The Pleasure of Holding a Book

As soon as I knew that Swords of Talera was on Amazon, Lana and I ordered a copy to see how the process would work. We got it late Wednesday evening, which seemed very fast to me, especially since other folks have told me that theirs is not going to be delivered until after mid-month. I imagine, though, that they had some printed and the first orders went out from those.

I was as excited as a kid to actually hold the book in my hand, and it looks very nice up close. The cover is great and the print and typesetting is dark and readable. The book is well put together and I’m very happy for that. Right now I have one signing set in Covington for July 31st, but I’ll be posting more on this as it gets closer. This was set up for me by the incomparable Lana Jackman, who is much better than the incomparable Dejah Thoris that John Carter fell in love with on Barsoom. I’ll probably have another signing in Arkansas when I go home to visit my family this summer.

Here’s a little bit of information from David Morrell’s writing book that I thought was interesting. He points out that Hemingway used more adjectives and adverbs than people often think but that he used them differently. Here’s the first sentence of A Farewell to Arms.

“In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels.”

We’ve got five adjectives and an adverb here, but the adjectives seem almost more like nouns because they stand alone, “dry and white in the sun” rather than directly modifying the nouns they are directed at, “pebbles and boulders.” If we rewrote it in a more standard fashion we’d have something like:

In the river bed there were dry, white pebbles and boulders, and the clear, blue water moved swiftly in the channel.

I thought this was an interesting observation, and one that had not really occurred to me. Worth considering.

Marketing For Today

I haven’t posted here in a couple of days, but those days have been pretty much of a whirlwind for me. I’ve been contacting a lot of people about Swords of Talera, trying to set up a couple of signings, and also just enjoying looking at the cover. I’ve always heard that the time for writers to do their marketing is “before” a book comes out. I didn’t do any marketing directed at “Swords” before it came out. This isn’t completely because I’m lazy and dumb. I do have my reasons for not doing so, some of which do have to do with marketing.

First, of course, I freely admit that I’m superstitious about talking of potentially good publishing things until I see them in front of me. Writing primarily for the small press means that, often, things will not come out when you think they are, perhaps just not on time, and perhaps not at all. I’ve been embarrassed before by telling my friends that such and such was going to be published and then having it…not.

Second, and this is a marketing related issue, I see the benefits of “pre-marketing” to be much more important if your book is going to be widely distributed in bookstores and be there on the shelves when potential buyers stop by. The purpose of this kind of marketing is to create an awareness in potential readers that the book exists and to suggest in some way that it might appeal to those readers. But if the book is going to be sold primarily online I suspect that the same rules don’t apply. So far, all of my “marketing” has been done online. I’ve sent emails to friends and have posted about the book on my blog and on various other sites/groups that I visit regularly. This worked pretty well to create an initial surge. “Swords” reached into the 8000 level on Amazon’s Sales Ranking, and hung around in the 9000 to 14,000 level for a couple of days. I know this doesn’t mean I’m going to hit the Times Bestseller list, but it felt good and I know it means that I did sell some books pretty quickly.

Third, in a way I have been doing marketing, but not marketing of a “book.” The internet has been a boon to folks like me. Strange as it may sound, I’m a pretty shy sort of fellow. I don’t make friends easily and I don’t really enjoy a lot of social events. I often feel ill at ease or even a bit awkward when there are a lot of people around. I suspect that this is true of quite a few writers, of course. But the internet has given me a forum where I can feel comfortable posting information about myself and letting people get to know me in a sort of slow, non-intense way. I also have interests in reading and writing that aren’t necessarily shared by large numbers of other folks. The net has helped me find several groups who have common interests with me, and it was after posting to those groups that the biggest jumps occurred in the Amazon sales rankings.

Some of the people who bought Swords of Talera had read my writing before and liked it. Some bought it because they love the genre and are willing to take a chance on anything new in that area. But some of them bought the book simply because they had gotten to know me online. Many of those are folks reading this blog. I appreciate you all.

We Interrupt This Regularly Scheduled Blog

Over the past few months I’ve dropped little hints here to suggest that something good might be on the horizon for me. Well, now it’s begun to happen and I can finally talk about it. My novel, Swords of Talera, has just been released by Borgo Press and is available on Amazon. This is the first of a trilogy. The follow-up books will be Wings Over Talera and Witch of Talera. Both are scheduled for publication but I’m not sure exactly when that will take place.

I’m very happy. It’s been five years since Cold in the Light was published, and nearly eight since “Swords of Talera” ran as a magazine serial. This version has been substantially revised for book publication, by the way. Those of you who have read Cold in the Light should know that this is a very different kind of book. “Cold” was a horror/thriller. “Swords” falls into the “Sword & Planet” genre (often called “Interplanetary Romance”). This type of book originated with Edgar Rice Burroughs and his John Carter of Mars series.

Swords of Talera has a convoluted history. I wrote it when I was 24, then revised it around the age of 29 and started sending it to the bigger publishers. DAW and Del Rey passed on it, although I got good commentary from both places. DAW was cutting their Sword & Planet books to the bone about then, and Del Rey had moved much more into fantasy that was heavy on magic and dragons. I then sold it to a small publisher, who never published it, sold it to a second small publisher that went under when the owner absconded with the press's funds, and finally offered it to Tom and Ginger Johnson who ran it as a serial in their Startling Science Stories mag, where it won their readers’ choice award.

Last year a pro writer friend of mine named Charles Nuetzel, who has written Sword & Planet fiction and a lot of other stuff too, suggested I try my Taleran books on Robert Reginald over at Borgo Press. Rob liked the trilogy, accepted it, and then did a thorough editing job on all three. My special thanks go out to Charles (CAN) and to Rob. Much appreciated, my friends. Your names are gold with me.

From the Reading about Writing Front

Here's a good point from David Morrell:

"We call a fully drawn character "lifelike" when in fact we can never know someone in life as well as we have known that character in fiction. To the degree that we are privy to a character's thoughts and emotions, the experience is totally unrealistic, however magical."

He's right on here. In the real world we never truly know what is inside of another person. We can't read their thoughts and can't even trust our reading of their emotions. How ironic that in "fiction" we can do both.

Article in Progress

Here's a little snippet from an article I've been working on today. Maybe it'll be of interest, although nothing earth shaking certainly. It's meant primarily for the college level writer.

Remember that we often get a mistaken impression about how talented other people are. We pick up a novel and think how superbly written it is. We hear a good lecture from a teacher and we think, “Wow, this lady really knows her stuff.” We see Shaquille O’Neal slam-dunk a basketball and we just stare. In each case we think how lucky some people are to be born with those kinds of skills. And in each case we are wrong.

Sure, Shaq would probably be better at basketball than most of us even if he had never practiced it. But all of us could be better than we are if we worked hard enough at it. People are not born experts. They may have innate talents, like size, speed, or coordination, but most people have to work hard to make their jobs look easy. Writing is the same. Being a good writer is probably both a gift and a learned skill. Some people may just be better than others. But almost everyone can learn to write a term paper that will earn an “A” in college.

Morrell Again

Here's David Morrell again, on showing and telling. "In practice, a certain amount of telling is inevitable. Otherwise, a story might never be completed. But it's useful to know which method you're using and to steer from telling to showing as soon as possible in order to provide the immediacy that is more likely to capture a reader's attention."

In this case, I agree absolutely. There are times when you have to "tell." There are times when "telling" gets you quickly through certain details that the reader needs to know in order to get to the exciting stuff that follows. That's the stuff you "show." Knowing when to show and when to tell seems to be the hard part.

Squirrel Head Terror

I've just run off six squirrels who were in my backyard. Why you wonder? Well, it's because they are greedy little destructive bastards. We've been putting out food for all kinds of animals, including squirrels. We especially like to see the birds. We have cardinals, chickadees, blue jays, buntings, doves, thrashers, woodpeckers, hummingbirds and many more. There are several stump pieces in our yard and we started out by pouring seed for the birds on those. But the squirrels started eating all the seed, or scattering it about, and running off the birds. We bought a bird feeder. The squirrels tore the top off of it, even though we still had seed on the stumps. We bought a supposedly squirrel proof feeder that hung on a thin metal pole. The squirrels climbed the pole and began tearing holes in the feeder. We bought a supposedly better squirrel proof feeder. They tore it to shreds.

So now I run them off when I see them. They ain't very scared, even though I have stated in plain English to them that I've eaten squirrel before and don't mind doing so again. They still ain't scared. But maybe I should be. Two of them are looking in the window at me even as I speak. They're chattering something in their own lingo. I hope it's not: "Who does he think he is? I've eaten human before and don't mind doing so again."

Character Revisited

In Lessons from a Lifetime of Writing, David Morrell says the following about characters: "Which are harder to write: types or multidimensional characters? I suggest types are harder because the narratives in which they appear impose limitations that make it more difficult to be creative."

