains states you will have to ride up hills and that makes your quads hurt and after a while your glutes hurt too and you have no choice but to grit your teeth and keep pushing despite the lactic acid burn in your thighs because the top of the hill is just up ahead and you won’t’ accept being that pansy that gets down and walks your bike the last little way so you duck your head and accept the pain because every muscle fiber that rips and reknits will make you that much stronger in the long run.

Kind of like that first rejection in your inbox that you were expecting because everyone gets rejected and you knew that on some level but when it’s you staring at the NO on your screen it feels different somehow and then you get more rejections and try to laugh it off or blame it on the market or Mercury being in retrograde but it stings like a sonofabitch for that manuscript you sweated over for a year or more and revised till you knew the damn thing by heart to be turned down with nothing but a form rejection but you suck it up and send the next query out because what else can you do?

4. You will get better…

…because when you keep getting back on that bike even though your ass hurts something fierce from yesterday’s ride and your muscles are considering taking out a restraining order against you there’s comfort in knowing you’re faster this week than you were last week and that the hills that nearly crucified you your first time out on the bike don’t feel like much more than gentle inclines to you now and that gear you didn’t have the strength to push just last month is now your go-to gear on the flats and perhaps all that sweat and ache is worth it after all.

Kind of like when you keep writing word after word and story after story you realize after a while that maybe you’re beginning to get the hang of pacing or dialogue or structure or whatever it was that you stumbled over back when you started on this journey and your beta readers aren’t correcting your grammar that much anymore because you’ve mastered the fundamentals and now their comments are all about the story and characters and sometimes they even forget to critique they’re so wrapped up in your story and you think perhaps all those late nights in front of the computer have been worth it after all.

5. You will feel something…

…because you are not hermetically sealed into an office or a car with filtered air you are out in the rushing wind and the cold and the heat and sweating and feeling the rain sting your eyelids and you feel the air scrape your lungs in the winter and hang heavy in your throat in the humid summer and your legs hurt and your shoulders are tense but sometimes when you get up before the sun you see it stain the east red in the morning and see the high-risen creek whipped by wind in the late afternoon and by god you are alive and every beat of your racing heart tells you that you are here in the world and experiencing something for yourself.

Kind of like when everything finally clicks with a scene and the characters come alive in your mind and on the page and you laugh or cry or suffer with your creations and that last passage is the most beautiful you’ve ever written and the story’s finally starting to look complete and there’s a fierce joy in your chest because you have created something in the cauldron of your imagination and by god there it is on the page in black and white and it’s alive and outside of you and now you’ve shared part of yourself with the world and it is utterly, utterly freeing.

Write on, friends.

Also, I <3 my bike. :)

* The “pernicious dandelions” phrase I lifted from Stephen King’s On Writing. Sorry, Steve.

♪ Happy Blogoversary to Me…. ♪

2010-10-01T00:01:00.000-04:00

What the crap? Has it really been a year since I put up my inaugural post on this ‘ere blog? Yes, I suppose it has, now I think of it. It was September 29th, 2009, when I first sent the thoughts of a fledgling writer-blogger out into the ethernet. I was such a naif.

And now? Now I’ve a year of blogging under my belt, and dude, I’m SO, like, a pro at this shiznit. For serious.

Um…it appears as though I’ve picked up some silly expressions in the blogosphere this past year too. I never used to say “for serious.” Huh.

Anyhow! Let’s have a recap of the highlights, shall we? Since that appears to be de rigeur for blog anniversaries and all. I give you, gentle readers, the year in blogging!

Sept. 29th, 2009 1st post! I think I came across as a bit of a sententious tool, but only about three people read it anyway, so whatever.

Oct. 17th, 2009 I did what? I placed top 10 in Nathan Bransford’s 1st Paragraph Contest? Huh. I guess I did. That’s a nice kickstart to the social networking thing, innit?

Oct. 21st, 2009 I blog about my first ever publication. Granted, the piece went up on the first of the month, but still, I was kinda proud. I even got paid for it!

Nov. 5th, 2009 My first blog award! It came from the lovely and über-talented Carolina Valdez Miller, whom I’m still proud to call a friend.

Nov. 11th, 2009 I won my first writing contest thingy, over at Suzy Hayze’s Tales of Extraordinary Ordinariness blog, and discovered how much fun entering blog contests is.

Jan. 2nd, 2010 My first blogfest! This story, incidentally, made a reappearance in iambic pentameter form on Livia Blackburne’s blog. What? She dared me to do it! Plus, I got a free book out of the deal. :)

Jan 11th, 2010 My first contest! Since Carol and I hit 100 followers around the same time, we co-hosted a flash fiction contest, and got some seriously awesome entries. Merrilee Faber and Michelle Davidson Argyle took home top honors in that one.

