Cheers, Donna
Friday, August 9, 2013
RECHARGING. . .
Cheers, Donna
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
A Pair of Projects and a new Who
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| Created by Liza O'Connor |
Summer is a hard time for me to write when I have my three monsters home for the holidays. But this year I don't even feel the inclination. Having done a short story and three sets of edits since the start of the year, attempting and once more failing CampNaNoWriMo, plus waiting for news on four projects that I hope to have contracts on, has apparently drained my muse. She's currently taking a break on the outer rim of the galaxy, and will let me know when she's ready to teleport back. :P
But I had two main projects I wanted to work on as and when time allowed. Firstly, I bit the bullet and claimed my dealer's table for WorldCon - LonCon 3 to be held in the UK in August 2014. Eeep! I have no idea what I'm doing but hope to gain a bit of experience at another con beforehand. Aside from taking my own work to the world's biggest scifi convention, I decided I wanted to represent the SFR Brigade too (and the talented other scifi authors I have the privilege of knowing). Top of my list of things that I want to promote is Tales from the SFR Brigade. Now, I could just print up leaflets/cards and put up a poster about it with links to the retail sites, but I know that people still like to see a physical product in their hands, despite the huge leap in popularity of the ebook. So I discussed the possibility of doing a one-off print edition to take as a display item to the con with Laurie. Just one that I can hand to people to look at, then give them a leaflet if they express an interest. After all, the dang thing is FREE, and hopefully by then it'll be up on Amazon too. So, more than a year since I've last done any work with a POD service, I'm back at lulu.com relearning all the things I learned back before I had a contract, when I thought I'd be self-publishing my work. At the moment it's still in the early draft stages as I need to reformat the master document to get rid of some weird spacings, and on the possibility of more artwork from the cover artist to give it a decent back cover. I'll update you all when there's been more significant progress. In the meantime, be aware that I'm willing to take swag (and even books as interest and packing space allows) from Brigade members and fellow scifi authors (it must be SF related) but I'll post again closer to the time. If you want to get updates, you can join the event on Facebook here.
Secondly, I volunteered to go review seeking for the anthology. I'd already intended to do so on a smaller scale as I'm still trying to cadge more reviews for my other June release - my YA scifi Gethyon - plus my extensive book reviewers list is in desperate need of an update. So I've combined the projects, working my way through the list updating as I go, adding new ones, and looking for reviewers that will accept either book. It's a slow process as there are far more romance review sites on the list than any other genre, and of those many prefer to focus on contemporary and/or paranormal rather than scifi. My small but favourite group of reviewers have already said yes (bless 'em!) but I still have a long way to go. Of course, there's absolutely no guarantee that the reviewers who accept the books will give a positive review, but that's a truth all authors have to face when they put their work out there. If you can't learn to shrug off the negative ones well...I'm sorry, but you're going to find it hard going. The SFR Brigaders have also been discussing reviews and how to go about seeking them - you can check out a couple of blog posts I did on how NOT to do it here.
Who's the New Who?
What kind of geek would I be if I didn't mention the recent announcement of who will play the next Doctor? With a 35 minute show devoted to the reveal (something never done before and a bit overkill IMO, but I understand why they wanted to make a performance out of the event) we learned Peter Capaldi will be the new Doctor.
I'm pleased for several reasons. Aside from thoroughly enjoying Capaldi's protrayal of the twisted fallen Angel Islington in the BBC dramatization of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, Capaldi is a long time fan of the show. He's already appeared in DW in Fires of Pompei, and in Torchwood's Children of Earth (and, funnily enough, as a Time Traveller in The All New Alexei Sayle Show - an episode called Drunk in Time). I'm also glad to see an older actor take the role. I really thought the BBC would keep going younger (and Matt Smith was the first actor to be younger than me - an inevitable but disturbing fact). This has led to a lot of complaints that Capaldi isn't 'hot'. Well, aside from being in the generation where the hotness or not of the Doctor was irrelevant, I'd say it depends on your perspective. I know a lot of older fans who find Capaldi quite dishy, but I still say it wouldn't matter to a true fan. I'm sure there's a lot of male fans to whom it will always been inconsequential. If your enjoyment of the series is based solely on the attractiveness of the actor playing the Doctor to you personally, you're going to be disappointed at least once in a while. You're also missing the point of the show...
