That's Been Done Before

I've commented before that there are some parts of my beloved genre that just bore the shit out of me. "New" is really "The same but from a different persecptive." How can you tell? Because our titles sound like they came out of a sausage maker. Fantasy in, delicious sausage out. One link looks much like the next.

Here is your modern fantasy title:

[Article] [A]'s [B]

(The use of the article or the possessive can be eliminated to make the title more impactful.)


COLUMN A
Assassin
Dark
Dragon
Fire
Ice
Kingdom
Mask
Prince
Shadow
Thief


COLUMN B
Blade
Emperor
King
Knife
Magic
Shadow
Shard
Sword
Thorn
Throne

That Was a Little Terrifying

When I get up in the morning, I write. When I get to work, I spend all day in a cubicle on a computer. When I head home, I write. When I get home, I am often on a computer. I live the classic American sedentary lifestyle. I type 99 words per minutes according to quick brown foxes that jump over lazy dogs. Or at least I did until this past week.

Carpal tunnel syndrome is probably something most writers will deal with at some point or another and at varying degrees. For me it meant that holding the Chinese take-out bag sucked because pinching hurts. Or it meant doing hand stretches because of the dull ache in my hand at the end of the day. More recently it meant stalling for a few minutes at skate practice because I couldn't actually tie my laces. And then a few days ago it finally struck home. It meant I couldn't write, or at least I couldn't use the index finger on my right hand. Not that the index finger is an important digit when used on a QWERTY keyboard.

My word count dropped. My typos skyrocketed, and by the end of the day, I gave up writing entirely. Same went for Friday. My word count was zero. Zero word-count days are sad days. They're the days where the sun remains trapped behind clouds and everything looks gray and desolate. It was a little more terrifying than I let on, too. A couple tweets about it, just to share and maybe gather support, but no hands above my head, run in circles screaming. More just a "What have you done? Why didn't you fix this sooner? You've just ruined your entire life." silent admonition.

Clearly I'm typing today, so something's changed. My wife is a vocal proponent of chiropractics. I am not, having known a few that have made ridiculous claims as to the snake oil they could sell me. Also being forced to see one as a child so we could throw money at not fixing the problem. (A chiropractor found my dad's cancer--it was that far advanced--and my mother got it in her head that they could then cure everything, which they can't.) In this case, however, research shows that manipulation of the hands can actually alleviate carpal tunnel symptoms similar to more direct action applied by medical doctors. I looked all this up, and read about it on reputable sources.

It cost me more than I wanted to pay (to which I am still annoyed), I will have to go back repeatedly over the next month and spend even more money (to which I am annoyed but slightly less because that was expected), BUT I can type again. I had been waking up in pain every morning, but today I woke up just fine and here I am cruising along. I even wrote yesterday and hope to do so again if I can steal some time for myself.

So take care of yourselves people. Don't wait until it's too late. I don't know about you, but I think I would sound like an idiot trying to write with Dragon voice recognition software (and it would make writing on the train particularly awkward).

Musings and Other Thoughts

My wife and I have resumed our Christmas tradition (after a year off due to the economy) of spending a few days up in the White Mountains at a bed and breakfast. Nearby is one of New Hampshire's historical covered bridges. They're historical because these things are over two hundred years old. And I drive my car over them. Yup, that's right, Henry Clay and I have traveled over the same covered bridge (and shame on you if you're an American and don't know who Henry Clay is; history->repeating and all that ;)).

There are covered bridges in other states, but they don't interest me as much. There's something about the aged Appalachians, not so high as the Rockies but higher still than your normal hills and over a minor gorge is a covered bridge, wood cut and laid down centuries before, still viable today. And why is that? Because it's covered. I swear to god, that's the actual reason. It's not some marvel of engineering (well it is, but it's not like the guy was a time traveler or something). They covered the bridge and the planks were protected from the environment and thus have endured. That is awesome.

That is so awesome that I want to write a portal story where a covered bridge is a gateway to the past. I know portal stories are cliche, but I don't care. I love covered bridges.

