Blog, Schmog: Random Thoughts on Writing and Other Aberrant Behavior

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2011-05-24T14:20:00.001-04:00

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E-Wars: The New York Times and the 'E List'

2010-11-12T08:44:00.001-05:00

Well, by now you've heard. It's official; the New York Times will begin rating eBooks starting in January '11. An 'E' best seller list, (henceforth known as the 'E List') similar to the present one for print books, will now appear in the NYT. Left unanswered is whether they plan to aggregate E and print book sales to determine an overall best seller. Given the mad growth in eBook sales, and the flat performance of print books, an E List seems almost inevitable. But it was only a year or so ago the whole topic of eBooks was highly controversial.

What does this development mean? I think the answer lies in one word. Legitimacy.

Of course the publishing industry will now be watching the Times E List along with the print book list. Perhaps that will draw the more reluctant publishers into the eBook arena. But more important for the marketplace, readers who may have dismissed the idea of a 'real' book not being in print will be drawn to eBooks and eReaders. People on the verge of accepting eBooks will now have the cover they need to take the plunge. Look to the other 'Best Seller' lists, like the LA Times and USA Today, to quickly follow suit with their own version of the 'E List.' As a result eBook sales will surge in 2011.

The Big Dog has spoken: eBooks have gone legit.

The Digital Revolution rolls on.
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E-Wars: The Digital Revolution Rolls On

2010-11-06T18:05:00.001-04:00

US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT will discontinue its print edition for subscribers as of December 2010. Apparently the print version will still be available in news stands. The announcement is another indication that everything print is going digital, that is 'e.' Print is losing ground for so many reasons they are difficult to list, but here are a few: loss of advertisers, increased cost of print and distribution, shrinking subscriber base, preference for more dynamic eEditions. How long the whole concept of a general news magazine, or newspaper, even 'e' versions, will last is anyone's guess, but my gut tells me not very long in historical terms.

Print editions of everything are suffering for all of the above reasons, and because people are discovering how nice eReaders are. How many times have you heard someone say recently: "I love books, the feel of the paper and turning the page, then I got a (kindle, nook, kobo, fill in your favorite) as a gift and I love it!" Even die hard book fanatics are embracing the eReaders.

So now you can get USN&WR for your iPad, but unfortunately it will not be available in doctor's waiting rooms. There, and in similar venues, you will only be able to access six to twelve month old issues.

Tradition wins out.

E-Wars: The Opening Gun

2010-11-03T16:26:00.001-04:00

Amazon has raised its kindle prices from certain publishers (henceforth known as 'offending publishers.') to where the ebook may actually be more expensive than the print book. It's not Amazon's fault, here's an excerpt that explains the heart of the difficulty:

"Earlier this week, Amazon.co.uk was forced to accept new commercial terms from big publishers Penguin, Hachette and HarperCollins, who have switched to the "agency model" for their ebooks. On this model it is publishers, not retailers, who set the selling price."

Why would an offending publisher make the electronic edition as, or more, expensive than the print, when it obviously costs less to produce? Answer: To drive buyers to the print edition. I see this as a last ditch effort by the offending publishers to retain the marketplace that they currently dominate and understand. It will fail.

What will this cause readers to do, especially modern e-savvy readers? Two things I think.

1. Not buy either edition of the book from the offending publisher. (See the below protests.)
2. Discover other writers, from other ebook publishers, that they may like just as much or better than the writers they now buy from the offending publishers.

Consequences:

The offending publishers lose.
Writers with the offending publishers lose.
Other publishers gain.
Writers with other publishers gain.
The reading public ultimately gains.
Offending publishers eventually abandon the practice or lose big, maybe close their doors.

I think Darwin wins.

What do you think?

Read the full article here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/nov/03/ebook-prices-kindle-amazon-protests

Pirates, Gatekeepers and Darwinian Publishing Part III

2010-10-19T05:44:00.007-04:00

One of the supposed dangers of the Internet is the possibility that a few search engines or providers will dominate the net and therefore will be able to surreptitiously direct us to their preferred customers or supress sites they don't agree with. As of this writing Google accounts for 66% of Internet searches. Unless you include non-traditional (isn't that delicious) search 'engines' like Facebook, which accounts for about half of all searches in the US. Add the dozens of watchdog/reporting/marketing services like Search Engine Watch, and the hundreds of industry specific search services, eGroups devoted to one thing or another, blogs, etc and you realize there is no chance of a monopoly taking over the Internet.

Unless it's the Feds of course. That would be 'snowball earth' scenario in our little Darwinian world. But I digress.

For writers there is no better time and there is no worse time. All the known, comfortable ways of publishing seem to be changing, morphing before our eyes. Each week we learn some new thing that opens up possibilities, yet confuses our path even more. Query letters? Agents? ePub? Self ePub? Start our own publishing house? (It's easier than you think, they're springing up like weeds.)

Kindle, Smashwords, Pubit, and the like offer unprecedented access to world markets. Oh, yeah, you need a killer cover, and marketing blog/website/twitter/facebook pages that establish your platform, or as Kathryn Craft put it, your 'street cred' for whatever you're writing. And you better get your branding right.

Confusing, mind numbing, head-spinning changes and terms, yet more and more authors are choosing to epub their own works. Established mid-list authors are reissuing their back-lists to establish revenue streams from otherwise unavailable novels. New authors are publishing their first books. Services exist that will get you an ISBN number and push your book through the process that puts it on Kindle, Nook, and other eBook outlets. New services are springing up to design covers, web sites, blogs to develop the branding and platform for eAuthors.