I also know there's a lot of unhappiness over it being yet another white guy. What can I say? Perhaps it makes me sexist AND racist, but The Doctor has always been that, and despite my desire for equality in SF, that concept is stuck in my head. I wouldn't have been horrified by either (but I can imagine there might have been a huge outcry from some areas having seen enough negativity simply over Capaldi, sheesh). It would have been a bigger surprise, and in some ways I almost expected it after the announcement of a special show for the reveal. I think it's unfortunate that we've lost the Time Lord society in the story, which at least would have allowed for diversity in their race - as shown in Star Trek Voyager with Tuvok, the first black Vulcan. If the Doctor can regenerate into anything, why not into another kind of alien? (Oh, all right, we all know in reality the expense and trouble that would be for the SFX department and potential discomfort for the actor make that less feasible). But then, the beauty of being a SF/SFR author (and one of the reasons I started writing) is that I can create my own universe of diversity, and accept the bias in an iconic show like Doctor Who without having to hate on it. As the Angel Islington once said when the heroes of Neverwhere laughed at his offer to join him, "Ah, me..."
In consolation to those unhappy with Capaldi I'll say this. The Doctor will regenerate again. And again. And again. He will always change, and there will always be people who don't like it. Personally I can't wait to see how Capaldi will play the part, and how this will change the dynamic between the Doctor and Clara. (BTW I also posted on my blog about the prospect of a female Who, and why, surprisingly, I'm not all for one. Check it out here).
Pippa's JournalNo solid news to impart. Gethyon was in the LASR Book of the Month Contest at the end of last week - sadly it didn't place. I have tentative progress on two pieces of work that I can't yet announce (I HATE sitting on things like that when all I want to do is share!), and by this time next week I'll know if my cyberpunk short story will have made it into an anthology. If not, I've also had an offer on that from elsewhere.
Discoveries
I was desperately hunting for blog post ideas and came across this - The Lazy Bloggers Post Generator. You can vary most of the information to be included, or just leave it and hit Create Post and take pot luck. Here's my maybe less than humorous result. :P
Dudes I just discovered I have not updated this since 1999... You would not believe the fairy dust I have to clean up. I'm so sorry!.
I am lost in a sea of pseudo-olde-english with setting fire to people wearing Crocs, being distracted by the shiny, just generally being the life of the party to my kids, my day is a nightmare I would like to wake up from 3am to way past dusk. I am not being a whinging Pom or anything. perchance.
I absolutely, positively promise won't blog until the next time booze prices go up and I have to get sober for a while. No, really! What do you mean you don't believe me?
Hey, some days that would be better than nothing, right? Er, right?
Pssst!
A contest for unpublished and published (but uncontracted) authors!
Monday, August 5, 2013
Anchors Aweigh: Sail into a Great Summer Adventure
August is "Hell Month" at my day job, which usually means I drop out of sight until sometime in September. But I just had to pop in to share this...
This story delivers not only a great romance, but a genuine experience. "Join up" and serve aboard a floating, self-contained city as it heads out "on cruise." What great muse-fodder for those of you who write Science Fiction Romance of the space-faring variety.
There's something about a man in uniform...but there's something about a woman in one, too...
When Hallie McCabe meets Philip Johnston at a picnic, she is drawn to his integrity. He is a gentleman. But also an officer. From her ship.
Aware of the code against fraternization between officers and enlisted, Hallie conceals her Navy status, hopeful she and her secret will stay hidden on their enormous aircraft carrier until she can figure out a way for them to sail off into the sunset together.
