RealityBypass

Well I’m sure you can list many reasons to get published, from finally getting a little money from your work, being able to see what the cover looks like, to letting a wider audience read your novels…

But yesterday a friend of Jana’s and mine gave me one of the best reasons to get published…

Wait for it…

Friend Jane Doe (11/24/2008 6:55:39 PM): Yes, but I am a sucky friend, and haven’t finished reading it. Because I can’t take a stack of papers in with me to the bathtub, and that’s where I’m doing all of my reading right now.
Kristen (11/24/2008 6:55:54 PM): LOL!!!!
Kristen (11/24/2008 6:56:04 PM): I attempted to…er… edit… them in the bathtub once
Kristen (11/24/2008 6:56:07 PM): It doesn’t work so hot.
Friend Jane  Doe (11/24/2008 6:56:23 PM): I REALLY want you to get your books published so I can read them in the bathtub.

So there you have it editors and agents of the world! We must be published so Jane Doe can read us in the bathtub! 

Anyway there’s some amusement for the day. 

So this week is Thanksgiving in the US, a time when we gather together and usually eat way too much followed by rabid shopping through the weekend.  Well…at least some families.  For me Thanksgiving is when I make a crudload of pies and every year try to come up with a flavor we haven’t tried before, 10 flavors and about 20 pies this year.  It’s the first time the piano duet of Sleigh Ride is pulled out and played several times.  Usually the first few times are at a pretty sedate pace, but the music gets faster and faster and more frantic as it goes until everyone is laughing far too hard to concentrate on the music anymore.  As long as you hit the last chord everything is fine.  I’m not a shopper so I hide at friend’s homes on Friday and Saturday to play games and read books and just generally relax.  When the turkey is gone, then it’s a quiet time to reflect on things I’m thankful for, most of which are represented by the people I spent the holiday with.  This year I’m thankful for my new hubby and boys at the top of a very long list.

So, as you can tell, I’m feeling nostalgic.  How about you, dear readers?  What things are you thankful for and what things represent Thanksgiving for you?

~Jana

Hello Blogland!

Today, as I sat around in Walmart waiting /forever/ for my prescription, I started thinking about energy and motivation. The last two weeks I found myself very discouraged with my PHD classes, not wanting to keep reading and passing through WHAT WAS I THINKING mode. I got through the week but I realized I needed a break, and so I took Friday - Monday one weekend and did /nothing/! I played with a couple stories I was working on, played some computer games, and watched a few movies. I highly recommend Ladron que roba a otro Ladron, it’s a Latino rewriting of Ocean’s 11 and very enjoyable.

Anyway this got me thinking about writing. We talk about keeping up with your deadlines, ignoring your internal editor on first drafts and a lot of that, but we forget that Study Breaks are needed by writers too! Sometimes if you find yourself procrastinating terribly when working on your latest project, it may be good to give yourself 3 or 4 days of a break. I don’t recommend going much beyond that, because you’ll lose the flow but there’s a reason we get leave time in most jobs. (Well a reason we’re SUPPOSED to get leve time, the American job market makes me froth sometimes with making it difficult for people to take vacation. Ahem.)

Anyway my suggestions for how to recharge your writing battery:

1) Movies! Movies! Find some movie that inspires you and puts you in a good mood. I find these are great literary fodder. (Or watch something so awful that you realize “I can do better than that!”) I suggest Finding Forester, Romancing the Stone, and Princess Bride as good Book Movies. Any old Black and White is good inspiration too.

2) Food! Cook something… invite friends over for a dinner party, bake something… nostalgia is a great writing impetus.

3) Watch old episodes of your favorite television shows. It’ll put you in a good mood and inspire you.

4) Exercise… It’ll help you remember why sitting in front of your computer is a HECK of a lot more fun. Hah.

5) Re-read a comfortable old favorite, maybe pull out those kids books you just loved.

