'TIS THE SEASON TO . . . UM

Here in the mountains of Western North Carolina it’s still the dead of winter. The wind blows cold across the ridge, rattling dead branches and ruffling yellowed grasses. A few dry beans remain in the bottom of the jar, collected every time there was a foggy morning in August, each one a harbinger of snow before winter is out. What gravel there was on Snowbird Road, our connection to the outside world, is buried under four inches of slippery muck, which freezes into ruts when the temperature drops and thaws again into a muddy mess when the sun hits it.

Despite Paxutauny Phil’s dire prediction of six more weeks of this, there are already signs of spring. Yesterday, a flock of robins covered my back yard, digging for sustenance in the semi-frozen earth. Certain slender young red oaks have begun to blush slightly ruddy against the hillsides, not exactly budding, but somehow preparing for a change. And the birds, silent since late September, have begun to sing in the thin sunshine.

Winter, soon to be spring. And the book I just wrote, planning to release in November, is set in winter. Only now, due to circumstances beyond my control, Not Fade Away, Interstellar Rescue Book 4, will be released in spring—April 10, to be exact. All my lovely descriptions of snow in the mountains, of bare branches and icicles and bitter winds, will be completely wasted on readers basking in the sun at the beach. Arrggh! 

I suppose I could do a quick rewrite to change all the weather-related setting stuff. But I would invariably miss something in the rush to re-do the manuscript, which has been edited and formatted already. Besides, believe it or not, I already changed the setting once, early on, realizing when the original release date would put the book.

Those of you who set your books completely onboard starships are sniggering right now. No seasons to worry about for you! And, if you set your book on some other planet, who knows what their seasons are like, right? Yeah, I get it, it’s my fault if I set a large part of my books on Earth. Seasons come with the territory.

The question becomes how much readers really care about the predominant season they’re reading about. I’m re-reading Diana Galbadon’s excellent Outlander  series, and her descriptions are so detailed you could never lose track of what time of year you’re in. Beautiful—and accurate—lists of bird calls and wildflowers and weather patterns. Then, again, she covers an entire year within the span of a few chapters, so you can’t get too attached to a particular season, no matter how beguiling. The setting is important—whether it’s Scotland, the West Indies or North Carolina—but the plot and the characters are so compelling that you just have to keep reading.

I have to hope that will be the case for Not Fade Away, too. Otherwise, my readers will be forced to crank up the air conditioner and pull down the shades in the warm months to set the proper wintry mood.

Cheers, Donna

A REALITY METER SET ON LOW

As a fan and a writer of science fiction romance, my “reality meter” is set pretty low. In fact, I love all things paranormal, supernatural, weird, out-there, futuristic, not-readily-explainable and mind-expanding in addition to your usual adventure-in-space tales. I tend not to demand that a story fit within the normal boundaries of “real life.” I imagine most of you feel the same, dear readers, or you wouldn’t be reading this blog.

Though I will occasionally pick up a good history or biography, or catch an interesting TV documentary, I read—and watch—primarily for escape. That’s why I so often choose romance novels, which can not only transport me to another place and time, but also assure me of an emotionally satisfying ending. On-screen, too, I look for an experience that offers something very different from my daily life—a trip back into history, a glimpse at the future, an adventure in an exotic setting, or, at the very least, thrills and chills and stuff blowing up while I remain safe in my theater seat.

My mom (gone for many years now) always used to say she had no interest in soap operas because she had enough of that kind of drama in her own life. I react the same way to novels or films about dysfunctional families, young people trying to “find themselves,” romantic comedies, or—the latest trend—quirky old people on some kind of quest. (Apologies if those happen to be your favorite kind of stories or films; exceptional examples can always be found, of course.)

A friend with a much higher “reality meter” setting and I recently disagreed on just such a film: THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI. Now, already, this is not a film I normally would go for, with its premise of a woman (Frances McDormand) who seeks to shame the local police into solving her daughter’s rape/murder by calling them out publicly on said billboards. But the movie was filmed locally, and my friend recommended it. Since I like Frances McDormand, I tried it.