Let me say, clearly, that I absolutely disagree with this. Let me also say that a writer in my writing group who publishes at a much higher level than I generally agreed with Morrell, and that I don't believe even creating a good character "type" is easy.

What evidence do I have to support my view? I will readily admit that it is anecdotal and/or non-scientific, but here's what I see.

1). There are more writers publishing and making a decent living out of writing types than multidimensional characters. This is despite the fact that readers in most genres will accept a multidimensional character even if they don't require one. I can enjoy a good private eye novel with a character who is very much the standard hard-boiled detective, but I don't mind if the writer has added something extra. So why don't more writers add that something extra? I suggest that it's a lot harder to do so.

2). Here's an analogy from painting. Character Types have certain standard characteristics that they need to exhibit. If you've read a lot in a genre you pretty soon pick these characteristics out. Then it's at least partly a matter of inserting these characteristics into your own work. I know that's not easy, but this can be a little more like a "paint by numbers" work than a completely free-hand painting. I couldn't paint a decent free-hand painting to save my life, but I can follow specific guidelines I'm given. It may not look terribly pretty but it will be servicable.

3). I've tried writing types and I've tried multidimensional characters in my own work. I find types immensely easier to work with. This is not necessarily to say that my "types" were well done, but I did get paid for them. I always try in my own work to give my types a little something extra, but I don't know if I've ever written a fully multidimensional character. I think the closest I've come is Kargen from Cold in the Light, and he isn't even human.

Developing good characters is never easy, of course. And this goes for types as well as multidimensional characters. I know people who have read extensively since they were young in a genre that they want to write in, and yet they don't seem to quite capture the essence of the character or the genre and their work remains largely unpublished. But I don't believe these folks could write a multidimensional character either.

Maybe I should do a little test of my own. For example, I've never written a hard-boiled detective character. Could I pull it off? I don't know, but I'm reading a little Raymond Chandler now and I'll see if I get the itch. I'll let you know what happens.

Reality is a Dish Best Served in Moderation

We camped out again in the back yard last night. Once again it was perfect. The whippoorwills called from dusk till dawn. There were thin wisps of fog.

I awoke a few times, lay looking up through the tent's mesh at a sky given texture by the bright moon. At one point I realised that directly above me loomed a viking warrior with a horned helm and a sword upraised in one fist. By the light of morning he had transformed into a tree. Birds roosted on his blade.

Fiction is an act of transformation. It is an act of will imposed upon the mundane reality of black words on a white page. Trees become ships, become worlds, become stars. And it's not just the writer who imposes these visions. The reader transforms the work further, in ways the writer had never forseen, or intended.

At the heart of our job as writers is to see the world anew, to transform it and let our readers transform it further. But to do so we may have to shake up our own perceptions. We may have to look at reality under a new light. We have to let the moon show us vikings where daylight showed us only trees.

Indulging the Inner Child

Well, having decided, and upon the advice of friends (see comments to yesterday's post), to indulge my inner child, Lana and I camped out in our back yard last night. We pitched our tent behind and to the right of where the fire bowl is in the accompanying picture. We had a fire first, of course. And the weather was so nice that we left off the tent cover so that both sides, the roof, and most of the back were open to the sky. There's a mesh, of course, to keep out the mosquitoes.

It was perfect sleeping weather, just cool enough to need a light blanket so that we could feel all cuddly warm, but with only a little wind. Camp cots were our one concession to semi-adulthood. These are wire mesh cots that we bought, and slept on, for several months during the Katrina evacuation. They fit our tent perfectly and, young as my inner child might be, his outer hips are still those of a 48 year old man and hurt when he has to sleep on the ground.

The whippoorwills serenaded us all night, and there were several other night birds in action, as well as a number of tree frogs. I was hoping to hear coyotes howling but they didn't seem to be indulging their inner wolf last night. I heard a variety of dogs bark, and I figured that many of those barks were directed at wild things passing through in the woods. I heard a few rustlings in our own woods but didn't catch a glimpse of anything.

All in all, a night well spent. I'm thinking of doing it again tonight.

My Inner Child

I know writers talk about their inner child at times, but apparently I really do have one. And he's got an ear infection.

About two weeks ago the ear canal of my right ear became swollen and very painful. I thought I'd gotten bit by an insect so I waited for the swelling to go down. (Of course, I had images of some insect having laid eggs "in" my ear and that the larva would soon start burrowing out through my brain.) After about three days the ear was still swollen so I decided to see a doctor the next day. Miraculously, the swelling was way down by the time I awoke the next morning and I thought all was well.

The following weekend my ear canal swoll up again, and this time I started having weird feelings of pressure inside my ears and a steady ringing. I did go to the doctor this time, and his conclusion? I have the kind of ear infection that kids get. He said, "it does happen occassionally in adults," but I could see he didn't find that very common. He gave me some antibiotics and they seem to be working.

My question is this. Why is my inner child getting an ear infection now? Could it be that I haven't listened to him enough lately? Have I been too "grown up" of late, what with grading on my final exams and paying my bills?

Screw grading tests or writing. I think I'm going to go play outside.

One Project Down, Many to Go

Well, the Morrell article is done. I'll email it in today or tomorrow. It's due on the 27th. But today I set up folders (both physical and on my computer desktop) for four of the six summer projects that I have planned. I know I won't get all six of these finished in a single summer, but if I get organized, and keep decent notes as I work on them, it will make the long-term goal of finishing them all easier. I'd thought I was going to have a fairly leisurely summer, but some good stuff has dropped into my lap so it won't be leisure but it should be fun. With the deadlines I have, at least I will be able to stagger the work, writing on one project while reading for another. And since I won't be teaching I'll be able to split my day up, using mornings for one project and afternoons for another. At least that is the plan now, although I often find once I get into a project that it begins to consume me and I work mornings and afternoons on the same thing. I forgive myself for that. I do like to be organized, but there's no sense being strict about it. ;)

The Plot Thickens

At one time, David Morrell says, he was taught that there are five types of plots:

1) Human against Human. 2) Human against Nature. 3) Human against himself/herself. 4) Human against Society. 5) Human against God.

Morrell thinks there's only one, and it goes like this: Somebody wants something, and somebody else wants to stop them from getting it. This is conflict, which is at the core of plot. But for a story, Morrell says, you also have to have "why." You have to know the motivations of the antagonists.

Sounds pretty simple when you put it that way.

David Morrell Talks About Hollywood

One chapter of Morrell's writing book is on his experiences in Hollywood. He mentions a certain producer (not by name) who invited him to sit in on his office day to see what it was like. It consisted mostly of not taking people's calls, then calling someone else to see if they knew what the caller may have wanted.

Apparently in Hollywood, the studio executives almost never actually read a book. They read the "coverage," which is a 1 to 2 page summary of the book done by someone other than the writer. Morrell told of a studio exec who put his arm around Pat Conroy one time and told him what a great writer he was. "The coverage on your book moved me to tears," the Exec said.

Morrell's primary advice? Be careful as a newbie writer dealing with Hollywood or they will eat you alive.

Book Sale

The St. Tammany Parish Library book sale started this weekend. I went. I saw. I failed to conquer my urge to spend. I like to pick up hardback copies of books that I really love at such sales, and this time I found hardback copies of Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard and Peter Straub's Houses Without Doors. I also found a hardback copy of Stephen Gallagher's Red, Red Robin. I've liked Gallagher for a long time but he's a British author and I almost never see his books on the shelves of bookstores here in the States. I'd buy 'em new if I did because he's also a very nice guy.

I've heard some good stuff about Michael Connelly so I picked up something by him called Void Moon. If I like it I'll buy some more of his stuff new. I also picked up a couple of Ed McBain's books of the 87th Precinct, some of the earlier ones in the series. I've only read one book by him but I really liked it. I got some older David Morrell thrillers, and a hardback copy of Binary by John Lange, who is really Michael Crichton before he got big.

Also arriving today, were copies I'd ordered of David Morrell's Lessons From a Lifetime of Writing, and as I delve into this I'll be posting more about it, and a collection of literary essays by Robert Reginald called Xenograffiti.

And now? Time to get reading.

What Were They Thinking

Here's a couple of those little experiences that teachers love so much. First, I gave a test yesterday. One student finished the test and left after about 25 minutes, then returned 20 minutes after that. Here's a transcript of the conversation that followed.

Student: "Was there a question on the test about Freud's stages?"

Me: "Yes."

Student: "I talked to some of the other students and I don't think I answered that one."

Me: "Sorry."

Student: "Well, can I see my test to see if I did?"

Me: "OK."

Student (after seeing that her answer for the question was left blank.) "See, I didn't answer this one."

Me: "Sorry."

Student: "Well is there anything I can do? I know the answer?"

Me: "Well I can't let you answer it now. The only reason you realized you didn't answer it was because you talked to other students who finished the test."

Student: "But I promise I know it."

Me: "You realize that I can't let people leave a test, talk to other students who have finished the same test, then come back in and answer questions they left blank?"

