I got a good start yesterday, more than 5,000 words. Of course, I realized at nearly the 4,000 word mark that I'd skipped some things and was doing scenes out of order. I tried to convince myself that the new way was better than the synopsis, then realized it really wasn't. So then I went back and started filling in the missing stuff. As a result, I have chapter one done and the back end of chapter two. I still need to write most of chapter two leading up to the part that's already written, which may or may not actually end up being part of chapter three. To tell how critical that book soundtrack concept can be, I ran some errands this morning, but I hadn't yet burned the soundtrack onto CD, so I still had the soundtrack for the last book playing in my car -- and it really bothered me. At the next red light, I had to remove that CD and replace it with a generic "driving around" CD. I'll have to burn the new CD before the next time I drive.
While going through the process of getting book 5 published, I'm seeing how much and how rapidly the publishing world is changing. Granted, some of that may be the difference between doing it myself and going through a publisher, as I'm involved in a lot of things that were previously kept hidden from me, but even so, a lot has happened in this business since the last time I had a book published in the US, four years ago. A big one is NetGalley.
Back in the Ye Olden Days of 2008, the way publishers put books out for review was to mail a physical copy of the book. For long-lead publications (where they need the book months in advance to review it around the release date), they'd print up review copies that weren't the final proof and that didn't have the real cover. These were more expensive than the real book because they were printed in smaller quantities. Then they might do a second mailing of the actual book to places like blogs or web sites that had a faster turnaround time. Because of the cost of the physical book and the postage, they were pretty selective about where they sent review copies. At the same time, though, bloggers started being a lot more influential in spreading word of mouth while newspapers and magazines were decreasing their book coverage. That meant the publisher mailings were focusing on the places least likely to actually cover the book.
Now there's NetGalley, where publishers can offer electronic copies to reviewers. A lot of the time, the reviewers find the books instead of the publishers having to push them. The trick is that anyone can sign up as a reviewer on NetGalley, and then the publicist has to decide which of the "reviewers" requesting a book actually gets one. I spent about an hour going through review requests on Tuesday and will probably spend another hour today. In case you are on NetGalley, I thought I'd share what I'm looking for when I decide whether to grant a review request.
The main thing is to beef up your profile. I want to know what venues your reviews appear in and what your reach is -- how many subscribers, followers, etc., you've got. I need a link to your blog or site so I can get a sense of how professional you are, what your target audience is and how well my books would fit in. Without that information, you just look like you're trying to get a free book (if the only thing on your profile is "I love to read," you're not going to get a lot of review copies). I'm generally evaluating the profiles on the basis of how well it will get the word out -- is this person an expert, connector or influencer, in the terms of word-of-mouth marketing. An expert is the person you know has done the research already, so you can rely on their suggestions -- that friend you know follows the latest in tech gear, reads the reviews and magazines, so when you're ready to buy, you can ask him what to get. Or, in books, the person you know follows the industry and reads everything. A connector is the person with a network who can either reach a lot of people or who can reach the key people you need to reach. That could be someone with 50,000 Twitter followers or the hermit whose only friend is Oprah, but who is one of Oprah's most trusted friends (or is Oprah that influential anymore?). An influencer is someone people either trust or want to follow, whether or not they're an expert. This is why companies like putting things in the hands of celebrities. If people see a celebrity with something, they want it, whether or not they think the celebrity knows anything about it. You've hit the jackpot if you find an expert who has influence and who has a huge network, and that's generally what I'm looking for in evaluating review requests.
So, does it look like the blog or site has any readers other than the blogger's mom and sister? Do the readers interact or comment? Is there a friends list that shows a following? Are the other books reviewed on the site the kinds of things that readers of my books are likely to be into, and vice versa? I'm probably going to decide you're not a great fit if all the other books you review are things like erotica about threesomes or books on gardening. Is there some degree of professionalism involved? Are the reviews reasonably well written and avoiding major spoilers? I'm not looking for entirely positive reviews, but how predominant are the negative reviews and how nasty are they? Unless there's an audience so massive that any exposure is good exposure, I'm probably not going to grant a review copy to someone who seems to try to make herself look smart by gleefully trashing every book she reads.
What I've found interesting is that in the first batch of requests, none of them have been blogs I'm familiar with. That means I'm reaching places I wouldn't have known to target. I can go after the sites I know, but it's harder to target places I don't know about. However, the big question is whether this will add up to sales.
Now, since I spent the morning running errands, I'm off to get some writing done.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
What Goes on the Cover
I think I'm actually going to write the first words of book 7 today. I also proved that the time I put into making my book soundtrack isn't at all wasted. I thought I had the first scene planned, but then a song popped up on iTunes that suddenly gave me an entirely different image of what the opening scene could be, and I realized my plans were all wrong. Adjusting that changed the flow of the first third of the book in a way that I think will make it a hundred times better. That's what I call good procrastination, when it forces you to take time to think and consider. If I had just started writing yesterday based on my initial idea instead of spending much of the day listening to music, the book would have been wrong.
For my writing post this week, I'm addressing a reader question (and if you have questions, let me know!). This gets into some behind-the-scenes stuff about what goes on in publishing, but it may also be helpful to you as you submit books to editors or agents or if you decide to publish on your own. The question was about the stuff that goes on the book cover -- the information about the book and the quotes from reviewers and other authors.
How this works varies by publisher and also varies within the publisher based on the editor's working style, the editor's relationship with the author, the author's clout at the publisher and possibly even the phases of the moon. I once worked with a publisher where I found out what the text on the book cover would be when I got a copy of the printed cover flat -- the actual cover that would be bound around the book (and then I had to change the spelling of the heroine's name in the manuscript to match that text). And I've worked with a publisher that let me entirely rewrite their text.
They generally refer to that text on the cover that describes the book as the "cover copy." in a paperback book where it's printed on the back cover it may be called "back cover copy." In a hardcover book where it's on the inside flap of the paper jacket that's wrapped around the book they may call it "flap copy" or "jacket copy." Usually, the editor writes this, or the editor may take a stab at it before turning it over to someone in the marketing department. I also know of former editors who now work freelance writing cover/jacket copy, so it does sometimes get outsourced. The author may or may not get to see, approve, edit, make suggestions or rewrite this copy. My latest publisher was pretty good about giving me input, since they knew that in real life I'm a professional marketing communications writer, so this is an area of expertise. Often, this copy is written before the book is complete. It may be written based on the synopsis used to sell the book, and that's why the book that seems to be described on the cover sometimes doesn't seem to match what's inside. In those cases, the final book may have veered from the synopsis. That's also why I had to change the spelling of the character's name. Between the time I sent out the initial synopsis and the time they bought the book (and I'd already finished a draft), I'd changed my mind about the character's name, but the cover was based on the synopsis.
Even if you're dealing with a publisher that gives you no input, it's good for an author to learn to write this kind of copy. I find it useful during the creative process to force me to narrow in on what the book's about. If I can't describe the story in a way that makes it sound interesting in a couple of short paragraphs, then I need to work on drilling down into the story to find the core of it and what makes it compelling. You'll also need this kind of text for a pitch paragraph in a query letter -- and if your pitch paragraph is good enough, an editor may use it in writing the cover copy. If you self-publish, you'll have to do this for yourself, unless you hire a marketing writer to help you. This is a learn-by-doing skill. Try to write cover copy for your favorite books -- without looking at what's on the cover. Then compare it to what's on the cover. Browse a bookstore or Amazon and see what kind of copy catches your eye. It may take a lot of drafts to distill your book into a couple of punchy paragraphs, since writing shorter is a lot harder than writing long.
Those short statements on the cover from other authors or reviewers are generally referred to as "blurbs" or "cover quotes." Generally, the publisher sends out advance copies to other authors who write in the same general area and asks if those authors are willing to provide blurbs. Sometimes the author and agent may get involved, depending on their contacts and network. There will generally be some brainstorming among author, editor and agent about who to approach. This is really nervewracking for authors because you never know what you'll get, and putting your book in front of one of your literary heroes can be terrifying. Sometimes they don't respond at all. Sometimes you get something nice. Usually if they hate the book, they don't say anything or they give the "I was too busy to get around to reading it, sorry" excuse. If you're lucky, you may get unsolicited feedback. That's how I got a quote from MaryJo Putney on one of my books. She wrote for the same publisher, happened to read the previous book and e-mailed her editor about how much she loved it. That got forwarded to my editor, who then asked her if she'd like to read the next book for a blurb.
I've heard of unpublished authors soliciting blurbs before submission -- if they have published friends who've read the manuscript, they may be willing to provide a quote that the author can then use in the submission. I would say that if you can do that, it can't hurt, but be sure you have explicit permission to do so. I've heard of cases where published authors judged a contest entry and signed their judging forms, and the aspiring author then used the judges' comments as endorsement blurbs when they submitted the book. The judges were irate because there's a big difference between the kind of encouraging remarks you might make on a contest entry -- probably taken out of context among a lot of critical comments -- and endorsing a book. That sort of thing does get back to authors because editors and agents are savvy enough not to take an endorsement like that at face value and will check back with the authors via their networks (because just about everyone in publishing is only a degree or two of separation away from just about everyone else) to verify. Then it will backfire if the author says, "Yeah, I said the story was a lot of fun, but that was the only nice thing I could think of to say to ease the blow before I went into what a mess it was." So, contest judging remarks or critique group or beta reader feedback doesn't count as an endorsement. You can say you won the contest, but don't quote your judges.
For my writing post this week, I'm addressing a reader question (and if you have questions, let me know!). This gets into some behind-the-scenes stuff about what goes on in publishing, but it may also be helpful to you as you submit books to editors or agents or if you decide to publish on your own. The question was about the stuff that goes on the book cover -- the information about the book and the quotes from reviewers and other authors.
How this works varies by publisher and also varies within the publisher based on the editor's working style, the editor's relationship with the author, the author's clout at the publisher and possibly even the phases of the moon. I once worked with a publisher where I found out what the text on the book cover would be when I got a copy of the printed cover flat -- the actual cover that would be bound around the book (and then I had to change the spelling of the heroine's name in the manuscript to match that text). And I've worked with a publisher that let me entirely rewrite their text.
They generally refer to that text on the cover that describes the book as the "cover copy." in a paperback book where it's printed on the back cover it may be called "back cover copy." In a hardcover book where it's on the inside flap of the paper jacket that's wrapped around the book they may call it "flap copy" or "jacket copy." Usually, the editor writes this, or the editor may take a stab at it before turning it over to someone in the marketing department. I also know of former editors who now work freelance writing cover/jacket copy, so it does sometimes get outsourced. The author may or may not get to see, approve, edit, make suggestions or rewrite this copy. My latest publisher was pretty good about giving me input, since they knew that in real life I'm a professional marketing communications writer, so this is an area of expertise. Often, this copy is written before the book is complete. It may be written based on the synopsis used to sell the book, and that's why the book that seems to be described on the cover sometimes doesn't seem to match what's inside. In those cases, the final book may have veered from the synopsis. That's also why I had to change the spelling of the character's name. Between the time I sent out the initial synopsis and the time they bought the book (and I'd already finished a draft), I'd changed my mind about the character's name, but the cover was based on the synopsis.