Feb 19th, 2010 I host my first and only blogfest, due to a Twitter-challenge. That’s all I have to say about that. *cough*

April 21st, 2010 I hit 250 followers! And, of course, I host a contest.

May 22nd, 2010 Courtney Barr, the Southern Princess, makes me my very own blog award! Color me flattered, Charlie. :D

May 25th, 2010 Victoria Mixon kicks me in the balls.

Jun. 7th, 2010 I ruminate on the Cycle of Blogging. Iz teh funny. Also, iz teh true, which is why it’s teh funny. (Incidentally, I also picked up a LOLcat-speak habit this past year. Not sure how I feel about that.)

Jun 17th, 2010 I crank out a tiny bit of flash fiction that grows some serious legs and turns into my work-in-progress novel. Seriously? It’s UF? With vampires? I was SO not expecting that.

Jul. 20th, 2010 Really, it was only supposed to be a dalliance, a brief, back-and-forth story, but the Stilettos & Shirley Temples blog serial I started with Mercedes M. Yardley has morphed into…something else entirely, hasn’t it?

Sept 24th, 2010 I pass 500 followers! And have no idea what kind of contest to run. Still considering that. :)

And there we have it, writer-friends, my year in blogging.

Actually, looking back on it, a helluva lot happened this past year. Here I was thinking that time was flying by, but when I think about that 100 followers contest, it feels as though it were eons ago. I suppose it was, in social media years, but still.

So here I am, one year later, still writing away, trying to add words to the novel, submitting short stories and flash to fiction markets, planning on my first writers’ conference at the end of this month. I’m still the same douchebag I ever was, but I’m an older, wiser douchebag. I’m a better writer now, more assured, more practised. I’ve met some damn cool people, and made some fantastic friends in the blogosphere. Some of them I even met in real life!

And you know what? I appreciate every single person who swings by my blog to read my random and meandering musings. Thank you, truly, for spending time with me here in my little corner of cyberspace. You are, quite simply, awesome.

Let’s see what this next year brings, shall we? I can’t wait.

Cinders: A Review

2010-09-28T00:01:00.000-04:00

So Cinders is a fairytale retelling with significant elements of romance. Yes, I can already hear what you’re thinking, writer-friends: “Er…Simon? What are you doing reading a fairytale romance novella?” To which I answer, “Shaddup. If a guy wants to read fairytale romance and cry into his wine cooler every now and then, who are you to judge?” :P

…

BAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!!

Um…sorry. Couldn’t keep a straight face there. I don’t cry into wine coolers, only into vodka.

Anyway, the truth is I read cinders cause I like Michelle Davidson Argyle (aka, Lady Glamis), the author, and wanted to show support for a fellow writer. (See that, kids? This whole social-networking-as-platform thing does work, after all!) And in the vein of writerly support, I think I’ll go ahead and review Cinders. Yes, I shall.

So. Here’s what the back cover has to say for itself:

Cinderella’s happily-ever-after isn’t turning out the way she expected.

With her fairy godmother imprisoned in the castle and a mysterious stranger haunting her dreams, Cinderella is on her own to discover true love untainted by magic.

Yup, it’s a Cinderella story, but nowhere near what you’d expect. As I read it, it’s more about how far this woman will go in pursuit of what she thinks she wants. It’s about choices, and the consequences that follow when you choose wrongly.

There’s a lot to like about Cinders, so let’s start there. First of all, let’s dispense with the whole self-publishing stigma right at the outset, shall we? There’s nothing even remotely second rate about the quality of the book: lovely cover design, great production standards, and if there were more’n 3 typos in the entire thing, I’d be surprised. Hell, even Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book had a misspelling or two, and that was professionally edited, so Michelle did a fantastic job with that.

As for the story, let’s just say this: Glam sure ain’t afraid to put the hurt on her characters. Cinderella makes some pretty questionable decisions in her quest to find true love, and several of ‘em bite her in the ass pretty hard. Like, great-white-shark-bite hard. Yowza. This is why I loved the ending of Cinders: it’s not neat, it’s not tidy, and it sure ain’t happy, but it makes perfect sense. And boy does Cindy have a character arc! Quite the changed woman at the end, she is.

The other thing I appreciated about Cinders was Michelle’s use of imagery. She’s got an excellent eye for vivid and startling scenes, and the pictures she paints with words have a way of sticking with you. The following passage illustrates what I mean.

The next morning the kitchen smelled of blood. It was splattered on the wood countertops and splashed across the floor. Cinderella watched thin red streams trickle between the stones.

The prince’s hunting party had done well: fifteen ducks, three pheasants, and eight rabbits hung on a long thin wire in the corner. The red liquid dripped steadily from their limp bodies swaying back and forth in the cool breeze from an open door.

You can just see the kitchen, can’t you? Even smell it? That’s what I’m talking about.