Oops, I think I just coined a term, eAuthor.

So lets assume anyone can do this (and if you're smart and persistent enough to write a novel you can do this) what are the consequences? What happens when anyone who wants to publish a book can do so at little or no cost except personal effort?

First off, virtually all novels are written on spec, that is you write it, then shop it around and try to sell it. That means there are a lot of unpubed novels sitting on hard drives. I suspect a flood will hit Amazon, Pubit, Nook, etc. over the next two years as ebooks become more 'legit' and people become savvy about how to publish them. Many of them will be trash, of course, and will sink without a trace.

But among them will be dozens, or even hundreds, of runaway best sellers. And thousands of mid-list books, none of which would have seen the light of day without self-epublishing. Thousands more will find a large enough 'niche' market to make decent money for their authors without ever reaching the mid-list.

Successful authors will write and publish more eBooks, the unsuccessful will get better or disappear. Sites like Goodreads will help us tell each other about the good ones.

Remember the market is word-wide and the information is free.

When main stream reviewers see this, some of them anyway, will turn to the eList (Oops, coined another term) for books to review. That may take a while, especially for the self-pubd. Eventually main stream publishers will also recognize the value to be found in the eList, and contracts will be offered to top selling authors.

This means that we, the writers, will increasingly choose what to offer the public, and the public will increasingly choose what is successful. There are few gatekeepers in this ePub world to tell us what we can or can't have.

In essence self-epublishing for novels will become a world sized Helium, brutally Darwinian in its selection process and brilliant in its ultimate output.

It's what real competition is about.

I can't wait.

Mass Format Changes in MS WORD

2010-10-13T17:29:00.000-04:00

This is a mini tutorial on how to make mass format changes in MS Word. In this case it is changing underline to italics without affecting any other parameter. But this technique can be used for any format including paragraph, color, tabs, language, frame, style or highlighting.

Go to Find/Replace

Click 'More' button. Cursor should be in 'Find what:'

Press Format Font

Pick underline style straight line. Click OK

Move cursor to 'Replace with:'

Note 'Format: Underline' under the 'Find what:' field

Go to Format Font

Pick 'Underline style:' none and 'Font style:' Italic.

Click OK

Press 'Replace All'

Note 'Format: Font: Italic, No underline' under the 'Replace with:' field

And the magic happens.

Lily - Not a Book Review

2010-09-22T19:14:00.002-04:00

I don't do book reviews.

I just finished Lily by Laura Monteverde DeWalt.
It's a vampire story.
I hate vampire stories.
I loved this story.
I loved this character.
Go buy the book.
BTW, it's published in English and Spanish simultaneously.
(You think YOU have an editing problem!)

Pirates, Gatekeepers and Darwinian Publishing, Part II: How we got here.

2010-09-18T16:33:00.000-04:00

Last time I made the argument that the nature of the publishing business over the past two centuries had worked to keep real competition from the marketplace. This time I'd like to come at it from a different direction.

Thirty years ago, in 1980, it was a silly notion that microcomputers (IBM had just invented the marketing term Personal Computer) would ever have a serious place in business. Oh, sure some specialist might use one of them for some technical work, (I did) but it was inconceivable that they would have a place in the everyday business of business. REAL computers took up whole rooms and needed megatons of air conditioning.

In 1990, a few PCs were scattered around some offices doing word processing and spreadsheets, but a real tool for critical business operations? Well…no.

By 2000 PCs and networks were a given, and nearly everybody had one.

In ten years, it went from 'eh' to crucial 'gotta have.' (Today many of you will post your comments from your eThing or your iThing. It's not a gotta have anymore, it simply is.)

What made the difference? Hardware advanced, doubling capability roughly every eighteen months while staying the same price or actually getting cheaper. Connectivity, Internet & intranet, became ubiquitous, then essential, and software products to do things that had been pipe dreams, or not even conceived of earlier, exploded onto the business and recreational scenes.

Writers please note: I used the passive voice in the last two sentences. But the process was anything but passive. It was cutthroat competition among hardware and software manufacturers to bring new, innovative and useful products to the marketplace. Thousands of products competed, rose to prominence, and went by the wayside. (Remember Ashton Tate? The ZIP drive?) We tried the new stuff, made it work for us, and discarded it when something better came along.

The point is this came about because there was an open, competitive market for us, the customers, to choose stuff for ourselves. It was, and still is, a relentlessly Darwinian process. There are no gatekeepers to tell us what choices we can have, or to artificially elevate one product over another. (More about this next time)

The Internet, its wireless incarnations, and the aps being written for it, are completely unregulated and entrepreneurs have made available a truly astonishing range of products, many of them free or pretty cheap. Web sites, only ten years ago the must have thing, are now a ho-hum given. Blogs, facebook, twitter, youtube, ustream, all of which are free, are the new media. Add-ons by savvy entrepreneurs turn these freebees into powerful marketing tools, with everything from email newsletter managers to sidebar advertising targeted to the individual consumer.

I will use one illustration of how entrepreneurs are changing the way things get written and published. A site called helium.com (thanks to author Jeffrey Allen for the info) is a place where you can pick a topic, write about it, and get feedback plus a ranking vs. all others who have written about the same topic. You are expected to read and critique other works, not related to yours, so it is a mutual cooperation process. As you get your feedback and ranking you can rewrite and resubmit, getting more feedback and being re-ranked. As you improve, you move up the scale till you may reach the top. The top ranked pieces are submitted to appropriate publications by the helium staff, and you may actually get paid for it. The process is free, except for having to rank other folk's stuff. Helium does a lot more too, but this is what I want to highlight now.