Even if you're dealing with a publisher that gives you no input, it's good for an author to learn to write this kind of copy. I find it useful during the creative process to force me to narrow in on what the book's about. If I can't describe the story in a way that makes it sound interesting in a couple of short paragraphs, then I need to work on drilling down into the story to find the core of it and what makes it compelling. You'll also need this kind of text for a pitch paragraph in a query letter -- and if your pitch paragraph is good enough, an editor may use it in writing the cover copy. If you self-publish, you'll have to do this for yourself, unless you hire a marketing writer to help you. This is a learn-by-doing skill. Try to write cover copy for your favorite books -- without looking at what's on the cover. Then compare it to what's on the cover. Browse a bookstore or Amazon and see what kind of copy catches your eye. It may take a lot of drafts to distill your book into a couple of punchy paragraphs, since writing shorter is a lot harder than writing long.
Those short statements on the cover from other authors or reviewers are generally referred to as "blurbs" or "cover quotes." Generally, the publisher sends out advance copies to other authors who write in the same general area and asks if those authors are willing to provide blurbs. Sometimes the author and agent may get involved, depending on their contacts and network. There will generally be some brainstorming among author, editor and agent about who to approach. This is really nervewracking for authors because you never know what you'll get, and putting your book in front of one of your literary heroes can be terrifying. Sometimes they don't respond at all. Sometimes you get something nice. Usually if they hate the book, they don't say anything or they give the "I was too busy to get around to reading it, sorry" excuse. If you're lucky, you may get unsolicited feedback. That's how I got a quote from MaryJo Putney on one of my books. She wrote for the same publisher, happened to read the previous book and e-mailed her editor about how much she loved it. That got forwarded to my editor, who then asked her if she'd like to read the next book for a blurb.
I've heard of unpublished authors soliciting blurbs before submission -- if they have published friends who've read the manuscript, they may be willing to provide a quote that the author can then use in the submission. I would say that if you can do that, it can't hurt, but be sure you have explicit permission to do so. I've heard of cases where published authors judged a contest entry and signed their judging forms, and the aspiring author then used the judges' comments as endorsement blurbs when they submitted the book. The judges were irate because there's a big difference between the kind of encouraging remarks you might make on a contest entry -- probably taken out of context among a lot of critical comments -- and endorsing a book. That sort of thing does get back to authors because editors and agents are savvy enough not to take an endorsement like that at face value and will check back with the authors via their networks (because just about everyone in publishing is only a degree or two of separation away from just about everyone else) to verify. Then it will backfire if the author says, "Yeah, I said the story was a lot of fun, but that was the only nice thing I could think of to say to ease the blow before I went into what a mess it was." So, contest judging remarks or critique group or beta reader feedback doesn't count as an endorsement. You can say you won the contest, but don't quote your judges.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Obvious Villains
I started really digging into book 7 yesterday. When I write a synopsis, it's generally all about plot. Now I have to figure out what's going on with the characters, what the emotional arcs are, etc. That's where creating my book "soundtrack" really seems to help, even if it does look a lot like procrastination. I'd say it's the good kind of procrastination because it buys time for the subconscious to be ready. I guess you could consider it an audio collage. Jennifer Crusie writes a lot about the elaborate (and sometimes 3-D) collages she makes to get her thoughts straight on a book. I do it with music. I set iTunes on shuffle and see what comes up, then think about how it might apply to the story or characters. Sometimes that gives me ideas for scenes or even plot twists I hadn't considered or planned. Sometimes it reminds me of an emotion that needs to be present. After making a list of songs and how I think they apply to the story, I put them in more or less chronological order in a playlist, and then I'll burn an MP3 CD to keep in my car while I'm working on the book. That way, I can keep my head in the book even while running errands.
I think there are some new people around, and I've started posting some of my book commentary on Goodreads, where it looks like I give only four or five stars, so I thought it might be a good time to reiterate my "review" policy. I don't consider myself a book reviewer. I'm more of a book recommender, so I only talk publicly about books that I want to recommend. I'm not giving four or five stars to everything. I'm just ignoring anything I'd give a lower rating than that to. I'm not playing "nicey-nice" and giving high ratings to everything, regardless of what I really thought -- that's actually one of the many reasons I dropped out of those blog tour groups. While I liked and would recommend a number of books from those groups, being in the group and having that reciprocal arrangement meant endorsing some things I really wouldn't want to recommend. With my discussion of books, I consider it kind of like doing a bookstore browse with a friend, where you go through the store pointing out things you liked, telling enough about it that your friend can decide if it sounds interesting, and then telling a little about why you liked it. You're not going to bother talking about the books you hated, unless maybe your friend picks up a book that you want to warn her about. I read so many books that I wouldn't have the time to write reviews for all of them, and besides, I don't want to give the publicity to the books I hated. I'm more willing to go negative on movies because I see so few that I'd almost never get to talk about movies if I didn't include the ones I hated.
I'll admit that there is a bit of a political element here because, let's be honest, I have to work with a lot of these people. I may end up with an author on a convention panel, or my editor or agent may ask an author for a blurb on one of my books, or one of my projects may be submitted to an editor who edited a book, and that can get really awkward if I've savaged a book they were involved with. It's awkward enough when I hated the author's book and haven't said anything (there's a lot of mental cringing going on). Until someone gets to be a mega bestseller where they're either bombarded with results or have people who deal with that sort of thing, most authors have Google alerts set for their names and book titles, so they'll know if you've been nasty. Since I have additional reasons for not going negative, it seems a lot fairer and easier to just stick to that policy rather than picking and choosing when to go negative based on whether I know the author or editor, how likely I am to ever have to deal with either, whether it's close enough to my work for it to look like I'm tearing down the competition, etc.
Some of the critics of positive-only review policies say you need to know what a reviewer dislikes and why in order to know if you trust that reviewer. Again, I would say I'm more of a recommender, and I figure that if you read my books, you probably know something about what I like and you might like the same things (or maybe if you read my reviews and like the same things, you might decide to read my books). But there's another problem with mentioning negatives in reviews: Sometimes it's really hard to do that without spoiling the book. If I hate a book because I hate the ending, it can be difficult to get into why without giving away the ending. It's easier to say positive things without spoiling the book.
For instance, I read a book this weekend that I was loving. I thought the premise was brilliant -- one of those "why didn't I think of that?" situations -- and the author gleefully busted a number of tropes and cliches. I was mentally composing my rave recommendation. And then I got to the last couple of chapters and would have hurled the book across the room if it hadn't been a library book. There's no way I could have written about why I hated the book without spoiling the ending.
But it brought up a potentially valuable writing lesson, so I'm going to discuss it in vague terms without getting into specifics about the plot, characters, title or author. It's all about how to handle a villain and/or the "mystery" element of a plot, because you can get into a lot of trouble if your readers are more intelligent than your hero -- especially if your hero is characterized as being brilliant and able to see things from a unique perspective.
In this book, the villain (though the heroine didn't know yet that he was the villain) is shown being a jerk to the heroine in the opening scene. In the next scene, he's a threatening jerk even hinting at rape, but she stands her ground, calls his bluff and more or less intimidates him into leaving her alone. Soon afterward, she finds herself in a very dangerous situation that she only escapes because of her presence of mind and that of another person involved, and the villain was the person responsible for making sure that kind of situation didn't occur. That event is what kicks off the story, sending the heroine into a new situation (crossing Joseph Campbell's Threshold), where she finds herself dealing with a person in need of help -- the victim, more or less. The villain works for the victim, and that means she has to spend time with him. She gets to know him and learns that he has motive for the wrong done to the victim -- he pretty much spells out exactly what his resentments are and why and how he's benefitted from what happened to the victim -- and there's evidence as to how he might have the means. His position means he has opportunity. There's nobody else around to suspect of being the villain. And yet when the villain shows up to foil things by waving a weapon and monologuing after the heroine and the victim share their plans with him, the heroine is utterly shocked that the villain is the villain. At which point I say, "Duh, lady, I've been there since the first scene," and remind myself that this is a library book, so I'm not allowed to damage it. To make matters worse, there are some serious consequences to them not realizing who the villain was in time that make the "happy" ending not very satisfying for me. Though I'm not sure any ending would have been happy at that point because this supposedly brilliant heroine had proved to be Too Stupid To Live. I thought the villain was so painfully obvious that I kept waiting for a huge twist to show how wrong I was, so I was incredibly disappointed to find out that I was right.
And it's so easy to avoid that "Well, duh, I've been there since the first scene" situation. You either have to have enough solid red-herring suspects that there's some doubt as to who the villain really is, with the villain being good at hiding his true nature -- the "seemingly good guy who turns out to be bad/seemingly bad guy who turns out to be good" scenario -- or you have to let the heroine figure it out but be up against opposition. In this case, there were good reasons for the victim not to be able/willing to see the villain as a threat, but the heroine with her outside perspective should have been able to see it. That would have complicated her relationship with the victim because she couldn't have relied on him to help with the investigation, and he wouldn't have believed the villain was a villain unless he heard him give his evil scheme monologue while waving a weapon. Then you've got all kinds of tension as she has to play nice with the villain while being aware he's the villain and has to hide what she's up to from her ally, all while finding either evidence or a way to trick the villain into revealing himself.
It was so frustrating because I was on the verge of finding myself a keeper copy of that book, and I was planning to buy the one book in that series that my library doesn't have. Now I may see if I can find a copy of the missing book at a used bookstore because I have enjoyed the other books, but now I'm leery of trusting that author. Even more frustrating is the fact that the situation was unique enough that I can't steal it and do it right without it being obvious -- though I've already written something involving an obvious villain where the heroine spots it but the victim refuses to see it. Maybe that's why I was so annoyed, since I've dealt with that.
I think there are some new people around, and I've started posting some of my book commentary on Goodreads, where it looks like I give only four or five stars, so I thought it might be a good time to reiterate my "review" policy. I don't consider myself a book reviewer. I'm more of a book recommender, so I only talk publicly about books that I want to recommend. I'm not giving four or five stars to everything. I'm just ignoring anything I'd give a lower rating than that to. I'm not playing "nicey-nice" and giving high ratings to everything, regardless of what I really thought -- that's actually one of the many reasons I dropped out of those blog tour groups. While I liked and would recommend a number of books from those groups, being in the group and having that reciprocal arrangement meant endorsing some things I really wouldn't want to recommend. With my discussion of books, I consider it kind of like doing a bookstore browse with a friend, where you go through the store pointing out things you liked, telling enough about it that your friend can decide if it sounds interesting, and then telling a little about why you liked it. You're not going to bother talking about the books you hated, unless maybe your friend picks up a book that you want to warn her about. I read so many books that I wouldn't have the time to write reviews for all of them, and besides, I don't want to give the publicity to the books I hated. I'm more willing to go negative on movies because I see so few that I'd almost never get to talk about movies if I didn't include the ones I hated.
I'll admit that there is a bit of a political element here because, let's be honest, I have to work with a lot of these people. I may end up with an author on a convention panel, or my editor or agent may ask an author for a blurb on one of my books, or one of my projects may be submitted to an editor who edited a book, and that can get really awkward if I've savaged a book they were involved with. It's awkward enough when I hated the author's book and haven't said anything (there's a lot of mental cringing going on). Until someone gets to be a mega bestseller where they're either bombarded with results or have people who deal with that sort of thing, most authors have Google alerts set for their names and book titles, so they'll know if you've been nasty. Since I have additional reasons for not going negative, it seems a lot fairer and easier to just stick to that policy rather than picking and choosing when to go negative based on whether I know the author or editor, how likely I am to ever have to deal with either, whether it's close enough to my work for it to look like I'm tearing down the competition, etc.