Student: "I guess."

Me: "Sorry."


Second experience: About a month ago a student who had graduated several years earlier emailed me to ask for a letter of recommendation for graduate school. After looking over her records I found that she'd had only one class with me, barely passed it with the lowest "C" possible, missed nearly a quarter of the class periods, failed to hand in anything on time, and that her transcript showed that she'd performed about the same way in most of her other classes. I wrote back to say that I was sorry but that "I really cannot write a positive letter for you." I told her to try some of her music professors from here since her grades were better in those classes. I heard nothing back until a phone mail message yesterday: "Dr. Gramlich, I'm sending you that recommendation form for me that we talked about. Please fill it out for me."

Haphazard Posting

It's a bit hard to post today. I'm still thinking of the Virginia Tech shootings, still thinking of my own students, my own classes. I'm thinking of a student years ago who told me, "Doc, you know I like you. If I ever leave a message on your phone not to come to work someday, you should really stay home that day."

Anyway, my posting may start to be a bit haphazard for the next couple of weeks. I give a test on Thursday and then another very big one next week. The week after that begins our final exams, and I still need to get the David Morrell article done. It's coming along well, but I'm a little tired. And set to get more tired.

"Stay frosty," as they say.

Forgetfulness and Confusion

Yesterday, as part of my work on the David Morrell article, I did a detail scan on First Blood and a few others of Morrell's books that I read years ago. First Blood is, of course, the book in which Rambo first appeared. I enjoyed that book when I read it back in the late 70s, but it's amazing, although not unexpected, how many details that I'd forgotten. Part of the source of my forgetfulnes of the book is, naturally, the movie made from the book starring Sylvester Stallone. Here are some things I'd forgotten.

1. Rambo's first name is never given in the book. It is in the movie that we get "John. J."

2. Rambo is taken out of town "twice" by the sheriff and returns a third time before all the crap hits the fan, thus making him somewhat less sympathetic.

3. Rambo does not escape from the police station with a knife in the book.

4. Rambo was raised Catholic.

5. Rambo's mother died of cancer when he was young, and his father was an abusive alcoholic. Rambo shot his father at one time with a bow and arrow.

6. Rambo worked in a garage before joining the military.

7. Rambo gets clothes from some moonshiners in the book.

8. Rambo kills a lot more people in the book.

Interesting how the memory works. Or, fails to work.

Whippoorwill

The whippoorwill is a night bird, although sometimes you hear them in late evening. They nest in wooded places and are seldom seen. Thus the picture, which was taken from our deck of the evening woods around our place.

I grew up in the country in Arkansas and grew to love the sound of whippoorwills. It's a lonely sound; it makes you ache. But it touches you. In the last couple of evenings I've begun to hear whippoorwills around my house in Abita Springs, and the memories and feelings aroused by the bird's call have come surging back. I had been lamenting to Lana only a few weeks before that I'd not heard the whippoorwills and that I missed them. I'm listening each night for them now. I hope they will stay.

The name of the wipoorwill comes from the sound of its call, although my mom always told me that the bird wasn't saying "whip poor will" but said instead, "Chick fell out of the willow." That's always how I hear it.

The whippoorwill is supposed to be able to sense a soul departing after death, and that's why they call. Lovecraft used them for this purpose in some of his stories. So did August Derleth. I don't know about that. I know only that their sound renews my soul. It lets me know I'm alive.

A Plethora of Titles

I was looking on Amazon at books on "Writing" and was amazed at the huge variety of titles available. It seems like writing is a popular topic. Are there really that many people who want to be writers? Or do folks who want to write just read a lot of tip books? I wonder if there are any good "titles" left unused. I know I thought I had quite a few different writing related books but there's no chance I'm ever going to catch up with what's available. So, those of you who read such works, what are the best ones out there. Personally, two books that I've found really helpful to me are William Zinsser's On Writing Well and Lawrence Block's Telling Lies for Fun & Profit. I also have King's On Writing, and Orson Scott Card's book on Writing SF and Fantasy, both of which had some good stuff in them.

Dialogue Tags

Dave Hardy commented on this blog the other day about dialogue tags, so I thought I might say a few things about them from my perspective.

As a reader, the most important thing to me is not to be confused about who is talking and when. Even if there are only two people in a scene, I'll get lost after half a page of dialogue without tags unless the speech of the two individuals is dramatically distinct. I know for myself (and I suspect it is true for most readers), the dialogue tags largely become invisible to me, especially if it is the ubiquitous "said." Thus, as a reader, I'd probably prefer the writer to err on the side of more tags rather than fewer.

As a writer, I actually tend to use dialogue tags for three purposes. The major purpose is to make sure the reader knows who is talking. However, dialogue tags can also slow the pace of a scene, which is just what you want in some situations. Tags can also change the, for want of a better term, "music" of a scene. I don't know why, but to me dialogue tags, particularly things like "I told him" or "he responded," add a bit of gravity to a scene when I read it out loud. This may just have to do with the slowing of the pace. It's clearly a "sound" effect for me, though.

Anyway, here's another slice of that story I posted a piece of yesterday, but this is almost solely dialogue. This is how I identified the speakers in this piece, although there are certainly other, perhaps better, ways of doing it.

***

Chalathar was waiting for us, leaning on a marble balustrade. Behind him loafed three rough looking characters.

“Been expecting you,” Chalathar said.

I arched an eyebrow.

“You are going up to see Kuurus, aren’t you?”

“We have to get through his guards first,” I said.

He nodded. “I know. I’ve brought some friends along for the fun.”

For a moment I studied his companions, hard-cases all. Two were men, the third a big Nokarran whose light gray fur was mottled with dark rosettes so that he resembled a snow leopard walking.

“Looks like you need a leash for ‘em,” I said.

The Nokarran smirked. Chalathar chuckled. “Then they couldn’t kill,” he replied.

Now it was my turn to nod. “Let’s make that happen, then,” I said, stalking past him up the steps.
***

Note: The last "said" certainly doesn't have to be there, but when I broke the sentence into two, giving me: "I stalked past him up the steps," it seemed more jarring and I thought it flowed better as one sentence with the "said" in there. Sometimes it's amazing how many little decisions we make each moment in writing.

A Piece of the Action

Here's a little sample from something that I hope will be out soon.

The Vhichang sighed, reached up to rub at his slashed cheek. I glanced at him. His yellow eyes were hard. He hitched up his sword belt and drew a dagger into his left hand to give himself two blades to match mine. He started walking toward me.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” I told him.

“I took the gold,” he replied.

“A hard way to make a living,” I said.

“Aren’t they all.”

He lunged for me then, blades winking with light, his movements smooth and fluid, his technique nearly flawless. Nearly.

My rune-blade licked out, met his dagger, hacked it free of his hand. My rapier hooked up and inside his sword, driving it out of line with his body as his thrust brought him a little too close to me. I stepped into him, looping my arm around his, locking my elbow to catch his wrist and sword against my side where they were useless to him. I wrenched upward on the Vhichang’s arm, heard him grunt as his shoulder came out of its socket.

I lifted my other sword, the runes glimmering along its length as I brought it high. The Vhichang snarled, spat at my feet. I didn’t hold it against him, but I killed him anyway, hacking the blade down into the soft juncture where the shoulder met the neck. He sagged, collapsed against me with what sounded almost like a sigh, and I released my grip on him so that he fell at my boots.

The Ss’Korra had not moved. I saw him shiver, and tossed him the rapier I’d taken from him only moments before. He caught it reflexively, breathing hard, his green eyes skittering from side to side like minnows fleeing the approach of a shark.

“Tell me who hired you and I’ll let you live,” I said.

He groaned, and if it were possible his pupils dilated even more widely. “No!” he screamed, and threw himself toward me.

Our blades linked, slid together in a rasping burst of sparks. I stepped back and away. The Ss’Korra stood for a moment, then collapsed to his knees, dropping his sword in a clatter on the ground as his hands came up to try and stuff the pouring blood back into his chest. I turned away, heard the thud of his body on the stones as he fell the final distance onto his face and died.

Why Can't I Proofread

Sometimes I despair of my proofreading abilities, even though I suspect that I'm actually better than a lot of folks at it. In a piece I was rereading last night for the umpteenth time I discovered that I'd written the word "mediation" where I meant "meditation." How many times I passed over that one I'll never know.

Of course, if that was my only error I might be OK. But I discovered that one major character had different colored eyes in two different places, that I'd changed the eye color for a minor character at one point but failed to change it elsewhere, that I'd described one character's eyes as "jade-black,"(Uhm, hello, jade is typically green," and that I'd written army where I meant navy. Even so, minor errors, you say? But how many times have I been through this piece? A lot, I'll tell you.

And I guess I can also tell you, you'll never catch 'em all. I think sometimes of myself as a perfectionist. In reality I have to admit I'm not even close.