Caught in an emotional firestorm, Hallie faces a future without the man she loves, a career-shattering secret from the past, and the burden of being the one person who can prevent a terrorist attack on the ship she has sworn to protect with her life.
Prepare to set sail for the Persian Gulf with a crew of 4,999 sailors and officers and one terrorist in search of his own kind of Paradise.
What so completely absorbed me once I started reading this book was the feel of utter authenticity. The rules, the regs, the smell of jet fuel, the roar of the engines, the close quarters, conflicts and camaraderie of military life.
I can appreciate the heroine's situation. She's fallen for a man she knows she shouldn't be with, and she's bending the rules to the point of catastrophic failure--and risking his trust in the process--because she knows as soon as she tells him the truth, it's over. But she will tell him the truth, even if it costs her everything. It's just that her timing on that big reveal goes completely askew...
I imagine some holier-than-thou readers will have issues with her honesty, and admittedly, I did at times, too, thinking, "OMG, girl, just tell him!" At the same time I could completely relate to her sentiments and easily walk in her shoes. This is the man of her dreams and she doesn't want to see her relationship go up in smoke. Who would? Hallie is likable, relatable, and an endearing combination of timid heart and tough-as-steel mind.
The hero, Philip, is a man of integrity, a true gentleman and someone I admired as a "good guy." He's a a working hero, not some commanding officer with lots of shiny brass and top-dog swagger, but an honest-to-goodness Navy man doing a real job in the bowels of his massive ship. Even so, this shoulder-to-the-grindstone, squeaky clean, BCG-wearing sailor has an alpha side that often surprised and delighted me. I LUV me an unpredictable hero.
The story also does a remarkable job of getting inside the head of the villain, and showing some of the culture and traditions he has more-or-less adopted (less, actually). Though I can't respect him or his warped values, I can understand why he turned. He's tragic, twisted and deeply disturbed, but he's no cartoon villain.
This story carries some big surprises and killer twists, but the biggest surprise for me came in the form of a secondary character that at first annoyed and then absolutely dazzled me. You know things will be okay when this guy takes charge. And best of all? The next book is about him! (Pssst....Keep your eye on the Sky. :)
FORGIVE & FORGET is the first book in the Love in the Fleet series. Watch for the next one, FORGET ME NOT, December 3, 2013.
Here's the link to Amazon: Forgive & Forget (Oh, and BTW, just between us, you might want to note the very reasonable price on the Kindle version right now. *winkety wink*)
I just finished the coolest book!
Yes, it's written by one of my fellow Firebirds--which means she's also a 2012 RWA Golden Heart finalist--but that said, I have this thing... If I can't rave about a book, I don't write a book review. Peeps, I'm raving. For anyone, anywhere, interested in Military Romance, don't pass this one up. For those of us who write Military Romance (of any era), you can learn a lot from this tale about how the military--the Navy, in particular--works.
Like...flight decks are damn scary, noisy places, full of hazards.
And trying to get a bit of much-needed shut-eye is no easy feat when you live in the equivalent of a dormitory packed with three-tier-high bunk beds located directly beneath a busy airport.
This story delivers not only a great romance, but a genuine experience. "Join up" and serve aboard a floating, self-contained city as it heads out "on cruise." What great muse-fodder for those of you who write Science Fiction Romance of the space-faring variety.
Forgive & Forget
by Heather Ashby
Henery Press
280 pages
________________________________________
When Hallie McCabe meets Philip Johnston at a picnic, she is drawn to his integrity. He is a gentleman. But also an officer. From her ship.
Aware of the code against fraternization between officers and enlisted, Hallie conceals her Navy status, hopeful she and her secret will stay hidden on their enormous aircraft carrier until she can figure out a way for them to sail off into the sunset together.
Caught in an emotional firestorm, Hallie faces a future without the man she loves, a career-shattering secret from the past, and the burden of being the one person who can prevent a terrorist attack on the ship she has sworn to protect with her life.