6) Visit museums or the zoo. I really suggest art museums as giving you some mental uumph on a novel. I guarantee you that you’ll find a nifty picture that inspires fantasy

7) Whatever makes you most happy…

~Kris

This is on my mind tonight, considering as a PHD student I have several big ones coming up. I have three papers that are due in mid-December although I have great plans of getting one of them completed this weekend. Here’s hoping….

Anyway, I was reading on several blogs about people doing an all-nighter where they just sit down and write as much as they can in a 24 hour period. This is apparently a sanctioned NaNoWriMo activity. I can see that being okay for a draft, if you’re willing to throw out a lot and re-arrange but it strikes me as somewhat reckless too. I think deadlines are good for personal goal setting. Making a pact with yourself that you will work on the writing and put the same dedication to it as you would your regular day job keeps you moving forwards. My biggest problem with writing is that I lose my “flow” if I don’t keep up with it at least every other day. I have a tendency to hate what I wrote before and go back and rewrite the whole thing if I let it sit for too long. Which I’ve gotten some beautiful work out of this, but forcing yourself to scribble for hours straight strikes me as quickly sucumbing to the “Law of Diminishing Returns”

What is this?

- The law of diminishing returns is a classic economic concept that states that as more investment in an area is made, overall return on that investment increases at a declining rate, assuming that all variables remain fixed. To continue to make an investment after a certain point (which varies from context to context) is to receive a decreasing return on that input. (CITATION)

Basically once you get past a certain point of tiredness, you’re going to see less and less quality in your writing. You’ll have more leaps of logic errors, more typos and other problems. As I’ve matured as a writer, both academically and in fiction, I’ve discovered that setting smaller goals for word counts/day or a couple hours per day lets you approach things from a fresh perspective and allows a lot less rewriting later.

I think there’s a place for stream of consciousness, getting everything on paper as fast as you can; when you’re first starting to get an idea for a direction in your story but after you get that inspiration of who, what, where, when I suggest saving yourself some heartache when your favorite paragraphs go on the chopping block, by taking some time to outline.

This is not to say that writing whatever comes to mind in a rough draft isn’t a bad start. Any time you just write, it’s a good thing… but be prepared for the fact that you may have to rewrite the whole section or even scrap it entirely.

-Kris

           Alrighty folks, I wanted to introduce you to one of my favorite Kick-Butt Heroines, who stepped onto the stage 20 years before many of our beloved Urban Fantasy butt-kickers. Meet Victoria Iphigenia Warshawski, daughter of a Polish cop and an Italian immigrant in Chicago. That’s what first drew me to this novel series, because my family are Italian-Polish from Chicago, so I know many of the landmarks they talk about in the series. You see “The Real” Chicago in Paretsky’s novels, one I remember when we used to go downtown to see my aunts. This is the Chicago with neighbors who know eachother, family’s who have passed down small flats for years and tough old men and ladies who will fight for their property and their family. The character of Sal Contreras really brings back some nostalgia, with his Senior Citizen Bulldog attitudes towards invaders, threats and his paternal protection of Vic. Anyway the writing is crisp and clear, the plots move well and Vic takes on a lot of white collar crime. You get a feel for “real” detection in these novels, and learn a lot about how an urban defender would truly have to work. Vic is a wise cracking, hard working and ultimately soft hearted defender of the exploited, the weak and the silent.

In this gripping adventure, the first V.I. Warshawski mystery, America’s top private eye is tossed into dangerous adventure when a seemingly straightforward assignment becomes complicated and deadly.

Hired by a man who calls himself John Thayer, V I’s assignment is to find Thayer’s son Peter’s missing girlfriend. But when V.I. finds young Peter’s dead body instead, her client disappears. Her efforts to track down her client and learn his true identity take her deep into a labyrinth of fraud and violence.

By the time V.I. figures out the answers she is in a race to find the missing young woman—before the murderers do.