Manna From Heaven

I guess Easter is the appropriate time for manna from Heaven. I was off Thursday and Friday for Easter break and figured I'd get some sleep in. I didn't, or not as much as I'd planned anyway. Ended up writing for ten to twelve hours a day because of some nice projects that fell into my lap. It wasn't like I didn't have enough to do, but I already mentioned here that I'm going to take off this summer from teaching and these projects are coming at just the right time. We only have a few more weeks of school before summer is here. Anyway, my writing time is set for a while, but the end results should be pretty nice.

Sorry to be so cryptic about said projects, but I've learned not to talk about the "bird" until it's in my hand. It may be superstition, but as they say, things fall apart. The center cannot hold. Well, we'll see. I'm anchoring myself in now and will have to be torn up by the roots.

From "Renderings"

Taking a little break from David Morrell's thrillers, I started reading a novella by James Sallis called Renderings. I have very little idea what's going on in the story, but I've never minded being lost with Sallis. The trail may not be cut neat and tidy and paved, but you know there'll be great vistas along the way and that you'll end up somewhere interesting.

The main character in Renderings is a writer, and at one point we hear the following thoughts:

"Walking in the hills today I thought how surprised our old professors would be at the way I write. Suckled on New Critics, they believed the writer a master manipulator, a kind of conjurer, every word and motion bent inexorably to the final effect. I believed it too, but when I began to write, from this side of the door, that all collapsed. The only way I could do it was by winging it; if I knew things ahead of time, I simply couldn't make myself write. From page to page, word to word, I never knew what would happen. I still don't."

Although this is a character speaking, I suspect strongly that this is the way Sallis himself works. Thus my comments about the meandering path. Of course, I think this approach to writing works better with Sallis's more literary fiction than it would for something like a genre action/thriller (without extensive rewriting). I can't, however, decide whether it is more of a comfort or an anxiety to work this way. It's actually comforting to not have to plot, to not worry over what happens next and what follows that, to just open a vein as they say. But it's also worrisome. Writing takes work, and what if you write yourself into a corner three/quarters of the way through a book? How much time and effort might you waste when a little forethought would have saved you?

Maybe there's a reason why Jim's work is mostly novella length. Maybe there's a reason why many of my favorite reads are on the shorter side of novel length. As a reader, I feel the passion, the exploration, the freedom that writer's such as Jim Sallis bring to their work. There's nothing mechanical, no place where you become aware that Screw A goes into Part B. The work grows around you, grows over you, as if you're a fallen log lying quietly in the forest as the seasons pass.

A Blog Dream

OK, this is a first. Last night I dreamed a blog entry. I was writing about dialogue, about how it can’t be realistic but must sound realistic. Realistic dialogue would be cluttered up with “uhms,” and “likes” and so on, and would meander around the point until your reader was firmly ensconced in their own dreams. Good written dialogue has to carry just a flavor of such realistic voice, but also needs to be crisp, non-cliché, and needs to advance the plot while simultaneously revealing character. Seems simple, doesn’t it?

Of course, my dream wasn’t quite as succinct as what I’ve written above, and was full of asides that mostly make no logical sense in the middle of the day. But there was one aside that feels as if it might deserve greater attention. For the dream post, I’d developed a color scheme that represented different types of dialogue. Dialogue that meandered, was perhaps too realistic, was color coded “muddy brown.” Dialogue that screamed, “I am the bad guy,” was, of course, “black,” while dialogue that showed the good guy being good was “white.” Crisp dialogue was “red.” Non-cliché dialogue was “pink.” Dialogue that advanced the plot was “orange,” while dialogue that revealed character was “yellow.” Dialogue that did all four of the latter things well was rainbow colored.

In the dream, this seemed a great insight, although in the light of day I see that it’s tremendously complicated and would be very difficult to put into practice. I may try something like it on a story of mine sometime just as an exercise. Any time I can keep myself thinking about the purposes of written dialogue I think it helps.

In thinking about where this dream came from, I think I’ve figured out a possible genesis. Remember the David Morrell story I posted about a couple of days ago? It was “Orange is for Anguish, Blue for Insanity.” The painter in that story had color-coded emotions. I know this resonated with me, and somewhere in my unconscious it’s been ricocheting around ever since. Funny how that works.

David Morrell, an Update on Work

Well, I'm deep into the reading for my David Morrell article. I've read quite a bit of his stuff before but have missed some of his newer stuff. I just finished Creepers, and his short story collection Black Evening. I also read his 1983 children's book, The Hundred-Year Christmas, and I'm about a third of the way through his thriller, The Covenant of the Flame. Creepers was a very fast read, about the new breed of urban explorers, but I enjoyed his short stories most. He included helpful biographical information throughout the collection and that is really beneficial. Since he and I are both members of HWA, I emailed him in hopes of being able to ask him some questions. So far no response, but it's only been a few days.

Nothing profound to add today, just an update on work.

The Rain Plummetted, from Lucas's Challenge

The rain plummeted to the ground like tiny meteorites.

Correction, Joe thought. Those drops weren't tiny to the beings who lived in his back yard, the beings he watched through night-vision goggles every evening from his window while he sat in his frigging wheelchair. Those bastards had ruined his life. It was because of them that he’d fallen and broken his back, and it didn’t matter that he’d been out in the yard drunk trying to smash them up with a shovel. They were on his land, his property. And now their constant digging was starting to undermine his house. Already one corner of his porch was sagging. He could picture the honeycomb of burrows that stretched, no doubt, beneath the entire structure of his home.

But now they were getting theirs. To those little monsters the raindrops would be huge, would be meteorites in reality as they plunged explosively to earth, tearing up the elaborate grass nests and filling the pin-hole tunnels in which the creatures lived. He was glad. He imagined the water working deeper and deeper into their black holes, gurgling toward them as they scrambled for a safety they would never find. He hoped every one of the bastards drowned.

Although he couldn’t move his legs, his arms worked and he shook a fist toward the window. “Die scum!” he shouted.

Then he laughed, and pushed away from the window, and rolled himself into his kitchen. He opened his fridge and took out a beer, popped the top and swallowed deeply of the golden liquid.

“Beautiful,” he murmured, as thunder rumbled and the rain started pounding harder upon the roof. “Those rain dancers I hired are sure doing their job. It’ll rain for days. There won’t be a dry spot anywhere around here for those monsters to hide out. Wash them out. Wash them right out of my hair.”

Joe laughed. The rain plummeted to the ground like tiny meteorites. In his yard, in the dark tunnels filling with mud, a race was dying. But one of them, rising on shaky legs in a last dry chamber, began, herself, to dance. Far away, outside the orbit of Mars, something stirred in the asteroid belt. Something stirred. Many things stirred.

A rain began to move toward the earth. A hard rain. A dry rain.

A Character's Words of Wisdom

In his short story, "Orange is for Anguish, Blue for Insanity," David Morrell has a painter who is driven mad. But before he goes mad, while he's struggling to find his own vision, he records in his journal the following words:

"Need to free myself of convention. Need to void myself of aesthete politics, need to shit it out of me. To find what's never been painted. To feel instead of being told what to feel. To see instead of imitating what others have seen."

Good advice for any creative artist. Important, and damn near impossible. Also scary as all hell. I'd like to do this, but the courage is hard to come by. And the strength. And always I wonder. Maybe I just couldn't, even if I had the courage and the strength. Because after those come talent.

So That's How It's Done?

David Morrell has a story called "The Typewriter," about an egotistical but untalented writer who buys a "magic" typewriter. No matter what drivel the writer tries to type, the typewriter turns it into commercial bestselling drivel, and the writer gets rich. (Until things go wrong, of course.)

Stephen King later used a somewhat similar idea for his "Word Processor of the Gods," and even moreso in Tommyknockers." But Joe Lansdale reported in "Bestsellers Guaranteed" that you don't need magic to make you a bestseller. You just need the "organization." This group will guarantee their clients to make the bestseller list by controlling all the elements of production, advertising, and distribution, and all the writer has to do is a little favor for them. Talent is not required.

The head of the organization in "Bestsellers Guaranteed" admits that he knows nothing about books. But then, he's not selling books, he's "selling success."

Preposterous. Insane. Absolute nonsense. This couldn't possibly be how it works in the real world of publishing.

Indeed?

Assumptions About Writers

As a helpful guide to my blog visitors, I have constructed a list of things that one can safely assume about writers. As a writer myself, I assure you that these things are absolutely true.

1. Writers are eager to hear criticisms from readers about every element of their published work. They especially like it when terms like “sucked” are used. Don’t worry that they might get their feelings hurt. Writers are toughened to criticism.

2. A published book sells a lot of copies and makes the writer a lot of money, so they will usually be happy to give you a copy for free. The mere fact that you’d like a copy of their work is reward enough. In fact, most writers have a large number of copies printed up at their own expense for just such a purpose.

3. Writers typically only work 2 or 3 hours a day. Part A: If they aren’t typing, they aren’t working and can be freely interrupted. Part B: If they are reading, then they aren’t working and can freely be interrupted. Part C: Writing isn’t a real job anyway.

