BOLDLY GOING REQUIRES A LEAP OF FAITH

Boldly going on moving day

Last week I embarked on a journey, if not into the unknown, at least into the unfamiliar. I gathered myself (and all my worldly goods, my husband and two cats) and I launched myself into the ether. I took a leap of faith.

On the surface what I did may seem a simple thing, rather mundane. I just moved from Fredericksburg, Virginia, where I had lived for almost twenty years, to the small mountain town of Marshall, North Carolina, where hubby and I are building a new house. No big deal, right? People do it every day. When I was a kid I did it every couple of years, for reasons good and bad. It’s as American as apple pie. Just pick up and make a new life in a new place.

And, really, this move isn’t that intimidating. After all, we’ve owned the land we’re building on for almost ten years and have been visiting Marshall for all that time. We know the area and some of the folks in town by name already, so we have a start on making friends. My husband’s parents are just down the road in Black Mountain.

The house goes up on the mountain

Still, we’re leaving behind longtime friendships and our kids and grandkids, who will be much further away now. And despite the close allure of Asheville, we will be giving up the convenience of town life for the peace and quiet of the country.  It will be a change.

People have mixed reactions when we tell them what we’re up to. Most won’t come right out and say they think we’re crazy, but you can see it in their eyes. Why leave everything behind and start over at our age? Some say they wish they could but . . .

Blanca adjusts

Actually doing something like this—building an intentional community with others in an unfamiliar place—takes vision and a certain amount of pioneer spirit. It takes belief in yourself and your ability to persevere and adapt. It requires creativity and determination and flexibility. The challenges it presents are a major part of the fun. All in all, it’s a lot like writing, something I plan to do a lot of here on the mountain. 

And just like with writing, you take that leap of faith knowing the reward will be well worth it once you succeed.

 

 PING PONG

--Congratulations, Laurie, on your LAST BUDGET CYCLE EVER! Yay! Pretty soon you'll be taking this leap of faith with me as you hit the retirement road!

--Agree with you completely, Greta, that you need to know the rules of writing before you can break them. The best writers often bend the rules, but it's very clear they know what they're doing in the process.

Cheers, Donna

ON THE ROAD AGAIN . . .

Once again I'm dashing off these few lines just before I pack up my trusty computer and head for the hills. This time that phrase is meant literally. Sunday I'll be putting Blanca, the Queen of the Universe, and Shadow, AKA Chat Dieu, the Sidekick, in the back of my car and making the seven-hour drive to the little mountain town of Marshall, North Carolina, just north of Asheville. Hubby will be following with the rest of our worldly goods in a rental truck.

Yep, it's time for the Big Move! So no time for my usual long-winded post. Gotta pack up the kitchen!  

My reports for the foreseeable future will come from Marshall!

Cheers, Donna

 

RARE BLUE MOON SHINES ON ARMSTRONG MEMORIAL

Today a private memorial service was held in Cincinnati, Ohio for former astronaut Neil Armstrong, a member of NASA’s pioneering Apollo crew and the first man to walk on the moon. Armstrong died Saturday, August 25, at the age of 81, from complications of heart surgery.

Armstrong’s death came as a shock to those of us with emotional and intellectual ties to the space program and the dream of travel to the stars that his achievements represented. He had always seemed larger than life, though his friends and family assured us he was a quiet and unassuming person.

Today, the family issued this statement regarding ways to honor the man they've called a "reluctant American hero":

To everyone who has so graciously remembered Neil Armstrong:

The outpouring of condolences and kind wishes from around the world overwhelms us and we appreciate it more than words can express. Many have asked if a memorial has been designated. If anyone wishes to make a memorial in his name, we suggest, in lieu of flowers, memorials be sent to one of these worthy organizations:

Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
Neil Armstrong New Frontiers Initiative
PO Box 5202
Cincinnati, OH 45201-5202
www.cincinnatichildrens.org

Telluride Foundation
Neil Armstrong Scholarship Fund
620 E. Colorado, Suite 106
PO Box 4222
Telluride, CO 81435
www.telluridefoundation.org/index.php?page=donate-here

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Neil Armstrong Scholarship Fund
AIAA Foundation
1801 Alexander Bell Drive
Suite 500
Reston, VA 20191
www.aiaa.org

The family made one additional suggestion of a simple way to remember the first man who walked on the moon. "Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink."

Tonight will be the perfect night to do just that, with the blue moon shining above wherever you are. This blue moon, a second full moon in the same month, is the first since December, 2009. There won’t be another until July, 2015. So take a http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifmoment and reflect—on one man’s accomplishments on July 20, 1969. On humankind’s possibilities in the future if we would only be brave enough to follow him.

Donna’s Journal

While the dog days of August have New York's agents and editors in thrall, I’ve been working on revamping my website. I’ve moved my martial arts information to a separate website (http://donnafrelicksensei.com) and added a new page just for excerpts from my work. Check out my new look at http://donnasfrelick.com.


Cheers, Donna

MISSED IT BY THAT MUCH!

Some of you may remember that line from the ‘Sixties TV comedy series “Get Smart” starring Don Adams as the bumbling spy Maxwell Smart. (Maybe you caught the movie remake a few years ago, in which case, sorry.) Smart was always within a hair of catching the bad guy or recovering the stolen secrets, but due to an unfortunate tendency to blow things up or trip over his own feet he invariably “missed it by that much”, a quantity indicated by the space between his thumb and index finger.

That little space might as well be as much as a parsec when we’re talking about the difference between a good book and a great one. Laurie hinted at this problem in her post this week when she mentioned how much she’d been enjoying a recent read until she got to the end, where it seemed to run out of steam. What could have been a great book was instead just a good one. Missed it by that much.

I began to wonder about this after I encountered a spate of good-not-great books, all of them SFR and all of them from the same well-respected e-publisher (who will remain nameless). Some of them I found problems with from the beginning; at least one of them was terrific until the very end, when it let me down. But as I began to think about it, I realized there are any number of ways a good book can go wrong.