Can you think of anything more brutally Darwinian? But if you participate, and persist, I guarantee you will become a better writer. This is now geared to non-fiction, but can you think of any reason, other than length, why it couldn't be adapted to fiction?

The people who put Helium together have invented the perfect writer training academy: write and be ranked, try again and be re-ranked, move up the food chain. The entire process is anonymous, so you don't feel so bad.

In a way, the entire publishing industry is about to become like this. We are at a cusp of a change that hasn't happened since the invention of movable type. In some ways this change has already come about. Many of us are members of critique groups that consist of people we have never met and who may live in other countries. We routinely exchange manuscripts (which means 'hand written' BTW) with people on the other side of the globe.

There's a corollary to all this, something that is not always obvious. That is that the marketplace has become vast beyond imagining. Which means that the niches are also vast beyond imagining. The entrepreneurs who learn how to fill those niches will prosper.

As a writer you can be an entrepreneur who fills some of those niches.

More in Part III: Competition and Monopoly.

Pirates, Gatekeepers and Darwinian Publishing Part I

2010-09-09T09:40:00.001-04:00

It's odd how events trigger unrelated ideas.

I just heard a pirate on the radio, you know the one:

"Yaaarh, Cap'n."

That accent has been instantly recognizable as the iconic 'pirate' accent for the past sixty years, even by people who have never seen the film or heard of actor Robert Newton who uttered it in "Treasure Island" in 1950. How does such a thing get embedded in the collective consciousness, so deeply in the culture that it is still being used today?

I think the answer is it strikes some sort of chord, some basic understanding/connection in the American subconscious that it sticks there and won't go away. To do that it must compete with tens of thousands of other equally clever and memorable utterances. But…without a Disney film to carry it, this iconic accent would never have been heard, and certainly would not be fixed in the culture.

That brings us to gatekeepers. The public was only able to hear that accent because some number of gatekeepers (agents, producers, directors, casting companies) at Disney Studios hired Newton and approved his interpretation of the character. The gatekeepers ruled.

For the past two hundred years in the publishing industry the gatekeepers have been agents and editors. If one of them didn't like or understand what a writer wrote, no one got the chance to see it. In other words it never got a chance to compete in the marketplace.

In the past two decades we all know of blockbuster stories that only got printed because some small publisher shrugged and said, "what the heck, maybe we'll break even." It is understandable. Costs of publishing have been skyrocketing while sales are flat, driving agents and editors to look for that blockbuster, which only means they are unwilling to take real risk and are continually looking for the Last Big Thing, which means they generally miss the Next Big Thing. Again, gatekeepers ruled.

Meanwhile advancing technology conspired to put word processing in the hands of literally anyone, at least in the USA, insuring an avalanche of badly written stories magically appearing in agents' in boxes.

In theory, (Wouldn't you love to live in Theory, everything seems to work there.)

In theory, competition improves the product and drives down prices as businesses innovate (i.e. take risks) to bring more and better products to the free market. In other words, it is a Darwinian process with the buying public determining who survives and prospers. Of course it has been a long time since we've had a really free markets in most things, electronics being a notable exception. Hence all the iThings and eThings that keep getting cheaper and better and adding more function.

But publishing has never really been a free market because of the nature of how stories get accepted to appear in print. Gatekeepers again. The producer of the product, the writer, never really had a practical way of competing with the choices made by the publisher, because of his (the publisher's) wide, deep, and exclusive distribution and marketing channels. There have been notable exceptions with self published works eventually attracting a big enough following that a 'real' publisher picked it up. But these are really rare and countable on one hand.

Today the iThings, eThings, the Internet and real innovation and competition have brought us to the edge of Darwinian Publishing. An emerging marketplace where the buyers REALLY get the chance to decide who prospers and who does not, and the producers (writers) get to directly compete in the open market.

More in Part II about the ways this is coming about, hint: it's not just about ebooks.

Story Fodder

2010-05-29T13:48:00.002-04:00

Everything is fodder for the writer's pen. I think these pictures should inspire someone here at FF&P. Maybe the 'gang' members are really shapeshifters? After all, why should mountain lions and wolves have all the fun? And BTW, you DON'T want to mess with these guys.

STREET GANGS IN HELENA , MONTANA

It's gangs like these that the people of Helena have to put up with.. A bit different from the problems in other cities...

It proves that every State has their own "unique" gang problems. They roam the streets and yards night and day.

They hang out in even the best neighborhoods!

...and you CANNOT (legally) stop them.

I got these in email, but yahoo strips off the pics so I thought I'd post them here.

Mixed Media: The Verisimillipede

2010-05-28T07:53:00.002-04:00

As a concept, the verisimillipede has a verisimultitude of uses. One could almost say it has veritable legs of it's own.

When one is scurrying across the detritus at the floor of one's own thoughts, over the dusty leaves of discarded story lines and the dry branches of unusable plots, the empty carapaces of dead chapters strewn about, sucked dry by that idiot in your critique group, desperately seeking that egg of an idea to be hoarded, nurtured, developed until it emerges from it's protective chrysalis a fully realized novel the same but yet cleverly different from all other novels ever written in the genre, ready for the publisher or agent to read and exclaim:

"OMG it's the Last Big Thing!"

Then, as you scuttle between keynoting author conferences and crowded book signings, national talk shows and--dare we say it—Oprah, you will appreciate the many legs of the verisimillipede.

Opening Lines

2010-05-26T21:10:00.001-04:00

OK, suppose you were looking for a novel to read. Think about what you do when you go into a bookstore or a library:

What intrigues you about a book?