While on this vacation, my wife read a book that's being turned into what looks like a cheesy movie. She insists I'll like it, but what she describes to me, it sounds kind of cliche. High schoolers acting like high schoolers, evil casters acting like evil casters, Southerners acting like Southerners. Nothing really challenges role expectations. Still, she insists I'll like it. I'll put it at the bottom of my to read pile so I can forget about it.

She did say something that piqued my imagination. She mentions how the Southern bitties don't like the Daughters of the Revolution.

Light bulb!

You always get stories about popular groups with global Machiavellian schemes. Masons, templars, illuminati, etc. What if all those organizations warred and defeated each other and now least organizations battle each other. Daughters of the Revolution versus the Sons of the Confederacy. Knights of Columbus versus the Elks versus the Rotary. What kind of plots would these organizations advance and who would be the unlucky bastard to get stuck between them?

Hell, Flip it on its Ear

I'm reading Tad Williams' DIRTY STREETS OF HEAVEN. Not only is this the latest novel from one of my favorite authors, it is officially the first novel I've ever paid more than $9.99 for, without some kind of asterisk attached1.

Williams does a wonderful job building out a recognizable Judeo-Christian angelic hierarchy without necessarily committing to Judeo-Christion affirmation2. Watching the bureaucracy and power games played out by Heaven and Hell not only against each other but also against their own foot soldiers adds a lot of layers to the book. I wonder how much research Williams did ahead of time and how much is just pure imagination woven together by an expert author.

There is one thing that's nagging at me, though. For all the questions put forth of how this works or that works, what do they do and why do they do it, one underpinning facet of our real life mythology is the understanding of God and the fall of Lucifer and those cast out of heaven that populated hell. That's a very Christian bit of religious mythology and one that isn't questioned in the book at all.

In fact, anyone writing angel stories (and they've exploded the last few years--so much so that I've abandoned my own fledgling idea for an angel story) seems to keep this one line consistent. God created the angels, Lucifer rebelled, there was a war among the angels, and the rebels lost. They were cast down into perdition to burn for all eternity.

But here is this book with all these wheels within wheels and political maneuvering and propaganda. Wouldn't it be interesting if Lucifer hadn't rebelled at all? If the Christian mythos of the fallen angels was all propaganda by the true victors?

There were five archangels: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, and Lucifer. Lucifer was the proudest of the lot and thought himself equal to God3, so he rose up. But what if that's not true. What if he was the only one faithful. What if the archangels conspired against their creator and Lucifer was the scapegoat. The angels rose up, God was cast out of heaven and imprisoned in a shadowy/fiery pit (depending on your leaning toward the Judeo or the -Christian). The four archangels then spun their propaganda to the various choirs and armies and angels and the story spread. You might have the whole hierarchy of heaven operating on the perverted instructions of a long-absent deity.

And you might have that scapegoat spending the rest of his immortality dealing with the repercussions of everyone thinking him a monster and a traitor all the while he remains faithful and trying to free God from his prison.

I don't know what dealings he would have on earth to accomplish this goal, but that's where the story would likely take place, at least in part. And his name would be Luc. If I ever come up with the larger details of this plot, I will make it into a story.



1 I paid more for A DANCE WITH DRAGONS, but I split the cost with my wife, so really it only cost me $7. I paid more for THE MAGICIANS AND MRS. QUENT, but I used a gift card so really it only cost me $2. And I paid more for HitRecord.org's TINY BOOK OF TINY STORIES, VOL. 2, but that's an enhanced eBook and if a book comes with videos, I'm cool with breaking my ten-dollar limit.

2 The main character at one point makes the astute observation that perhaps their understanding of heaven is only framed in a context that they understand from their experiences as mortals4 and that if they had been Hindu in life, they wouldn't have been given such Judeo-Christian terminology. That was interesting. I'd like to see that explored further.

3 A number of stories change his motivations to him feeling sorry for the lot humans were given or some other reason for breaking his fidelity to the highest, but originally it was just a matter of pride. One of the seven deadly sins.