As for what didn’t work as well for me? Well, it won’t surprise anyone to learn that the romance aspect was the main thing I stumbled on. I felt I could have been sold a little better on the secondary romance that causes most of Cinderella’s post-nuptial angst. Not that I’m against marital complications (I routinely screw up my characters’ relationships for fun and entertainment), but there was kind of a de facto feel to Cinderella’s dilemma that I felt could have been mitigated by a bit more foreshadowing or elegantly-worked-in backstory.

The other thing that nagged at me was the ending. Now yes, I did say that I love the ending, and I do—the situation of it. But the setup for the situation I felt was a tad thin. Ultimately, I think both of my criticisms of Cinders stem from its being a novella. Given more time and a less constrained wordcount, I feel as though the parts that struck me as underwritten could have been expanded, foreshadowed, constructed more thoroughly. This, of course, is my personal preference as a reader; there are plenty of people who love the simplicity and directness of the novella form.

So would I recommend Cinders? Certainly, and not just because I like Michelle. Her prose style is elegant and flowing, and the world she’s created is earthy, detail-rich, solid. Her use of imagery is outstanding. The story will shock you in places, make you smile in others, and the ending, while perhaps surprising, is satisfying in that oh-of-course-it-had-to-be-this-way sense. Cinders is definitely worth a read.

~~~~~

Michelle’s author site: http://www.michelledavidsonargyle.com

Purchase Cinders here (paperback and electronic editions available): http://www.michelledavidsonargyle.com/p/purchase.html

Work in progress…Friday? Oh, hell. It’s just announcements.

2010-09-24T00:01:00.000-04:00

I’m sure you noticed, O loyal readers (and maybe even you disloyal ones too), that my Work in Progress Thursday post (which, naturally, evolved out of my inability to post any progress on Wednesday) was co-opted yesterday by those oh-so-helpful tips on writerly success. That means my weekly check-in falls on Friday this week. Yay! *coughs*

How’d I do? Well, once again, I wrote quite a bit, but not all on the novel. What did I write? Here, have a bulleted list (writers love bulleted lists):

Stilettos & Shirley Temples, Part 11. (And wouldn’t you like to know what happens? Well, you can’t. Wait till Monday.)
An exploratory scene for a potential super sekrit project. (This, upon rereading it, sucked to an ungodly degree. I cringed a couple times. *facepalm*)
A from-scratch rewrite of the exploratory scene for a potential super sekrit project. (This was far and away better, IMHO, and didn’t make me want to poke myself in the eye with a #2 pencil.)
Sketches of the next 9 or so scenes for the novel. (I had some great evil laughs to myself as I tossed in plot-complications and violent confrontations. What? You don’t evil laugh to yourself when you’re writing. Erm…neither do I, then. *tugs collar* *grins sheepishly*)
JUST enough words on the novel to eke out one more percentage point on the WIP-meter. (Though, in my defense, I did scrap a few hundred words of half-written scene because I decided not to include that subplot in the book after all, so my ending wordcount doesn’t reflect all my novel-writing this week.)

I’d guess that was about 4 – 5k of writing, overall, which ain’t bad. AND DON’T YELL AT ME FOR CONSIDERING SUPER SEKRIT PROJECTS YOU WOULD TOO IF YOU HAD AN OPPORTUNITY THIS FUN! Uh…yes.

Right. Let’s just do the table and image thingy, then, huh? Yah.

WIP STATUS

Current word count: 11,529

Number of future scenes sketched out: 9

Past week’s effort classification: Unfocused, and slightly pathetic. >.<

~~~~~~~~

Also, hey! Are y’all (and by “y’all” I mean, “all you writers living in the Philadelphia area,” so I should probably have said “youse”) remembering Philly Lit Night? Yeah, the Philly Lit Night that involves me, Laurel, Frankie Diane and The First Novels Club ladies, and any other writers that want to show up, meeting at the Irish Pub, 20th & Walnut, at 8pm.

You know you want to go. They serve beer there. Also, vodka. What else do you need as enticement? (The food’s good too. And by food I mean Guinness.)

~~~~~~~~~

Oh, and one more thing! Guess what happened this past week or so. I’ll give you a hint:

Who are all those lovely people?

Right, well if you didn’t get the hint, I finally hit the 500 follower mark. This is momentous! This is stupendous! This is more significant than the invention of the printing press!

And, of course, I must now host a contest of some description. ‘Cept I have no clue what that’ll be. Maybe I’ll get the folks at Philly Lit Night to help me brainstorm.

Whatever I come up with, I’m pretty sure it’ll make “epic” look like too paltry a descriptor. Yeah. I’m cool like that. So stay tuned!

~~~~~~~~~~~

I think that’s enough rambling for now, don’ t you? I’ll stop now, then.

Have a great weekend, writer-friends! And don’t forget to come back on Monday for Stilettos & Shirley Temples, y’hear?