Prepare to set sail for the Persian Gulf with a crew of 4,999 sailors and officers and one terrorist in search of his own kind of Paradise.
________________________________________
What so completely absorbed me once I started reading this book was the feel of utter authenticity. The rules, the regs, the smell of jet fuel, the roar of the engines, the close quarters, conflicts and camaraderie of military life.
I can appreciate the heroine's situation. She's fallen for a man she knows she shouldn't be with, and she's bending the rules to the point of catastrophic failure--and risking his trust in the process--because she knows as soon as she tells him the truth, it's over. But she will tell him the truth, even if it costs her everything. It's just that her timing on that big reveal goes completely askew...
I imagine some holier-than-thou readers will have issues with her honesty, and admittedly, I did at times, too, thinking, "OMG, girl, just tell him!" At the same time I could completely relate to her sentiments and easily walk in her shoes. This is the man of her dreams and she doesn't want to see her relationship go up in smoke. Who would? Hallie is likable, relatable, and an endearing combination of timid heart and tough-as-steel mind.
The hero, Philip, is a man of integrity, a true gentleman and someone I admired as a "good guy." He's a a working hero, not some commanding officer with lots of shiny brass and top-dog swagger, but an honest-to-goodness Navy man doing a real job in the bowels of his massive ship. Even so, this shoulder-to-the-grindstone, squeaky clean, BCG-wearing sailor has an alpha side that often surprised and delighted me. I LUV me an unpredictable hero.
 |
| Author Heather Ashby with Navy Seahawk |
This story carries some big surprises and killer twists, but the biggest surprise for me came in the form of a secondary character that at first annoyed and then absolutely dazzled me. You know things will be okay when this guy takes charge. And best of all? The next book is about him! (Pssst....Keep your eye on the Sky. :)
FORGIVE & FORGET is the first book in the Love in the Fleet series. Watch for the next one, FORGET ME NOT, December 3, 2013.
Here's the link to Amazon: Forgive & Forget (Oh, and BTW, just between us, you might want to note the very reasonable price on the Kindle version right now. *winkety wink*)
Friday, August 2, 2013
BETTER STORIES WOULD SAVE HOLLYWOOD
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| Zorro:A hero with a great story |
Hollywood needs a hero. Or at least it needs saving. Most of the muscular, big-fisted adrenaline
junkies the movie moguls hoped would produce the mega-bucks this summer have
failed to bring home the bacon. Despite
entire fortunes being expended on special effects (destroying the White House
and Metropolis, building shiny robots to throw neo-Godzillas around the coastal
cities of the Pacific Rim, riding horses through trains/driving trains into
canyons), audiences are yawning—and staying away in droves.
Disney’s THE LONE RANGER is the most talked
about loser of the summer, made for a reported $215 million, but garnering only
$86 million so far, despite the star presence of Johnny Depp. That was almost enough to make everyone
forget Will Smith’s disastrous foray into SF, AFTER EARTH, which has earned a
paltry $60 million to date. PACIFIC RIM
may make back some of its high production cost overseas (the Japanese love
their robots vs. monsters), but so far has seen lackluster results of $87
million here in the U.S.
The highly anticipated WOLVERINE debuted last
weekend and, predictably, fanboys were excited enough to pack the
theaters. But what was the
highest-grossing film of the weekend? A
low-budget horror flick with minimal gore and special effects right out of the
Seventies, THE CONJURING.
You can hear the agonizing from the Left
Coast all the way over here: What does
this mean?
The film executives have their theories, of
course, all of them wrong. Take their rationalization
of the failure of THE LONE RANGER: No
one under the age of 60 recognizes the character, so no one went to the
movie. Even if that were true—and I’m
not buying it (my 11-year-old grandson knows the character because I have the
old TV shows on DVD and we’ve watched them)—the year-long promotion of the film
in theaters and on TV ahead of its release would have been enough to overcome
that problem.