4 I know the author gets to make the rules, but given the various shootings lately and the frequent use of the word angel, the pedant in me feels obligated to point out that angels are separate beings from humans all together and no one alive, according to current religious mythology can ascend to become an angel. That's like a dog aspiring to become a cat after it dies. Sainthood is the highest reaches for a human. Angels are something different. That's why Alan Rickman doesn't have a dick in "Dogma".

Inspiration Strikes Like LIghtning

It's not a good idea to wait on inspiration, but when it strikes, you grab that shit and hold on. It can be a winning lottery ticket, and if you tell it to wait until later, you might never get to scratch off those numbers and hit the big score.

/simile

I was leaving work late today, as I have done for weeks now. It's the busier time of year, made busier because I'm trying to get everything done so my holidays can be holidayicious. AND I had skate practice tonight, for which I was running late. As I hustle to the elevator, I hit the button, the down arrow lights up, I hear a ding, and...

...nothing. The doors don't open. Another door behind me opens. I look. That arrow is lit up too and there's a person inside. I watch the opposite elevator the entire time. I step in, watch, the doors close, I watch to the last. The light was on, but the doors never opened. How strange! Especially since I just listened to a piece on NPR's Marketplace about the science of elevators. I've been paying attention, and that was certainly weird.

Wouldn't it have been horrible if I had gotten on that elevator and then it broke down and then I missed skate practice entirely rather than just showing up late.

What if... what if... what if...

So many possibilities come to mind, and then I hear the first lyrical construction of what becomes the first few lines below. After I finish my current rewrite, I have two novels on deck. One is a larger fantasy I've tried to write twice before. The other is a science fiction who-dunnit with the working title of FAMILY JEWELS. I may have done a wind sprint for that one previously. I dabbled on it because I couldn't get it out of my mind. And I admit, I was unimpressed with the wind sprint. This, however, these few paragraphs capture the tone and attitude I want for the story.

BAM! Inspiration to the face! Hop past the break (if you see a break) to read the first few paragraphs. I'll let this simmer on the back burner for when I write the full thing. This may move it up to the next-to-bat position even though I've been world building on 7TH SACRIFICE a lot lately. We'll see when we get there. For now I still have a lot more to do with BLACK MAGIC AND BARBECUE SAUCE.


Chapter 1: Benedict Quick Hated Running

There is always a singular instant, a domino moment, when What Is deviates from What Should Be and becomes What If. All of a person's nicely ordered and freely chosen decisions become the victims of causality, falling one after the other. For Benedict Quick, lead detective at Quick and Easy Investigations, that moment occurred on Saturday the 15th of April at 0731. He stood on the fifth floor of the Bellanton Building, waiting for the uppevator to turn into a downevator, but when the up-arrow light turned off and the down-arrow light turned on, the doors did not open.

Another down-arrow light turned on, and a synthesized bell dinged as the doors to a second downevator opened behind him. Ben stepped into the metal box, an old-style pulley/engine conveyance that worked against gravity in both directions to move a person to differing floors while keeping their feet on a solid plane.
“Backward fucking planet,” Ben grumbled for the billionth time, punching a plastic circle marked “G” that lit up after he touched it.

That kind of antique novelty was common on planet Wozniak, the odd and eccentric, the vogue and the retro. Most members of the Galactic Cooperative of Planets used anti-graviton movement tubes, uppevators, downevators, leftevators, rightevators, and so on. These old style boxes only moved up and down and had a tendency to get stuck, even back when they were the only method of transport from the first to the fiftieth floor.

The first downevator's light remained on, but its doors never opened. It sat there, waiting for someone to call for service, while Ben made his way to the ground floor. Ben Should Have gotten on that first downevator. It Should Have gotten stuck between the fifth and the fourth floors with him inside. Then he wouldn't have reached the lobby when he did. He wouldn't have spotted Xio Xiolin--a white-collar biometics counterfeiter with a bounty on his head--walking toward the exit. Xiolin wouldn't have made eye contact. Xiolin wouldn't have run. And Ben wouldn't have had to chase him.