Plot holes you can drive a starship through. These can derive from a faulty premise (the worst kind) or simply from carelessness (that is, hoping no one will notice that you said the stardrive wouldn’t work in null space in Chapter Two and now you have your hero using it to rescue your heroine in null space in Chapter Ten—just an example, not something I came across.)

One of the books I did read—and I hope I don’t offend here—postulated a planet with a sun so hot it would almost literally fry the skin off you if you were out long enough. And yet before I knew it the hero and heroine were stripping down for a passionate encounter in the blazing sun! Ouch! Talk about a hot scene—and I don’t mean in a good way. That author needs an afternoon with my critique partner, who upon reading such a scene would have taken the author’s skin off with a single look, never mind the white-hot sun.

The outdoor scene wasn’t the most puzzling plot hole of this book, however. The real problem was the premise at the heart of the story, which I won’t describe for fear of giving away the book and its author. The point is no matter how great your characters are, no matter how beautiful your style is or intriguing your ideas, you cannot have a great book with a plot that doesn’t hold together from beginning to end.

Heroes or heroines made out of cardboard. This one is subtle. As a reader, you might not even notice it at first. You might be reading along, and just become aware of a feeling of vague dissatisfaction. Something is wrong; you’re bored with these people, or they don’t respond to the situation the way real people would. Eventually you want to shake them: Wake up! you want to scream. Do something! Smack him! Love her! Really? Is that all you have to say??

The problem is most noticeable with the H/H, but it can also apply to secondary characters. And it is worse with SFR because so many of its writers come out of the science fiction tradition of “ideas first”. Too many writers figure if you get the world-building right, you’re home free. Not so, especially if you hope to create a romance within the pages of your book. For that you need real people.

No villains or villains missing in action. Just because you are writing a science fiction romance does not mean all the conflict must be internal (between the H/H). Or just because you’re in space does not mean all the external conflict must be at a distance. Too many of the books I read either had no identifiable villains or had them “out there” in the enemy ship only. I never saw them, felt them, smelled them. They had no names, faces, thoughts.

Several of the books had a villain, but he didn’t make an appearance until halfway through the book—way too late to make a difference in building conflict. Some editors hate flashbacks, but if that’s what you have to do to introduce your villain early on, I say take the hit for the flashback rather than wait until Chapter Twenty to show your reader the villain's ugly mug. A flashback at least has the advantage of a scene playing in “real time”, rather than having a character “tell” us about what happened years ago to make him hate an invisible villain.

A great villain is indispensable to a great book. Don’t leave us hanging without one.

Where’s the romance? I don’t care what the heat level is, if you have set out to write a science fiction romance, you have to pay attention to the relationship between the hero and the heroine. That means the relationship is equal to the other parts of the story. Sexual tension between the characters builds in an arc the same way the story line builds in an arc, the same way change happens within the characters themselves. It leads to something in the end. If you don’t know what I mean by all that, you will frustrate and disappoint any readers (like me) who hope to see your hero and heroine find love with each other. You will make us wonder why there is a man and a woman in this story at all. Why not just a guy or just a woman? Or two buddies?

Is that all? The biggest disappointment of all my reads was one terrific story that had me tearing along at a great pace with fully developed characters, enough sexual tension between the H/H that I could overlook the fact that they were not going to actually consummate the relationship and even the hint of villainy, when skreeeeeee! the thing skidded to a halt in what seemed to be the middle of the story. I sat there with my e-reader in my lap going, “Huh?” I had to read back over the last few pages of the story to realize the author had wrapped up the “mystery” of the tale in the midst of a chaos of fighting.

Okay, so we could maybe have spent a little more time with that, ya think? The ending of a book is crucial—all the pieces must come together just so, like an elaborate dinner that has to hit the table hot and perfectly garnished all at the same time. It can’t look too easy—like in the book Laurie read—or we won’t believe it; it can’t leave things out or gloss them over, or we’ll miss them. The pacing has to make us want to stay up until all hours turning pages, but it can’t drop us in a pile heaving and sweating at the end. I think the word we want is denouement. Wrap up all the loose ends. Make sure we know where your H/H are going next. Make us want to read your next book.

Is that a lot to ask? Yeah. But the great books do all that and more. The ones that don’t miss it by that much. And that much is everything.

Donna’s Journal

Ping Pong

Congratulations, Laurie, on your contest success this season and particularly on snagging the interest of at least one publisher for your manuscript with the Gotcha! Contest. I share your frustration with the feeling of being “stuck” in second or third place, without a first-place win. My own Trouble in Mind seems to have the same problem. I wonder if it’s not simply our relatively unpopular SFR subgenre being forced to compete against the more “acceptable” vamps and werewolves, demons and angels. TIM is more clearly SFR from the get-go, where my first manuscript had a more romantic suspense feel to it and got a few first-place wins. Just a thought.

Cheers, Donna

TIME TRAVEL NO CHALLENGE FOR KING

Since H.G. Wells built his famous Time Machine, time travel has been a staple of science fiction and SFR. The heroes and heroines of countless novels, television shows and movies good and bad have used any number of devices, from tunnels and portals of all kinds, to slingshots around the sun, Guardians of Forever, discs placed in library players, and machines and conveyances of every description to propel themselves to another time and place.

The rules governing these trips through time have been as varied as the means of transportation. Every author or screenwriter has a different grasp on the slippery eel of time travel and a different way around the paradoxes that threaten to derail every attempt to manipulate the past. And as difficult as it is to think through the ramifications of movement through time, time travel just seems an irresistible draw to SF/SFR writers.

Now even Stephen King has entered the fray with his latest novel, sending his hero back in time to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 11/22/63. Not surprisingly, King has come up with an intriguing set of parameters for his time travel: the portal (found by accident in the back room of a diner soon to be replaced by an L.L. Bean outlet) opens up on the same location at the same hour of the morning of September 9, 1958. If his hero, Jake Epping, takes the same actions every time through the portal, the same actions will follow—the same conversations, the same people crossing his path, etc. But if he changes his actions, other reactions follow, in a chain which has far-reaching consequences, not all of which can be predicted. Every time he leaves the past to return to 2011, the changes remain in place, but if he goes through the portal to 1958 again, things reset to zero. That is, it is as if he had never been there the first time.