Some of the critics of positive-only review policies say you need to know what a reviewer dislikes and why in order to know if you trust that reviewer. Again, I would say I'm more of a recommender, and I figure that if you read my books, you probably know something about what I like and you might like the same things (or maybe if you read my reviews and like the same things, you might decide to read my books). But there's another problem with mentioning negatives in reviews: Sometimes it's really hard to do that without spoiling the book. If I hate a book because I hate the ending, it can be difficult to get into why without giving away the ending. It's easier to say positive things without spoiling the book.
For instance, I read a book this weekend that I was loving. I thought the premise was brilliant -- one of those "why didn't I think of that?" situations -- and the author gleefully busted a number of tropes and cliches. I was mentally composing my rave recommendation. And then I got to the last couple of chapters and would have hurled the book across the room if it hadn't been a library book. There's no way I could have written about why I hated the book without spoiling the ending.
But it brought up a potentially valuable writing lesson, so I'm going to discuss it in vague terms without getting into specifics about the plot, characters, title or author. It's all about how to handle a villain and/or the "mystery" element of a plot, because you can get into a lot of trouble if your readers are more intelligent than your hero -- especially if your hero is characterized as being brilliant and able to see things from a unique perspective.
In this book, the villain (though the heroine didn't know yet that he was the villain) is shown being a jerk to the heroine in the opening scene. In the next scene, he's a threatening jerk even hinting at rape, but she stands her ground, calls his bluff and more or less intimidates him into leaving her alone. Soon afterward, she finds herself in a very dangerous situation that she only escapes because of her presence of mind and that of another person involved, and the villain was the person responsible for making sure that kind of situation didn't occur. That event is what kicks off the story, sending the heroine into a new situation (crossing Joseph Campbell's Threshold), where she finds herself dealing with a person in need of help -- the victim, more or less. The villain works for the victim, and that means she has to spend time with him. She gets to know him and learns that he has motive for the wrong done to the victim -- he pretty much spells out exactly what his resentments are and why and how he's benefitted from what happened to the victim -- and there's evidence as to how he might have the means. His position means he has opportunity. There's nobody else around to suspect of being the villain. And yet when the villain shows up to foil things by waving a weapon and monologuing after the heroine and the victim share their plans with him, the heroine is utterly shocked that the villain is the villain. At which point I say, "Duh, lady, I've been there since the first scene," and remind myself that this is a library book, so I'm not allowed to damage it. To make matters worse, there are some serious consequences to them not realizing who the villain was in time that make the "happy" ending not very satisfying for me. Though I'm not sure any ending would have been happy at that point because this supposedly brilliant heroine had proved to be Too Stupid To Live. I thought the villain was so painfully obvious that I kept waiting for a huge twist to show how wrong I was, so I was incredibly disappointed to find out that I was right.
And it's so easy to avoid that "Well, duh, I've been there since the first scene" situation. You either have to have enough solid red-herring suspects that there's some doubt as to who the villain really is, with the villain being good at hiding his true nature -- the "seemingly good guy who turns out to be bad/seemingly bad guy who turns out to be good" scenario -- or you have to let the heroine figure it out but be up against opposition. In this case, there were good reasons for the victim not to be able/willing to see the villain as a threat, but the heroine with her outside perspective should have been able to see it. That would have complicated her relationship with the victim because she couldn't have relied on him to help with the investigation, and he wouldn't have believed the villain was a villain unless he heard him give his evil scheme monologue while waving a weapon. Then you've got all kinds of tension as she has to play nice with the villain while being aware he's the villain and has to hide what she's up to from her ally, all while finding either evidence or a way to trick the villain into revealing himself.
It was so frustrating because I was on the verge of finding myself a keeper copy of that book, and I was planning to buy the one book in that series that my library doesn't have. Now I may see if I can find a copy of the missing book at a used bookstore because I have enjoyed the other books, but now I'm leery of trusting that author. Even more frustrating is the fact that the situation was unique enough that I can't steal it and do it right without it being obvious -- though I've already written something involving an obvious villain where the heroine spots it but the victim refuses to see it. Maybe that's why I was so annoyed, since I've dealt with that.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Change of Plans
My weekend really didn't go as planned. First, the shrimp creole didn't happen because that's pretty labor-intensive and I wanted to finish proofreading, and I had some country-style boneless ribs that were sounding pretty good. So I marinated those in a little liquid smoke seasoning, cooked them on the George Foreman grill (I can't use a real grill where I live), then added the sauce and broiled briefly in the toaster oven. They were almost as good as if I'd really grilled them. I'll have to do the shrimp creole tonight, though.
Saturday ended up being really busy and turned into Support the Second Sopranos Day. It takes a certain personality to sing second soprano. These are generally people who could sing first soprano (or sometimes they're altos with a higher range), and they're also people who can read music and find offbeat notes in strange chords, but they're content not to play the diva. They find more pleasure in finding those odd harmonies than in getting the big glory notes. And they have to really pull together to help each other work out those odd parts. As a result, our section is really tight-knit. The funeral the choir sang for on Saturday was for the husband of one of the second sopranos. It was a very sudden and shocking loss, so we'll have to continue being close and supportive. I did find that when social skills fail, listening and hugging work pretty well. I'm not a big hugger. It never occurs to me to initiate a hug, and I'm not overly keen on receiving them (I'm not a touchy-feely person). My personal space bubble is about the size of my house. But there are times when the thing to do is let myself be hugged (while fighting not to go stiff and rigid) and remember to hug back, and that's all the person really needs at that time.
On a happier note, one of the other second sopranos and her husband were celebrating their anniversary that weekend, and at the funeral they invited me to join them that evening for a gathering at a place in the next town over. That turned out to be a fun night at a place I'll have to go back to. It's in an old building on the very quaint town square. At lunchtime, it's a sandwich/salad deli kind of place. On Friday and Saturday nights, it becomes a wine and tapas bar with live jazz. It was nice to spend the evening hanging out with choir friends, drinking a glass of wine and listening to a really good jazz band. Now I know a nearby place I can go when I get the rare inclination to just go out. It's not even a really late night because it closes at ten.
Sunday turned into my resting/relaxing day. I mostly just watched TV, read and worked crossword puzzles, then went to bed pretty early.
Today brings two things I've been looking forward to. For one thing, the new season of Warehouse 13 starts tonight. For another, I'm starting to do the prep work for book 7. It's been a while since I wrote that proposal, so I need to get back in that mindset. I'm doing something fun and kind of experimental with that plot, so we'll see if I can pull it off. The idea seemed great in a synopsis, but writing it may turn out to be tricky. I'm developing my soundtrack for helping keep my head in the story today, as well as reviewing all my notes and plans. Tomorrow I may start actually writing, unless something happens today that triggers a good first line. Plus, I'm going to finally send my agent that other project I've been working on for ages.
Saturday ended up being really busy and turned into Support the Second Sopranos Day. It takes a certain personality to sing second soprano. These are generally people who could sing first soprano (or sometimes they're altos with a higher range), and they're also people who can read music and find offbeat notes in strange chords, but they're content not to play the diva. They find more pleasure in finding those odd harmonies than in getting the big glory notes. And they have to really pull together to help each other work out those odd parts. As a result, our section is really tight-knit. The funeral the choir sang for on Saturday was for the husband of one of the second sopranos. It was a very sudden and shocking loss, so we'll have to continue being close and supportive. I did find that when social skills fail, listening and hugging work pretty well. I'm not a big hugger. It never occurs to me to initiate a hug, and I'm not overly keen on receiving them (I'm not a touchy-feely person). My personal space bubble is about the size of my house. But there are times when the thing to do is let myself be hugged (while fighting not to go stiff and rigid) and remember to hug back, and that's all the person really needs at that time.
On a happier note, one of the other second sopranos and her husband were celebrating their anniversary that weekend, and at the funeral they invited me to join them that evening for a gathering at a place in the next town over. That turned out to be a fun night at a place I'll have to go back to. It's in an old building on the very quaint town square. At lunchtime, it's a sandwich/salad deli kind of place. On Friday and Saturday nights, it becomes a wine and tapas bar with live jazz. It was nice to spend the evening hanging out with choir friends, drinking a glass of wine and listening to a really good jazz band. Now I know a nearby place I can go when I get the rare inclination to just go out. It's not even a really late night because it closes at ten.
Sunday turned into my resting/relaxing day. I mostly just watched TV, read and worked crossword puzzles, then went to bed pretty early.
Today brings two things I've been looking forward to. For one thing, the new season of Warehouse 13 starts tonight. For another, I'm starting to do the prep work for book 7. It's been a while since I wrote that proposal, so I need to get back in that mindset. I'm doing something fun and kind of experimental with that plot, so we'll see if I can pull it off. The idea seemed great in a synopsis, but writing it may turn out to be tricky. I'm developing my soundtrack for helping keep my head in the story today, as well as reviewing all my notes and plans. Tomorrow I may start actually writing, unless something happens today that triggers a good first line. Plus, I'm going to finally send my agent that other project I've been working on for ages.
Friday, July 20, 2012
Listening to the Spidey Sense
Yesterday also turned out to be pretty good. I guess I'm on a roll. I did get a little bad news, but it was balanced by some additional not-bad news that included some really nice and encouraging comments about my work. I'm still loving the book I'm proofreading. I'm reading a book I'm really enjoying. My house is cool. Life is good.
I'm also starting to really look forward to WorldCon next month. I bought my plane ticket this week when my Spidey Sense suddenly told me to go check airfares, and they were more than a hundred dollars cheaper than the last time I checked (my Spidey Sense has been right about both the AC and the airfares, so I think I'd better continue listening to it). Normally as I get closer to a trip like this, I start wondering if I really want to go and have a bad case of "don't want to leave the house" kick in. Now not only am I excited about going to Chicago, but I'm catching myself mentally planning other trips. Depending on how money stuff works out (if I sell the book currently on submission, if book 5 sells well enough that I make decent money on it), I may even take a real vacation this fall, or at least a work-related trip that has some fun or down-time built into it. I haven't been to New York in a few years, and if I sell the book, then I'll want to go meet the new editor, and I'll have some research to do.
In the meantime, this will likely be a reasonably quiet weekend, which will be nice after last weekend being so busy. I don't have a movie for tonight, but I've got plenty on the shelves if I decide to watch something instead of read, and there's a new Phineas and Ferb episode tonight. I think I'm going to attempt to make shrimp creole. I have some shrimp in the freezer that I need to use, and I've got the other ingredients on hand. I'll just have to see if I can mentally recreate the recipe after watching my mom do it so many times. Saturday I have to sing for a funeral, so I imagine I'll need a fairly quiet evening afterward. Funerals are draining, whether or not I knew the person. In this case, it's the husband of a friend. I didn't know him, but I know her very well (she's sort of my adopted choir mom), so it's rather heartbreaking, and my social skills really aren't up to dealing with this sort of thing. I just kind of freeze and mumble.
But first, I have to finish proofreading, finish my PR plan and make a quick Home Depot run because the bulb in one of my oddball light fixtures burned out, and the Home Depot is the only place that carries that kind (have I mentioned how much I love the person who designed my house?). I may peruse paint colors, but there's no point in getting any or making a decision because the AC company still hasn't fixed my wall or called me about scheduling a time to fix it. I may have to start nagging. I'll give them until Monday. That will be a full week, enough time for them to at least have updated me on the status. I have a feeling it fell between the cracks (no pun intended) (Spidey Sense activated).