*waves*

*disappears*

How to Respect the Craft of Writing. Maybe.

2010-09-22T19:10:00.001-04:00

It has recently come to my attention that some of you out there (and if you’re wondering whether I’m talking to you, then yes, I am) don’t respect the craft of writing enough. It’s a long and storied profession, and lately it seems as though every Tom, Dick, and Sally wants to jump on the bandwagon and crank out the next Twilight or The Da Vinci Code (only with worse prose) and retire to a private island. This concerns me.

This concerns me so much that I’ve put together a list of things that can immediately set you apart from the hobby writers and other assorted ne’er-publish-wells that float around the blogosphere. You’re welcome.

To wit, I present to you, dear writer-friends, with three simple actions you can take to achieve writerly success.

1. Dress the part*

You’re a writer, dammit, and you should look like one. Cat-assing around is for the kids that play WoW for 8-hour stretches. You, O professional writer-type, need to come to your computer, or moleskin notebook dressed to impress (your muse, that is). That means anything less than business casual is unacceptable.

This is what I’m talkin’ about, fellas.

And for the ladies….

And if you really want to get the muse hot and bothered, you could go all out with evening wear. But yoga pants? Boxer shorts? T-shirts? You might as well muck about on Twitter for the rest of the night, ‘cause your muse just high-tailed it out to hang with Rachel Zoe.

2. Be well groomed**

It’s tempting, I know, when you’ve been up late writing for nights on end, to skimp on personal hygiene a bit, but the muse has a highly developed sense of smell. Shower daily—twice daily if you sweat a lot. Make sure you’re clean shaven, with various and sundry stray hairs duly tweezed, combed down, or waxed away. Splash a little cologne or perfume on, perhaps put on those matching pearl earrings and necklace (ladies), or those platinum cufflinks (men). Your muse likes these things.

The muse is SO not showing up for this guy….

3. Have refreshments handy***

The best writers in history have all kept liquid refreshment close at hand while writing. Is anyone arguing against the genius of Charles Bukowski and Hunter S. Thompson? I think not. So learn from their examples, writer-friend, and stock that refrigerator.

Now, I’m not encouraging out-and-out alcoholism (although that certainly worked for O. Henry and Raymond Chandler), merely a good solid buzz by the end of an evening’s writing. And let’s be clear, if you want to write at the highest levels, friends, please, for the love of all that’s respectably drunk, don’t buy Pabst Blue Ribbon. The higher quality the alcohol, the happier your muse.

Stoli is good. Grey Goose better. Pilsner Urquell is good. Chimay Red better. Cristal is good. Dom Perignon better. I think you get the picture.