Why do you pick it up?

Why do you open it up?

Why do you keep reading?

Why do you buy it?

Here’s how those questions work for me: Title, Cover, Blurb, First Line, First Paragraph, First Page. Each stage is a gate, if the book passes through one gate, it goes on to the next, until I decide to buy or put it back on the shelf.

Now, I don't do this consciously, (or I didn't before I started writing) but that's how it works. Author can be important too, there are a few authors I'll pick up almost regardless of everything else. But for the unknown author, it works the way I outlined.

So lets look at each of these in turn. How much control do you, as an author, have over each of these:

Title: Author has little control. Publishers change titles all the time, depending on what they think will sell. Sometimes they may even be right.

Cover Art: Author has virtually no control. Some publishers solicit your input, but they may ignore it. Sometimes they put in exactly what you specifically request they leave out, and leave out exactly what you specifically request they put in.

Don’t be sensitive.

Back of the Book Blurb: Author has little or no control. In most cases some PR flack is going to write this, without having read your book.

First Line: Author actually writes this!

First Paragraph/First Page: These too!

So what should a first line do? Tell, or preferably show, you something compelling, intriguing, provocative and seductive, about the characters, situation, conflict, plot, tone, scope or theme of the story. It should draw you in inexorably, irrevocably, compellingly, and subtly, without, of course, using too many adverbs.

So here's an example:

The rain fell in torrents, only checked by violent gusts of wind which swept up the street and rattled along the house-tops, fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps struggling against the darkness.

Now is that a great opening line, or what? Maybe a bit purple, but in one sentence you get the entire opening scene, and the theme of the story. Rainstorm, gothic, dark, city, gaslight era. The 'rattled along the housetops' conjures pictures of slanted tile roofs edged with snarling gargoyles. The whole thing imparts a sense of desperation and impending doom. You can almost hear the organ music.

This is actually my own rewrite of the most famous opening line in English literature. It begins: "It was a dark and stormy night. ...." Look it up, and tell me how I did.

What's your favorite opening line?

I think mine is: "I told him I loved him but he killed me anyway." Now I never actually read the book that is from, in fact I don't remember what the book is, but isn't the line great? (In all fairness I only saw the line on a blog, not in the book.)

How do you decide what book to buy?

First Refuge of the Inarticulate: Profanity as Cliche

2010-04-21T14:35:00.001-04:00

SF classic author Isaac Azimov had a character named Hari Seldon (The Foundation series) who invented a science called 'psychohistory' which was the science of predicting the behavior of large populations.

This is irrelevant, except to introduce one of Hari's favorite sayings, which was: 'Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.'

I have my own version: 'Profanity is the first refuge of the inarticulate.'

Now, if you have an inarticulate/asocial character, then profanity might be perfectly appropriate, but there are more subtle and effective ways to show that kind of character. It's also appropriate in a military type setting, but not to be overdone or it becomes distracting (like too many erotic scenes) and of little use in advancing the story.

In everyday language profanity has become common, and so, you might argue, I'm just reflecting the norm of the culture. Really? Since when is dialog just conversation? If I want to experience an expletive filled conversation I'll have lunch at the nearest truck stop, I don't have to read your book for it. Profanity is nothing more than a one-word cliché, a cheap device to make a character or situation seem 'edgy.' But it is just as much an evasion of your responsibility as an author as any other cliché.

My characters do spout an occasional 'damn,' 'c**p,' or even 's**t' as an exclamation in the appropriate circumstance. Indeed, there are places where if you don't use one of those words (the plane is about to crash into the mountain, for instance) it would be as unrealistic and distancing as using them in too many places.

Words like that are spices to be used sparingly; least you dull your reader's appetite. An overspiced dish is as unpalatable as an underspiced one. So sprinkle expletives carefully.

BTW, least you think me a prude, I was a Marine, where you can't eat a meal without someone asking you to pass the f...'in salt. True, but once again of no use in advancing a story, unless the story is about how crude Marines can be.

But that's not a story, or even news.

A view from the diner

2010-04-03T13:58:00.000-04:00

Our local diner is on a busy street in town. A major state highway runs right by, so it is a very busy intersection. Right across from the diner is a local garage. They fix and sell cars there. It’s not a big place, just two bays, and a narrow parking area.

A couple of times a week I go to this diner to drink coffee and write, about which more later. My favorite spot is a booth by the window which happens to be really private and quiet. From this booth you can see the state highway and the garage across the road. Sometimes you get a really interesting show. Periodically a rollback type hook-em-up truck pulls in and deposits a (usually) damaged vehicle. Their technique is interesting, though. They drop the car onto the parking lot, then, with the car still attached, back up the rollback, pushing on the car’s front wheels with the lowered platform, steering the car backwards like a trailer. Makes for odd happenings. Like the time the car smashed into the retaining wall at the rear of the parking lot. Consternation? Regret? Not a bit of it. The guy pulled out, repositioned the car, and did it again. I guess he wanted it really close to that wall.

Then there was the time one of them backed the car they were trying to drop off into the side of another car on the lot. The guy repositioned the vehicle and...did it again. After he finally got the car positioned correctly he went into the garage, came out with an axe, and buried into the hood of the car he had hit. Punishment for jumping out in front of him, I suppose.