Benedict Quick hated running.

The Invisible Friend

This might work better as a short story than a novel, but it's an intriguing idea I want to write down before I forget. I was watching a record on Hit Record (or perhaps it was this one) and started to think about Peter Pan's shadow. It's not often you see a shadow articulated away from its person unless it's actually a shade, an apparition or some kind of specter. You never see a shadow as a shadow with nothing about its nature more sinister than a person whose very nature is bound to the person who casts it.

This got me thinking on various scenarios. The one I found most intriguing was one where a boy is lonely, and he creates an imaginary friend. But he's too old for imaginary friends. He needs something more tangible but there is nothing. Nothing but his shadow. He can play ball with his shadow (assuming he throws the ball against the wall), he can put on plays with his shadow, tell stories at night, and never be alone.

In fact, his shadow is so real that he discovers it is real. There is a person inside his shadow, one just as lonely, one just as desperate to leave his world behind. And so he does. He takes the boy's body and gives him his.

In the end, when the two are righted, the boy hasn't gained some newfound appreciation. For what he had. He's heartbroken, because in the end, his only friend in the world abandoned him as well. He really is all alone.

(Sorry for any typos. I wrote this on an iPad two-handed, and the autocorrect can get a little aggressive.)

A Review: CAPTAIN VORPATRIL'S ALLIANCE

If you know anything about me, you know that my favorite author is Lois McMaster Bujold. And guess what? She has a new book out! There are four categories of Bujold books: Vorkosigan saga, Challion tetralogy, the Sharing Knife, and the Spirit Ring.

The Spirit Ring is the first fantasy book she ever wrote. It shows. It's good, but nothing of the quality you should expect from her. The Sharing Knife is a four-part series that has concluded, though the world has room for more. The Challion tetralogy was not conceived of as a five-part series and there are only three books so far, but there better damn well be five books. This is some of the best fantasy you will ever read ever anywhere period don't argue. And then there is her most famous series, the Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan -> Miles Naismith Vorkosigan series with a bajillion novels, novellas, and short stories (including some stories like FALLING FREE that take place in the setting without any of the main characters).

This most recent offering is CAPTAIN VORPATRIL'S1 ALLIANCE, the often seen cousin of Miles, Ivan You Idiot. As the series has continued, Ivan has gone from a feckless womanizer to someone who is immensely capable and goes out of his way to hide it so no one notices and assigns him more responsibility. This book explores that motivation and it's AWESOME if you're a fan. If this is your first book in the Vorkosigan universe, put the book down and go read CORDELIA'S HONOR2. The book will feel incredibly mediocre unless you've read other books in the series.

Specifically, the climax will disappoint you if you don't know Miles and you don't know Ivan and you don't know the difference between them. I might not have spotted this as quickly if I hadn't seen Bujold in person at a book signing (where she signed my book and I promptly had an anxiety attack and ran away--yeah, behold my coolness). She mentioned that when she was writing, she caught herself writing a Miles book and not an Ivan book. Miles succeeds through perpetual forward motion. Ivan lets things come to him, and you see this in the book a LOT. Faced with a problem, the solution is to wait and hope it goes away. This is most obvious in the climax and if you don't know that this book is entirely Ivan, you might not like it.

But this novel is Ivan. This novel shows Bujold's mastery of character and voice. If you changed the names to something else and read this book, you'd easily know this is an Ivan book.

This book takes place chronologically before CRYOBURN. I know that doesn't mean they were written that way, but I wish they were. This is the better of the two books and CRYOBURN could have used some more work (except for the epilogues--Gregor's makes me cry). I started reading this book on Monday and finished it on Friday. I actually stopped writing on my train ride and just started reading the book.

So here's the short review: You read even some of the Miles books? Read this. You've never read any Miles book? Read CORDELIA'S HONOR. You'll get to this one eventually and you'll be rewarded for taking the extra time.