4. Writers never have enough ideas of their own and are desperate to hear more “great” ideas from perfect strangers. The writer will, of course, be happy to write that idea up and share the profits with said stranger. This benefits both parties.

5. Much like medical doctors, writers are eager to give free advice and consultations on their area of expertise to total strangers. After all, when you work only 2 or 3 hours a day you have a lot of free time to fill. They are especially happy to fix someone’s grammar troubles so that the work instantly becomes salable.

6. Writers are superb party guests. They are good with words, after all, so they are always prepared with witty repartee. If you really want to see them at their best, make sure you put them on the spot by asking them to get up in front of the guests and tell a spur-of-the-moment story that is both poignant and funny.

7. Writers lead exciting lives, filled with frequent jet trips to New York for champagne brunches with their agents, and with blockbuster, multi-city tours where they dine at only the best restaurants and sleep at only the finest hotels.

8. Writers are, of course, crazy. (At least the good ones are.) But this is why they are entertaining. Feel free to ask them such questions as: “What happened to you in your childhood? Or, “I’ve always heard that writers are mostly gay. Is that true?”

9. Writers believe everything they write. For example, if a writer has a ghost in their story you can be assured that they believe in ghosts. Similarly, you can judge a writer’s personal philosophies from their characters. If the writer has a character who is racist then be assured that they themselves share such thoughts.

10. Writing comes easy for those who have the talent. One just sits down and words and sentences unspool from the storage center in the writer’s magnificent brain. Why, it’s scarcely work at all.

And now, I must leave you, my fellow travelers of the blogosphere, for my muse has called and I sense an epic trilogy coming on. That could take me most of the rest of the day. Then it’s off to chat with Brad and Angelina about my script for their upcoming movie. Where’s my secretary with the coffee?

Assumptions

I gave a test today (March 30) and four people missed it. One emailed in sick; three others were going on a university planned visit to a graduate program. On my syllabus, handed out day 1 of class, the test time was clearly listed. My syllabus also says that a test which is missed for a legitimate reason can be made up during the final exam period at the end of the semester. Now for the assumptions part.

A student representing the three trippers came yesterday (March 29) to tell me that they (the three) had decided to take the test next Tuesday (April 3) at 12:15. Oh how I longed for Spock’s ability to so deftly arch an eyebrow. When I informed the representative that this would not be possible, I received a rather dismayed “We’ll have to wait until after Easter?” (We’re off for Easter break on Thursday, April 5 and Friday, April 6.) I informed said representative that, “Well, yes,” and explained my syllabus policy about make-ups generally being given during final exam week.

The student who was ill was more flexible. Within the email informing me that she/he would miss the test was a notice that she/he’d be better on Monday and could take the test at either 10:00 or 2:00 that day.

There appear to be certain assumptions here on the part of the students, and I thought it interesting to consider what they might be.

1. My time is theirs. If giving them a make-up should require me to miss lunch, say, then that’s not a problem.

2. I can give the exact same test to those making it up as to those who took it at the scheduled time. Cheating is not a possibility to be considered.

3. If I do need to create a new test that is the “same but different” from the original, then that can be done largely at a moment’s notice and/or I will be happy to do it over the weekend.

4. Since they are missing the test, they suddenly become my highest priority. My need to grade the tests of the other students and to deal with various faculty issues is not a problem. In fact, I believe they assume that I have only my classes to deal with and all of my other time is free time.

The question naturally arises, where do these assumptions come from, and do they exhibit them anywhere else in their daily lives? I mean, surely they don’t have such assumptions about their doctor visits or their airline flights. The worst part is that when I explain to such students that, 1) I owe it to the students who took the test on time to grade their tests before I prepare make-ups, 2) developing a make-up test is harder than developing the original test because the make-up needs to be at the same level of difficulty but different, 3) that I give make-ups during final exam week because in the past I've found that as many as 1/4 of the students will miss a test if they think they can take it only a day or two late, and 4) that any make-up test will be given at “my” convenience, meaning I’m not missing lunch or giving up my Saturday to do it, they look at me like I’m mean.

All this got me to thinking about assumptions that people make about writers. My tomorrow’s post will deal with that.

Details, Smeetails

Warning: No problems are actually solved in this post.

You spend a good hour crafting a dramatic scene. A family comes home from a pleasant dinner. The father and mother tuck their daughter into bed before going back to their room to watch TV. But what neither the reader nor the parents know is that someone is in the house. Someone has been waiting, with a plan to kidnap the child, and now he is ready to make his move. Through the house, he will creep. Oh, he’s left clues to his presence. (You, the writer, left clues.) But will the parents notice them in time? Will they be able to stop the villain from taking their child?

To create such a scene the writer will need details. Perhaps there’s a sliver of still damp mud on the stairs, and the only muddy place around is the back yard--where no one has been this day. Perhaps an inside door is ajar that wasn’t left that way. Maybe the toilet is running but it only runs after it’s been flushed. Maybe there’s an odor. One or both of the parents need to notice these things, need to find them cumulative, need to find their tension rising as realization hits. The writer is hoping that the reader’s tension will rise at the same time.

Herein lies the problem. To be effective, the clues need to be sketched in subtly. But what if the reader doesn’t pick up on them? Readers bring so much of themselves to the table, and that is both a blessing and a curse for the writer. It’s a blessing because we don’t have to give every single detail of a world to have our readers join us there. They bring with them to your piece their imagination, experience with the written word, and a love of stories. They want to be swept away and are willing to give us the chance to sweep them.

But readers are also fickle. They’re human. They have moods. They get tired. They have a million other things to do. In conversations in my writing group, and with other readers, I’ve seen how one tiny detail can throw the reader out of a book. And the detail doesn’t even have to be wrong! A friend of mine who writes historical mysteries spoke about a criticism she got from one reader who thought she was putting modern thoughts into the head of a period character. Turns out, the writer had done her research and knew that such thoughts, while not common in the period, had clearly been expressed in writing by some people of that time.

What is the solution? It seems our best chance is to write so well that we “create” the appropriate mood in the reader. No matter how he or she feels when they pick up your book, they need to feel how you want them to feel by the end of the first few paragraphs. I know it can be done. I’ve had it done to me by writers such as Thomas Harris, Dean Koontz, Cormac McCarthy and Jim Sallis. So, the solution is simple. Just become a great writer. Whew, I’m glad I figured that out. And now I leave you to it.

Hey, don’t look at me like that! I solved the problem for you. You don’t expect me to do everything for you, do you? The great writing is your part of the deal.

VILLAINS: THE BLACK AND THE GRAY

Villains! Readers love to hate them. Writers have to have them; in most fiction they are as indispensable as the hero. But how do you draw them? I mean, do you make them evil to the core? Do they glory in the blackest of their deeds? Or do you make them conflicted, give them shades of gray? Do they question their own actions? Do they, perhaps, even consider themselves the “Good Guys?”

Gray villains are more realistic. Most people believe they are doing good even when another viewpoint paints them as evil. The men who flew the planes into the World Trade Center almost certainly believed themselves to be doing right. Most of those people in the world who joyed to see Americans suffer and die probably did not think of the deed as black. I, on the other hand, could not help but find myself sickened by those who destroyed so many decent lives and by those who celebrated that fact.

Those of us who write realistic fiction have to keep this kind of thing in mind. If our villains are terrorists, then no matter how repugnant we might find their actions personally, we have to remember that they probably don’t see themselves as evil. They have motivations for their actions; they may even have the kinds of characteristics that we often associate with heroes, such as being loyal, self-sacrificing, and caring about their own families. I’m not saying that you must approve of your villains’ actions, only that you must try to understand “why” they do them and not fall back on the simple explanation that they are “Evil.” Even if your villains know they are doing bad, realistic fiction almost demands that they be conflicted about it, or that their actions are at least partially out of their control.

In fantasy and horror on the other hand, it is OK (although not required) to have a villain who is an absolute. In fact, it can be a hell of a lot of fun. Maybe it shows my own less than literary heritage, but I enjoy a villain who milks their evil for all it’s worth. In my Taleran fantasy novels, Vohanna is just absolutely evil. She knows it, she enjoys it. She tells our hero at one point that she could give him explanations for why she does bad things but the truth is she does them because she “can,” and because “she likes it.” Vohanna was a lot of fun to write. Kargen, the “villain” in Cold in the Light, on the other hand, certainly illustrates many shades of gray. In fact, quite a few people have told me that they identified strongly with the character. Kargen was also fun to write, but a lot harder to pull off than Vohanna.

I don’t accept that there is a right way or a wrong way to draw a villain. Both kinds of villains have their place. Be aware that if you create an “absolute” villain that more literary readers and critics are probably going to think of them as “comic booky.” If you like that kind of villain, however, and enjoy those kinds of stories, then just tell the “comic booky” critics to screw off. What do they know about the joys of evil anyway?

