RealityBypass

Today I got called Professor McAlear. I don’t know what it is about that particular title, but it gave me a little thrill. Maybe it’s the sense of legitimacy, that I’ve finally been /accepted/ in that role by the students. Of course, the fact I look about the same age or younger than most of them gives it an extra thrill. The funny thing about all of this is it’s one of my literary dreams coming true. When I was a little girl, I had a funny tendency to make all my characters in my stories either detectives or Professors. This tendency to have Professor characters in games such as Call of Cthulhu and World of Darkness, and Professor protagonists in my short stories continued into adulthood. I have no idea what the appeal of a Professor was, I came from a family where my parents were the first generations to go to college. Most of my cousins, aunts, uncles and other relatives work in blue collar professions, do their jobs well and make a damn good living. I am the black sheep. I write books for my hobby, I study esoteric Spanish Literature and consider it fun, and I’m going on my third college degree. But today I realized just what it was all for, and that is to be called Professor McAlear. Or Profesor Mac, or La Profesora… which always makes me giggle. It’s basically calling someone THE Professor. I can deal with being The Professor!

A smidge of background information… I have a renter in my basement. A friend from college who doesn’t mind living under a rather noisy family and pays her rent on time. It’s a pretty decent situation all the way around. Last night she called up the stairs asking for help getting something ‘unstuck’, so I went down into the depths to help. It’s my job as the “LandLady” a long running joke.

When I get downstairs I find that her toilet seat has broken and she stopped and got a new one, which means removing the old one…which is rusted in place by two bolts that run through the seat and through the porcelain of the throne below. Oookay…easy enough. She has tiny hands so just couldn’t get a good enough grip and this should ‘only take a minute’. NEVER believe that phrase. It’s the path to evil and to being on your back between a toilet and the counter, a pair of pliers in each hand trying to get a rusted out bolt to turn without breaking through the porcelain or hitting ones self in the head. I didn’t do well with the not hitting myself. I squished fingers, whacked myself in the head with the pliers and dropped a screwdriver into the throne. At no point during this insanity did I think to call my husband down to help. We’ve only been married for six months and somehow in the thirty odd years of singleness I’ve developed a ‘I’ll do it myself’ mentality. I’m fairly sure said mentaility will be the end of me.

After thirty minutes I finally got the bolt free and her toilet reassembled. I understand why my father cusses when he works on plumbing jobs and I will never again mock him.

I then went upstairs and made notes about the experience so one day I can torture a character with it. Nothing like moments of real life trial and, honestly, hysterical laughter to inspire the muse.

I want brownies that do housework and plumbing jobs now!

~J

…is not as dreaded as I thought it might be.  Thus far my WIP is being graceful about being reworked.  There have been some moments where I twinged as I slashed away beloved text, but those don’t last beyond the good stuff coming out from under the wreckage.  It looks like it’s a book.  Woohoo!  I may finally be able to start work on the other projects which have been crowding my brain.  I’ve got a couple of notebooks that have become the keepers of other ideas for ’sometime’ and that’s working out pretty good.

In the meantime I’m reading Meg Cabot’s Mediator series, starting with Shadowland.  It’s way cute and I highly recommend it for those looking for a light hearted young adult urban fantasy.  Speaking of…15 minutes relax time…off to read!

~J

    Well I’ve gone back to work and school this week, hence missing my normal posting day. I’ve just started the Doctoral program at the University of Houston and so I’ve been enjoying the unique experience of Rush Hour Traffic in the country’s fourth largest city. It’s funny how you begin to recognize some of the cars on the regular commute! A ride that should take me 25 minutes has taken me upwards of 50 these days. Which, of course, has made me particularly tired in the evenings. I’ve never been comfortable driving, and I’m working very hard to remind myself to not tensely hunch over the wheel. Other people have claustrophobia, I, however, have car-closeness-phobia. If a car is in the lane next to me or there’s cars on all sides, I have to fight a regular sense of anxiety. I’m not entirely sure why this bothers me, I think it’s the sense that at any time someone could crash into me from any side. Maybe I can have eyes that swivel around, four sets watching in every direction? That seems to be what’s required in rush hour traffic. Thankfully, I only have to deal with this for a couple more days. Then I can leave later, and leave the rat race to the corporate crowd.

What does this have to do with writing? Not a whole heck of a lot. But I’m tired, and this is on my mind… so that’s what you get! I must admit, I did see where the writers of Men In Black got their idea for the race through the crowded manhatten tunnel. Who wouldn’t want such an easy way to bypass traffic! Of course, then we’d have traffic jams in the air too if we had flying cars. One phenomenon of traffic that just blows my mind is how people will creep up until there is no space between cars, as if they’d get somewhere faster. Logically, if we all left 3 car lengths of space, everyone could merge and switch lanes with ease… and we’d all get places faster.

~Kris

My grandfather has a way to explain the work ethic he expects out of his children and grandchildren.  It goes something like this: 

Everyone wants to work for $100 an hour…not everyone can, so cherish a $100 an hour job if you can get it.  If you can’t.  Well…there are plenty of jobs at $25 try for one of those.  If you can’t get one of those there are jobs for $15 an hour, try for one of those.  If you cannot find anything else there is almost always a place for someone willing to ride on the garbage truck.  It’s not glamorous but it is work, and if you haul two bins to the other guys one you’ll soon be driving the truck and if you do that better than anyone else…you will rise to the top.  Never be afraid of hard work, and never stop just cause the guy next to you is taking a break.  Set your sights high and fight for what you wants.  You’re not entitled to anything.