I am SO THIRSTY right now.

~~~~~

Do you see how easy it is to set yourselves apart from the plebeian masses filling the nation’s slushpiles? You might even—as proof of your writerly seriousness—want to include a picture of yourself writing with your query letter. What agent wouldn’t be impressed?

And there you have it, writer-friends: your path to blockbuster sales and your own private island.**** You can thank me later.

*I’m not serious about this.

**I’m not serious about this either.

***I’m REALLY not serious about this one.

****Can I visit you on your island, though?

Philly! Lit! Night! HAHAHAAA!!!

2010-09-18T09:32:00.001-04:00

Yes, writer-friends, we’re less than a week away from the epicosity of a writers’ night out on the town in Philly. Are you excited yet? ‘Cause I am!

Frankie posted the announcement yesterday, and I’m following up today to remind y’all to mark those calendars for next Friday, the 24th, when we’ll be boogeying on down at the Irish Pub near Rittenhouse Square.

It’s a pub. It’s Irish. It’s the Irish Pub.

Okay, perhaps there won’t be any boogeying, but you never know. Frankie might regale us with a bellydance if we ask nicely enough. :)

Start time is 8pm (that’s Eastern Standard Time, in case you’re flying in from somewhere else). The first round of shots is scheduled for 8:30, and there’s a bar fight planned at around 9:45, so be sure to bring some sort of concealed weapon.*

What will we talk about, you ask? Oh, I dunno. After we get past the initial “ZOMG you’re so much taller/shorter/paler/greener than you look online!” stuff, I guess we’ll just talk smack about other writers who aren’t there. That’s always a hit at writer get-togethers. Maybe we’ll talk about books and writing and agents and publishing, too, when we’re not character-assassinating fellow bloggers.**

SO! Plan your week, put aside some spending money, bring an appetite, a significant other, whatever, and JOIN US FOR FOOD, FUN, WRITING-RELATED TALK, AND VODKA! (Okay, I’ll be drinking vodka. You can drink whatever you’d like.)

See you there, Philly writers!

*This is not true. I haven’t scheduled any rounds of shots.

**This isn’t true either. I don’t think we’ll be character-assassinating anyone. Unless they deserve it, in which case we might.***

***We won’t really. Promise.

Work in Progress . . . Thursday. Again. facepalm

2010-09-16T00:01:00.000-04:00

DON’T GIVE ME ANY GRIEF ABOUT IT, HUH?

Er…sorry about that. I shouldn’t be all defensive up front, there, should I? No, probably not.

Anyhow, I do want to keep up with my weekly updates, if only because it makes me add at the very least 1% to my manuscript every week. Seriously, if I can’t add a single percentage point to my progress bar in any given week, I should be beaten with electric eels, and I don’t want to be beaten with electric eels, so I try like hell to add at least 1,000 words a week, or thereabouts.

Yes.

So how’d I do this week? Meh. I reached over 11,000 words, but just barely. I could blame that on the family coming home after an extended vacation and me having to resume fatherly duties and losing epic amounts of sleep with a tiny person waking up at odd hours of the morning, but then I’d just be making excuses, and you’d be reaching for the eels again, so I won’t blame it on anything other than my own native laziness.

WHATEVER!

I made some progress.

Here it is:

WIP STATUS

Current word count: 11,034

Number of future scenes sketched out: 2

Past week’s effort classification: Almost electric-eel-beating-worthy. Damn.

Philly Lit Night – Be there or be, uh, not there….

2010-09-10T00:01:00.000-04:00

That’s right, ladies and gents, the irrepressible Frankie Diane Mallis and I are organizing a get-together for Philadelphia-area writers on Friday, Sept. 24th. We’re thinking somewhere on South Street, but depending on the response, we might have to find someplace that can handle a bigger crowd.

Maybe here?

Anyhow, drop a comment on this post or Frankie’s announcement to let us know if you’re interested. We’d love to see you and chat about writing and publishing and which agents we’d like to play beer pong with!

And, to pique your interest, here’s just a few of the things that you could find out at a gathering of this sort:

If I really do drink vodka straight.
If Frankie can actually bellydance.
If Laurel’s as nice in real life as she is on her blog.
If I’m as much of an idiot in real life as I am on my blog.
If the First Novels Club ladies really all have matching tattoos.
Whether it’s possible to have a conversation in real life consisting entirely of hashtags.
If Twitter really has made me more stupider.
If it’s true that most writers make Gollum look tanned and fit.
If it’s possible to recite Jabberwocky flawlessly after six whiskey shots.
If agented writers actually sparkle.
If there’s any writers within 300 miles of Philadelphia who haven’t read Twilight yet.
If anyone will bring a book to the get-together and pull it out during lulls in the conversation.
Whether I can convince Frankie that mozzarella sticks are totally worth cheating on her vegan diet for.

And that’s just a sampling. There may be additional opportunities for learning at such an event. The sky’s the limit! (Okay, your credit card limit’s the limit. Or last call’s the limit. Whichever comes first.)

Join us! RSVP! It’ll be fun! :)

Work in Progress Wednesday. On, uh, Thursday. cough

2010-09-09T00:01:00.000-04:00

I know, I know. I was supposed to post this yesterday, but Molly had things to do the rest of the week and wanted to put up our Trading Spaces posts then. Who am I to argue with a lady? (Don’t answer that. No counter-examples, please.)

Anyway, I’m posting my wordcount update today. You’ll deal, I’m sure.