Then there was the smart fellow trying to remove all four wheels from a vehicle that was on the rollback. He lifted one of those big hydraulic floor jacks you see in garages onto the bed of the rollback. Then he jacked the car up while it was on top of the rollback, put 6x6 lumber under the rear end, then lowered the jack. He removed the wheels from the rear, went around to the front, and jacked the car up from there. The car was now rocking and pivoting. Keep in mind he had to reach up to his shoulders do all of these things, the car was above his head. Once he got the front wheels removed, he lowered and removed the jack. The car was on top of the rollback with 6x6 lumber propping it up in a very precarious position, balanced on what was essentially one point. What to do? He couldn’t drive it away like that. Ah-ha! Sledgehammer!

Another brilliant move was backing a running car off the tilted bed with the hood up, then driving it onto the street, with the hood still up, to get it into one of the repair bays.

In the winter they do donuts in the snow in the parking lot.

Did I mention the parking lot is really narrow?

Somewhere Charles Darwin is sobbing inconsolably.

A Visit to the Celestial Crystal

2010-03-10T22:37:00.000-05:00

I'd like to introduce you to the woman who kicked me off my comfortable muddle in the middle. Her name is Kathleen Coddington and she teaches a six week novel writing class at our local community college. About two and-a-half years ago I took that course. After the second week I went home and tore 30,000 words out of the heart of my 80,000 word semi-finished SF novel. It hurt. But it was the right thing to do. I finished that one, and I'm half way through a second with plans for five more.

Thanks, Kathie!

********************************

Thanks for allowing me to visit, Bart and talk about my latest book, Palace of Dreams. The story, a futuristic erotic romance, is set in the Celestial Crystal, the most prestigious dream dome on Cereus Prime. I thought your readers might enjoy a brief tour.

Want to swim in luminescent alien seas? Or hunt fire dragons on Tau Ceti? Or perhaps you have a hankering to be empress of Setari V or to spend the night with a virile, sensual, blue-skinned Malian man or woman? Visit the Celestial Crystal, the setting for Palace of Dreams, and these or any other dream you desire can be yours. Led by telepathic guides, the process is not quite a virtual reality game or lucid dreaming (a self-aware dream), but with elements borrowed from both.

I’ve always been fascinated by the surreal world of dreaming. I’m not alone. The use of the dream world as a plot device, especially popular in science fiction and fantasy, dates back to the ancient Greeks. Chaucer and Shakespeare have investigated it, but no one handled it as well as Lewis Caroll in Alice’s Adventurs in Wonderland. Talk about surreal. Movies like Dreamscape, total Recall, Vanilla Sky, the Matrix and Nightmare on Elm Street have all relied on some facet of the dream world to further their stories.

Nights and days are never boring at the Celestial Crystal. Recline on the comfy couch, a brief sting of a needle then place the coronet that connects you to your guide on your forehead and off to dream land you go. With enough credits, the legendary Inari Rau might be your guide. You can always dream.

Book release date: March 5, 2010

Ellora’s Cave: Aeon

Novel. You can purchase the book at http://www.jasminejade.com/ps-8218-50-palace-of-dreams.aspx

Visit her at: www.kathleencoddington.com or http://www.kathleencoddington.wordpress.com/

Book Trailer for Palace of Dreams.

Blurb:
In the dream domes of Cereus Prime visitors can fulfill their deepest erotic fantasies in sessions led by telepathic guides. Among the guides, Inari Rau is a living legend. On her final night as a guide, she receives a request to lead one last dream. During the session she loses control and is drawn into a fantasy of raw, sexual pleasure with her mysterious client.

Kastel Fane has a mission to complete—give Inari the dream of a lifetime as a farewell gift from her friends. If he succeeds, he’ll receive a hefty reward. What neither expects is the passion that ignites between them or the new psi talent that is born out of their first encounter, an ability that leads to dangerous consequences for both of them. As they fight for a future together, can Kastel prove he is the man who can finally fulfill all of Inari’s dreams?

Bio:
Kathleen Coddington has been writing romance on and off for 15 years. She has three books, a paranormal romance and two historical romances, published by Cerridwen Press and one erotic futuristic through Ellora’s Cave Publishing. She is a member of Romance Writers of America, Pocono Lehigh Romance Writers and the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group, where she served at various times as VP, secretary and treasurer.

A retired school librarian, Kathleen enjoys reading and travel. Members of two Civil War reenacting units, she and her husband are frequent lecturers at schools and historical societies. She has also published several articles about the fashions of the mid-19th century. She and her husband and two cats live near their son in a small town in eastern Pennsylvania where she teaches a novel writing course at the local community college.

Linnea Sinclair: Romantic SF is not a contradiction in terms.

2009-12-25T10:05:00.003-05:00

Just discovered Linnea Sinclair and I heartily recommend this author. I just finished her first book "Finders Keepers." Hard SF with more than a touch of romance, space opera, whatever you want to call it, it's a good, fun read. I'm ordering the rest of her books.

Linnea's website: http://www.linneasinclair.com/

The Sci Fi Military Paradigm

2009-12-18T06:56:00.006-05:00

A few days ago Linnea Sinclair, author of a series of hard SF romances, (no that's not a paradox) posed this question on the FFandP loop:

Why is the Navy the model for Science Fiction military, not the Air Force ?

I thought about this for a while and came up with the following (non exhaustive) reasons:

1. Long distances = long transit times, logically requiring self-sufficient craft with long linger times, i.e. ships. You can't explore while doing a flyover.

2. Early SF writers, notably E. E. Smith, Heinlein, Asimov, etc., grew up in an era when Naval power was supreme and airplanes had severely limited range. The paradigm stuck.

3. SF writers tend to think of space as the equivalent of the unexplored earth in the age of sail, hence ships. Which is sort of like #1

4. Space, like the ocean, is vast and mostly empty. Important events occur at choke points where adversaries have a compelling interest. (Planetary orbit, Jump points -- Trafalgar, the Tsushima straits.) Forces must go there and stay to project power. Navy business, not Air Force.