If he makes money and puts it in a bank account the first time through, or buys a car or makes a friend, those things are all gone if he goes back to 2011 and returns again to 1958 the next day. (He can spend as much “time” as he wants in the past; when he returns to 2011, only two minutes will have passed.) If he saves a life in 1958 and goes back to 2011, that person will live only as long as he doesn’t return to 1958. Once he returns to the past, everything is reset; he will have to save that life all over again.

And there’s another complication—the past itself seems to be setting up roadblocks, making it difficult for Jake to do what he has set about to do. Minor obstacles—cars breaking down, power outages—interfere with the test cases he’s set up to prove he can actually change the past. Then major problems begin appearing as he gets more serious about his task—run-ins with the bookie he’s been using to make money to finance his stay, the draw of community and connection at the school where he works, love with the librarian at that school, a horrific suicide attack by the librarian’s ex-husband.

Many times Jake is tempted to give up on his quest to murder Lee Harvey Oswald and alter the course of history, a quest he’s undertaking not so much for himself, but out of a sense of obligation to the dying man who began it all, the owner of the diner. The more he learns about Oswald, the more he wonders whether he has it in him to kill this pitiable creature. And yet he realizes how much is at stake.

As usual, King brings his gripping story-telling skills and marvelous characterization to this tale. He has us from the first sentence and doesn’t let go, with that wonderful, deceptively rambling voice of his giving Jake life and letting us see 1958 from his eyes. King chose wisely in making Jake around 35. Until he lives it, Kennedy and Vietnam and the Cuban Missile Crisis (which happens while Jake is stalking Oswald), is all just a history lesson, and a vague one at that. He explains to someone that he’s just an English teacher; he doesn’t understand the politics. He, like the rest of us, learns the hard way when he walks into a bar on a night in October and sees that “everyone was watching the man I had come to save. He was pale and grave. There were dark circles under his eyes.”

That’s just the way I remember it, too, Steve. I was only nine, but even I didn’t miss the implications of that speech.

I can’t tell you how the book ends. Haven’t gotten that far. (And wouldn’t anyway—everyone hates a spoiler.) I just know that the thing that’s usually enough to give even James T. Kirk a headache is no more than another notch in the handle of the best gunslinger in the writing biz. Time travel? Yeah, that one’s easy for Stephen King. Just like all the rest.

Donna’s Journal

Action!
Actions I've taken as a writer. Where am I? What am I doing?

January 15 is the deadline for the Washington Romance Writers 2012 Marlene Awards contest. This year’s Paranormal category finals judge will be Heather Osborn of Samhain Publishing. I’ll be entering both my manuscripts, Unchained Memory and Trouble in Mind in this one, in hopes of snagging a final and the attention of this editor at the well-respected e-publishing firm. I’ve never had much luck with the Marlene before, but I’ll put it down to the contest coming early in the season. Now I’ll be submitting two well-traveled and polished manuscripts, so maybe I’ll have a better chance. If you’re interested in giving me some competition (spitsnarl!) the link is www.wrwdc.com .

Cheers, Donna

To Space With the TechNerd Brigade!

How about a little hope for the New Year?

The effort to keep the U.S. competitive in space may be showing new life thanks to a friendly race between multi-millionaire tech geeks. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is the latest to join the private space technology scramble, bankrolling the design and construction of the widest airplane ever built to carry a new commercial spaceship high into the atmosphere. From there the ship would blast off into orbit using a booster rocket, a method that saves fuel (and money) over conventional rocket launches. The spaceship could hold as many as six people.

Allen is working with aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan on the project. Space Exploration Technologies, a company owned by Paypal’s Elon Musk, will provide the space capsule and booster rocket for the venture, called Stratolaunch. Together the airplane-and-booster system represent “a radical change” in how people can get to space and it will “keep America in the forefront of space exploration,” Allen said.

Allen and Musk are not the only cyberspace tycoons with an interest in space exploration. One of Allen’s chief competitors is Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com Inc., founder of the private space company Blue Origin. Blue Origin received $3.7 million in NASA funds to develop a rocket to carry astronauts. However, its initial flight test ended in failure last August.

What is fascinating is that Allen freely admits he is following a childhood dream:
“When I was growing up, America’s space program was the symbol of aspiration . . . For me, the fascination with space never ended. I never stopped dreaming what might be possible.”

For those attracted to difficult technical challenges, space is the ultimate challenge, he said. “It’s also the ultimate adventure. We all grew up devouring science fiction and watching Mercury and Gemini, Apollo and the space shuttle. And now we are able to be involved in moving things to the next level.”

For a writer, what is truly wonderful about that statement is that Allen so easily equates the dream with the reality, science fiction with science fact. If you can dream it, you can make it happen. If you have the will.

Of course, ceding the domain of space to private enterprise has its drawbacks, and science fiction has envisioned that future, too. The Space Merchants, by Frederick Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth, the ALIEN movies and other examples too numerous to mention have warned us of the dangers of letting profit drive the exploration of space. But these men seem at least as motivated by a sense of wonder as by the lure of any possible riches to be made out there. They are willing to go where our government is so far unwilling or unable to go.

So, good luck, fellas. You’ve found a much better way to spend your money than collecting cars and villas. May you live long and prosper and get us where we all want so much to go.

[Information for this post based on an article by Donna Blankenship and Seth Borenstein, Associated Press; photo courtesy Stratolaunch Systems.]

Donna’s Journal

Action!
Actions we've taken as writers. Where are we? What are we doing?
Those of you who are involved in trying to sell the written word in any way are well aware of the state of disarray in which the publishing industry currently finds itself. Agent Elaine English, speaking to the December meeting of the Virginia Romance Writers, suggested that this may have been the most disruptive year in publishing since Gutenberg.