I'm also starting to really look forward to WorldCon next month. I bought my plane ticket this week when my Spidey Sense suddenly told me to go check airfares, and they were more than a hundred dollars cheaper than the last time I checked (my Spidey Sense has been right about both the AC and the airfares, so I think I'd better continue listening to it). Normally as I get closer to a trip like this, I start wondering if I really want to go and have a bad case of "don't want to leave the house" kick in. Now not only am I excited about going to Chicago, but I'm catching myself mentally planning other trips. Depending on how money stuff works out (if I sell the book currently on submission, if book 5 sells well enough that I make decent money on it), I may even take a real vacation this fall, or at least a work-related trip that has some fun or down-time built into it. I haven't been to New York in a few years, and if I sell the book, then I'll want to go meet the new editor, and I'll have some research to do.
In the meantime, this will likely be a reasonably quiet weekend, which will be nice after last weekend being so busy. I don't have a movie for tonight, but I've got plenty on the shelves if I decide to watch something instead of read, and there's a new Phineas and Ferb episode tonight. I think I'm going to attempt to make shrimp creole. I have some shrimp in the freezer that I need to use, and I've got the other ingredients on hand. I'll just have to see if I can mentally recreate the recipe after watching my mom do it so many times. Saturday I have to sing for a funeral, so I imagine I'll need a fairly quiet evening afterward. Funerals are draining, whether or not I knew the person. In this case, it's the husband of a friend. I didn't know him, but I know her very well (she's sort of my adopted choir mom), so it's rather heartbreaking, and my social skills really aren't up to dealing with this sort of thing. I just kind of freeze and mumble.
But first, I have to finish proofreading, finish my PR plan and make a quick Home Depot run because the bulb in one of my oddball light fixtures burned out, and the Home Depot is the only place that carries that kind (have I mentioned how much I love the person who designed my house?). I may peruse paint colors, but there's no point in getting any or making a decision because the AC company still hasn't fixed my wall or called me about scheduling a time to fix it. I may have to start nagging. I'll give them until Monday. That will be a full week, enough time for them to at least have updated me on the status. I have a feeling it fell between the cracks (no pun intended) (Spidey Sense activated).
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Revisiting The Boyfriend School
I had a pretty good day yesterday. I'm enjoying my nice, cool house. I did a couple of rounds of grocery shopping, so I'm well-supplied with food (I'd been running painfully low), and it's mostly good, nutritious food. One thing I like about summer is all the summer fruit, and I've got cherries, strawberries, peaches and grapes, which should take care of my sweet tooth for a while. I've been working on my PR plans and have a few good leads. I started proofreading the latest book, doing my usual reading aloud thing, and instead of reading a chapter and then taking a break I ended up plowing through a lot of it without stopping because I couldn't put it down. There's something about this book that sings to me, which really shows up when I read it out loud. I don't consider myself much of a wordsmith. I write for story, not for beautiful prose, but there are some bits I think are unintentionally brilliant. I didn't do any crafting to shape the words intentionally, but somehow the words I used to convey the story came out really well, if that makes sense, and that popped out to me when I was reading out loud because the words rolled off my tongue. It's so cool when something like that happens. My subconscious must have been firing on all cylinders. I just hope I'm not the only person who reacts to this book this way. And on top of that, I got a couple of pieces of sort of good news. Really, it's more a case of not-bad news, but in a situation where that's actually really good. It involved learning that a couple of doors are definitely still open, which is better than learning that a door has been closed.
Maybe that explains why I was pretty functional this morning and even had some energy, even though I forgot to drink my breakfast tea. I went downstairs to get my mid-morning cup and found my breakfast teacup still sitting beside the teapot. I somehow didn't notice that I never brought it to the table. No wonder breakfast went more quickly than normal.
I was in a bit of a mood earlier this week, and I was between library trips, so I found myself reaching for an old favorite book, The Boyfriend School by Sarah Bird. If it had been published ten years later than it was, it might have been lumped into the chick lit genre, but as it was, when I read it in the early 90s while I was struggling to make myself write romance novels, I had that "this is what I want to read and write" tingle. I got it from the library then, and it was totally out of print at that time. I did a happy dance in the aisles of Half-Price Books when I finally found a copy. While chick lit was going strong, they reissued it in trade paperback with a slightly chick-litty cover, and I bought it at a booksigning for the new book she had coming out. My editor at that time was friends with her, so she'd been warned about me before the signing, which was good because I had one of those trembling violently moments in which I could barely speak. I hadn't yet read that copy, and it's been a while since I re-read that book, so I gave it a whirl.
The story is about a photographer for a shoestring Austin weekly newspaper during the bust years of the 80s who gets assigned to cover a romance writers' convention. She goes in with the smugly superior attitude that's pretty common to reporters writing about the romance genre -- those silly books for silly women -- but gets schooled pretty quickly when the first writer who speaks to her is a jaded ex-journalist. The ex-journalist and her friend, a medievalist whose bestselling historical romances allowed her to escape the confines of academic life, take our heroine under their wings and teach her about the genre, making her actually read some of the books before she writes about them. Then after the conference they support her when she decides to try writing one. She just has one quibble: She doesn't believe any real woman would fall for a romance hero. Real women want nice men with integrity who treat them well. They point out that she rejected the nice guy with integrity they set her up with. As she plunges into writing, she feels like something's holding her back. And then she meets a mysterious stranger who seems to have stepped right out of the pages of a romance novel, and it changes her life.
It's hard for me to be objective about this book because it almost seems like this book was written just for me. I was living in Austin during the period in which the book is set, and I worked for a weekly newspaper one summer. I lived on the edge of the neighborhood where the heroine lives, and so I knew all the places she went. Her post office was my post office, her library branch was my library branch. Plus, I've been to those romance conferences and I know those people (in fact, it turns out that my guess for the inspiration for one of the characters was correct, based on the bonus material in the back of this edition. The speech patterns brought to mind someone totally different from the character who was described, and now I know why). I'm not at all like the heroine and probably would have made different choices than she made, but her life is enough like some things I've been through that I could identify with her. With all that, I can't help but love this book, but I do still think it's a great book beyond that. It has a twist to it that means it becomes a totally different book the next time you read it because reading it with the knowledge of what's really happening changes the story. I love books that do that (something to add to my literary bucket list). It has some fairly profound things to say about love and attraction, fantasy and reality. And it probably explains why it was such a struggle for me to write romances. I've had a lot of crushes, some pretty deep and intense enough that they were easy to mistake for love, but I don't think I've ever been truly in love -- not even in a "real world" way, let alone that earthshattering romance novel way. I'm not sure it's possible to write about that experience with the depth and intensity you need in a romance novel if you haven't experienced it. I can only write about what I wish would happen, and I'm not sure that carries the same weight.
One thing that was interesting from the perspective of reading it now was the way the romance genre has changed. There's something the writers warn the heroine that she shouldn't do in a romance that's now practically required. Sex has become much more important, and not even the flowery, euphemistic kind. The money factor is also very different. In the 80s, a category romance writer could have easily been driving a Mercedes. Now, I'm not sure you could do that just on categories. They don't have nearly the reach they once did. I suspect Amazon had a lot to do with killing that genre. The appeal was the convenience -- you subscribed to a line and every month got a shipment of books that were along the lines of what you liked, so you didn't have to go through the hassle of going to a bookstore. Now you can go online and pick and choose exactly the books you want and have them delivered -- or if you have an e-reader, you can just have them downloaded instantly. The subscriber numbers were dropping drastically when I quit writing for Silhouette more than a decade ago. I wonder what's happened recently -- or have e-books given the category romance new life? I know they've got a longer life now. They used to be on the shelves for only one month, but they stay forever in e-bookstores. Even my old ones are available again.
I would recommend this book to those who like the "smarter" chick lit (that's about something more than dropping designer label names) or for those who have a love/hate relationship with romance novels -- where you like the idea but often find them frustrating. It's also really, really funny.
There was a movie version of this book, with the title changed to Don't Tell Her it's Me (though on the DVD they're apparently calling it The Boyfriend School) that was pretty awful, though I'm not sure if my perspective was skewed because it wasn't exactly like the book I love. Sarah Bird wrote the screenplay, but I still thought it lost whatever charm the book had. For one thing, the setting was changed, for no apparent reason, and I thought that Austin was practically a character in the book. For another, the casting was all wrong and they needlessly changed a lot of critical details about the characters. And it included the "rom com dash" in which the heroine has to make the mad dash across town and publicly humiliate herself, which is definitely not in the book. The movie also mostly takes the guy's point of view when the book is from the woman's perspective. Even the description of the movie spoils the big twist in the book, so if you have plans to read the book, stay away from the IMDB listing or the DVD's Amazon listing.
Maybe that explains why I was pretty functional this morning and even had some energy, even though I forgot to drink my breakfast tea. I went downstairs to get my mid-morning cup and found my breakfast teacup still sitting beside the teapot. I somehow didn't notice that I never brought it to the table. No wonder breakfast went more quickly than normal.
I was in a bit of a mood earlier this week, and I was between library trips, so I found myself reaching for an old favorite book, The Boyfriend School by Sarah Bird. If it had been published ten years later than it was, it might have been lumped into the chick lit genre, but as it was, when I read it in the early 90s while I was struggling to make myself write romance novels, I had that "this is what I want to read and write" tingle. I got it from the library then, and it was totally out of print at that time. I did a happy dance in the aisles of Half-Price Books when I finally found a copy. While chick lit was going strong, they reissued it in trade paperback with a slightly chick-litty cover, and I bought it at a booksigning for the new book she had coming out. My editor at that time was friends with her, so she'd been warned about me before the signing, which was good because I had one of those trembling violently moments in which I could barely speak. I hadn't yet read that copy, and it's been a while since I re-read that book, so I gave it a whirl.
The story is about a photographer for a shoestring Austin weekly newspaper during the bust years of the 80s who gets assigned to cover a romance writers' convention. She goes in with the smugly superior attitude that's pretty common to reporters writing about the romance genre -- those silly books for silly women -- but gets schooled pretty quickly when the first writer who speaks to her is a jaded ex-journalist. The ex-journalist and her friend, a medievalist whose bestselling historical romances allowed her to escape the confines of academic life, take our heroine under their wings and teach her about the genre, making her actually read some of the books before she writes about them. Then after the conference they support her when she decides to try writing one. She just has one quibble: She doesn't believe any real woman would fall for a romance hero. Real women want nice men with integrity who treat them well. They point out that she rejected the nice guy with integrity they set her up with. As she plunges into writing, she feels like something's holding her back. And then she meets a mysterious stranger who seems to have stepped right out of the pages of a romance novel, and it changes her life.
It's hard for me to be objective about this book because it almost seems like this book was written just for me. I was living in Austin during the period in which the book is set, and I worked for a weekly newspaper one summer. I lived on the edge of the neighborhood where the heroine lives, and so I knew all the places she went. Her post office was my post office, her library branch was my library branch. Plus, I've been to those romance conferences and I know those people (in fact, it turns out that my guess for the inspiration for one of the characters was correct, based on the bonus material in the back of this edition. The speech patterns brought to mind someone totally different from the character who was described, and now I know why). I'm not at all like the heroine and probably would have made different choices than she made, but her life is enough like some things I've been through that I could identify with her. With all that, I can't help but love this book, but I do still think it's a great book beyond that. It has a twist to it that means it becomes a totally different book the next time you read it because reading it with the knowledge of what's really happening changes the story. I love books that do that (something to add to my literary bucket list). It has some fairly profound things to say about love and attraction, fantasy and reality. And it probably explains why it was such a struggle for me to write romances. I've had a lot of crushes, some pretty deep and intense enough that they were easy to mistake for love, but I don't think I've ever been truly in love -- not even in a "real world" way, let alone that earthshattering romance novel way. I'm not sure it's possible to write about that experience with the depth and intensity you need in a romance novel if you haven't experienced it. I can only write about what I wish would happen, and I'm not sure that carries the same weight.