Author: Sara Paretsky
Rating:
    Genre:  Mystery
    Age: Late teen to Adult
    Content:  Murder, mild language, mild sexual innuendo
    Overall:  Buy

by: Kris

Well, it’s been a few days since I posted.  Sorry about that.  Somewhere life just ran away from me and I’ve been standing in the middle going ‘buh, buh, buh, buh…’

Anyway, today is a link round up.  Not because I’m lazy, but because I’m still feeling run over by life in general.  Sooo…coool contests, interviews and other things.  I promise something more writerly next post.

Literary Escapism has a fun interview with Lisa Hendrix, where she talks about Norwegian were creatures and the inspiration for her new book series.  Enter to win by describing your inner amnial.

Eos Books is running a 10 years, 10 weeks, 10 giveaways contest on their blog.  Every week there’s a new pack of books up for grabs and all you have to do is follow simple instructions and give up your email address to enter.  Totally worth it.

Lori Devoti is one of my new favorite time sinks.  She’s so much fun to read and is doing a 30 days of vampires special that you just must read up on.  Go, read…I’ll wait.

And I think that does it for today’s link round up.  Some good places to go and read and enter contests.

As for me I have Christmas shopping to finish, yes I’m nuts, and I must ponder the nature of a man-coyote who stubbornly wants to be included in the next Misery book.  I thought she had trouble with two men…but what about three…?

~J

Today as I was slaving away on the exercise machine, I found myself channelling Saawariya Chavan for inspiration! Wariya is the Bollywood actress and leopard princess who is one of the protagonists of the latest work in progress. She keeps fit so she can look gorgeous on the movie screen and so she can keep her rank and position in the leopard pride. I have no reason to keep rank and position, but I do want to look gorgeous walking down the street!

From Edward Winter, tiger protector of Mumbai, I’ve learned to be a neater and tidier person. I’ve had to become more detail oriented to write him, and he simply cannot stand anything disoganized. I’ve adopted that habit, although not quite to his extreme.

From Ben Taney, Victorian Vampire and assassin, I’ve learned that it’s okay to enjoy being a pampered lady. I’m a feminist and I was a tomboy growing up, but seeing all of the ways Ben treats Dianna like a lady… and his dismay when she acts just the opposite, is endearing to me. And it shows me that it’s okay to be a pampered lady, to let a man hold the door for you sometimes and to dress up for Masquerade Balls on occasion!

Beyond that, the research into cities and cultures around the world has definitely been fun. I got to visit London and New Orleans because I wanted to see the settings first hand, and I’ve been reading up on Bollywood and India for the latest work in progress.

What have you learned writing your characters?

A million years later…  The picture of the October grab bag, which went into the mail today.  I think I’m all caught up now.  :)  If folks are missing prizes from previous to this week pretty please let me know and I’ll try to figure out where they went.

In other words progress moves along on both of our WIPs and the combined one.  This is a good thing.  I suspect queries will go out this week.  Cross your fingers for us.

Much thanks.

Jana

        Today’s feature is The Summoner by Gail Martin. I loved the cover and the premise of a Necromancer as a protagonist, so I went into this book with high hopes. It’s a hefty book at 637 pages long, but that didn’t deter me. In fact it gave me even more hope to find something epic, unique and fun. The Summoner is set in a Medieval world where ghosts and the vayash maru (vampires) walk amongst men, and where they can be controlled by the power of Necromancers. Unfortunately that’s where the books originalism ends. Many reviewers have called this a by-the-numbers sword and sorcery novel. You have the young, put-upon prince Matris Drake who must learn to wield his power given him by his Grandmother to defeat the ambitious and overwhelmingly cruel Jared, his brother. Jared overthrows the legitimate government and Tris and his friends flee for their lives. I don’t entirely mind cliche, but the problem with the Summoner is that it’s both completely predictable and the characters are completely flat. They don’t have much emotional depth, so sometimes their relationships with eachother seem almost laughable. Basically the Good Guys are Noble and Decent and the Bad Guys are Terrible and Conniving, and little else. I don’t have much good to say about the novel, they narrative style didn’t do much for me either. Other reviewers claim to at least not mind reading through the plot. However the book requires that you read the sequel to truly find out what happens to the characters, which immediately puts it on my “Don’t Bother” list.    