For a related post, see Steve's excellent commentary on developing good villains.

Character Identification

My writing group talked about how readers identify with characters last night, and one member commented that people are most likely to identify with characters who are like themselves. They were referring primarily to characteristics like race and gender. Although there is truth in that statement, I don't have trouble myself identifying with characters who are quite different from me in those aspects. In reading SF/fantasy and horror I've identified with plenty of characters who weren't even human. I mentioned a book here a few days ago by David Gemmell called Winter Warriors. The book has an ensemble cast but my favorite character is the lone black swordsman in the tale. I identify strongly with him.

One the other hand, I recently read a book by the African American writer Donald Goines called Inner City Hoodlum, and I couldn't identify with any of the black characters (or white ones, for that matter) in that book. This got me to thinking, why could I identify with a black character in one case and not another? I think there are two reasons.

First, the main black character in "Hoodlum" has ambitions that I don't share. He wants to get rich, wear fancy clothes, drive a fancy car, and have sex with a new woman every night. In other words, he was not like me at all on the inside. Nogusta, on the other hand, the black swordsman from Winter Warriors, wants a quiet place of his own but has duties that keep him from getting it. He cares about other people (perhaps more than I do), and is hard working, loyal to his friends, and misses his family. Boom, identification.

Second, Nogusta's goals in the context of the book are universal ones. He's not in it to help just himself or those who are replicas of himself. He wants to make the world a better place for everyone. He wants to see "all" children happy. He even cares about animals, and rescues a horse from slaughter because--even though it is old--it has a noble and brave past.

Putting aside any discussion of "realism" in characters, Nogusta is the kind of person I'd like to be. Any character, of any race or gender, or species, that shows these kinds of universal goals will be someone I can identify with.

A Night in Jail

Friday afternoon I get the call. My 19 year old son and one of his running buddies have been arrested in New Orleans for graffiti--caught in the act of spray painting under a bridge. I know it’s against the law, and am not very happy with my boy, but he doesn’t do obscenities. He does the kind of stuff that I’ve posted as today’s image, although this one isn’t his. He’s done some stuff on paper that I’ve got up on my office wall. Personally, I think he’s pretty damned talented, although I’d prefer he paint on plywood in our back yard and take pictures with his phone to show his friends.

Anyway, I go back into the city, to central lock-up, which is the kind of place you don’t even want to visit on a Friday evening. Things get rather interesting. I wait in line with half a dozen other folks to get to the bond window to find out what is going on, and, lo and behold, they respond to everyone in front of me and then walk away when I get up to the window. Maybe it was because I had long hair.

I wait semi-patiently for about five minutes before a female officer returns to the window to ask if she can help me. I ask about my son and she tells me he’s been arrested for “Criminal Damage to State Property.” I ask if I can get him out. “If someone pays his bond,” she replies in a “what are you, stupid?” voice. I sort of thought I’d implied that I was there to pay the bond, but then who knows what they heard. Grammar and proper expression were not exactly a strong point of the place, seeing as how there was a sign posted next to the bond window saying: “Do not speak to the prisoners or you will be arrest.” (Italics mine.)

“That’s why I’m here,” I say. She looks at me blankly. “Can I pay it?” I finally say, to which she does some checking on her computer and says, “It hasn’t been set yet. He has to see the judge in the morning.” I reply with something like, “He has to stay in jail overnight for graffiti?” And she says, “It was on state property.” This doesn’t help me much, although later someone else, apparently a previous occupant of the facilities, explains to me that if it had been on city property he would have gotten a ticket and been let go.

I had talked to Josh a few minutes on his cell phone right after he was caught and had told him I was on my way to get him, after yelling at him for a moment. So now I want him to know that he’s not going to be able to get out until Saturday. I ask if I can get a message to him and the officer says, “Not now.” “Does that mean I can get him one later, I wonder.” “We’re in the middle of a shift change,” she replies. I begin to question whether there is any real English in our conversation.

I wait around for an hour or so until shift change is over, but, alas, the answer to my question about getting a message to my son after that is, “No.” I go to see a couple of different bail bond folks but they tell me nothing can be done because it is a state charge. I drive home, considerably worried about my boy spending a night in central lock-up, but there appears to be nothing we can do. A little later my son gets his phone call and calls my ex-wife collect. She answers, and despite the fact that she tells them she’ll accept the charges the operator shuts him off because he called a "cell phone" collect. This is apparently against policy, some kind of policy. She heard him say, “what is going on…” and then nothing. Apparently he has no idea why he’s in there overnight, and he’s had his one phone call.

I don’t do much sleeping the rest of the night. I spend quite a bit of time trying to call central lockup to explain about the “collect” call to a cell phone. No human ever answers the ringing, ringing, ringing, although once in every five attempts I hear a machine say: “all our operators are busy at the moment. Please try your call again.”

Saturday morning, I’m back at central lock-up early. I find out from the bond window folks that my son is already in court (which turned out not to be true), and that I’ll have to pay his fine through a bail bondsman. I go to a bail bondsman. They are much, much more polite than the police officers, but they tell me they take only cash, no checks, no credit cards. I have about $150 with me and there is a place nearby that will cash checks, so I wait.

Around noon I find that his bond is 5,000 dollars, although the bondsman will take $630 of that to get him released. The check place won’t cash that much so I drive as fast as I can to my bank. On the way I’m called by the bail bondsman to say they actually need $714. Luckily, there’s a teller window open at my bank so I get the money and rush back. On the way I’m called by the public defender to say that he’s being released on his own recognizance. At least I don’t have to pony up any cash, although I now have about 800 dollars in my pocket as I walk to central lock-up. This is not a particularly comforting feeling.

A couple more hours fleet past before my son and his friend are released. He gets a hug, and a chewing out, in that order, then another hug. I find out that they had to sleep sitting up because the cell had over 30 people in it. There were roaches everywhere. I make him stop when he starts to tell me how disgusting the floor was. My stomach just isn't that strong.

He tells me about how some of his cell mates were using drugs in the cell, and about two guys that had to be taken out and (apparently) taken to the hospital to be stomach pumped. They'd tried to swallow their drugs upon arrest. He and his friend both say it was the worst experience in their lives, for which I’m rather glad. And they were given no idea during the night as to why they were still being held. They were arrested at 3:30 on Friday, and finally got out around 2:30 on Saturday. They’d had nothing to eat during that time, although after seeing the conditions of the place I’m pretty sure that’s a good thing.

I finally slept last night. I dreamt of jails.

Night Wild

I heard them last night. I woke up around five in the morning, tired but unable to go back to sleep. And so I wandered in the darkened house, stopping after a bit to stand by the French doors that open onto our deck. The yard was painted faintly with light, although the moon should have long been down. It was very quiet, no whisper even of wind. Then I heard them, a brittle howling that swelled from one voice to two, to three, to many. For a moment the night took on a texture of sound, the wild language of coyotes raised in meanings I could not translate. Then the dogs erupted into barking all over the neighborhood. The coyotes fell silent; the dogs raged on. Civilization versus savagery. Civilization always lags behind, always follows, only to find when it arrives that the savage has melted away. As if it had never been.
* * *

Special thanks to Lana for updating my webpage for me. You rock.

Long Days, Long Nights

It's been a heavy work week with little time for blogging, but I finally managed to catch up fairly well last night. Teaching can be a feast or famine sort of existence. You'll have a week or two of short days and then suddenly a week of hell. This week was the latter, and it's during the "shorter" days that I tend to get fiction written. So, not much new writing here lately. I am reading a couple of books that are much better than the last two I read, although I haven't gotten to the endings yet.

Book 1, Blood & Thunder by Mark Finn. This is a biography of Robert E. Howard, who I've mentioned here many times. It's the first full-length biography of Howard in the last 30 or so years. Mark's approach is almost conversational, but he provides a lot of interesting material and is clear to lable speculation as what it is. He's obviously done his research and knows what he knows and what he doesn't. Since I'm rather intimately tied in with Howard scholarship I would have read this even if it wasn't well written. But it is. I'm not only getting good information, I'm enjoying it as a reading experience. I know Mark personally as a friend, but if I didn't like his book I just wouldn't even mention it here. If you're interested in Howard this is a great work to pick up.

Book 2, Winter Warriors by David Gemmell. Since I'm considering writing a big heroic fantasy novel myself, I'm doing some studying of Gemmell to see how he achieves his effects. So far, (about a third of the way into it) I'm enjoying this book very much. Gemmell seems unable to write a bad book, but my favorites of his have typically been stories of the "Drenai." This is one such. If you've never read Gemmell, I'd suggest some of his earlier Drenai books, particularly the ones featuring "Druss the Legend." This will set you up with the background, although any of Gemmell's books can stand on its own.

Lazy Endings

Ending a book well is hard, but it's perhaps the most important part of the writer's job. The reader has stayed with you through the thick and the thin, and at the end is where you deliver your pay off to them. Two books I finished this weekend didn't deliver, at least in my estimation. Both were pretty big sellers, and I've very much enjoyed previous works by both writers. This time I was disappointed. And here's why.