One thing that was interesting from the perspective of reading it now was the way the romance genre has changed. There's something the writers warn the heroine that she shouldn't do in a romance that's now practically required. Sex has become much more important, and not even the flowery, euphemistic kind. The money factor is also very different. In the 80s, a category romance writer could have easily been driving a Mercedes. Now, I'm not sure you could do that just on categories. They don't have nearly the reach they once did. I suspect Amazon had a lot to do with killing that genre. The appeal was the convenience -- you subscribed to a line and every month got a shipment of books that were along the lines of what you liked, so you didn't have to go through the hassle of going to a bookstore. Now you can go online and pick and choose exactly the books you want and have them delivered -- or if you have an e-reader, you can just have them downloaded instantly. The subscriber numbers were dropping drastically when I quit writing for Silhouette more than a decade ago. I wonder what's happened recently -- or have e-books given the category romance new life? I know they've got a longer life now. They used to be on the shelves for only one month, but they stay forever in e-bookstores. Even my old ones are available again.
I would recommend this book to those who like the "smarter" chick lit (that's about something more than dropping designer label names) or for those who have a love/hate relationship with romance novels -- where you like the idea but often find them frustrating. It's also really, really funny.
There was a movie version of this book, with the title changed to Don't Tell Her it's Me (though on the DVD they're apparently calling it The Boyfriend School) that was pretty awful, though I'm not sure if my perspective was skewed because it wasn't exactly like the book I love. Sarah Bird wrote the screenplay, but I still thought it lost whatever charm the book had. For one thing, the setting was changed, for no apparent reason, and I thought that Austin was practically a character in the book. For another, the casting was all wrong and they needlessly changed a lot of critical details about the characters. And it included the "rom com dash" in which the heroine has to make the mad dash across town and publicly humiliate herself, which is definitely not in the book. The movie also mostly takes the guy's point of view when the book is from the woman's perspective. Even the description of the movie spoils the big twist in the book, so if you have plans to read the book, stay away from the IMDB listing or the DVD's Amazon listing.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Doing the PR Push
My house is now more or less back to normal -- aside from the hole in the bathroom wall that still needs to be patched. I was sitting on the arm of my sofa, watching them expand the fresh-air intake in the living room wall yesterday, and I somehow became the source for tools. I was expecting a conference call in about fifteen minutes, so I wanted them done and out of there. One guy would start to send the other guy back out to the truck for something, and if I had it, I'd just grab it and hand it to them. They ended up using my hammer, since my tool box was already out. When they needed a flashlight, I reached over to the coffee table and handed them one. And then I found myself wondering why on earth I have a flashlight on my coffee table. I have one in the kitchen and one in the bathroom because my cabinets and closets aren't really lit and it makes it easier to find stuff, but I'm not entirely sure why I keep one in the living room. I think maybe it ended up there during the spring storms, when it was part of my emergency supplies. I had a battery-operated radio and a flashlight at hand, and they're still there. You never know when the power might go out and you'll end up fumbling in the darkness, so I keep a flashlight near most of the places I'm likely to be after dark. Still, it was pretty weird to just reach over and grab a flashlight in my living room because who does that? (My friends: "We do!" Which is why they're my friends.)
The conference call was with my agent and publicist to discuss the launch of book 5, and now I'm feeling slightly overwhelmed. This week I need to put together a PR plan and timeline, and then I'll have to carry it out. I love public relations strategy and planning but I really hate actually doing it. I was made for senior management at an agency, but getting there requires going through the actually doing it phase, which was why I didn't try to get another PR job when I got laid off. I'd been thinking that all I'd really need to do is get the word out to my fans, but my agent is treating this release like a Big Deal. Now I'm getting a taste of what it's like to have a lead title, and it means doing a big publicity push. Meanwhile, I need to do one last proofreading pass of the latest project to get to my agent so it will be off my plate. And then there's some formatting/proofing I may need to do on other stuff. While all this book stuff is going on, I'm also at the busy phase of my FenCon PR job, so I need to write a press kit and do a lot of media outreach. In August I'm also helping with the music and art day camp at church and then there's WorldCon. Somewhere in all this, I need to write book 7. And then the PR starts again with the release of book 6, with FenCon coming right before that.
While I'm talking PR, it's time for another reader survey: Do you follow any blogs or web sites that give you info on books? Where do you go to learn about what books are coming out? Are there any blogs that cover books that you frequently see tweets or Facebook posts about or that otherwise seem to be pretty influential or that have a big following? I'm trying to put together a list of places to try to promote to, though the situation is a little tricky. A lot of sites won't cover self-published books. This book was published by a royalty-paying publisher -- in Japanese. It's the English edition that's self-published, and it's the continuation of a series that was traditionally published in the US. Will sites that covered the first four books refuse to consider the next books because of the publishing method? I guess I'll find out. Meanwhile, I've started a Facebook page for the series, where I'll post all the news and info. You can find it at http://www.facebook.com/EnchantedIncSeries.
I'm also going to throw out an offer: I'm thinking of doing a reader blog tour (in addition to whatever else gets set up with genre blogs or sites). So, if you want to do a short e-mail interview with me or have me do a guest post on your blog (please specify the topic because I'm not sure my brain can handle coming up with ideas to write about right now), let me know. I'd like these to run around the August 15 release date, but the sooner you get questions or post topic suggestions to me, the better because I'm going to be a wee bit swamped.
The conference call was with my agent and publicist to discuss the launch of book 5, and now I'm feeling slightly overwhelmed. This week I need to put together a PR plan and timeline, and then I'll have to carry it out. I love public relations strategy and planning but I really hate actually doing it. I was made for senior management at an agency, but getting there requires going through the actually doing it phase, which was why I didn't try to get another PR job when I got laid off. I'd been thinking that all I'd really need to do is get the word out to my fans, but my agent is treating this release like a Big Deal. Now I'm getting a taste of what it's like to have a lead title, and it means doing a big publicity push. Meanwhile, I need to do one last proofreading pass of the latest project to get to my agent so it will be off my plate. And then there's some formatting/proofing I may need to do on other stuff. While all this book stuff is going on, I'm also at the busy phase of my FenCon PR job, so I need to write a press kit and do a lot of media outreach. In August I'm also helping with the music and art day camp at church and then there's WorldCon. Somewhere in all this, I need to write book 7. And then the PR starts again with the release of book 6, with FenCon coming right before that.
While I'm talking PR, it's time for another reader survey: Do you follow any blogs or web sites that give you info on books? Where do you go to learn about what books are coming out? Are there any blogs that cover books that you frequently see tweets or Facebook posts about or that otherwise seem to be pretty influential or that have a big following? I'm trying to put together a list of places to try to promote to, though the situation is a little tricky. A lot of sites won't cover self-published books. This book was published by a royalty-paying publisher -- in Japanese. It's the English edition that's self-published, and it's the continuation of a series that was traditionally published in the US. Will sites that covered the first four books refuse to consider the next books because of the publishing method? I guess I'll find out. Meanwhile, I've started a Facebook page for the series, where I'll post all the news and info. You can find it at http://www.facebook.com/EnchantedIncSeries.
I'm also going to throw out an offer: I'm thinking of doing a reader blog tour (in addition to whatever else gets set up with genre blogs or sites). So, if you want to do a short e-mail interview with me or have me do a guest post on your blog (please specify the topic because I'm not sure my brain can handle coming up with ideas to write about right now), let me know. I'd like these to run around the August 15 release date, but the sooner you get questions or post topic suggestions to me, the better because I'm going to be a wee bit swamped.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Cool!
My house is now delightfully cool. I hadn't realized how bad it was until the new system was in and I felt the difference. I have the thermostat set the same, but the house seems a lot cooler -- to the point I went and adjusted the thermostat because I was too cold. The other nice thing is that the new system is so quiet, I can barely tell when it turns on. The outside unit is just outside the living room window, right next to where I sit to watch TV, so when the AC kicked on it was so loud I had to turn up the volume. With this one, I can mostly tell that the AC has come on because the thermostat makes a little click. It's still a little noisy in my bedroom where the inside unit is, but that's mostly the sound of air moving through the ductwork, not the blower itself, and that's probably going to change today.
Because, of course, there have to be complications. They needed to move the fresh air intake in my bedroom because some genius had put it six inches from a vent, which meant the hot/cold air was being sucked right back in instead of circulating. They had a plan for where to move it that looked ideal, but once they started cutting through the sheetrock they discovered that it was a load-bearing wall with a truss that supports the second floor. Not that this was obvious before they started cutting because that part of the wall doesn't have anything above it. Apparently the truss starts farther out than the second floor itself (there is some spectacularly bizarre architecture in this house). The plan is that today they'll expand the size of the main fresh air intake in the living room (which was my original suggestion when we were trying to solve this problem). Then we'll see how that works. I may just need to keep the bedroom door open, or we could end up putting a transom type vent over the bedroom door. And then they'll have to get someone to repair the sheetrock in the bathroom, and then I guess I'll get to repaint that room. I was planning to do that eventually because I didn't get quite the color I really wanted when I took out the wallpaper and painted that room eleven years ago. It shouldn't be that big a job. I think when I did it the last time, I spent most of the time ripping off three layers of wallpaper. This time, it'll just involve taping off everything, then probably a coat of primer (since the color I want is lighter than the color that's there) and then a coat of paint, and as I recall, it only took a couple of hours, at most, for each coat of paint because it's a small space and only certain walls are painted. But yeah, a little more complicated than I planned on, though probably worth it to be cool with bonus quiet. It was lovely being able to watch the series finale of Eureka last night without my finger on the remote's volume button.
Because of the complications, they had to call in supervisors to consult, so I had men coming and going from my house all day. Fortunately, they were all in uniform, so it shouldn't have looked to my neighbors like I'd gone into some less-than-savory business all of a sudden. I was hiding upstairs in my office to stay out of the way, but I kept having to run down and open the door when someone new showed up. I think that may have been the most people I've had in my house at any one time since I hosted the dessert portion of a progressive dinner party soon after I moved here. I got a minor jolt when I opened the door one time because the guy who was there was pretty much a double of Duke on Haven -- probably not as tall or as built, but very similar facial structure and facial hair. I found myself looking around for his silver box full of strange weapons. He used to do house painting before he went into the AC business, and he admired my bathroom paint job and was discussing colors with me. I did a glaze finish last time, but I don't know if I'll do that again. It looks cool, but I don't know if that's now out of style.
By the end of the day when they all left, I actually did the thing you see in movies and TV where I shut the door and then leaned wearily against it. It was a little freaky having people in my house all day long. Having my solitude back was sheer bliss. However, it was a very productive day while I was stuck in my office. I actually got everything on my to-do list done.
And now they're downstairs cutting holes in my living room wall. I hope this one works. That wall would be a pain to repaint.
