GRUMPY BEAR SPEAKS

This is not a rant about the major issues of the day. We here at Spacefreighters long ago agreed that this is not the proper forum for those kinds of screeds. And, besides, if I started down that road, I might just take a left and keep on driving.

No, this is just a venting of choler about a few minor annoyances that happened to MAKE ME CRAZY this week. Because I’m feeling particularly grumpy today. Like this guy:

There’s a hole in my bucket. I just read the last book in a beloved series by one of my very favorite authors. (No, I’m not going to name either the series or the author.) Ninety-percent of the book was just as thrilling and wonderful as the rest of the series. I didn’t want it to end, especially because this was the end of a long, delicious reading experience. But, dang it, the ending left a HUGE plot hole unresolved—and not in a way that indicated we’d learn what happened in a future book. Just, “Okay, and then these people make it home, and The End.” Wait. What?

Bad enough, but there’s worse. Shrugging off this disappointment, I start another book by a favorite author who shall remain nameless. A very famous author, I might add, and a best-selling book. Pretty soon I start noticing something is missing: most of the commas before the conjunction but. Not all of them, mind you, which might indicate some kind of conscious revolt against the Evil Conjunctive Comma! No, this looks like just plain old carelessness, like someone neglected to edit this book, or put “ignore all” on every compound sentence. Because I can assure you, my computer grammar function will remind me every time I forget to insert that damn comma before the word but in a sentence like this: “Sally loved him, but he had terrible grammar.”

Death to groundhogs. Yes, Punxutawney Phil warned us there would be six more weeks of winter. That was on February 2. It’s now March 22, which by my count means the stupid groundhog has overstayed his welcome by a week. We’ve just suffered through our fourth nor’easter in three weeks and another storm is due Sunday. Here in our little corner of Western North Carolina, we’ve been lucky; the storms have hit us only glancing blows. Everywhere else in the Eastern third of the nation people are ready to pull Phil out of his burrow and string him up. Yes, and next year, I insist on erecting a very large umbrella over his successor’s burrow.

What good is electricity if I don’t have Facebook? People may be digging themselves out of the next storm only to find they have lost their raison d’etre. Facebook is in deep trouble, the center of its own little storm of scandal after the discovery that data firm Cambridge Analytica sold information it gathered on some 50 million Facebook users to third parties without their knowledge. (No, really? I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked ! ) People are calling for Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg’s head and (a little gleefully, I think) predicting the collapse of the social media giant. But if there has ever been anything that is too big to fail, Facebook qualifies. No other social media platform has anywhere near the reach that this original behemoth does.

But here’s the real reason all of this will blow over by next week: there is no such thing as privacy on Facebook and anyone who uses FB should know it. How many times have we been warned not to post anything we wouldn’t want our aged grandmothers to see? How many times do the cyber-experts have to say Social Media is Forever? Do you really think those ads for super-cute TREK tee-shirts just magically show up on your news feed? Or the click-bait posts about aliens/cats/conspiracy theories/extremist politics of all persuasions? Early on, I was inclined to think the Evil FB Gnomes themselves used a computer algorithm to sell ads and click bait. Now I can envision them as Russian cyber-spies and slimy firms with smart, catchy names like Cambridge Analytica (which is probably three hairy guys in wife-beaters sitting around a roomful of computers in a Motel 6 in Cambridge, Ohio). So much better.

And now for some GOOD news. Finalists in the 2017 Romance Writers of America RITA® (published works) and Golden Heart® (unpublished manuscripts) contests were announced last Wednesday. As three of us here at Spacefreighters know, the moment caused chaos, exhilaration, joy, heartbreak and misery in countless writing households around the world as the word went out. Finaling in either of those contests can be a highpoint in a writer’s career and a long-sought-after goal, regardless of whether the contest is actually won. So, bravo, all you finalists, whatever your category, and good luck to you when the winners are announced in July.

Cheers, Donna

HANGING ON TIL THE END

What’s the hardest part of a book to write? Not the beginning, because what writer isn’t full of enthusiasm at the onset of a project? Sometimes that opening sentence is what launches the whole thing in an author’s mind. Call me Ishmael. Chapter One: I am Born. For years I couldn’t remember what happened to me that night.*

The middle chapters are almost always a hard slog, it’s true. They don’t call a problem with this section “the sagging middle” for nothing. Keeping up the pace, making sure you don’t lose all of your subplots in a swamp of details, enforcing consistency in your characters, all take discipline and drive.

But the proof of any novel’s pudding is at the end, when all the plot threads must tie themselves up in neat little bows, the bad guy must get his or her just deserts, and your hero and heroine must have resolved all their internal and external conflicts so they can enjoy their happily ever after. Aarggh!

Of course, the myth is that plotters and pantsers approach this moment of truth in completely different ways. Plotters, it is assumed, have it all figured out from the beginning. It’s there in the outline! This happens, then this, then, ta-da! Ends tied, bad guy dead, HEA.

Pantsers, supposedly, just write until things work themselves out. If they hit a wall, they write around it, or over it, or under it. Intuition working overtime, pantsers find solutions to whatever problems present themselves as they come up, though maybe that doesn’t happen right away. (I hope not, anyway, or I would be much more jealous of these folks than I already am!)

But, surprise! Hardly anyone is exclusively a plotter or a pantser. And the Muse is fond of throwing all sorts of obstacles in our path as we work our way through a story. Unexpected plot complications. Demanding characters. Corners, with wet paint on the floor all around. Inconvenient laws of physics that make you want to switch to writing contemporary romance. And, most especially at the end of a novel with any subplots at all, the issue of timing (that is, who is supposed to be where at exactly what day and time).

As a plotter, you might think I’d have fewer problems than some with tying things up at the end of a book. But right now, I’m close to the end of the first draft of Book 4 in my Interstellar Rescue series and, really, I have no idea how to end it. Well, I mean, I know generally what should happen. Minor villain vanquished by the hero/heroine (and, big reveal here, dog—which, I should add, I’d already put in the story before Pets in Space was launched). Major villain(s) vanquished (for now) by the Rescue team from earlier novels (since this is a series). Hero and heroine (and dog) get their HEA. Sexy secondary character set up for his own future book.  All good.

But the devil is in the details. I could use a little pantsing skill right about now. Because there comes a time when you just have to sit down at the computer and write something.

And hope it all comes out the way it should. In the end.

*The first line of Unchained Memory, Book 1, Interstellar Rescue series

 

CONGRATS TO 2017 RITA/GH® FINALISTS!

Well done to the Finalists announced Tuesday, March 21, including SFR Brigade members Janet Halpin (Golden Heart®, Paranormal, for Beryl Blue, Time Cop) and Susan Grant (RITA, Paranormal, for Champion of Baresh)! The nomination for the RITA is especially sweet for Grant, one of the pioneers of SFR in the early 2000s who had been out of the game for several years. She self-published Champion of Baresh, which she calls a “book of my heart.” Good luck to Susan and Janet in Orlando in July!

Cheers, Donna