English, who owns and operates her own agency in Washington, D.C., explained that with the rise of digital publishing, the legitimizing of self-publishing, the decline in traditional print book sales and the scramble for profits, no one in the industry is quite sure what to do. No one wants to make the wrong move, but at the same time, no one wants to be left behind. The result is a kind of paralysis in some quarters and furious change in others.

A few things do seem to be clear, according to English: the so-called “legacy” publishers are increasingly conservative, leaving new writers or slow sellers out in the cold. On the other hand, new opportunities with digital publishers or self-publishing are rising for those writers as e-publication in all its permutations becomes more respectable. Self-pubbing is no longer the dirty word it once was. However, anyone going that route had better be very savvy of the production, promotion and sales work required to make a go of it.

Those seeking publication with established digital presses should be aware that the contractual process is more complicated than it used to be, with both more rights and longer terms being sought than just a few years ago. English, who is also an attorney familiar with publishing law, suggested hiring an experienced attorney to review your contracts, even if you don’t have an agent working for you full time.

English spoke to the largest gathering of writers ever for a VRW Christmas luncheon. At one point she commented that she admired us for our perseverance in the face of all these obstacles, wondering, “Why do you keep doing this?” Most of us could only shake our heads. As Harlan Ellison once put it, we write because we can’t not write. It’s a curse.

Or a blessing.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa

And Happy New Year—I’ll be back in 2012!

Donna

BEAM ME UP, SANTA: WHY NOT AN SF CHRISTMAS STORY?

Yes, boys and girls, it’s that time of year again. Time to deck the passageways, string up a few LED lights around the bridge and call it Hanukkahchristmaskwanzaa (or Ursplz if you hail from Terzon III, where the winter solstice comes once every three Earth years). Any excuse to celebrate, I always say.

Actually, I’m a huge fan of the holiday season. I go all out, bingeing on spirit (the nonalcoholic kind, usually) from Thanksgiving until Epiphany, when I’ll reluctantly take down the decorations and store them away for another year. Most years of my childhood, my single mom strove to make things bright, but we did have a few memorably tough holidays. I figure a person can have two responses to bad holiday memories. You can let them sour you forever on Christmas, or you can do what I’ve chosen to do. I’ve decided I’m in control now, so it’s a wonderful life at my house every year. So there.

I do think we are missing something important in the festivities, however. We need a good science fiction Christmas movie. That’s right, think about it. In all the vast library of cinematic SF, there is only one example of a plotline set around Christmas—1964’s SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS. This is a movie widely acknowledged to be among the worst ever made. What a disgrace! Take two of my favorite things, put them together and what do you get? Garbage, that’s what!

Surely we can do better. I did search the Internet Movie Database (I lurrve me some Imdb!!) in hopes of finding out if someone had. My search yielded one other title: EDWARD SCISSORHANDS!! Okay, first of all, does this admittedly excellent Tim Burton film starring Johnny Depp really qualify as SF? I suppose it does have some key scenes set at Christmas, but it’s not quite what I had in mind.

I was thinking more along the lines of this alien who crash-lands somewhere in the Arctic Circle. He has skills—telekinesis and control of time and some forms of energy. He adapts to his new environment, gets a sleigh and a herd of reindeer and, uh, improves them. Then he begins to see what a crazy, needy world he’s landed on. How can he help? He taps into a local legend and voila!

I’m thinking maybe J.J. Abrams and Stephen Spielberg might want to collaborate on this one again like they did on SUPER 8. I’m sure we could throw a kid in there somewhere. Maybe an Inuit girl discovers “Santa” testing out the new souped-up sleigh on the ice, and so on. She should have a dog. And a single mom—oooh, there’s the romance connection! Dang, this can’t lose!

See? All you need is a little Hanukkahchristmaskwanzaaursplz spirit and inspiration flows like eggnog! Here’s hoping you find lots of all three under your Christmas tree this season.

Donna’s Journal

Ping Pong

I think your costume is terrific, Laurie (and be brave—go for the peek-a-boo top under the vest!). I’ve seen it all at TREK cons, believe me, and this seems quite classy. I’m not a dress-up type at all, though it’s the first question I’m asked when people learn I used to go to TREK cons. I’d much rather see what others come up with and, like Kaye says, let people remember me for my book rather than my “look”. (Soon enough I’ll be air-brushing my photos, too—they won’t even recognize the “real” me at book signings!)

Cheers, Donna

Donna’s Journal

Action! Actions we've taken as writers. Where are we? What are we doing?

I just have time for a quick note this week. (Thank goodness Laurie and Sharon are back full force.) Homework for my online course is still keeping me busy, I spent last weekend out of town and, oh, yeah, I’m still plugging away on the first draft of Fools Rush In.

The deadline for the RWA 2012 Golden Heart submissions is November 15, a mere three weeks away. Believe it or not, the decision to enter the contest is not a given for me this year. I’m thinking hard about it, seeing as how Unchained Memory has had two shots at it already and Trouble in Mind may have hidden problems that could keep it out of the running. Laurie is lobbying heavily for me to go for it (thanks for the vote of confidence, partner!), but we’ll see what she says after she reads the ms. for TIM, which is in her hands as we speak!

Ping Pong
We respond to our co-bloggers . . .

Laurie’s post about the superfast interstellar Internet came at a good time for me—just as I was trying to figure out how my Fools Rush In heroine, Rayna, could send a message from my hero’s ship in deep space to another Rescue agent on the planet she had hoped to reach. I really wanted to have them speak in real time—that would have made for the most dramatic impact—but “real” science wouldn’t let me do it. Oh, for the days of TREK fanfic, when I could have just relied on good ole subspace radio, whatever that was! Even with relays, you’d still be limited by the speed of light, so talking back and forth is pretty much out. I settled on sending message “packets” via photon burst, relayed in the same way the ships are by jumps through stable quantum nodes. You’d have to wait for the replies though. Snail mail for the stars.