Because, of course, there have to be complications. They needed to move the fresh air intake in my bedroom because some genius had put it six inches from a vent, which meant the hot/cold air was being sucked right back in instead of circulating. They had a plan for where to move it that looked ideal, but once they started cutting through the sheetrock they discovered that it was a load-bearing wall with a truss that supports the second floor. Not that this was obvious before they started cutting because that part of the wall doesn't have anything above it. Apparently the truss starts farther out than the second floor itself (there is some spectacularly bizarre architecture in this house). The plan is that today they'll expand the size of the main fresh air intake in the living room (which was my original suggestion when we were trying to solve this problem). Then we'll see how that works. I may just need to keep the bedroom door open, or we could end up putting a transom type vent over the bedroom door. And then they'll have to get someone to repair the sheetrock in the bathroom, and then I guess I'll get to repaint that room. I was planning to do that eventually because I didn't get quite the color I really wanted when I took out the wallpaper and painted that room eleven years ago. It shouldn't be that big a job. I think when I did it the last time, I spent most of the time ripping off three layers of wallpaper. This time, it'll just involve taping off everything, then probably a coat of primer (since the color I want is lighter than the color that's there) and then a coat of paint, and as I recall, it only took a couple of hours, at most, for each coat of paint because it's a small space and only certain walls are painted. But yeah, a little more complicated than I planned on, though probably worth it to be cool with bonus quiet. It was lovely being able to watch the series finale of Eureka last night without my finger on the remote's volume button.
Because of the complications, they had to call in supervisors to consult, so I had men coming and going from my house all day. Fortunately, they were all in uniform, so it shouldn't have looked to my neighbors like I'd gone into some less-than-savory business all of a sudden. I was hiding upstairs in my office to stay out of the way, but I kept having to run down and open the door when someone new showed up. I think that may have been the most people I've had in my house at any one time since I hosted the dessert portion of a progressive dinner party soon after I moved here. I got a minor jolt when I opened the door one time because the guy who was there was pretty much a double of Duke on Haven -- probably not as tall or as built, but very similar facial structure and facial hair. I found myself looking around for his silver box full of strange weapons. He used to do house painting before he went into the AC business, and he admired my bathroom paint job and was discussing colors with me. I did a glaze finish last time, but I don't know if I'll do that again. It looks cool, but I don't know if that's now out of style.
By the end of the day when they all left, I actually did the thing you see in movies and TV where I shut the door and then leaned wearily against it. It was a little freaky having people in my house all day long. Having my solitude back was sheer bliss. However, it was a very productive day while I was stuck in my office. I actually got everything on my to-do list done.
And now they're downstairs cutting holes in my living room wall. I hope this one works. That wall would be a pain to repaint.
Monday, July 16, 2012
Romantic Comedy: I'm With Lucy
My old AC is now being dismantled, a little behind schedule. They'd told me "first thing" Monday morning because they like to do as much as possible before it gets hot. So I was out of bed around 6:30 to make sure I was up and dressed before anyone showed up, which was painful, as I'd actually been sleeping well and it was pleasantly cool and comfortable. They didn't get here until after 9 because they had trouble finding my place and called the wrong number to get directions. I guess the installation guys aren't quite the geeks the sales guys were.
My romantic comedy for this weekend was I'm With Lucy, and I was curious what I'd think about it upon rewatching. I first saw it on some cable channel, and I watched it over the phone with a friend. Not long after that, she was diagnosed with cancer, and she died by the end of the year, so that marathon phone call with us watching a movie together was probably one of the last "good" times before I had to call her in the hospital and she was loopy from pain meds. And that tends to shape my memories of the movie. But I found that I did still like it, and there was a lot I missed from having been chatting on the phone while watching. I don't know why this one didn't get a wider release or make a bigger splash. I'd been aware it was being made, but then the first I heard of the finished product was when it came on some cable channel on a Saturday afternoon.
The gist of it is that in a framing story, Lucy (Monica Potter) is trying to persuade a friend to accept a blind date setup by telling her that she may not know what her type really is if she only dates men she chooses that she thinks are her type. By taking blind dates, you get a broader variety and may discover that your type isn't what you thought it was, so you'd never meet the right person without blind dates. And it worked for her. After a really nasty breakup, her sister made her go on a lot of blind dates, and now she's about to marry one of those men. Then we see all her blind dates from that time, but instead of seeing them in sequence, we see them in parallel -- we compare the first meetings of all of them, and then skip around to see various moments of the ups and downs instead of seeing an entire date from start to finish before moving on to the next one. That structure lends a bit of suspense to the usual romantic comedy format. We know one of them worked out, but we don't know which one, and because there are ups and downs with all the first dates, you can't judge by how the first date went, and all the men were at around the same level of fame at that time, so you can't even go with the idea that the most famous one will win. There's John Hannah as a recently divorced scientist, Gael Garcia Bernal as a sexy playwright, Anthony LaPaglia as a macho ex-pro baseball player, Henry Thomas as an uptight businessman who's had a really bad day, and David Boreanaz as a wealthy surgeon. It isn't until near the end of the movie that we start to see what happened after the first dates for some of these relationships and get closer to figuring out which one she's marrying -- and which one she wants to set her friend up with.
And I did like this movie a lot, even removing my personal emotional context from it. As someone who has been on a lot of blind dates, it's fun seeing just how bad they can be, and how what starts badly can end well, and how what starts well can go downhill. Even a bad date with someone who was totally wrong could have its merits and teach something about relationships and people. I enjoyed the sense of suspense that had me truly wondering almost to the end how it would turn out, but with the reassurance that it did work out, so I didn't have to worry about someone trying to upend the genre by having things go wrong entirely.
I wonder why Monica Potter didn't become a bigger star. She was really likable in a few extremely obscure romantic comedies and I think has done a few TV roles (wasn't she in The Practice for a while?), and she's got a nice mix of girl-next-door and snark. I also wonder why we don't see more of Henry Thomas. He makes a great romantic comedy leading man in both this (although the "leading man" is shared among five people) and in I Capture the Castle, but although he works steadily he doesn't seem too worried about stardom. I guess he doesn't need to, since as a kid he had the lead role in one of the biggest movies of all time, and it seems like he mostly stays in Texas and works when he feels like it, which probably means a happier life and which means he's a rare case of a child star who hasn't imploded. I admit to feeling a little creepy about finding myself admiring the little kid from ET, even though it turns out he's not that much younger than I am.
My romantic comedy for this weekend was I'm With Lucy, and I was curious what I'd think about it upon rewatching. I first saw it on some cable channel, and I watched it over the phone with a friend. Not long after that, she was diagnosed with cancer, and she died by the end of the year, so that marathon phone call with us watching a movie together was probably one of the last "good" times before I had to call her in the hospital and she was loopy from pain meds. And that tends to shape my memories of the movie. But I found that I did still like it, and there was a lot I missed from having been chatting on the phone while watching. I don't know why this one didn't get a wider release or make a bigger splash. I'd been aware it was being made, but then the first I heard of the finished product was when it came on some cable channel on a Saturday afternoon.
The gist of it is that in a framing story, Lucy (Monica Potter) is trying to persuade a friend to accept a blind date setup by telling her that she may not know what her type really is if she only dates men she chooses that she thinks are her type. By taking blind dates, you get a broader variety and may discover that your type isn't what you thought it was, so you'd never meet the right person without blind dates. And it worked for her. After a really nasty breakup, her sister made her go on a lot of blind dates, and now she's about to marry one of those men. Then we see all her blind dates from that time, but instead of seeing them in sequence, we see them in parallel -- we compare the first meetings of all of them, and then skip around to see various moments of the ups and downs instead of seeing an entire date from start to finish before moving on to the next one. That structure lends a bit of suspense to the usual romantic comedy format. We know one of them worked out, but we don't know which one, and because there are ups and downs with all the first dates, you can't judge by how the first date went, and all the men were at around the same level of fame at that time, so you can't even go with the idea that the most famous one will win. There's John Hannah as a recently divorced scientist, Gael Garcia Bernal as a sexy playwright, Anthony LaPaglia as a macho ex-pro baseball player, Henry Thomas as an uptight businessman who's had a really bad day, and David Boreanaz as a wealthy surgeon. It isn't until near the end of the movie that we start to see what happened after the first dates for some of these relationships and get closer to figuring out which one she's marrying -- and which one she wants to set her friend up with.
And I did like this movie a lot, even removing my personal emotional context from it. As someone who has been on a lot of blind dates, it's fun seeing just how bad they can be, and how what starts badly can end well, and how what starts well can go downhill. Even a bad date with someone who was totally wrong could have its merits and teach something about relationships and people. I enjoyed the sense of suspense that had me truly wondering almost to the end how it would turn out, but with the reassurance that it did work out, so I didn't have to worry about someone trying to upend the genre by having things go wrong entirely.
I wonder why Monica Potter didn't become a bigger star. She was really likable in a few extremely obscure romantic comedies and I think has done a few TV roles (wasn't she in The Practice for a while?), and she's got a nice mix of girl-next-door and snark. I also wonder why we don't see more of Henry Thomas. He makes a great romantic comedy leading man in both this (although the "leading man" is shared among five people) and in I Capture the Castle, but although he works steadily he doesn't seem too worried about stardom. I guess he doesn't need to, since as a kid he had the lead role in one of the biggest movies of all time, and it seems like he mostly stays in Texas and works when he feels like it, which probably means a happier life and which means he's a rare case of a child star who hasn't imploded. I admit to feeling a little creepy about finding myself admiring the little kid from ET, even though it turns out he's not that much younger than I am.
Friday, July 13, 2012
The E-Book Scoop
It looks like I'll be getting a new air conditioner on Monday. They had to come out again yesterday to take another look because apparently I'm really special and my house was designed by a drunk moron, but one of the guys had a genius idea for how to approach the unique situation that should improve things significantly. In fact, it almost seems like the house was designed to do it that way in the first place, but for whatever reason (possibly the same reason that made them think faux leather wallpaper in the bathroom was a good idea) they didn't do it that way when the house was built. It's not even costing me as much as I feared (though still, please buy books). The really geeky guy wasn't there this time, but the new guy and I did spend some time explaining the concept of steampunk to the main sales guy, and the main sales guy was really intrigued by the Terry Pratchett book I had lying on the bar in the living room, which led to a discussion of other book recommendations, and he ended up taking one of my bookmarks because he thought his daughters would love my books. I hope the guys who install the unit are as cool because they'll likely be in my house all day. It is possible that I may not be able to do my regular blogging on Monday, depending on what power needs to be turned off. Or I might wilt and leave them to work and head to the library. We'll see. I just need to make it through the weekend with the limping AC that can't cool below 80 degrees (which is where I usually set my thermostat anyway, but I think it's actually a bit above that during the day now).
I had a talk this morning with the person who works with my agent to do the digital publishing, so here's some of the scoop, mostly about book 5, but a lot of this will also apply to book 6. Our target release date is August 15. That's when the book will be uploaded to the booksellers. When they make it available is up to them. It's pretty much the same as with paper books -- some stores shelve right away on release day while others leave books sitting in boxes in the back room for a while until they get around to putting them on the shelf. According to the expert, the All Romance e-book store gets things up almost instantly. Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Noble get them up in 12-24 hours. Google takes a couple of days and Sony and Kobo can take up to a week. The books will also be available via Ingram and Overdrive, but Ingram sells through other accounts and Overdrive sells mostly to libraries. That does mean that you can request it through your library.
We'll be putting it up for pre-order with Apple and possibly with Amazon, aiming at having that ready around the beginning of August, but Amazon keeps changing the way they do pre-orders, so that may or may not happen. For those who want a printed paper book, there will be a print-on-demand option eventually, but possibly not right at release date. We're aiming to have that ready in time for Christmas (getting it all formatted is totally different from doing the e-book and is rather complicated). That will be available through Amazon and via Ingram, so you should be able to order a copy through a bookstore. It would be a trade paperback like the initial books and would probably be in the same price range as the paper copies of the first four books. For those who don't have e-readers (like me), you can get free apps for computers and smartphones that will allow you to read the e-book. It may not be the ideal reading experience, but it's there if you want to read the book and can't wait for the hard copy. If you're a bookseller, librarian or reviewer who wants a review copy, that will be available via NetGalley, probably around the beginning of August, but that's a different conversation I'll be having with the publicist next week.