    In The Summoner, the dwellers of The Winter Kingdoms live with the dead.  Ghosts walk freely, intervening for good and ill in the affairs of the living. A fragile truce stands between mortals and Those Who Walk the Night, the vayash moru.  Restless and raging spirits have had no solace since the death of the last great Summoner, and no one to reconcile grievances between the dead, the undead and the living.  Tris Drayke, the new Summoner, may die before he can come into his full power.  Fleeing for his life when his family is murdered, Tris is pursued by an evil mage and haunted by malicious ghosts.
      Three true friends flee with Tris when they witness the king’s murder.  Three new friends, an adventurer with a dark past, a healer with a tragic secret and a swordswoman with reasons of her own, join them on the journey.  Tris must outrun the usurper’s bounty hunters and find the sanctuary of a friendly court to raise an army and reclaim the throne.  His greatest danger may be his own untrained magic, which he must tame in order to avenge his family, quell the restless spirits, and defeat the reborn Obsidian King.

Rating:
    Genre:  Fantasy
    Age: Late teen to Adult
    Content:  Very Little of Consequence
    Overall:  Junk

It seems like everywhere you look the message of the moment is the same:

Publication and books haven’t been left out of the loop with Boarders on the edge of bankruptcy and everyone forecasting a doom and gloom holiday season.  Authors, Agents, Editors and Publishers all look to have to weather a nasty storm until things smooth out as retail shoppers tighten their belts and decide where their spending dollars go.

As well publishing is facing the very real fact that technology is moving on without them and how and what people read is changing.  There is a window of opportunity to get on board and with an industry which is traditionally resistant to change nothing comes quickly.

Dooooom!

Heh…I can only keep up the doom thing for a brief amount of time before I start giggling at myself, and pretty much everyone around me.  I don’t think things are as bad as the nay sayers want you to believe, and I do think we’re both empowered to help and in an exciting time. 

When it comes to the first issue MoonRat said it best.  You can do your part by buying books both this holiday season and beyond.  A paperback costs about the same as a combo meal at Wendys, and I know there are a lot of us who haven’t yet given up our eating out, so maybe it’s time to skip a meal on the run and spend it on a book, which will last much longer than the chicken sammich!  Another thing we can do is to help give the love of books to those around us.  Personally I’m teaching my children, my friend’s children, my nieces and nephews and anyone else dumb enough to get in my way about loving books.  It doesn’t work on everyone, my brother is a hard sell, but I figure if I throw enough genres at him something is going to stick.  The number of book readers is going down, but we can help that by writing books kids want to read and getting books into their hands.

Going right along with this idea is encouraging new models of publication which help get stories into the hands of readers, by book, ebook, Kindle, palm, scroll, parchement, sky writing…whatever it takes.  This is a big decision happening at levels of publication which most of us don’t control, but we can encourage and experiment ourselves.

Everyone may have to make some sacrifices as this all shakes out.  It may mean changes to how returns are dealt with, or in how advances are created.  There may be some dry times for authors to get their works sold and into the market, but the best thing those authors can do is to keep writing.  No one knows the magic forumla for a best seller and everyone is looking for the next one.  If you stop writing because ‘nothing is selling in this market’ and you miss your window then how hard will you kick yourself in the head?

The best thing we can have now, across the board, is optimism.  There are so many people who buy into fear and hype and live life being afraid.  Don’t be one of them.  Look to the future with hope.  Write with purpose and passion.  The only time we should flee and run away is when faced with a vorpal bunny…now that’s terror.

Jana