5. Ships with crews and long voyages afford more dramatic possibilities.

6. The Navy is neater. (Apologies to all my AFROTC buddies and the USMC)

The earliest writer to envision a believable galaxy spanning civilization was E. E. "Doc" Smith. His 'Lensmen' series inspired the likes of George Lucas and Babylon 5's creator (whose name I can't remember.) It also inspired the very first video game, 'Spacewar,' in which 2 ships try to shoot each other while maneuvering around a star. With gravity. They inspired me too, and I'm sure a whole lot of others.

Well, the point is Smith envisioned huge fleets of ships fighting in 3 dimensional space, (anyone remember the "Cone of Battle?") and such was his influence that the paradigm stuck.

Much SF (notably David Drake's Honor Harrington series) borrows unasamedly from C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower, and the fighting concepts of the age of sail. Others come all the way up to WWII, or as game designer Frank Chadwick commented, "Jutland or Trafalgar with a touch of Midway for spice."

And that brings up the question, with all we know now about string theory, the physics of hyperspace, the alternate world hypothesis and multi dimensional math, what should the model for Science Fiction military be?

Well the answer is obvious. The Navy, of course. It's neater!

I welcome all comments that are fit to print.

Adventures with Tom(Tom)

2009-11-30T15:42:00.004-05:00

You'd think a guy who spent his whole career working with the most advanced computer technology would have embraced this concept years ago. Well, I finally did it, this weekend I bought a GPS unit. Deep in Lancaster county, the seductive female voice and the little green arrow brought us safely to our hotel, then found us a restaurant and a gas station. At the end of a long day of shopping and eating (mostly eating) we were on our way back after dinner with friends (Turn Left One Quarter Mile Ahead) when my wife asked me if there was a Dunkin Dounuts nearby. "Why?" I queried. She wanted a cup of coffee to top off the day, and we both like DD coffee. I didn't know, of course, so I consulted the little green arrow and, whadaya know? There was a DD, just 5.6 miles away! Little did we know that this simple request would result in our first "Adventure With Tom(Tom)"

We set out hopeful and full of joy, the thing had never steered us (no pun intended) wrong. In case you have never been in Lancaster County, PA you probably don't know that most of the county is Amish Farms. The Amish do not use modern appliances, machinery or...electricity. So, once off the main commercial highways the night is black. Not dark, black. Pitch black. Stick your head in a bucket black. Especially on a moonless night. Even so, we started out ok. About half way through the journey to DD: (2.3 miles to go) it told me "Turn Left Onto Sligo Road") So I did. Only it didn't look like a road. It looked like a farm track leading to someone's barn. Nevertheless, loyally following the little green arrow, I doggedly kept on, avoiding the ruts, steering around the potholes. The road dipped into a hollow and the fences on either side seemed to slowly close in on us. Civilization was a faint glow on the horizon.

That's when it occured to me.

This was one of those places where people disappear. You know, the place where aliens come down in their flyers and take you up, car and all, to the mother ship hovering overhead. But if that happened I knew what I would do. I would throw my new GPS unit out the window. When the searchers finally got there they would find it, the little green arrow bravely pointing straight up.

I gotta learn how to program this thing.

Theme

2009-06-07T18:36:00.002-04:00

An on line colleague, Estelle Harte, has posed an excellent question: what is theme? I suggest you read her blog before continuing here, she has posed some very cogent questions concerning theme. (See link at right) But feel free to eat the ice cream cone starting from the bottom if you like.

The concept of theme is something I have trouble with too. My idea of telling a story is to, well, tell the story. Let other people worry about what your theme is. My contention is that most of us don't consciously know what our story theme is until after we've completed enough of it to have an idea where it is all going. I know I certainly don't. That revelation may come at the concept stage, or the outline, or not until much, if not all, of it is written. Or even when you do the dreaded synopsis.

I remember reading a story about an SF writer, I believe it was Robert Heinlein, who once attended a lecture about one of his books. After the presenter had finished Heinlein (or whoever it was) spoke to him and objected saying, "I'm the author, and that's not what I meant at all!"

To which the presenter replied, "What makes you think you know what your story is about?"

How's that for a shocker? Do we really know what our stories are about, or does everyone see something completely different? A complex story has many different threads, and, like Luke Skywalker in the cave, which one we think is important/compelling/interesting depends on who we are and what we bring with us.

We all know you can read a YA and get something completely different from it as an adult than the intended audience does. I may read a technothriller for the tech, you may read it for the thrill, someone else may read it for the political stuff or the ongoing romance between the protagonists. Which is the 'real' story.

Recently at GLVWG (Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group) we had a local storyteller, Charles Kiernan, in for a talk about verbal storytelling and how it relates to writing. One of the interesting things he emphasized was, 'mutual creating.' (He had a better phrase, but I can't remember it.) The essence was that the audience, in our case the reader, enters into the story, and creates the scenes and actions in their imagination, and that too much detail (more for the written word, less for verbal storytelling) spoils the process and also spoils the story.

Well the obvious conclusion is that everyone is creating their own story as they read.

And that means they're creating their own theme too!

Oy.

I think I've come full circle.

Leave a message at the beep.