The acting was great, but the film was disappointing. In particular, I thought the ending left the audience (me) with no sense of closure. The film seemed to have no point, I protested to my friend. But, she responded, that’s just like real life. You often don’t get answers in real life.

Ah, but a film is not real life. It’s fiction, an artificial construct that may reflect real life to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the writer’s choices. The writer is in charge of that construct. The writer can give us answers, unlike real life. I can blame the writer (and the filmmaker in this case) for not giving me the answers I want.

This is the reason I rant and rave at the random killing of beloved characters on television series. I understand that sometimes actors need to leave and move on with their careers. But sometimes, writers just decide to kill characters off for the apparent hell of it (Game of Thrones, Blue Bloods, Walking Dead, Person of Interest, any number of others), weakening the story and leaving fans in gaping disbelief. 

In fiction, random acts do not occur. (I would also argue that truly random acts don’t occur in real life, either, but that’s just my personal philosophy.) Things happen in fiction because writers cause them to happen. In the fictional worlds I create, people die when I want them to die, for reasons I lay out carefully in the plot. These deaths cannot be avoided because they trigger other events; they push the hero and/or the heroine to action, or they signal a pivot in the plot. 

In the same way, if a story is left without an ending I find satisfying, it’s not because “real life” seldom has a neat ending, though that may be the writer’s argument. The writer chooses to tell the story a particular way, and chooses to end it a particular way. If that’s the case, then, as the reader (or film-goer), I can object to the writer’s choice.

Unlike in real life, where I can only act with the knowledge I have, then lodge a futile protest—or send out feelings of gratitude—to the Great Author in the Sky for whatever surprising turns my own story might take.

Cheers, Donna

IF NOT 'MY SECRET ALIEN BABY,' THEN WHAT?

During the discussion that lasted through several posts a few weeks ago here at Spacefreighters concerning a trend toward lurid covers and titles in SFR, I neglected to mention I was having my own little title crisis over Book 4 in my Interstellar Rescue series.

At that time, I was nearing the end of the first draft of the novel, which, for anyone else would be a second or third draft, since I edit as I go. I had a working title, which was everything you don’t want a title to be: vague, dull, tied to nothing in the plot or characters and of no use in determining what kind of book this was. I assumed when I began revisions of the draft, something more exciting would come to me.

Here's a hint: Gen. MacArthur says goodbye.

Well, guess what? I went through the manuscript, actively looking for title hints as I cut slow passages and sharpened dialogue, and . . . nothing. Nada. Zip.

I have a pattern for the titles in my series—three-word song titles, the first of which (Unchained Memory) was slightly modified. But the only song titles that presented themselves for this book steered the reader too much in the direction of romantic suspense or contemporary rather than SFR. Or they applied to the romantic plot and not the external plot (or vice versa). Or they made no sense at all unless you had read the book until the end. (I don’t know about you, but I hate it when I have to really think about how the author came up with that stupid title!)

I played word association games. I asked my walking group. I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep. I even considered running a contest to let my readers come up with the title. I’ve never had such trouble performing this basic function of writing life. And even now I worry that people will hate my choice, or not understand it, and won’t buy the book because of it.

Buddy Holly belts one out.

At least I have a plan to help readers with the understanding part. No one will have to spend more than a minute wondering where I came up with this title and what it means to the book they’re about to read, a story about a Rescue agent who brings his ailing father home to Earth to hide him from an alien assassin and falls in love with the extraordinary woman chosen to care for him. They’ll simply open the book and read this:

        “Old soldiers never die. They just fade away.”

                                  --General Douglas MacArthur

         “A love for real, not fade away.”

                                      --Buddy Holly

The title? Not Fade Away: Book 4, the Interstellar Rescue Series, a tribute to the Buddy Holly classic. Maybe not perfect, but it beats Follow the Sun, Daddy’s Home, Down to Earth, Last Starship Home and, especially, My Secret Alien-Fighter Lover.

 Cheers, Donna