This little problem is one of many that is making me realize I’m not quite cut out for space-faring SFR. I do much better when the aliens come to me—that is, when my humans control the field of battle here on Earth and the aliens are on hostile territory, have to bring their tech with them and so on. Life onboard the Shadowhawk is feeling very constrained right now, and I can’t wait to get my protagonists dirtside. They won’t be on Earth, but at least they’ll have a little more elbow room and the dramatic possibilities (aside from battles between ships, of course) will expand correspondingly.

Which brings me to the old question of what label to slap on what we write. That question is intimately tied to the question of who we think will want to read our stuff. And that is at the heart of our “problem” when it comes to selling ourselves to agents, editors and new readers alike. I decided a while back to make a concerted effort to sell to the romance audience, rather than the hardcore science fiction audience. Why? For one thing I, myself, had nearly stopped reading new SF because it lacked any appreciation for character development, never mind anything so Earth-bound as romance. And as soon as I picked up my first “time-travel” romance, I realized I’d been writing romance all along in my TREK fanfic—structurally, emotionally, and in every other way.

Romance is primarily character-driven. Science fiction is primarily idea-driven. As a writer you have to decide if your story is mostly driven by its characters or its ideas. If it’s the former, and those characters happen to be in love, then you’d do better to abide by the rules of the romance genre and work to sell your book to that audience, whether it has aliens in it or not.

I’m not convinced the hardcore SF audience wants character-driven stories at all, no matter what kind of sex those characters are having. The primarily male SF audience wants the technological world-building, the scientific details, the ideas that can make your brain hurt. They want writing that is evocative, but rarely emotional. Those guys would never in a million years agree that Anne McCaffery or Diane Gabaldon belong in a list of science fiction anything.

That said, I think there is an audience out there for character-driven stories—romances—that also have a science fiction element to them. I just think we have a better chance of opening minds among the romance readers—who have already embraced vampires, werewolves, demons, angels, cowboys, the entire male population of Regency England, the guys next door, cops, private eyes, doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs (well, maybe not lawyers)—as heroes. Why not aliens, starship captains, space pirates, alien hunters and so on? Fanfic readers have certainly embraced them for years and remain, I believe, an untapped resource for SFR writers.

At least, I have to believe it’s possible. I’m just not right-brained enough to compete with Vernor Vinge and the boys.

Cheers, Donna

Donna’s Journal
Brevity is the Soul of Wit; or
Dog Days Edition II

Time has gotten the better of me this Friday, so I just have a few brief notes to pass on. The good news is that I have returned to work on my WIP Fools Rush In, the third in my Interstellar Rescue series, this one set entirely away from Earth. I discovered the missing element in that story, the piece that, like a misfiring piston, was keeping the engine from starting up. It should have been obvious, but for some reason, it wasn’t.

The story lacked a villain.

Oh, it had generic bad guys and forces that worked against my hero and heroine and all that. Things happened that kept them from their goal (and from each other). There was even a mysterious mastermind behind the dimwitted plotters who are murdered before they can talk. It was like my writer’s intuition had been screaming at me for chapters to invent this guy, and I just wasn’t listening. I was dragging my feet and hemming and hawing and things were going SO SLOWLY, all because I wasn’t paying attention to what my instincts were trying to tell me.

Villainy needs a face. And a name. And his or her own motivation. In short, the villain should be a distinct CHARACTER, not just Evil or The Others or some such. Seems so easy when you put it like that, right? (Well, it IS just a first draft, after all!)

I suspect the plotting will go much faster now that I’ve got my ears on straight.

Although my plan to read my way out of the doldrums seems to be working, I’m not about to give up just yet. My current read is Eloisa James’s delightful A Kiss Before Midnight, the Cinderella story retold as only the very funny queen of historical romance can do it. I thought James’s Regency take on TV’s House was a hoot, but this one is even better. I’ve been laughing out loud for days and falling in love with the hero and heroine at the same time. Wonderful!

Cheers, Donna

Donna’s Journal
Bookshelf
Books we're reading and mini-reviews . . .

Well, the dog days have hit, it’s a hundred degrees in Virginia, my grandson’s summer visit is over, and I feel like a starship drifting along on impulse. I can barely drag myself to the computer to complete the revisions on my “old” manuscripts in case anyone asks for them, much less fire up my creative spirit to do any new work. We all have these low-energy slumps, and I don’t fret over them. I pick up a book (or two, or seven) and read the results of someone else’s hard work.

The RWA National Conference is always a great source of new reading material (and new authors) and this year’s con was no different. I started with Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander, the mother of all Scottish Highlander/time travel/ historical romances, one of the free giveaways at the authors’ opening panel speech in NY. Having read some of the “children” of this very popular subgenre—most notably Karen Marie Moning’s Highlander novels—I was curious about how such a huge trend could have found its start in what another panel at the conference called a “bumblebee book”.

When it came out in 1991, Outlander was a book that should never have flown—it was too long; it had too many historical details for a romance, too much romance for a historical; and there was this odd element of time travel—the heroine steps into a stone circle and is thrown back in time from 1945 to 1741. In the story the hero and heroine don’t meet right away, don’t begin their romance for another hundred pages; the author tends to go off on tangents about every little thing—medicinal plants, witchcraft, horse training, 18th Century European politics. And, perhaps bravest of all, the hero suffers abuse at the hands of the villain that would still be seen as shocking not only in historical romance, but in paranormal or urban fantasy as well.

Two things keep the book miraculously in the air, and both are the consequence of Gabaldon’s huge, uplifting talent. The first is the heroine’s remarkable voice. Claire Beauchamp Randall Fraser (she has occasion to use all three last names in the course of the book) has such a unique way of seeing the world—endlessly curious, compassionate, intelligent and brave—that you can’t help but want to hear all about it. If she stops to take a detour through some lost battlefield or 18th Century hospital, you forgive her, because she makes it so damn interesting. The emotions she describes—her own and those of the people around her—are just as real and finely drawn, as vivid as if this were a diary written by a perceptive observer.

It is because Claire falls in love with him that we fall in love with Jamie Fraser, the hero of the story. We see him completely from her point of view, but she allows us a deep insight into his character because he holds nothing back from Claire and she accepts him as he is. Writing from the first person is an extraordinarily difficult task—there’s always something you need to tell from the other person’s POV—but Gabaldon has managed it here with skill.