1 The Vor are a warrior caste on Barrayar, so take the last name and add Vor at the front. This makes names like Kosigan (KOS-i-gan) Vorkosigan (vor-KOS-i-gan). Despite the obvious rule of pronunciation that I applied to EVERY Vor name in the series, I have been pronouncing Vorpatril VOR-pa-tril instead of vor-PAT-ril as Bujold herself pronounces it. Turns out, I've been mispronouncing a LOT of names. E-ka-TER-in is actually e-KAT-er-in. Cetagandan like Set is actually actually like Seat. Even Barrayar which has TWO Rs is Bear-a-yar, which I think is totally unfair and I refuse to pronounce it that way.

2 CORDELIA'S HONOR is an omnibus3 that combines both SHARDS OF HONOR and BARRAYAR. I read SHARD'S OF HONOR every year. I didn't think I'd ever be one of those people, but it turns out I am.

3 Wonder to yourself, how are you going to read all these stories that have spanned nearly thirty years? Don't worry! The publisher, Baen, has collected almost all of them into omnibi. YOUNG MILES, MILES ERRANT, etc etc. The only ones you won't find are MEMORY4, CRYOBURN, and CAPTAIN VORPATRIL'S ALLIANCE. You'll actually find one story included a few times, which has to do about acceptable page counts and subject matter and not any nefarious decision on the part of Baen. Still, crap move not to include MEMORY anywhere.

Because 4 MEMORY is my second favorite Vorkosigan saga book after SHARDS OF HONOR. If you think you can do without this one, THINK AGAIN! Once you've gotten to the MILES IN LOVE omnibus, track down MEMORY and make sure to read it so we can huddle together and giggle about the scene where he wears his medals because that's AWESOME!!! *GOO!*

So...yeah, that's my review. I guess. Lots of fanboyishness in there, but I hope I was honest.

A Review: THE CITY'S SON

Once upon a time I was a podcaster. In addition to the weekly audio recordings, it also afforded me a place to act like a more professional blogger. I could review books (and in fact, reviewed a Tad Williams book that I had been keen to receive). I no longer podcast (or I should say, I no longer host any podcasts; I would certainly be a guest on a show). That leaves me this location to do book reviews, and I'm more hesitant to do so. Here it makes it feel personal rather than professional, and I don't want people to think I'm attacking their work. (I'm also critical on everything, including my own work, but if people don't know me, they might not understand that.) I still have a review saved in my drafts of a book I LOVE (and have read multiple times) that I've never published because there's one part of the book I have a serious problem with and don't want the author to think I dislike his work.

Despite all that, an author asked me on Twitter to tell him what I think of his book when I was finished, and I can't do that in 140 words, so here it is, my first book review in this journal. Not to leave him out there by himself, I'm also going to review another book later this week. Two in one week! Two! It must be Christmas.

And so we begin. I recently read THE CITY'S SON by Tom Pollock. This is an urban fantasy, and I don't normally read urban fantasy. This is also a young adult novel, and I'm tired of young adult novels. It seems like that's all there is on the market, for the most part. So now that you know that, here are my opinions of the book:

Read it. It's a good book.

Boom. Review done.

Wait, I'm supposed to do more? Okay. Here's the general description: Set in modern-day London, there is a world-within-a-world, but not with fairies, vampires, or werewolves. This is a wholly new concoction of not-humans, which makes this the best urban fantasy I've read in years. YEARS! This is the kind of setting that gets turned into a role playing game and you get to play it for years and years until you forget that it was based on a book.

People live in the walls. People live in light bulbs and depending on what kind of light bulbs they are (phosphorus versus sodium) they may hate the other kind of light bulb person. Trainwraiths that remember their passengers, wolves made of scaffolding, and so on and so forth. It is AMAZING. The setting of this book is so awesome that I could give up the plot and just wander around marveling at the world beneath London.