It’s a unique way of looking at things in a culture where many people come out of college believing that they ‘deserve’ a good job or a grade or a house or whatever…  so many people forget the hard work which gets most people to the top.  Yeah, some folks get a lucky break, but even a little luck usually has to be followed up with a lot of work for a career to be born.  Just ask Michael Phelps how much luck plays into an 8 gold medal run and how much is related to swimming as many hours a week as I put into my day job…

Writing is hard work.  Sometimes it’s $100 work and sometimes I feel like I’m slogging through the garbage (mostly garbage of my own creation, but there you have it).  But it’s work that’s worth it in the long run.  Listening to a lot of other authors I think you have to be just a little crazy to love this job.

Color me crazy…

This post brought to you by other mullings to come out this week.  My thoughts on Stephenie Meyer’s series after having given it a serious reread.

Stay tuned.

~J

I started a new story today, this one featuring a were-tiger detective and genies. I read a lot of detective novels and watch detective shows, so I figure I’d try my hand at this genre. I’m currently reading an Agatha Christie novel, after seeing one of her plays for the first time at the Alley. I love the mistaken identities and multiple twisting motives she weaves into her plots. I saw “The Unexpected Guest” and highly reccomend it! I was fooled until the end, but in hind sight I probably should have immediately picked up on the truth. I’ve started And Then There Were None now, with the classic setup of various people who don’t know eachother being invited to a house on an island by a strange benefactor. I hope it’ll be creepy!  Anyway for detective shows, I’m partial to Psych and Monk; both feature a nice quirky character. I think X-Files intrigued me with the detective aspect to it too. When it comes to books, I’ve enjoyed Elizabeth Peters, Sara Paretsky, Rita Mae Brown, classics like Nancy Drew, the Dresden Files, and Dick Francis. Anyone have any other Mystery suggestions?

~Kris

I was wondering the other day why most of the Urban Fantasy heroines I’ve read run their mouths faster than their fists. They meet some new Villian and/or possible ally and unleash volley after volley of verbal attack. On some characters it can be funny, but I’m starting to find it gets frustrating. Why can’t we have a heroine or hero that battles vampires and werewolves without provoking them with verbal insults.

I mean, there’s a time and a place for insults. It’s the classic Hero Defense when they’re caught up in a trap they cannot break. However, I find most of these heroes and heroines resort to verbal violence almost immediately when confronting the bad guy, without much provocation. Is this a way for them to compensate for realizing they’re weaker than who they confront? Or is it just a phenomenon that one Urban Fantasy author started and the others are now emulating. I’d like to see a polite and well spoken heroine, who surprises you when she comes after you with her sword. Or, at the least, someone who doesn’t resort to insulting Mothers and Male Prowess as a first resort. Are there any out there?

~Kris

I was thinking about short-stories, and their structure the other day. How you have to tell a complete story in a limited number of pages, and often manage to bring a character to life without the luxury of meandering and back story.  Then as I was watching Heroes, trying to catch up with the series, it dawned on me that many modern dramas on tv are essentially serial short stories. Each episode needs to have the initiating incident, rising action, a climax and falling action. While some series tend to have more cliff-hangers and ongoing plots than others, they do essentially tell a complete story in a compressed period. It’s been interesting to watch some of my favorite shows with a more literary eye, taking advice on how they build and resolve their plots. Thus far I’ve noticed an interesting commonality. Modern television mostly follows the classic Three Unities of theatre, as set forth by Aristotle. These are:

1. The unity of action: a play should have one main action that it follows, with no or few subplots.
2. The unity of place: a play should cover a single physical space and should not attempt to compress geography, nor should the stage represent more than one place.
3. The unity of time: the action in a play should take place over no more than 24 hours.

While we do seem to have more opportunity for expanding locations than Aristotle’s playwrites did, a good deal of television still sticks to a limited setting. It’s interesting, those three unities can easily be a guide for writing a short story. They help keep you to a manageable plot. You can certainly deviate from this as you get more skilled, but I know when I learned to write essays I had to start with a formula and expand from there.

~Kris

Breaking Dawn, by Stephenie Meyer came out on August 2.

I haven’t read the book.

I don’t particularly care for the series though I’m not going to get into the whys and wherefores here.   However, I find it interesting the backlash around the story and how it has concluded the series arc.  Fans are coming out in droves both in the camps of adoration and abject seething hatred.  It’s an interesting state of affairs, and reminds me of the reactions when the seventh Harry Potter book came out.  So it makes me wonder why these books drew such ire?  And such defense for that matter.  Is it because the writing changed?  Because the author was hurried?  Or just because the author’s vision didn’t match what some fans had in mind?

I don’t have definitive answers, but I am pondering these things.

Can any book that becomes so anticipated rise up under the weight of its own hype?

Hrm…

Points to ponder.

~J

Wooooohooo! Today I finished my sci-fi short story. It didn’t end at all like I was originally planning, but the image of the last paragraph just came to me as I was typing the last action scene. It’s a nice segue, too, I think for another chapter of the story. I’ve gotten a handle on the world as well. I’m really enjoying the idea of dolphins and sharks being used alongside humans in a war to retake the Earth. It’s been a while since I tried my hand at science-fiction, so it took some time to get into the groove. It’s also been a while since I’ve written a short story, which was a challenge to dive straight into simple plot without giving a lot of character back story. I like to connect with the characters I write, it’s the way I find my enjoyment in the tale-crafting. Short stories have to be a lot more plot-centric in order to work. But, after some work I really think I managed to get a feel for the characters as well. I’m particularly intrigued with Allison, the future-pirate. I left her in dire straits at the end of this installment, so I’m curious to see what happens to her.

Anyway, woohoo! Now I just have to decide what to do with the story.