Book 1: The hero is cornered by the villain in a dark storm drain at the end. She/he has a gun and the drop. The villain has been well developed and is clearly vicious and ready to kill. The hero is a bit more bumbling but has shown amazing resourcefullness throughout. So how does the author resolve the apparent standoff? A wild animal attacks the villain from behind and kills her/him. Even though we have previously been introduced to the tracks of this wild animal, I felt badly let down by the ending and had to read it over a couple of times to make sure that, in fact, what I thought happened had really happened. Say what?

Book 2: The hero and his friends are pursued by a witch who is well developed as a powerful and savage antagonist. She has killed and "eaten" a child. She has transformed into an eagle, and a dragon. She has possessed souls left and right who now do her bidding. She faces the hero. He steps toward her, and with a single blow of his sword cuts off her head, freeing all the souls she's captured and finishing the final battle before it has properly begun. Yes, the hero is supposed to have supernatural powers, but that's why the villain is developed as having her own magic. The hero must face a worthy adversary. Er, or not. Say what?

How could these normally fine writers forget two simple rules of good endings.

1. The hero must resolve the conflict themselves and cannot be "rescued" by fate.

2. Defeating the villain must be "difficult."

Sigh.

What's Wrong with (Some) People?

I was out for a walk today. I love the country, seeing the trees, hearing the wind rustle the leaves, having my eye caught by a splash of gold or lavender amid the green. But there are idiots around who have put a cramp in my enjoyment. I'm referring to the assholes who think the woods are their personal trash dump. It's not even the reefs of beer bottles and soda cans washed up in the ditches, or the blowing newspapers and napkins. It's the damned rotted "sofas," broken "TVs," "car seats," "refrigerators," "chest-of-drawers," and the freaking "piles" of black nylon trash bags spilling their cornucopia of crap into my environment. What the hell is wrong with people? I wish I had the power to take every last cast off carpet remnant and other piece of garbage and rematerialize it in the living rooms of the idiots who threw them out. I'd force them to live in the filth they create until they learned to dispose of it properly.

Book Mooch

Sid posted about Book Mooch some time ago and I recently got around to joining. So far, so good. You get points for uploading books that you're willing to give away, then can use those points to mooch books from others in the group. So far I've mooched one and been mooched for one, but I sent two more requests today. I had quite a few extra Louis L'Amour books because I inherited a collection from a friend's Uncle and ended up with quite a few duplicate copies. I've picked up various duplicates over time, as well. The only cost is postage to mail books that people mooch from you. Seems like a pretty cool idea, especially since many of the books I want are actually older ones that aren't on the shelves at the local bookstores.

For more on Biblioholism, check out Sphinx Ink's post today.

The Rest of the Story

Here’s the deal on the post I made a couple days ago on sympathetic versus unsympathetic characters. In my story, I had a woman whose son was kidnapped at age 10 by a pedophile and returned four years later, and whose son then runs away from home at age 15, leaving a note for his parents to say that "I'm sorry, but I just can't stay here. Don't worry." In the story, the woman tries to contact him through his cell phone, calls the police, checks with his friends (although he doesn’t have many since his return), goes on TV, where pictures and contact information are posted, hires a private detective, and then drives around for almost four days looking for him in places she’s sure he won’t be in. But she just has to “Do” something. She has her cell phone with her constantly and knows that her son knows her number. After four tearful and nearly sleepless days, she ends up at the home of a man whose son was murdered by the same molester. (This is about a week after her son has run away.)

Here’s where the controversy came in. In my story, I had the woman tell the man that she wants to kill the molester who has so damaged her son, and that she wants him (the guy who lost his son) to help. I thought that all this actually made my female character into a sympathetic character. However, most members of my writing group disagreed. Their major points, as I understand them, are:

1. A mother would not turn her mind to revenge when her son is still “out there” somewhere, lost and in need of help. Her only concern at the time would be to “find her son.” Thinking and seeking revenge at this time makes the women unsympathetic.

2. The woman is also made unsympathetic, (and weak), because she is trying to “manipulate” (their word) the man who lost his son into helping her.

I can agree that seeking the “help” of the man weakens the female character, although I also thought it would be a “realistic” response. It never occurred to me that the woman was trying to manipulate the man, only that she was seeking aid and comfort from someone who she thought would “understand her pain.” Also, knowing the rule that characters must ‘act’ to be sympathetic, I didn’t want to leave the woman sitting at home waiting for things to happen.

Point number 1 is the most confusing to me, and through further discussion in our group it seems that we are looking at some differences between men and women here, especially for women who are mothers. My female character reacts more like a male than a female, it seems. All in all, it’s led to some wide ranging and interesting discussion about what men and women expect from characters of the same gender, and of the opposite gender. It seems we’ve got a long way to go to understand each other.

A Public Service Message

Writers Beware! Be careful what you google. I heard a report today of a man who'd been murdered with a bullet to the head, then dismembered and loaded into three suitcases, which were then tossed into Chesapeake Bay. Police have taken his wife into custody as the primary suspect. Apparently, they obtained her work computer history and found that ten days before the murder she had googled "How to Commit a Murder." They also found searches for "fast-acting poisons" and local "gun laws."

It occurred to me that as a writer I have googled some pretty suspicious stuff, "fast and slow-acting poisons, Strychnine, chloral hydrate, weapons of all sorts, corpse beetles, bombs, concealed gun laws, pressure points, blood volume in the human body, etc., etc. Hopefully, no one of my acquaintence will disappear under mysterious circumstances or I might find myself hoist by the petard of my own computer search history.

And now of course I'm wondering, how suspicious are you?

Sympathetic versus unsympathetic

My writing group had a spirited discussion last night about the elements of sympathetic versus unsympathetic characters. It began when I described a scene in the book I'm writing, a scene that I believed illustrated a sympathetic female character but which most other members of my group felt showed, instead, an unsympathetic one. And so, without saying what my own choices were, I offer the following situation and ask you, my blogleagues, what you think. Here it is.

A woman's son was kidnapped when he was about ten and held by the kidnapper for four years. He was molested repeatedly but was eventually found and returned home. He is physically OK but certainly not psychologically well, and he runs away from home himself after about a year, leaving a note to his parents saying: "I'm sorry, but I just can't stay here. Don't worry." For further information, the woman's husband is not a factor, but the woman believes that the molester is still on the loose. Now, my question is: what would a realistic woman and mother do in this situation? What would she do immediatelly? And what would she do over the next four or five days?

Any help would be appreciated.

To My Inner Critic. Fuck Off You Offal-Eating Piece of Maggot-Swilling Swine!

Susan had a post today about her inner critic, although she refers to said critic as "bitch." I had a visit from the critic last night. I call him by the name in my title of the day.

I'd worked over two hours with a particular scene and while at it I was generally pretty happy with what was happening. The words seemed to be right, the sentences hung together, the paragraphs flowed. I finally reached a stopping point and I should have turned the computer off right then. But, oh no, I had to give the scene a quick last look over. At which point a big, booming voice (my inner critic isn't a "little" anything) said: "Well that was a major waste of time. There's not even anything worth cannibalizing here so please don't make me read it again."

I would have beat the shit out of him but he's wearing my face. And getting it wrinkled to boot. I told him I was going to embarass his ass today with this very post. He only smirked, and, as always of course, he got in the last word.

"It's your writing," he said. "Who do you think it's really going to embarass?"

The fucker! I'm afraid he's going to be right.

Critter Central

Our house has become even more Critter Central here lately. As I've mentioned, we throw our food scraps out back, close beneath the window where I sit to write, and the local beggars of the animal variety are starting to set their watches by us. We have three regular racoon visitors, two of whom will come up right beneath my window, and we have at least two different, and possibly three different, possums. Each of these will come at least twice a night, and sometimes more. We have had a fox, although not in a while.

Last night we managed, with much dancing about and jumping up and down, to herd a mouse out the back French Doors, and Lana discovered after finishing a small box of raisens that they had mites in them. Oh well, it was Friday, but Lana's not Catholic so I guess eating the mites wasn't a sin for her. In my windowsill, I have a dead stink bug roughly the size of my thumb, and our backyard is so constantly visited by birds that it resembles Pearl Harbor on the day of the Japanese bombing runs.

Today there are butterflies and bees in the clover, and I've had about all I can handle of sitting in the house. Outside I go, feeling like Saint Francis among the animals. Only without the saintly qualities, of course.

Alone Time

I found a great quote from Charles Darwin yesterday regarding a visit he made in old age to his childhood home. The person who owned it when the elderly Darwin visited insisted on playing the host for Darwin, taking him from room to room at his (the host's pace) and talking non-stop about this and that and what had been done. Afterward, a weary Darwin remarked to his sister: "If I had been left alone in that greenhouse for five minutes, I know I should have been able to see my father in his wheel chair..."