I'll be updating the web site when I have specifics, and when the books go live at the various sellers I'll post sales links here and to my web site, and probably also Facebook and Goodreads. Any other questions? I'm starting to get really excited about all the possibilities with this. I was reviewing the EPUB version of the file on my phone last night, so it's a real book now. I now need to get the Kindle app to check that format for any funkiness. And now that I've admitted having that book on my phone, I'll have to guard it carefully.
As a fun exercise that will also help us in setting things up to maximize the exposure to the right kind of readers, I have a couple of questions. First, which genre categories would you be most likely to look for my books in? (Either specifically looking for books in the series or just looking for something kind of like that.) Second, if you were searching for something like this to read, what search terms would you use? (Pretend for a moment that you haven't read the other books in the series and aren't searching for my name or any titles, just books kind of like that.)
I managed to get the DVD of I'm With Lucy from the library, so I don't have to dig up the VHS tape from recording a TV broadcast, so I think it's going to be a romantic comedy movie night with ice cream in front of a fan. I miss having good science fiction/supernatural Friday nights, but I'm really anticipating Haven this fall because the guest casting is raising the awesome levels. They're going to have Claudia Black (Farscape and Stargate SG-1) and Iain Glenn (Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey) in guest roles. That's a real notch above last season's "celebrity" guest stars. I hope both get to use their real accents and aren't forced into faking American.
I had a talk this morning with the person who works with my agent to do the digital publishing, so here's some of the scoop, mostly about book 5, but a lot of this will also apply to book 6. Our target release date is August 15. That's when the book will be uploaded to the booksellers. When they make it available is up to them. It's pretty much the same as with paper books -- some stores shelve right away on release day while others leave books sitting in boxes in the back room for a while until they get around to putting them on the shelf. According to the expert, the All Romance e-book store gets things up almost instantly. Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Noble get them up in 12-24 hours. Google takes a couple of days and Sony and Kobo can take up to a week. The books will also be available via Ingram and Overdrive, but Ingram sells through other accounts and Overdrive sells mostly to libraries. That does mean that you can request it through your library.
We'll be putting it up for pre-order with Apple and possibly with Amazon, aiming at having that ready around the beginning of August, but Amazon keeps changing the way they do pre-orders, so that may or may not happen. For those who want a printed paper book, there will be a print-on-demand option eventually, but possibly not right at release date. We're aiming to have that ready in time for Christmas (getting it all formatted is totally different from doing the e-book and is rather complicated). That will be available through Amazon and via Ingram, so you should be able to order a copy through a bookstore. It would be a trade paperback like the initial books and would probably be in the same price range as the paper copies of the first four books. For those who don't have e-readers (like me), you can get free apps for computers and smartphones that will allow you to read the e-book. It may not be the ideal reading experience, but it's there if you want to read the book and can't wait for the hard copy. If you're a bookseller, librarian or reviewer who wants a review copy, that will be available via NetGalley, probably around the beginning of August, but that's a different conversation I'll be having with the publicist next week.
I'll be updating the web site when I have specifics, and when the books go live at the various sellers I'll post sales links here and to my web site, and probably also Facebook and Goodreads. Any other questions? I'm starting to get really excited about all the possibilities with this. I was reviewing the EPUB version of the file on my phone last night, so it's a real book now. I now need to get the Kindle app to check that format for any funkiness. And now that I've admitted having that book on my phone, I'll have to guard it carefully.
As a fun exercise that will also help us in setting things up to maximize the exposure to the right kind of readers, I have a couple of questions. First, which genre categories would you be most likely to look for my books in? (Either specifically looking for books in the series or just looking for something kind of like that.) Second, if you were searching for something like this to read, what search terms would you use? (Pretend for a moment that you haven't read the other books in the series and aren't searching for my name or any titles, just books kind of like that.)
I managed to get the DVD of I'm With Lucy from the library, so I don't have to dig up the VHS tape from recording a TV broadcast, so I think it's going to be a romantic comedy movie night with ice cream in front of a fan. I miss having good science fiction/supernatural Friday nights, but I'm really anticipating Haven this fall because the guest casting is raising the awesome levels. They're going to have Claudia Black (Farscape and Stargate SG-1) and Iain Glenn (Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey) in guest roles. That's a real notch above last season's "celebrity" guest stars. I hope both get to use their real accents and aren't forced into faking American.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
To Wed or Not to Wed
The latest book is off with Mom for a sanity check, so now I have to get back to focusing on preparing for the release of books 5 and 6. I've got a conference call with the person handling the digital release tomorrow, so next week I should have all sorts of crucial details to report.
The guys came out yesterday to look at my AC/heater and figure out what they can do for me, and it turns out that it's going to be a challenge. They were very, very creative with their use of space when they built this house, and there are some quirks to the house. Like, the indoor part of the AC/heating unit is in the bathroom ceiling. They had to write down model numbers, take photos and then go back and do research to figure out what might be available to fit in that space. So I still don't know how many books I'm going to need to sell. They did confirm that the current unit is probably dying. They got out a thermometer and measured the difference in temperature between the air going in and the air coming out, and it's not chilling the way it's supposed to, in spite of the new freon. Whatever new thing they can do, even with my limited options, should be better than what I have now. It will be quieter and more efficient, and they showed why it's so noisy in my bedroom -- the ductwork. There's a fresh-air intake vent in my bedroom that's the wrong size for the unit, so the noise is too much air being sucked into it. Not to mention the fact that the intake vent is literally six inches from the output vent, so the cool/warm air is being sucked right back in instead of being circulated. They said they'd close off that intake vent and enlarge the one in the living room.
What was fun was that they noticed my DVD collection before they even looked at my AC, so they seemed to figure out that I'm a geek and reasonably intelligent, and they gave me the technical explanations without patronizing me. Plus, we had some fun conversations about Star Wars, Star Trek, Firefly, the Alien movies, etc. And they gave me some suggestions about improving airflow with the existing system -- which fans to turn on, which direction to turn them and when, which doors to open/close -- that made a big difference in the comfort level of the house. I'd always heard that you turned the ceiling fans one way for winter and the other for summer, and the summer way didn't actually seem cooler to me. But they said it's different depending on whether you're using the AC or using the fans to cool, and in the case of the upstairs, whether I'm in that room or not. It feels cooler in that room with the fan going one way, but if I'm not in that room, then I need to reverse the fan and open the doors, and that makes the whole house cooler. They said a fan on the loft would be even better, but that ceiling slopes so much and is so low that I'm afraid anyone taller than I am would be decapitated.
Last night I found a decent romantic comedy movie of all places on the Lifetime Movie Network (their OnDemand channel, so it's probably a few years old). It was called I Me Wed, and it's about a single woman who's perfectly happy being single -- not opposed to marriage, but okay with her life the way it is and therefore not at all desperate to get married. Her friends and family refuse to believe she's happy the way she is and think she's being too picky when she rejects men, and she's getting really fed up with that. When she tells a friend that she's okay being with herself and her friend snarks back, "Why don't you marry yourself, then?" she gets an idea. She announces that she's going to marry herself to get the point across that she's perfectly okay and her commitment to herself means she's not going to settle just so she won't be alone. Of course, she meets the perfect guy soon after that, and just as she's falling in love with him, her marrying herself idea hits the media. She becomes an inspiration to a lot of fed-up single women, and her idea of a simple ceremony to make a point to her family and friends spirals out of control as companies start donating things so she can have the perfect wedding to herself. Then she's stuck in a no-win situation: if she cancels the wedding to herself because she has a boyfriend, then it looks like she was only doing the wedding thing because she was alone and she'll disappoint all those women looking up to her, but if she goes through with a huge wedding to herself while she's got a boyfriend, it looks like she's just being self-centered (not to mention, it's easy to be a Bridezilla when the wedding really is all about you). She has to figure out what a wedding really means and when it really is important to worry about what other people think.
It had Lifetime movie production values -- supposedly set in Boston but filmed in Ottawa, and taking place in April/May but all the stock footage establishing shots of Boston used between scenes showed trees with fall colors, plus a completely no-name probably Canadian cast without even the usual inclusion of one "name" in a cameo role. And there were a few things that irked me, like an extremely stereotypical gay best friend character (all gay men just looooove to plan weddings) and the first kiss leading straight to sex thing that's one of my pet peeves. But otherwise, it was reasonably thought-provoking, I liked both the guy and the girl (he was really cute and exactly my type), I wanted them to get together, there was no bickering at all, they were actually perfect for each other and not doing the usual total opposites thing, the conflict came from the circumstances, they behaved mostly like reasonable adults and reacted in a believable way, and no one was totally right or wrong -- both of them had to do the public affirmation/apology and they had to work it out between them rather than one having to do the mad dash across town and then make a fool of him/herself while groveling.
I guess I particularly related as a never-married person who's been to way too many weddings. They did make a point that she wasn't doing this as a way to get presents. Even at the beginning of the film, she was shocking her friends by buying expensive kitchenware for herself instead of waiting to put it on a wedding registry. As she said at one point, "If I want a waffle iron, I'll buy a waffle iron." But I say it's totally about the presents. If I added up all the money I've spent on wedding presents over the years, I could have really equipped my own kitchen, and since I haven't been married, there's been no occasion for any of those gifts to be reciprocated. But even if I did decide to marry myself and register for gifts, I'd have to hire PIs to track down all the people I've given gifts to. Out of all the weddings I've been to in the past 22 or so years, I'm still in regular real-life contact with one couple and am Facebook friends with a few more. Some of those people did move away, which made staying in touch more difficult, but for the most part, I think it came down to the fact that I was close enough to be invited to the wedding (and to give a gift) but not close enough to remain within their circle of friends when they were no longer part of the same general group with me. We were friends when they were in the church singles group, but they no longer associated with me when they left that group. I did establish a personal policy about ten years ago that if I haven't heard from you in the previous six months and I receive a wedding invitation from you, then I'm going to politely decline and I don't feel obligated to send a gift. If I'm not important enough to be a part of your life otherwise, then I figure you can live without me at your wedding.
I am lucky, though, that I've never felt pressured to be married. The people closest to me know that it's not because I didn't want to be married but rather that I didn't find the right person and am okay enough on my own not to settle. There's no "man that got away" that I rejected for a trivial reason but that I have second thoughts about now and wish I hadn't let him go. I can't imagine living with anyone I've dated or been asked out by. The only ones where I thought it might have worked ended up rejecting me, which is kind of a deal-breaker. I don't really get the "what's wrong with you that you aren't married?" attitude from anyone. I'm more likely to get "what's wrong with men that no one's snatched you up?" But still, it was nice to hear the heroine in this movie saying the things I say about my life and to realize that I still agree with her, in spite of me never having found the perfect guy.
The guys came out yesterday to look at my AC/heater and figure out what they can do for me, and it turns out that it's going to be a challenge. They were very, very creative with their use of space when they built this house, and there are some quirks to the house. Like, the indoor part of the AC/heating unit is in the bathroom ceiling. They had to write down model numbers, take photos and then go back and do research to figure out what might be available to fit in that space. So I still don't know how many books I'm going to need to sell. They did confirm that the current unit is probably dying. They got out a thermometer and measured the difference in temperature between the air going in and the air coming out, and it's not chilling the way it's supposed to, in spite of the new freon. Whatever new thing they can do, even with my limited options, should be better than what I have now. It will be quieter and more efficient, and they showed why it's so noisy in my bedroom -- the ductwork. There's a fresh-air intake vent in my bedroom that's the wrong size for the unit, so the noise is too much air being sucked into it. Not to mention the fact that the intake vent is literally six inches from the output vent, so the cool/warm air is being sucked right back in instead of being circulated. They said they'd close off that intake vent and enlarge the one in the living room.