BUT! Before I do, a couple of announcements. Everyone loves announcements, right? Right. I knew you did. I know *I* always do. Yes.

ANNOUNCEMENT #1!

The lovely Ms. Jami Gold, a longtime commenter on this blog, and dedicated writer of paranormal novels, has written two posts this week inspired by my discussion of action through dialogue last Wednesday. She calls it the Matrix Approach to Scene Setting, and I recommend y’all hop over to take a look. The posts are well-written, well-reasoned, and rather helpful, if I do say so (and I do). The fact that Jami says nice things about me in them has NOTHING whatsoever to do with my recommendation. That’s mere coincidence, I assure you.

LINKS!

The “Matrix” Approach to Scene Setting, Part 1 – The “What”

The “Matrix” Approach to Scene Setting, Part 2 – The “How”

You like? You liiike? Good. On to the next announcement.

ANNOUNCEMENT #2!!

I made it to the second round of editorial review with a submission to a fantasy magazine today. I may still be rejected, of course, and kind of expect it, but even getting through one round makes me happy. So…yay!

And y’know what? I’d never have sent that piece out into the world again if it weren’t for the #10bythen challenge on Twitter. Not sure who instigated it (it may have been the ever-instigatory Mercedes), but I’d like to give a big thank you shoutout to the crew who motivated me to start submitting my short fiction again.

They are:

That right there, folks, is a talented bunch of writers. Check ‘em out, would ya? And there’s another round of #10bythen going on right now. That means we have to submit stories to 10 markets by October 1st. You up for it? Drop us a line on Twitter using the hashtag. We promise to demand only a fawning, groveling apology letter on your blog if you fail to meet the challenge. >:)

Aaannnd…

ANNOUNCEMENT #3!!!

Here’s where I talk about weekly wordcount. *sighs*

Look, I wrote a lot last week. Well, for me, anyway. I cracked 4k total words for the week. Except it wasn’t all on the novel. I wrote the next episode of Stilettos & Shirley Temples, for one thing (and, if I may say, it’s pretty fraggin’ cool). Also, I wrote the short fiction for Molly’s challenge yesterday. That was about 2,500 words between the two of those.

But the novel languished a bit. I only got 1,645 words written on it. However! I did break 10k words on a writing project for the first time EVAR!!! That’s a milestone, writer-friends. That’s new for me. Maybe I can make a go of this novel-writing thing after all!

You’re still allowed to mock me for not writing enough this week, of course. But, y’know, I’ll be okay. The little glow of accomplishment will get me through the pain of your derision. That, and Laphroaig Quarter Cask Double Matured scotch.

WIP STATUS

Current word count: 10,237

Number of future scenes sketched out: 3

Past week’s effort classification: Marginal, but still record-breaking. I’m fine with that. :P

Trading Spaces! Writing Challenges! Fecklessness!

2010-09-08T09:35:00.001-04:00

One of the fascinating things about the blogosphere and Twitterverse is the sheer variety of people one comes in contact with. After almost a year at this whole social media game, I now “know” people in just about every English-speaking country in the world, and probably a couple of people from every state. My writer-friends write the gamut, from humor to horror, picture books to VERY adult novels, and everything in between.

It’s very cool.

I mention this because some weeks ago, dear Molly Campbell from over at Life With The Campbells, challenged me to write something based on a simple name-adjective prompt, with the final result going up on her blog. Of course, we all know what I do when I’m challenged, yes?

And then I provided Molly with a prompt of her own, with the final result going up on my blog. You see how this goes.

My prompt? Aldrich Jones, feckless. Go see what I did with that when you’re done reading here (link at the end). Since Molly writes some wonderfully humorous stuff on her blog, I tried to keep it in that vein. Yah, me. Humor. I know, right? I didn’t even kill anyone in the story, which is odd for me.

And Molly’s prompt? Maryann Inglesbruck, unexpected. Her results are below!

* * * * *

Maryann Inglesbruck has big feet. She wears sneakers, black socks, and cardigans. She loves working in her yard with her three dogs patrolling around her. Weeds never have a chance to even get started in her yard, and people come from miles around to look at her roses. She quit smoking a few years ago, and now chews gum ferociously.

Maryann has never been married. She has lived her entire life in the same house she was born in. Her parents left it to her when they died. Maryann taught English at Union College for twenty five years, and when she retired, she vowed never to read another book.

I first met Maryann when we were both about four years old. Maryann’s mother Sue and my mother were best friends. We were often thrust together as playmates when our Moms had coffee. We lived within walking distance, and my Mom often would suggest, “Amy, let’s put our jackets on and walk over to see what Sue and Maryann are up to!” Off we would go. Maryann and I never had much in common. I liked dolls and stuffed animals, and Maryann liked baseball and picking her scabs. We tried to be friends, but it just wasn’t the way it was with our mothers.

Although our Moms were best friends, the families weren’t close. Maryann’s father and my father had nothing in common. My Dad was a doctor, and we didn’t see much of him, because he was so often called away to one emergency or another. Maryann’s Dad was a minister, and my parents thought he was a bit stuffy.