Which also leads me to my first complaint. Much like Buffy, it is hand-waved away that normal people self-delude themselves if they're exposed to this world. They cannot accept it, thus they do not accept it. They forget or rationalize or in some other way dismiss what they've seen. Except for every human character we meet that actually interacts with them. One of the two main characters of the book is introduced to this world and NEVER EVEN BLINKS AN EYE. She rolls right into it like she's hanging out in Camden Market or something.

I had trouble accepting how readily the human characters interact with the other world, but you get over it just like the book does. It speeds along so you don't have time to think about that (which means you either keep reading and accept it or you stop reading, which I almost did, but I'm glad I didn't).

Speed along because there isn't just an imaginative setting, there's an imaginative history to that setting. You get to learn about the Pavement Priests (SO COOL!), the mother of the streets, the Chemical Synod (so cool, but the long Ses make me think they're speaking in parseltongue). The setting is cool, but so much cooler because of the people that make it up.

Which gets us to the people. Ups and downs here. There are the two main characters, boy and girl. Then there's the female main character's best friend. There was a little confusion for me at the beginning because the best friend's nickname is Pencil and THAT name gets truncated down to Pen. The thing is, I thought they both had nicknames, one was Pen and one was Pencil, so things got really confusing really quick. Once I realized that Pen was Pencil and only one had a nickname, it made more sense. I was also disappointed because I thought Pen and Pencil was a great way to describe their friendship in as few words as possible.

The relationship between Beth and Pen is the high point of this book. As personal interactions go, Pollock nails these two the best. It feels the most natural. It reads the most engrossing, and it feels the most realistic. Second is the relationship between Beth and her dad, which really hits its high point in the middle of the book when neither character are together. It really helps their individual arcs along, and I was a bit jealous at how subtly those arcs had their foundation lain in the early chapters with these two characters. That was some mighty fine character development.

The relationship between the two main characters, well, that was the inspiration for this post. Now that I've finished the book, my opinion remains the same. (The backstory of the male main character is pretty wicked as well, lest you think I am ignoring him.)

Speaking of previous posts inspired by the book, there is also this post. I almost quit reading the book because of the errors. And I'm not talking about "Oh no, that's not an error, it's a Britishism rather than an Americanism". I mean, there are errors. Words missing. Words included that shouldn't be (words included that shouldn't that be). ESPECIALLY at the beginning. It dies down after the beginning but never fully goes away. It's rampant at the beginning of the book and was driving me nuts. This suggests a number of possible options: the beginning of the book received the most revision closest to publication (such as editorial notes), thus was not edited as much as other parts of the book that remained the same. The publisher skimped on editing. Or the author is atrocious at self-editing and that was the best the publisher could do. I'm leaning toward the first option myself, as I want to give both the publisher and the author the benefit of the doubt. (Having worked in book production before moving on to media, I know how, why, and how often publishers skimp on editing to save time and money.)

But lastly, and why I'm over the moon about the book, and why it means so little to you whether you'll like the book, his voice is SO similar to my own. I wouldn't have written this book. I've never been inspired to write urban fantasy. But if you had told me that you were from the future and I had written an urban fantasy and you let me read this book, you might convince me. Word usage, sentence style, cadence. It all sounds like me. And that's not to suggest that my voice makes it superior. It is to suggest that there is HOPE! I have improved significantly over the last year. I've moved on to the next level, I think in my brain. I'm ready to do this! But I'm not doing this. I'm still doing that other thing, and that can make it hard to keep one's chin up. But seeing Tom's book out there, that really makes it feel like there are agents out there that resonate to the way I write (just not necessarily what I've written to date). (That Tom's agent is on my short list of agents I want to work with only sweetens that pot, it is not the cause for this adulation.)

A pessimist (like myself) might think that an agent finding that voice wouldn't want another author that sounds similar, but that sliver of optimism I have in there says, but Tom writes urban fantasy and I never ever write urban fantasy (and with less finality, I rarely ever think of young adult stories either). So let's do this! Regardless of my dominant pessimism or my slight optimism, the simple fact that someone with a voice similar to mine has found an agent and a publisher says that YES there are fish out in that sea, so I need to keep swimming or I'll suffocate and the other fish who aren't those fish will eat me and crap me out to be food for phytoplankton. No one wants that.