This illustrated so perfectly to me the "unfortunate" state of life for many of us. I'm a teacher. Seldom during the course of my work day do I get a chance to string a few thoughts together without interruption, either from students or from co-workers, and if, perchance, I should find myself able to lean back in my chair for a moment and think, someone is sure to see me and ask, "are you OK? You look upset." I think I look happy inside my own head but most people have such little experience of that state that they can't help but judge it as something wrong.

Simply, our world does not allow much in the way of solitude. And many of us don't even seem to want it. I see students who are on the verge of a thought quickly getting on the cell phone to avoid it. I see people who walk in the door to their house, quiet finally after a long day, and immediately turn on the TV.

Solitude is not something to avoid. It is, rather, a place of sanity, a place of peace, a place quiet enough to hear your own self. And if you are a writer it is absolutely essential. I know this is why I take so many long walks, and why I don't mind at all having a few hours to myself. Solitude is a reward for the strain of living constantly among the noise of people. I don't want people to go away. I like quite a few people. I just want sometimes to go away myself. I want the human world to contract so that, in contrast, my own inner world can expand. Let's hear it for alone time.

It's a Tense Situation

My writing group got on the subject of "tense" the other night. I was talking about the piece I'm working on in present tense, and was mentioning some of the strengths and weaknesses of it that I was finding. One of our members, Laura Joh Rowland, pointed out some interesting things. She said that when she was feeling her way through a scene that she'd not previously planned out that she typically wrote in present tense, because to her it was "happening now." I realized that I often did the same thing when talking out a scene in my head. As I'm creating a scene I typically think about it in present tense, then I write it in past tense as I describe on the page what I've already seen. Also, Laura pointed out that we often tell stories verbally to people in the present tense. I don't know what all this means, for sure, but it got me to thinking. I do know there's a lot more to be discussed on the issue of tense. It's not just another word for stressed.

Self Made Man

I'd heard about the book Self-Made Man, but had not given it much thought until last night. A woman named Norah Vincent spent a year and a half living as a man and this book is the result. I'd orginally assumed it was going to be a male bashing tome, but I watched an interview on TV with her last night and she seemed to have a balanced approach. She certainly carried off the appearance of being male, and I guess it helped that she's five feet, ten. She joined a male bowling league, went on dates with women, went to a strip club, and had other male type adventures. I don't know if it helped her that she's lesbian, but in the interview she revealed that at least some men took her to be gay, although they didn't know she was female.

Some points she made in the interview. 1. Males don't have it easier than women, just different. 2. Males bond with each other by picking on each other. 3. Males have a desparate need for intimacy with other men but are afraid to show it and don't really know how anyway.

As for these points, I agree with 1 and 2, although I think almost everyone knows 2 to be true. As for 3, I believe men do enjoy the friendship and companionship of other men, and that they need to get away from women sometimes (as women need to get away from men). However, I don't know about this desparation thing. I think women and men judge intimacy differently. My Ex used to badger my son to talk about what was bothering him, and he sometimes would do so and at other times would clam up. I told her more than once, sometimes men really don't want to talk about it, and sometimes that's for the best. The need to share "everything" with another person is, in my opinion, more of a feminine trait than a masculine one. Or am I just being sexist? Maybe women are like that too.

Anyway, I think I'm going to give this book a read. It sounds interesting.

Nightmare Love

Michelle posted a piece on her blog today about an interesting nightmare that she had. It made me think of my own nightmares, of which I've had many. The first one I remember was when I was about 8 or 9 and was being chased by half a dozen small human forms with long necks and no heads. Each of the forms wore either a blue or a red cowboy shirt, which I had gotten for Christmas not long before and which I seldom wore after my dream experience.

That first bad dream scared the hell out of me, but also ignited a life long love affair with nightmares. Not long after we were married, my wife woke me up from a nightmare that I was having. She thought she'd done me a good turn but I had to tell her, "never wake me when I'm having a bad dream." I like my bad dreams. I replay them over in my head after they are done; I write them down. Quite often I've gotten story elements or even whole stories from such dreams. But most of all they are fun, at least after the fact when I realize they were a dream.

In my nightmares I've been the victim of serial killers, and I've been the killer myself. I once dreamt that I was writing a book in the blood of my victims on the shut-in walls of my lair. I only killed when I needed more "ink." I have several times dreamt that I was Satan. I have dreamt that I was insane, and that I killed myself. And I've dreamt about monsters, demons, ghosts, and aliens dozens of times. I've dreamt of battling sorcerers over ancient books of forgotten lore, and I've dreamt of a place in the Amazon where the children are all born from the congress of the village's mothers with a river demon. I've died in my dreams many times, and terrified as I am at the point of death, I always think one thing when I wake up. Cool!

How about you?

Tidbits

Just some tidbits today.

Steve Malley has a link to Alan Gutherie's 32 rules of writing and they are excellent ones. Check 'em out. Even though most of us know this stuff implicitely, it's still helpful to see them explicitely stated some times.

Sid and Wayne have an interesting thing going about what you might find in a "dead man's pockets," including their own. I don't have a camera handy but in my pockets now there is a "billfold" with fifty bucks in it, a driver's license, two credit cards, a Barnes & Noble card, two library cards, some pictures of my son, some business cards, a Save A Center grocery store discount card, and a few business cards from other folks. Also in my pockets? A buck o' six cents in change, including a penny I picked up in the parking lot yesterday, a set of car keys, a cell phone, and a piece of chalk.

Writing wise, I did a bunch of rough draft last night on my fantasy, "The Blackest of Hates," and I'm finding that present tense sure does push the pace along quickly, perhaps too quickly in some cases. I also started on my next column for The Illuminata, and this one too owes a great deal to discussions I've had with folks here on the blog, as well as with my writing group. Thanks folks.

In reading, I finished Tommyland, which is Tommy Lee's (of Motley Crue)autobiography. It was actually pretty interesting, although I was most interested in the Crue years, being a big fan of their music. I'm also reading Charlee Jacob's Haunter, which is certainly one of the most graphic books I've ever read.

Copies and Pay

Nothing much to post today other than that I got my contributor copies for Two-Gun Bob. This was a book published late last year about Robert E. Howard. (Remember my REHupa comment from yesterday.) I had an article in it called "Robert E. Howard: A Behavioral Perspective." I know that probably sounds all psychological/sciency, but like pretty much everything in the book the article is intended for a general audience and is written in a non-academic tone. It was published by Hippocampus Press.

And, hey, they also sent me money. Now the question becomes, do I buy more books? Do I buy more beer? Do I spring for a nice dinner out somewhere? Do I sit in the corner of my office surrounded by the books I already have, drinking the beer I've already bought, eating some tuna fish that is already in the pantry, and giggle madly to myself?

Now, that's a hard choice.

New Links

I've put up a few new links that I thought I might say a bit about. The first one on my link list to the right is to "Lana's Web Page". Lana is my girlfriend, a talented artist, writer, and all around wonderful person who also has a bit of an acerbic wit. If you doubt that, check out her new blog, which is called "I'm surrounded by Idiots." (Most of the time she doesn't mean me.)

The next link is to REHupa, which stands for Robert E. Howard United Press Association, a group of psychos, nerds, dinks, and scholars of which I'm a member. (I won't tell you which category I fall into, although it may be more than one.) These guys have a lot of fun, and an occassionally bloody war, discussing Robert Howard and his works. There you'll also find links to such blogs as Fire and Sword, by Dave Hardy, who occassionally visits "Razored Zen," The Cimmerian, which I believe was the first ever blog dedicated solely to Howard, and The Two-Gun Raconteur, a journal that publishes stuff by and about Howard.

Third, I've added a link to The Dark Man, a scholarly journal of Howard studies, of which I'm an Assistant Editor.

A Poet At Work?

The poet dipped his quill in a tiny puddle of iron-black ink and brushed a delicate calligraphy across a pale swatch of his manuscript, each stroke delivered as precisely as that of a surgeon’s scalpel. His lips moved as he read his own words.

“I dream in heat,” he whispered. “Of bell-loud nights where I tattooed love in her flesh with the wet needle of my tongue.”

The manuscript did not speak, could not around the satin gag that bound her mouth to silence. But now she allowed herself to breathe, allowed her chest to rise and fall beneath the fine dark lines that etched her skin. And her eyes were expressive, wet with a holy shine that the poet kissed lightly away.

“Not much more,” he said. “A few haikus worth, perhaps.”

He soothed the manuscript’s damp forehead with sandpaper-dry palm, then leaned back in his chair beside the bed where his canvas lay and picked up the smallest and sharpest of his knives. The manuscript shuddered, but the poet only trimmed his quill to a fresh tip and returned the blade to its defined space on the bedside table. Once again he dipped quill to ink; once again he wrote and read.

"A white rain
on a black day
scorpion voices whisper"

"Her lips
I dreamed
fallen into Hell"