My parents were divorced when I was ten. Mom and I moved into an apartment in town, and although he said he hated it, Dad stayed in the house. I saw Maryann once in awhile, but when we moved out of the neighborhood, Mom and Sue drifted apart as well. Life went on, and I grew up, married and had my own family.

I ran into Maryann occasionally. As she got older, she seemed to become more and more eccentric. As a minister’s daughter, she scandalized everyone in town with her odd way of dressing, chain smoking, and radical ideas. It was rumored that she was a lesbian.

My father died last year. My Mom, who now lives very happily in the apartment by herself, offered our house to me. “I don’t need the money, and I don’t really want to sell the house anyway. I would love to see you and your family living in it.”

So our family moved in. At times, it seems a bit strange to be here again. Oh, we did a lot of upgrading, and the house isn’t really like it used to be at all, but there are a few ghosts. And I am now Maryann’s neighbor once more. Maryann’s parents moved to Florida when her father retired from the ministry, and it was there that Sue died of cancer.

So I see her now and again, working in her garden. We wave, and exchange a few words. She asks about my Mom. I pet the dogs. I look at her sneakers, take in the cardigan, and wonder if she really is a lesbian. I marvel at how different we are, and wish we could have been friends.

Yesterday I found it. I was cleaning out the desk in the living room. That old desk is a wonderful relic; I think my grandmother got it from her parents. It has a false front, and if you press a little lever, it swings away to reveal some little drawers. I opened them, hoping in the back of my mind for treasure.

In one of the drawers, there was a photo of Mom holding me right after I was born. I remember the picture. She looked beautiful, and I looked wrinkled. I flipped it over. Mom had written on it. “The Minister’s other child.”

My mother. Dad. Sue. Reverend Inglesbruck. Maryann. Me.

The rest of my life.

* * * * *

Now that was a bit unexpected, wasn’t it? I think Molly did a great job. She rarely writes fiction, so this was a bit of a stretch for her, but you can see where her strengths lie, yes? She’s got a wonderful feel for character, for the little details that bring someone to life in a narrative. You can just see Maryann pottering around the yard with her big feet in sneakers, wearing a cardigan and smoking, right? I think Molly deserves a round of applause. Go on. Applaud.

Good. Now we’ve shown our appreciation for Molly’s challenge entry, do swing by her blog and read my entry. And while you’re at it, read some of her stuff too, huh? I can almost guarantee she’ll make you smile.

Happy Wednesday, y’all. :)

Do it like Shakespeare and Frost and…me! (Action through Dialogue)

2010-09-01T00:01:00.000-04:00

Oh, look. What esteemed company I’ve just placed myself in! Yes, I’m like a latter-day Billy Shakes, with a bit of Bobby Frost mixed in for good measure. (Now would be an appropriate time for incredulous laughter. I’ll wait till you’re done.)

Finished? Good. I have a point, of course. I almost always do. Except that one time, but let’s not talk about that.

My point is this: dialogue can be used to communicate action in your narrative, and can lean up your prose pretty darn quick if you use it right. Don’t worry—I’ll give examples. Let’s start with Bill, since he’s chronologically the earliest.

SHAKESPEARE

See, when Shakespeare was writing his plays, it just wasn’t the thing to insert stage directions into a play. He didn’t usually write Throws sword away into his manuscript, and so inserted most of his directions directly into the dialogue. You may have been taught this by your high school English teacher, but I’m noting it here because you can learn to apply this technique to your own writing.

An example? Sure. Let’s look at the very end of Romeo and Juliet, shall we? Juliet wakes to find Romeo dead beside her (I don’t have to put SPOILER ALERT here, do I?), and the dialogue commences:

JULIET:

What’s here? A cup, closed in my true love’s hand?

Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end.

O churl! Drunk all, and left no friendly drop

to help me after? I will kiss thy lips;

Haply some poison yet doth hang on them,

To make die with a restorative.

Thy lips are warm.

FIRST WATCHMAN:

[Within] Lead, boy: which way?

JULIET:

Yea, noise? then I’ll be brief. O happy dagger!

This is thy sheath;

There rust, and let me die.

Right. so where are the stage directions here? Well first, “I will kiss thy lips,” and then “O happy dagger! This is thy sheath….” We know that in the first instance, Juliet kisses Romeo’s lips, and in the second, she stabs herself.

It doesn’t have to be this obvious, of course. Let’s look at Frost next to see it done in a more modern style.

FROST

Now, Robert Frost, while certainly famous for poems like Out, Out, and Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening, also wrote many poems that are nought but dialogue, and illustrate a compelling scene using only the characters’ spoken words. I’ll share an example from “Home Burial.” I won’t give the setup, because I don’t want to rob you of the experience of reading this for the first time, if you don’t know it (but please do follow the link when you’re done here—it’s utterly worth a read), so let’s just say it’s an argument between a husband and wife. Here’s the excerpt:

“There, you have said it all and now you feel better.

You won’t go now. You’re crying. Close the door.

The heart’s gone out of it: why keep it up?

Amy! There’s someone coming down the road!”

So we know that the wife is crying, and that she’s opened the door, and that someone’s coming. All of this is communicated through simple dialogue. Certainly Frost could have conveyed those details through simple description, like he does in other parts of the poem, but the speech compresses the details, presents them in a very natural manner.