The second engine keeping this book in flight is Gabaldon’s talent for keeping the pressure on her protagonists. When you are reading along and every few pages you find yourself yelping, “Oh, my God!” or “Oh, no, she didn’t!”, you know you’re in the hands of a master. I had a writing teacher once who explained the process of creating fiction as taking a protagonist and giving him or her problems to solve. Well, Gabaldon gives Clair and Jamie problems in spades. Piles them on. I wish I could give a brief recounting of one example of this, but paraphrasing it just wouldn’t do it justice. Let me simply say that in one chapter of the second book of the Outlander series, Dragonfly in Amber, there are about seven reversals of fortune in the span of ten pages, ending with Claire literally running into the villain in the midst of an escape from someone else. Oh, and then there was her escape from him, so I guess that makes eight.

By my mention of the second in the series, it’s obvious I’m hooked on Outlander. Of course, Gabaldon doesn’t help her readers by ending each of her books on a cliffhanger. I did stop myself after the second book, though, making myself wait and read something else in between “episodes” of the Claire and Jamie story. Otherwise I’d be wrapped in a tartan and talking like Montgomery Scott until my husband disowned me.

The change of pace I chose was quite dramatic—Barbara Elsborg’s contemporary erotic masterpiece Strangers. Here is another book in that category of bumblebees—things that soar when they shouldn’t even get off the ground—and that big buzz you hear is the sound of readers who LOVE this book. Include me now as one of them.

Strangers is the story of Charlie and Kate, two lovers who meet as they are trying to drown themselves in the ocean. Not a promising start, one would think, but again, the story is saved by Barbara’s (and I’ll use her first name since she’s a “blog friend”) great talent for creating two characters who seem so real, so vulnerable, so warm and willing to try again that we can’t help but love them.

Charlie, a musician/film star almost destroyed by his fame, and Kate, a waitress with hidden talents and a devastating past, find each other at the lowest point in their lives and make plenty of mistakes along the way to a better future together. They aren’t helped by Charlie’s scheming agent or Kate’s so-called friends, either. What is wonderful (and awful) about Barbara’s story is the depth of human detail, the sense of reality in the dialogue between these two damaged people. Barbara doesn’t hit a false note anywhere, even though the material is often difficult—child abuse, grief, betrayal, abandonment. And yet, Charlie and Kate often face their lives with humor, and their relationship uses it to good advantage—Charlie is attracted to Kate because she refuses to treat him with kid gloves. Even while the two are still in the ocean at the very beginning of the story that humor emerges to save the book from the maudlin.

The question arises (in my mind, at least) as to what separates this novel from any “mainstream” contemporary romance, aside from the fact that it comes from a recognized publisher of erotica (Ellora’s Cave) and contains rather more than the usual number of sex scenes. I certainly wouldn’t compare it to other erotic novels I’ve read lacking well-developed plot, defined characters or, ahem, redeeming social value. But then, Barbara’s work is always a cut above, no matter what label you give it.

Cheers, Donna

BEAM 'EM UP, COWBOY!

If you’re going to make a movie with the title COWBOYS AND ALIENS, you’d best have a sense of humor. Fortunately for their audience, director Jon Favreau and writers Damon Lindelof and Roberto Orci/Alex Kurtzman, maintained tongues firmly in cheek while crafting this tale of visitors from space landing smack in the middle of the usual wild west hoohah.

Daniel Craig turns in a creditable job as a post-modernist Man With No Name, waking up in the desert in the first scene with no memory and a big ole shiny thing-a-ma-bob on his wrist that no amount of hitting with a rock will dislodge. Harrison Ford shows up soon enough in the growly role of semi-evil cattle baron. He’s there to rescue his worthless, cowardly son, who’s been shootin’ up the town, but as soon as he lays eyes on Craig, he recognizes him and wants to kill him. Too late—the sheriff (Keith Carradine, always good in a cowboy hat) has already identified him as a wanted criminal and will hang no man before his time.

In the middle of all this, dad-burned ALIENS show up and really start shootin’ up the town, lassoing (yes, literally) citizens along the way. As you might imagine, six-shooters have little effect against what appear to be atmosphere-capable starfighters. But, much like Frodo’s Sting, our cowboy hero’s magic wristband begins to glow as soon as the aliens appear over the horizon and blasts one of the ships clean out of the sky.

Are we having fun yet? Well, yee-haw, you bet we are! Throw in Olivia Wilde as the Mysterious Woman, Adam Beach as Harrison Ford’s much-abused half-Indian foster son/ranch foreman (think John Wayne and Jeffrey Hunter in THE SEARCHERS), Indian attackers-turned-allies, a doctor called Reverend and a bartender called Doc and a priceless scene between Ford and a small boy recounting the horrific history of a knife and you’ve got more than enough to keep you entertained for two hours.

I gather some critics were disappointed that this movie does not meet expectations for opening up a whole new crossover subgenre for exploitation. Well, no. What it does is exploit beloved clichés of both genres for pure entertainment value. Even the reason the aliens come to Earth is based on a common Western theme—they want gold. Gold is an excellent conductor and might be rare and useful to any advanced species, so it actually works here, too. There is no depth at all to this movie, but who cares? If you are a fan of Westerns and SF, and you can relax about it, you’ll have a good time.

Similarly, I wouldn’t look for depth in TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON. It’s all action all the time in this third installment of the Transformers franchise, which is just as well. The few moments we spend with Shia LaBeouf’s whiny, not-too-bright Sam Witwicky are largely a waste of time. And, fanboys, here’s an announcement: a guy like Witwicky would never have a girlfriend like Carly (model Rosie Huntington-Whitely). Just doesn’t happen. And, no offense, Hollywood, but I’m tired of seeing it onscreen when the flip-side—a “loser” female paired with a handsome, rich male—is never seen.