So, back to the short review, THE CITY'S SON is worth the cost and worth the read. You should give it a try. I quit books in the first chapter ALL THE TIME, and I made it through this one. That should speak for itself. And follow Tom on Twitter. He's good people.

Candy: A List

We had a poor turn-out this year for Halloween, which means we have left-over candy, which means I've been eating left-over candy. Here are the best name-brand candies out there. You may have your own, different list, but it's wrong. ;)

1. Reece's Pieces/Peanut M&Ms (tied)

2. Twix

3. Watchamacallit

4. Snickers (the almond variety is why my childhood favorite, Mars, is no longer on this list)

5. Krackle (settle for Nestle Crunch only if you don't love life)

Shoo! Get away, you!

Generally, I feel in a rush to be published and begin my professional career in earnest. Part of that is because I've been writing for so long and am a touch ashamed that I only recently started taking it so seriously. I lost a whole decade in there where I might have made something of myself. A small part of it is that there are these kids getting published now. 22, 18, 16, sixteen really? I wasn't good enough to publish at twenty-six much less sixteen. Then again, whole lost decade. I guess we can call it two lost decades!

But perhaps the biggest reason I'm in such a rush, the reason that isn't so obvious as "I'm old" is that other people keep having the same ideas I do! There's nothing more I hate than when someone reads something of mine and says "This is just like ____!"

FUCK! I don't want to be just like _____. I want to be me. Now, sometimes it just reminds them of the tone or the style and that's fine. But sometimes it's a matter of whole story concepts! You know that episode of Supernatural where it turns out a prophet has been writing books that detail the adventures of Sam and Dean? You want to know who came up with that story before the show even aired? That's right! And now if I ever publish it, someone will say "Hey, that's just like that episode of Supernatural!" No, sir, that episode of Supernatural is just like my book even though my book will have come out years later.

Sigh.

The longer this takes the more frequently that happens. I'll have to beat other people's stories away with a stick. A stick I say! *thwap thwap*

Okay, now I'm going to go watch Hugo, which is very similar to a story idea of mine, but it's okay because it's based on a book that came out before I had the idea, so really I'm encroaching on that guy's world.

(Yeah, I know there are only so many stories, but some of them hit closer to each other than I like. Dammit.)

The Cinema!

It's hard not to say Lord of the Rings is my favorite movie1. The most epic of fantasies done better than any genre movie ever before. But for all its awesomeness, I always come back to Out of Sight. Steven Soderberg's 1998 movie with George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, and Ving Raimes. The writing, the acting, the directing is all top notch. It has the perfect slow burn for a couple that spark right away.

That kind of thing is on my mind lately. How people get together in books almost seems obligatory any more. If two people of opposite genders show up on the same side of whatever they're battling, they seem required to get together. In the book I'm reading now, the writer really knocks it out of the park when he's writing about the female main character and her best friend. So much so I thought there was going to be a reveal that the two were lesbians and in love. But when she's around the male main character, even though the chemistry isn't nearly as good, the story pushes them together.

I'm watching Out of Sight and seeing what would in any other sense look like a meaningless conversation but it's full of romantic tension and some foreshadowing. I notice that I've been skirting away from relationships. They're usually already in progress and without complication because the "will they or won't they" seems pretty transparent. It's almost always a will they. Or, if they're together, they won't for much longer because people just can't seem to keep their shit together after the weight of the world (author) slaps them together like legos.



1 I know there were three of them2, but I consider them one movie. If you're going to be stubborn about it, I think Fellowship most improves (and surpasses) the book, but I still say that all three (extended) movies form a single bad ass movie.

2 Unless you were thinking I was talking about the animated movie. It's animation style is revolutionary, but it just can't compare to the live-action movie.

Run for Your Lives!