I fit in well with this little progression, don’t I? *cough*

Right, so why am I listing myself in such august company? Well, it’s because I’ve used precisely this technique myself, and I kind of like it for first person narration. It’s an awfully handy way to sidestep awkward self-descriptions of the “I paused to regard myself in the mirror” sort.

I’ll pull two examples from my Stilettos & Shirley Temples post on Monday by way of illustration. Check it:

She gives me a sidelong look as she adjusts a diamond stud earring. “Want to get your feet off the coffee table?”

“Nope.” I take a sip and lean against the soft couch back.

* * * * *

I swill the last of my vodka. What have you dragged me into, Mercedes? “I need a refill.”

“Maybe put something other than a towel on, while you’re at it,” she calls after me.

I don’t. She rolls her eyes when I step back onto the balcony.

Okay, I should note that I never mentioned (a) that I had put my feet up on the coffee table, or (b) that I was wearing nothing but a towel on the balcony. Why not? Well, because I feel as though it would have crudded up the narrative. Yes, perhaps I could have found an elegant way to communicate that information without dialogue, but why? It’s just as easy to slide in the little details by putting words in my characters’ mouths, and it flowed naturally for me.

And there you have it, writer-friends: one more weapon in your writer’s armamentarium. You might not like this method, in which case don’t bother with it. I just happen to think it’s a wonderful way to trim unnecessary description and keep your prose humming along nicely. Nothing reads faster than dialogue, right? Right.

Now off you go and talk some action, wouldja?

============================================

And, as part of the obligatory WIP Wednesday check-in, I present:

WIP STATUS

Current word count: 8,592

Number of future scenes sketched out: 4

Past week’s effort classification: Marginal, with no exucuses. I should be mocked.

Yeah, I added another 1,000 words to the novel, but that’s sorry for a week’s worth of writing. Go ahead and excoriate me. I deserve it. *sigh*

Constant Revision

A winner! Finally!

The Cracked book launch of awesome.

Happy, uh, belated New Year! *insert excessive cheeriness here*

The No-Kiss Blogfest (3rd Ed.)!

Blog Tour: Spruce Knoll for Endangered Species!

Philly Lit Night, Part…Oh, screw what part it is. Just show up.

Random Monday Gaiman Giveaway! Also, yay for small presses!

Tangled Tides Launch Party!

Who’s up for doing a good deed today?

One step at a time will get you there

I don’t write happy endings.

Bryan Thomas Schmidt: THE WORKER PRINCE

Get your ass out of bed.

Making Waves After You.

Debut! After You!

Waves. Making Them.

Marybeth Smith: FALL GIRL

Take my blog. Please!

On Self-Flagellation

There is yet good in the world. (Surprise!)

What’s Your Excuse?

Announcements! (Not annoying ones, I promise.)

Difficult. Necessary.

Hemingway kicks me in the face. Again.

A few (possibly opinionated) words about prose style.

Philly Lit Night! New, Improved, and in the Suburbs!

Publication awesomesauce! I mean, er…publication news. Yes, that.

Regrets

The stories…they won’t stop!

A Reason to Enjoy Monday! (Well, for one person, anyway.)

I don’t write for everyone. Just those who’ll get it.

A haiku for my morning bike ride to work.

Sunday. Philly Lit Night. Be there or, um, don’t.

In which I croak. (The Delusional Doom Blogfest)

In which we congratulate someone who damn well deserves it.

Work harder, people.

In which I am a slut for charity.

A Conversation Between Two Writers

Get out and have an experience, friends. Seriously.

Mais oui! C’est le Blogfest de Bernard Pivot!

Things I Believe, No. 1: Who Needs Them Grammar Rules?

You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby….

…stumbles into Blogland, blinking blearily….

Allison Pang's A Brush of Darkness Released!

In Which I Learn That Imitating Another Writer’s Voice is Harder Than I Thought

Blog Shenanigans. Again.

Philly Lit. Night, Part Deux! (Well, more like afternoon, but whatever.)

The Neil Gaiman Master class in Writing*—Part 2: Headhopping vs. POV Shifts

In which I hook the Query Shark (but she broke the line and swam off)

The Neil Gaiman Master Class in Writing* – Part 1: Openings

An Issue of Style….

So…it’s a New Year

Merry Christmas!

In which I grovel…. >.<

The never-ending to-do list….

Social Networking Awesomesauce

It's Carrie's Birthday!

Everything I know about collaboration I learned from Stilettos & Shirley Temples....

Write Drunk, Edit Sober (Also, TURN OFF THE INTERNET!)

"Silence Like Deep Water" goes live!

How to sell a short story in 44 easy steps.

There’s nothing to writing….

Things I said on the elevator at WFC…

Gah! I caved! NaNo…*facepalm*

The Publishing Industry Knows What It’s Doing. (Mostly.)

Even genius has its off days….

Alex Cavanaugh’s CassaStar Release Par-tay!

I have seen the future of publishing, and it is the Bookanator 10000

On Respect

A Slightly Skewed View of the World

Really? An Actual Work-in-Progress Wednesday?

In which I attempt a strained analogy between cycling and writing….

♪ Happy Blogoversary to Me…. ♪

Cinders: A Review

Work in progress…Friday? Oh, hell. It’s just announcements.

How to Respect the Craft of Writing. Maybe.

Philly! Lit! Night! HAHAHAAA!!!

Work in Progress . . . Thursday. Again. *facepalm*

Philly Lit Night – Be there or be, uh, not there….

Happy, uh, belated New Year! insert excessive cheeriness here

Gah! I caved! NaNo…facepalm

Work in Progress . . . Thursday. Again. facepalm

Work in Progress Wednesday. On, uh, Thursday. cough