Two things save this two-and-a half-hour homage to Hasbro’s ingenious toy inventions of the Eighties: the effects, which are spectacular, and the wacky performances of some of Hollywood’s best. John Malkovich is a hoot as the self-parodying CEO of a megacorporation that hires Witwicky. Frances McDormand does a hilarious turn as the director of a government agency charged with minding the Transformers. Patrick Dempsey is beautiful—and smarmy—as Witwicky’s erstwhile rival. John Turturro chews the scenery nearly as effectively as the Decepticon’s grinding gear-and-bladed python. And Ken Jeong provides a good ten minutes of completely meaningless fun as one of Witwicky’s co-workers.

I was delighted to recognize Leonard Nimoy’s unmistakable rasp as the voice of Sentinel Prime. What better excuse for any number of TREK references in the dialogue throughout the film?

Okay, so far I’ve given one A and one B. Sorry to say I have to give a C this time out, too. CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER had a lot going for it, but falters by taking itself way too seriously. You would think “camp” would be written all over a script that includes evil Nazis in possession of a secret formula; a villain with a red skull bent on world domination; a wasp-waisted female “handler” with a crush; and a hero that goes from 90-pound weakling to bulked-up he-man in seconds and uses a machine gun and an American-flag shield as his weapons of choice. But, no, everyone except Tommy Lee Jones (as the Army general who is supposed to find a use for “Captain America”) and Hugo Weaving (as Doctor Nazi Red Skull) seems to be treating this as Oscar material. Puh-leeze.

I could even have tolerated this until the ending, which, not to give away anything to those who haven’t seen it, is nothing more than a blatant come-on for a sequel. Well, I won’t be on pins-and-needles waiting for that one to come out.

DONNA’S JOURNAL

The August, 2011 issue of Romance Writers Report, the official magazine of Romance Writers of America, features an article by Larissa Ione, author of the Lords of Deliverance series of apocalyptic romance on dystopic, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic romance fiction. The end of the world has some appeal as a subject for SFR, says Ione, even beyond YA and digital publishers (a viewpoint I heard expressed among editors and agents at the conference in New York, also). The author points out, however, that working with such dark material isn’t always easy. As always, the worldbuilding must be meticulous, but not overwhelming. Some readers prefer man-made disasters, others, natural ones. And finding time for love among the ruins is a challenge. The article is available online for members at http://rwanational.org/.

Cheers, Donna

SEE NO EVIL: PRIEST'S DARK FUTURE

Well, the critics may have pronounced PRIEST undead on arrival, but I found plenty to like in this post-apocalyptic SF/vampire horror hybrid. A constellation of stars who can act—Paul Bettany in the title role, Karl Urban as his nemesis “Black Hat”, Maggie Q (of “Nikita” fame) as the woman who fights by his side, and Brad Dourif and Christopher Plummer to chew the scenery with dignified relish—lifts the movie above its humble “B” status. And beyond its genre-blending premise, a retro-SF, steampunkish look infuses the film, making this more than the usual popcorn fare.

Unlike the stylish, corporate-evil vamps of 2009’s DAYBREAKERS, the bloodsucking creatures of PRIEST are naked, alien, eyeless monsters, and they have lost the war with humanity in this alternate universe. Some twisted version of the Catholic church has vanquished them, using an army of warrior-priests, and now rules over a dispirited remainder of the human race in walled cities. Outside those cities, humans still live in isolated outposts, mostly free of the influence of the church, but vulnerable to predators of all sorts.

When the Priest receives word in the city that his niece has been kidnapped from a remote outpost, he tries to convince his church superiors that vampires have taken her, and begs permission to go after them. But admitting to the truth of this attack would undermine the church’s official position that the vamps are no longer a threat. The monsignors forbid him to go. Of course, he goes anyway.

His search for his niece takes him into the desert wilderness, where, in the manner of all quests, the Priest acquires both wisdom and companions. His niece’s lover (Cam Gigandet), the trigger-happy young sheriff of the outpost town she called home, had been the one to fetch him from the city. The kid insists on pursuing the vamps with the Priest, even after his first encounter leaves him frozen with fear. And, of course, the Priestess (Maggie Q), one of several of his church brethren sent to punish him for defying his superiors, reveals her long-hidden love for him as she gives up everything to fight with him. (That moment sounds corny, but it’s handled with much restraint, reminiscent of scenes in CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON.)

The plot has a few interesting twists and turns, which I won’t reveal here in case you plan to see the film. Suffice it to say the vamps are planning a comeback, led by a vamp/human hybrid (Karl Urban). The kidnapping was merely a ruse to lure the Priest in for the conversion or the kill. He must find a way to save his niece and stop the coming attack on the cities before the popcorn runs out. Vampires die spectacularly. Things blow up. The good guys win. And the Priest rides off into the desert, setting the stage for a possible sequel.

As I said—what’s not to like?

Donna’s Journal

Action!
Actions I've taken as a writer. Where am I? What am I doing?

I led off this week with more new material on Fools Rush In, but Tuesday I read my last chapters of Trouble in Mind for my critique partner, Linda. That session, and feedback from another contest in which I did not place, have led to more revisions on the manuscript, both major and minor. I’m rethinking my approach to the story overall and may be discussing that with my blog partners and IP’s extraordinaire, Sharon and Laurie here in the next week or so.

As always the issue is how much SF is too much for the general audience? How and when do we present all that SF info? Trouble in Mind is a much more SF-heavy story—a third of it takes place with the bad guy alien on his planet—and though what happens there is the entire justification for what happens on Earth with the hero and heroine, it is in some ways separate. For that reason (and also because she just doesn’t care for SF), my CP is voting those sections off the island. **sigh**

I thought by mixing the familiar with the unfamiliar I could interest the “muggles” in strange new worlds, but it seems no matter how much they love the mundane parts of my stories, they still hate anything that smacks of off-planet. And, no, I don’t write anything approaching hard SF. I’d be laughed out of WorldCon as a lightweight.