2 Renees 2

2009-04-25T23:38:00.000-04:00

Today one of those non coincidence coincidences happened. At a meeting of... well, I'd better not name the organization...too many prying eyes. Anyway at this...meeting...there were two women named Renee. Now, you have to understand, Renee is not the most popular girl's name in the USA...ever. The year these women were born...but I'm getting ahead of myself. Don't get me wrong, they are both nice ladies, despite having been born in...there I go again. OK, back to the story. When One asked Two...I'm calling them Renee One and Renee Two to avoid confusion, you see. When One asked Two how she got her name Two said...get this...her mother got it from a novel she was reading. Imagine that? From a novel! Heh, heh. Anyway, One says, "So did my mom." Then she named the novel, it was...no wait, I can't tell you that, it would give away the year. Can't be too careful these days. So Two says, "So did my mom! When were you born?" and One says, "In 19..." No, wait I can't tell you that, security is really tight. Anyway Two say, "So was I!" Anyway, to make a long story short, it turns out One and Two were born in the same year, only a few months apart, in the same city! And there they were, together at a meeting of...sorry, I keep forgetting I can't tell you that.

Now I have to ask you, is that coincidence? Of course it isn't! It's a conspiracy!

And that’s why you have to keep this quiet, if they found out...well, I mean, you know.

Must have been one helluva book, though.

Bart

The Vision of Persistence

2009-04-23T00:10:00.004-04:00

A very wise woman once told me, well, actually she told the whole class, but I was there so she told me too: “Many of you can write better than I do, but you won’t be published because you won’t be persistent enough.”

The last five days have passed in a fog. I caught a bad virus infection late last week, what we used to call a head cold. You know, that muzzy, stuffy, hot, headachy, stupid feeling? I didn't have enough functioning brain cells to write, or read, or even watch TV. And since you don't actually need functioning brain cells to watch TV, I must have been in brain cell deficit most of the time. In any case, Tuesday night at about eleven PM, I felt it break. You know the feeling, when the force of the illness is no longer on top of you; you are on top of it. It wasn't over, by any means, but I could feel it receding. The enemy was in flight.

That's how it feels when I overcome a block in my writing. I don't mean 'Writer's Block,' I'm not sure I actually believe in that. No, it's when I just don't know where to go with a story, and I think back to what that very wise woman said. Persist. That's it. Keep on keepin' on. So I do. I sit down (see 'application' blog) and start somewhere, almost anywhere. It may be another story, or another part of the same story, or maybe I'll flesh out part of an outline or a character sketch. Or go to my favorite writing place and scribble away as best I can. I do something. It may take days for it to 'break,' but eventually it does. And when it does, it is usually a dam burst that has me wondering where all the words are coming from. Where the ideas were all this time. It's as if a whole different world inside my story opens up, one that was there all the time, but I just hadn't seen yet. Like a vision. A vision of persistence.

It's not genius; it's perseverance.

Then I realized it is exactly like that virus. I take vitamin C and zinc, and lots of fluids and that helps, but…but…it is my immune system, persistent, consistent, hacking away at the virus day after day that eventually beats the enemy. And that's how I beat the block; persistent, consistent hacking away at it till it breaks. So here's the moral of the story:

Think like a leukocyte.

Bart

Animal Stuff

2009-04-14T15:21:00.002-04:00

I love the country. Odd thing for a Brooklyn boy, but I’ve always loved the rural places. Anyway, over the course of several lifetimes I’ve seen some odd animal happenings.

Ever seen a duck land on water? They literally water ski in, using their webbed feet like skis. I’ve seen a duck get embarrassed when it tried to land on a frozen creek, and tumbled a** over teakettle down the ice. He (it was a drake) got up, looked around as if to say, “I wanted to do that.” But there were no other ducks close by to impress, so he shook himself off, preened a bit, and waddled off.

I saw a squirrel laugh when the cat that was chasing it got whacked by a car. There were a lot of squirrels and cats where I lived in Brooklyn. Don’t ask me how I knew it was laughing, I just knew.

I once had a ferret named Noodles. She liked to hide in furniture and nip people’s ankles. Funny thing, she only bit women. Never drew blood, though; I think she was just showing them who the alpha female was.

Noodles nailed a flying squirrel that had gotten in one night. The thing moved so fast I would have sworn there were three of them cavorting around our living room. Noodles waited under the sofa, then dashed out and grabbed the thing as it went past. Only one flying squirrel.

I’ve seen groundhogs play tricks on each other. One was sitting up eating some berries, when another walked up and shoved him. They squabbled for a bit then both went back to eating the berries. Like two kids in a playground. I know, I know, it was some kind of dominance display, but as I was watching it sure looked like a trick. I swear the second groundhog had a gleam in his eye just before he shoved the first one. I could tell what he was going to do before he did it.

Cats. Some will fawn all over you if you leave them alone for too long, some will turn their backs and pointedly ignore you. For days.

Smiling. Sometimes you can tell an animal is smiling, even though they don’t actually smile. I once worked in (shudder) New Jersey. The place was miles from any ponds or lakes, but every year a pair of ducks would nest in the shrubbery in front of the building. Remember, no pond. When it rained real hard, the parking lot would, of course, have puddles on it, no more than half-an-inch deep. The ducks would waddle out from their refuge in the greenery and plop down in the puddles, in the rain. They would happily sit there for hours.

I swear those ducks were smiling.

Bart

The Application of Writing Productivity

2009-04-07T00:02:00.010-04:00

In 1987 a set of genius designers published a computer game called ‘Dungeon Master.’ Essentially it was automated Dungeons and Dragons. Unlike other games of the era, this one put you directly into the action, as if you were looking out of the eyes of the leader of your band of intrepid adventurers. The idea is to select a group of four heroes, some of whom were female, and enter a complex, 3D, multilevel dungeon where you fight monsters, solve puzzles, try to stay alive and, eventually, trap the bad guy. Weapons, amulets, potions and magic abounded, of course, but you also had to find food and water or your party would starve. Rich and complex, without complicated game-play, DM was far ahead of its time in concept, graphics, sound, playability and just plain fun. Fireballs exploded, skeletons clanked, giant crabs skittered and you could hear monsters coming from around the corner. One thing made a sound like wet concrete sliding off a steel trowel. My 10 year old grandson was totally taken by the game, for all of the above reasons.