An exciting thing happened to me in September. An agent read a full manuscript of mine and offered me a recommendation. I know it's not as cool as offering me representation, but a recommendation is pretty awesome in itself. "Send it to X and Y."

Well hell yes I will! Especially since both X and Y are on my short list of agents I would like to work with. What an awesome opportunity!

The thing is, both X and Y are at the same agency. Now some agencies specifically say "do not query multiple agents" but this isn't one of them. HOWEVER, I was still nervous of querying them both simultaneously. Some asshats out there will use in their query "so and so said I should email you" when so and so absolutely did not do that. They assume agents are enemies and don't talk to each other. Publishing is small folks and agents absolutely talk to each other. If you lie, you will get caught.

So I didn't want to appear to be one of those people by querying two agents at the same agency that I was contacting them on a recommendation even though it's absolutely true. I weighed the merits of both and chose which to send to first. And now I'm waiting. It's hard to wait for a response to queries. Harder still when you have a recommendation that you're hoping will help your already awesome manuscript (of course) rise to the top of the slush pile. Harder to the umpeenth degree when some agencies (a la Nelson Literary Agency) frequently send responses in two weeks or less. I've had agents respond to queries six months after I originally sent them. One time, I finished a manuscript and then received a rejection for the manuscript I had written BEFORE that one. There is not a set schedule for this kind of stuff.

So here I am waiting and it dawns on me. Shit, NaNoWriMo is here! With NaNoWriMo comes the SUPER-SLUSH! That period at the end of November through the middle of January where hopeful participants think their 50,000-word quantity-over-quality block of text is the next Harry Potter. I've made the mistake of querying during the super-slush. If you are serious about your career, just skip this time period. It's a billion times harder to get noticed. There are holidays and there is a ton of shit coming in.

So I am going to query second agent now so I don't get lumped in with the pending onslaught of 50k novels. If you're working on your query right now, I recommend you get that thing polished and out the door.

You Have a Proof, Read the Damn Thing!

Here's a little tradecraft for you. Copyediting and Proofreading are not the same thing. Copyediting often includes proofreading, but it's not its primary goal. It's the icing on the cake that makes your story better. Proofreading does not include copyediting (though occasionally a proofreader will attempt to do so and it usually means a lot of work cleaning up all their bad ideas--but I may be jaded with experiences past ;).

More tradecraft, copyediting costs more than proofreading. In instances where the schedule/budget are tight, you're more likely to see proofreading skipped rather than copyediting even though it's cheaper. Why? Because copyediting is more valuable. It doesn't just fix typos and bad grammar, it fixes holes in your plot, eliminates redundancy and cliche. It makes the story better. And surprisingly, readers are willing to accept a lot of typos if the story is good.

What does that mean? PROOFREAD YOUR SHIT! I hate reading authors talking about how bad their manuscript was when they turned it in. So and So cleaned that mess up and made it readable. Well then put So and So's name on the front cover since you weren't professional enough to make the effort yourself.

Tradecraft: No matter how hard you try, no matter how hard your editor tries, no matter how hard your copyediting and proofreader try, things will get missed. The more crap you leave in your manuscript for others to find, the more crap that will get missed. You get rid of as much as you possibly can before you turn it over. That way what's missed is minor and doesn't make you look like a writing slob.

I'm reading a book right now with an interesting premise and characters, but the frequency of errors is DRIVING ME NUTS! Complete words (articles or short prepositions) are absent in every other chapter. A) it knocks me out of the story. B) how shitty was your manuscript that you turned over that this many mistakes are present? and/or C) how shitty is your publisher that they didn't hire a quality freelancer that could find ENTIRE WORDS MISSING from a sentence.

*pant, pant, pant, pant* Okay, so the lesson, kiddies, is that a book is your face to the world. You can look like a slob and a slacker, or you can suit up and shine. Don't rely on other people to make your shit shiny. Put in the hard work. They'll think better of you for making their job easier and your readers will think better of you because it looks like you know how to write.