I bring this up not to whine (though this is a journal—some whining is surely allowed), but because I think as writers in a new sub-genre we’re all struggling with this balancing act in one way or another. Agents, editors, writers—everyone in the business is trying to figure out just where SFR fits, because no one is really sure just who our readers are (or will be). To a certain extent, I think your audience will depend on your book more than your categorization as “SFR”.

For example, my work has a strong romantic suspense component (like J.J. Abrams meets Linda Howard), so the right marketing strategy could bring in a lot of new RS readers. Laurie’s strong space/science orientation will draw more interest from traditional SF fans. Sharon’s supernatural underpinnings will speak to readers of paranormal romance. And yet all of us can be said to write SFR, with a very different balance of SF and R.

So it’s back to the drawing board (or the computer) for me on this “troublesome” manuscript. At least I have some expert help close to hand as I struggle to find my way.

Cheers, Donna

Donna’s Journal


Special Edition

Some days you wonder if it’s worth it to get up out of bed and stagger to the keyboard.

I write for two hours early in the morning four days a week, in addition to whatever hours I can get in during the rest of the day. And I’m a nightowl. So it isn’t easy to resist the urge to throw the alarm across the room, turn over and go back to sleep.

Especially when the latest feedback from contest judges comes back, and it’s negative or unthinking or, worse, mystifying. It seems especially cruel since I’d just spent two weeks making sure I was very clear about my reasons for scoring the entries I’d reviewed as a judge—as per my instructions from the contest coordinators. But I have to take a deep breath and look at my contest scores again. Two of the four judges loved my work. One offered useful feedback (comments, it turns out I’ve already begun incorporating in later drafts), and only one can be dismissed as “not relevant” (or other much less polite terms).

Okay. I can do this.

The alarm goes off. I get up and keep writing.

The email comes from the editor who’s been reviewing my manuscript. She thinks it’s very good, but in the end, feels it’s not right for her. You, my faithful blog readers (all five of you), will laugh to hear she thought the science fiction in my book overwhelmed the romance. As one of my friends said, evidently she didn’t make it to Chapter Eight. **sigh** Hoist, as they say, by my own petard. Whatever a petard may be.

I really want to sleep in the next morning. But I get up, sit myself in front of the computer and stare at the offending manuscript. For two hours. With no result. My baby is perfect, thank you very much. I don’t care if everyone else thinks she has two heads and a tail. Now, of course, if you’re offering to pay me to whack off one head and the tail, I’ll consider it.

The biggest problem, though, is when that damn alarm rings and you know you have nothing waiting for you at the computer but a blinking cursor. Somehow that ever-flowing fountain of ideas and dialogue and scenarios and character details has just slowed to a trickle. These are the days when it seems you are fighting your story for every word, bleeding each phrase onto the page, slogging through one page at a time. Maybe it’s the wrong story, you think. Or the wrong approach. Maybe I should start with this scene, or that one. In desperation you skip to something five chapters ahead that does seem clear to you and write that out. And you wait. Because, if your Muse works like mine, eventually the tap will start to flow again. Your subconscious will solve that little plot problem or character glitch and give you a solution.

That happened to me this week. I’d been struggling with my latest project, a space opera set in my Interstellar Rescue universe. The war had gone on so long, I thought maybe I was fighting a lost cause. Still, I kept at it, writing a page at a time, a bad scene at a time, until, finally, my writer’s intuition kicked in and gave me what I needed. I don’t think it would have happened if I’d given up and stayed in bed. And now I have something to get up for.

When the alarm rings tomorrow, I’ll be wide awake.

Cheers, Donna

Donna’s Journal


Action!
Actions I've taken as a writer. Where am I? What am I doing?

I continued my sojourn on the other side of the fence this week, reviewing entries as a judge for my local chapter’s annual writing contest. My hat is off to all judges everywhere, especially those who actually take the time to comment on the entries they’re given. It would be easy enough to simply read the pages and run through the scoresheet, I suppose. But to think through where the writers might be able to improve and give them legitimate praise where they have done well takes time. Or am I just a little obsessive-compulsive? Let’s just hope my judgees find the feedback helpful.

Meanwhile, I used what I learned from my judging experience to tighten up my entry for the 2011 Tampa Area Romance Authors contest. Boy, do my hero and heroine have goals, motivation and conflict now! And all in that first 4000 words!! Any of you who think you can out-GMC me should get a move on. The contest deadline is May 1. Details at http://www.tararwa.org/.

Pssst!
The latest buzz. Submission calls. New publishers. Industry changes. Inspirational sayings or quotes for writers. And our take on them.

RWA has finally announced the times and dates for signing up for agent/editor pitch appointments at the national RWA conference in New York City in June. Unlike past years, the one-day Oklahoma-land-rush-like stampede of writers eager to snag slots with their favorite agents and editors has been replaced with a slow-motion, agonizing Chinese-torture-like endurance contest stretching over several weeks.

As always, nominees for the 2011 Golden Heart and RITA Awards (are you listening, Laurie and Sharon?) will get first pick of the available slots, starting Tuesday, May 3, at 9:00 a.m. CDT (reminding us all that RWA HQ is in Texas). Next up will be GH and RITA nominees from 2010 and 2009, signing up on Monday, May 9, at 9:00 a.m., CDT. PAN and PRO members (that’s me, yay!) get a crack at slots starting Monday, May 16, 9:00 a.m. CDT. And, at last, everyone else gets a chance at whatever may be left, starting Monday, May 23, at, you guessed it, 9:00 a.m. CDT. Keep in mind that you must be registered for the conference in order to sign up for agent/editor meetings.

And, of course, once you obtain that coveted pitch slot, you may commence throwing up with anxiety.

Ping Pong
We'll comment back to our co-bloggers on things they've posted on their journals.

@Sharon—Welcome back. Sounds like Costa Rica was fun. Can’t wait to get a real glimpse of the Mystery Man. As for GP, amazing what some real time away from a manuscript will do for your perspective. Have a feeling I’ll be doing that myself soon!

@Laurie—Thanks for your tribute to the Endeavor. Such a sad time for NASA and all of us who grew up with the dream of space travel. Meanwhile,how’s the dress decision going?

Cheers,
Donna