What does this have to do with writing productivity, you may well ask.

I learned something from this game, something I always ‘knew’ but never had completely assimilated into my psyche. To tell you what I learned I have to tell you something about the game, specifically how your heroes grow and change. To start you must choose four out of twenty-four different characters, from a barbarian with a club, to small but powerful magicians, and everything in between. Each character has strengths and weaknesses, so choosing the right mix is important. Four magic users do you no good if there are five bad guys. The last one will bash your powerful, but depleted, magicians on the head and, voila, instant skeleton pile. So balance is the key.

And therein lies the basis for the lesson. In the beginning your (usually) two magicians are physically weak and vulnerable, but they’ve got those fireballs they can throw at the bad guys. Your physically powerful barbarians can protect them and bash any monsters that get too close. But even barbarians can do some magic. So a good tactic is to load the powerful magicians with fireballs (or some other really nasty spell) and use the little magic your barbarians have to keep the lights on. But they need to keep doing it, because the lights eventually fade and you will be left in pitch blackness, waiting for a purple worm to come along and eat you.

So when the lights start to fade, you have the barbarians work a magic spell to brighten them up again. After a while, the barbarians do so much magic, they gain a skill level and now can do a little more magic. And more. And yet more. Your magicians have to hold those fireballs to use on animated skeletons or poison rockpiles, so they don’t get to do as much magic work. Pretty soon you find the ‘barbarians’ have surpassed the magicians and are now the more powerful magic users, because they have been actually using magic, while the magicians are mostly on standby for emergencies. Sort of like muscles, if you don’t use them they atrophy.

Or your brain, if you don’t think much, it turns soggy and unresponsive.

Or writing. If you don’t do it, it goes away.

Which brings me to my brilliant insight: Writing productivity is the application of the seat of the pants to the chair.

Bart

Panning for Gold

2009-03-30T07:03:00.011-04:00

Thoughts from a writer's conference.

She kneels by the stream, hands busy in the icy waters. The stream moves swiftly in spring. Fed by the winter’s snowmelt, it carries many things down from the mountain, leaves and branches and bits of detritus. Occasionally a dead insect or a mummified mouse floats by. But she is not interested in those things. She swirls the pan around and around, heedless of the numbing cold that makes her joints ache. The reward is worth it.

Sand and gravel rotate in the water as she patiently moves the pan in slow deliberate circles. Her crafty eyes probe through the rippling distortions for the sign. For the tiniest glimmer, the yellow gleam in the sunlight that signals success. There! Her fingers seem to take on a life of their own as they scrabble after the yellow lump. She pulls it dripping from the glacial water, examines it with a knowing eye--but shakes her head. No. She tosses it back into the roiling torrent where it barely splashes as it is swept away.

Undaunted, she picks up her pan and plunges it once again into the icy stream.

Such is the life of an agent hearing pitches.

Bart

Techno Bubble

2009-03-24T13:35:00.003-04:00

That's Bubble, not babble.

I’ve come to the conclusion we live in a bubble. No, actually we all live in separate bubbles. Like that old movie, we seal ourselves off from each other using keyboards and display screens, not transparent plastic, but it amounts to the same thing. I’ve heard recently that when an editor/agent gets a manuscript the first thing they do is Google the author. If you don’t have a FaceBook page, Twitter followers and a LinkedIn network, you don’t really exist, and your credibility goes down the, uh, garderobe.

Forget a website, that’s way past passé.

Here’s the trouble. Just as identity theft can leave you destitute and devastated, identity augmentation (kinda like botox for your personality) can con you into believing Joe Schmo walks on water. That con does exist on the Internet, just go to any on-line dating service. You can make stuff up, reinvent yourself, create credentials and awards then create the institutions that gave you those credentials and awards, all without leaving your house, or even getting dressed. All it takes is one of those keyboard/screen thingies everyone seems to have, and a little tech savvy. Actually, you can copy everything you need to do this right from the Internet itself. Find a small college, copy their web site, change the name, move some pictures around, (you can get those from the internet too) and publish it as the web site of Joeschmo College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Voila, instant creditials, instant credibility, instant con.

Ever seen YAs (whatever age you identify as YA) texting? Ever notice when in each other’s presence they really don’t have much to say to each other? Why? Techno-Bubble again. These days everyone knows you give away an awful lot about yourself by actually looking another person in the eye. And every teenager knows this. I’m taking a class (on-line, of course) on making character emotions real. Some of the technique involves using involuntary body and facial movement and responses. The amount of emotional content in our faces is astounding, and what does every YA feel vulnerable about? Their emotions. So they text, IM, and email, avoiding the actual face-to-face thing with its attendant pitfalls.

We all do.

Don't get me wrong, I’m not anti-tech, far from it.

My entire adult career has been spent in the highest of technical fields, the emerging computer revolution. I write SciFi, love reading it and speculating about future technologies. I believe technology has made us, and especially women, (more on that later) richer, freer, safer, more comfortable, and given more people more options than any other time in human history.

I'm just commenting on human nature.

Well, bye for now, I have to go IM this to my on-line critique partners whom I have never actually met.

Bart