The real problem was the
writing in the film itself. The script
reduced the Lone Ranger to a bumbling idiot, Tonto to a smart-ass weirdo, and
the very idea of heroism to a cynical smirk.
This was supposed to be “edgy” and “cool”. No.
Antonio Banderas as Zorro (another “old” character everyone was supposed
to have forgotten about) was cool, and
he was still a hero. He could still beat
the bad guy, win the woman and save the day without making anyone cringe. In fact, he could make the audience cheer
without irony.
Changing one scene in THE LONE RANGER might
have saved it. Allowing the good guys—the
Indians—to win in their fight against the evil miners and giving them (and the
audience) a moment of triumph might have lifted the film out of its slough of
despair. But, no. The filmmakers opted for, what? A history lesson? Well, the audiences left and told their
neighbors, resulting in what should have been a lesson for the movie
moguls. Not that they’re listening.
PACIFIC RIM suffers from the same problem—poor
writing. The monsters are beautiful in
their own awful way. The robots are
shiny and wonderfully articulated. There
is no one better than Guillermo del Toro for envisioning and creating such
movie magic. But the actors and their
characters are lost in the middle of all this vast clash of the Titans. The story is one we have seen played out on
screen literally hundreds of times (and
in books and plays many times more before that). Hero loses brother to monsters and retreats;
world situation grows more dire; ailing leader calls him back to service;
newbie recruit with tragic past becomes his new partner/lover; sacrifices are
made, etc., etc. At least heroism is
treated without irony in this film, and it has an uplifting ending. But the battling 'bots are just not enough to
engage the interest of a thinking audience, and the fangirl audience has seen
plenty of destruction this summer. Just
how many mangled bridges and twisted skyscrapers can one tolerate?
Seriously. I’ve been to all of these movies, from IRONMAN
3 and SUPERMAN to WHITE HOUSE DOWN, PACIFIC RIM and WOLVERINE. Whole forests have been destroyed to make
these films. Warehouses of TNT. Enough old vehicles to transport half the
population of the Southern United States to work. Can’t we use these forces for good?
The movie execs and their analysts are fond
of blaming the many distractions of cable television, home theater, video
games, Netflix and a dozen other things for their troubles, so they keep upping
the ante to bring people into the theater:
bigger explosions, louder sound, wilder stunts, 3D. But the truth is, there is a limit to what
can be done on the screen with such things before audiences grow tired of
them. People will never grow tired of a
well-told story. If the story is told compellingly, with
characters that we can believe in, the effects won’t matter.
This is why people still pay good money to
take their kids to see movies like MONSTER UNIVERSITY or DESPICABLE ME 2. Yes, the animation is great, but without the
story, sensible parents could wait for the video. Their kids are clamoring to see the film in
the theater because they fell in love with the characters the first time
around. Good writing does that, not
special effects. Good story does that,
not 3D. And if it’s true of animation,
it’s ten times truer of live action.
Why is this so hard to understand? WOLVERINE is full of entertaining fight scenes
and plenty of eye candy for both sexes, but the story might as well be
constructed of fishnet. I understand
that we are adapting the story from a medium in which words are not the primary
form of communication, but, come on. I
think the original comic was probably better.
I don’t mind that the hero is full of angst
for one reason or another, but let him fight for the good and win. I actually think a heroine is better if she
is flawed, but let her overcome her self-doubt, get her guy and achieve her
goals. Let the two of them save the
world together. Let the audience cheer
and clap without having to hide behind their popcorn as they do it. Give us a story we can believe in, Hollywood,
and we’ll be there, like we’ve always been.
PING PONG
Congratulations to Pippa for finaling in the
RWA Aspen Gold Contest P/TT/F category with Keir. Good luck in the final round!
Also Happy Birthday, Pippa, tomorrow, August
3! Hope your little ones stay healthy
long enough for you to enjoy it! :-)
Cheers, Donna
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