What was fun was that they noticed my DVD collection before they even looked at my AC, so they seemed to figure out that I'm a geek and reasonably intelligent, and they gave me the technical explanations without patronizing me. Plus, we had some fun conversations about Star Wars, Star Trek, Firefly, the Alien movies, etc. And they gave me some suggestions about improving airflow with the existing system -- which fans to turn on, which direction to turn them and when, which doors to open/close -- that made a big difference in the comfort level of the house. I'd always heard that you turned the ceiling fans one way for winter and the other for summer, and the summer way didn't actually seem cooler to me. But they said it's different depending on whether you're using the AC or using the fans to cool, and in the case of the upstairs, whether I'm in that room or not. It feels cooler in that room with the fan going one way, but if I'm not in that room, then I need to reverse the fan and open the doors, and that makes the whole house cooler. They said a fan on the loft would be even better, but that ceiling slopes so much and is so low that I'm afraid anyone taller than I am would be decapitated.
Last night I found a decent romantic comedy movie of all places on the Lifetime Movie Network (their OnDemand channel, so it's probably a few years old). It was called I Me Wed, and it's about a single woman who's perfectly happy being single -- not opposed to marriage, but okay with her life the way it is and therefore not at all desperate to get married. Her friends and family refuse to believe she's happy the way she is and think she's being too picky when she rejects men, and she's getting really fed up with that. When she tells a friend that she's okay being with herself and her friend snarks back, "Why don't you marry yourself, then?" she gets an idea. She announces that she's going to marry herself to get the point across that she's perfectly okay and her commitment to herself means she's not going to settle just so she won't be alone. Of course, she meets the perfect guy soon after that, and just as she's falling in love with him, her marrying herself idea hits the media. She becomes an inspiration to a lot of fed-up single women, and her idea of a simple ceremony to make a point to her family and friends spirals out of control as companies start donating things so she can have the perfect wedding to herself. Then she's stuck in a no-win situation: if she cancels the wedding to herself because she has a boyfriend, then it looks like she was only doing the wedding thing because she was alone and she'll disappoint all those women looking up to her, but if she goes through with a huge wedding to herself while she's got a boyfriend, it looks like she's just being self-centered (not to mention, it's easy to be a Bridezilla when the wedding really is all about you). She has to figure out what a wedding really means and when it really is important to worry about what other people think.
It had Lifetime movie production values -- supposedly set in Boston but filmed in Ottawa, and taking place in April/May but all the stock footage establishing shots of Boston used between scenes showed trees with fall colors, plus a completely no-name probably Canadian cast without even the usual inclusion of one "name" in a cameo role. And there were a few things that irked me, like an extremely stereotypical gay best friend character (all gay men just looooove to plan weddings) and the first kiss leading straight to sex thing that's one of my pet peeves. But otherwise, it was reasonably thought-provoking, I liked both the guy and the girl (he was really cute and exactly my type), I wanted them to get together, there was no bickering at all, they were actually perfect for each other and not doing the usual total opposites thing, the conflict came from the circumstances, they behaved mostly like reasonable adults and reacted in a believable way, and no one was totally right or wrong -- both of them had to do the public affirmation/apology and they had to work it out between them rather than one having to do the mad dash across town and then make a fool of him/herself while groveling.
I guess I particularly related as a never-married person who's been to way too many weddings. They did make a point that she wasn't doing this as a way to get presents. Even at the beginning of the film, she was shocking her friends by buying expensive kitchenware for herself instead of waiting to put it on a wedding registry. As she said at one point, "If I want a waffle iron, I'll buy a waffle iron." But I say it's totally about the presents. If I added up all the money I've spent on wedding presents over the years, I could have really equipped my own kitchen, and since I haven't been married, there's been no occasion for any of those gifts to be reciprocated. But even if I did decide to marry myself and register for gifts, I'd have to hire PIs to track down all the people I've given gifts to. Out of all the weddings I've been to in the past 22 or so years, I'm still in regular real-life contact with one couple and am Facebook friends with a few more. Some of those people did move away, which made staying in touch more difficult, but for the most part, I think it came down to the fact that I was close enough to be invited to the wedding (and to give a gift) but not close enough to remain within their circle of friends when they were no longer part of the same general group with me. We were friends when they were in the church singles group, but they no longer associated with me when they left that group. I did establish a personal policy about ten years ago that if I haven't heard from you in the previous six months and I receive a wedding invitation from you, then I'm going to politely decline and I don't feel obligated to send a gift. If I'm not important enough to be a part of your life otherwise, then I figure you can live without me at your wedding.
I am lucky, though, that I've never felt pressured to be married. The people closest to me know that it's not because I didn't want to be married but rather that I didn't find the right person and am okay enough on my own not to settle. There's no "man that got away" that I rejected for a trivial reason but that I have second thoughts about now and wish I hadn't let him go. I can't imagine living with anyone I've dated or been asked out by. The only ones where I thought it might have worked ended up rejecting me, which is kind of a deal-breaker. I don't really get the "what's wrong with you that you aren't married?" attitude from anyone. I'm more likely to get "what's wrong with men that no one's snatched you up?" But still, it was nice to hear the heroine in this movie saying the things I say about my life and to realize that I still agree with her, in spite of me never having found the perfect guy.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Life Skills for Writers
I have about 50 more pages to review/revise, and then I think I'll send it off to Mom and maybe a friend or two. I'm making a lot fewer changes than I expected. I don't know if that's been because of distraction brain (there are a couple of things I may go back and tinker with that I don't think registered when I read them) or if because it really is ready. Then I'll get back to stuff like updating the web site again.
I skipped the writing post last week for the holiday. Today I think I'll talk about something not strictly writing-related. We know the kinds of skills you need to be a writer: writing (duh), research, knowing something about the business. But I've found that there are some non-writing life skills that are helpful -- if not critical -- to a writing career.
1) The ability to read aloud.
If you get a book published, at some point you will likely be asked to read from your work. This can be a great promotional tool or it can sink you like a rock. Authors are asked to do readings at booksignings and conventions, and I even had a newspaper ask me to read an excerpt on the phone for them to put on the newspaper web site as a bonus feature for their article about me. If you can do a good job with these readings, you'll get the audience excited and interested even if your book isn't a topic they might otherwise notice. If you drone in a monotone, no matter how exciting the book itself may be, the audience will assume that your book is boring.
I also find that reading aloud is helpful in the creative process. It's a good way to proofread and make sure that you read every word and not just skim over it. It's a great way to check your dialogue and make sure it sounds like something someone would actually say and to make sure your characters have distinct voices. If you find yourself going into the character voices while reading, that's a good sign. But doing that in a way that proves to be helpful requires being able to read well.
Reading aloud well takes practice. Listen to books on tape to see how the pros do it. Go to readings by other authors and take note of what works and what doesn't. Take a speech or drama course at a community college. Record yourself reading your work or someone else's and then critique your own performance. If you do get scheduled for a reading, rehearse it. Don't just show up, then thumb through your book to find a part you think might work and read it cold. I usually find my excerpt in the manuscript and edit it for reading. You don't need dialogue tags if you're doing character voices, and there may be continuity bits you need to fix to make an excerpt make sense out of context. I print it in large print and mark up the page to remind me of what I need to do when I read. Then I practice and time it.
2) Non-fiction writing
Your focus may be on fiction, but being able to write articles and essays is really helpful for promoting your work. Blogging is essentially writing an essay, and the better you do it, the more effective it is as a promotional tool (I've been approached by magazines to turn blog posts into articles for them). You may also be asked to contribute articles or opinion pieces to writing magazines, writing organization magazines and newsletters or non-fiction books. Not only does that get your name out in more places, but it can be a nice way to make a little extra money.
3) Money management
If you live paycheck-to-paycheck and figure that if you still have money in your account, you're free to spend it, you'll probably have some trouble surviving as a full-time writer or even getting to the point of making the leap to full-time writing. You don't get a monthly paycheck with your taxes and insurance costs already deducted. Advances get paid in lump sums, and it's easy to get giddy and go nuts when you get a single check that big, but that check may have to last you a couple of years before the next bit of money comes in. Royalties (once you earn out the advance, which can take a few years) are generally paid twice a year by the big publishers. The e-bookstores pay monthly if you're self-publishing, but you don't know how big that check may or may not be each month. You'll need to put aside money to pay income taxes, and you'll have to pay business expenses. For instance, most promotion these days comes out of the writer's pocket, not the publisher's. Managing my money before I took the leap into full-time writing so that I had a big financial cushion was one of the best things I did for my career. You can find books on money management, and that's also something they usually have classes and seminars on at community colleges.
4) Networking and other interpersonal business skills
Networking can be very helpful in building a career, but if you do it wrong it can also be detrimental. It's a good idea to learn what's professional and acceptable -- how to approach people without being annoying or creepy, how to draw upon your network without being presumptuous or coming across like a user. There's also a lot of business etiquette that I've found helpful in my writing career. Even simple things like writing thank-you notes can make a big impression. I learned most of this stuff in my old day-job career and from the professional organizations I joined in college, but you can find books on these subjects. There may also be panels and workshops on networking and business etiquette at writing conferences and conventions.
Is there something you'd like to know about the craft or career of writing? Let me know and I'll address it in future posts.
I skipped the writing post last week for the holiday. Today I think I'll talk about something not strictly writing-related. We know the kinds of skills you need to be a writer: writing (duh), research, knowing something about the business. But I've found that there are some non-writing life skills that are helpful -- if not critical -- to a writing career.
1) The ability to read aloud.
If you get a book published, at some point you will likely be asked to read from your work. This can be a great promotional tool or it can sink you like a rock. Authors are asked to do readings at booksignings and conventions, and I even had a newspaper ask me to read an excerpt on the phone for them to put on the newspaper web site as a bonus feature for their article about me. If you can do a good job with these readings, you'll get the audience excited and interested even if your book isn't a topic they might otherwise notice. If you drone in a monotone, no matter how exciting the book itself may be, the audience will assume that your book is boring.
I also find that reading aloud is helpful in the creative process. It's a good way to proofread and make sure that you read every word and not just skim over it. It's a great way to check your dialogue and make sure it sounds like something someone would actually say and to make sure your characters have distinct voices. If you find yourself going into the character voices while reading, that's a good sign. But doing that in a way that proves to be helpful requires being able to read well.
Reading aloud well takes practice. Listen to books on tape to see how the pros do it. Go to readings by other authors and take note of what works and what doesn't. Take a speech or drama course at a community college. Record yourself reading your work or someone else's and then critique your own performance. If you do get scheduled for a reading, rehearse it. Don't just show up, then thumb through your book to find a part you think might work and read it cold. I usually find my excerpt in the manuscript and edit it for reading. You don't need dialogue tags if you're doing character voices, and there may be continuity bits you need to fix to make an excerpt make sense out of context. I print it in large print and mark up the page to remind me of what I need to do when I read. Then I practice and time it.
2) Non-fiction writing
Your focus may be on fiction, but being able to write articles and essays is really helpful for promoting your work. Blogging is essentially writing an essay, and the better you do it, the more effective it is as a promotional tool (I've been approached by magazines to turn blog posts into articles for them). You may also be asked to contribute articles or opinion pieces to writing magazines, writing organization magazines and newsletters or non-fiction books. Not only does that get your name out in more places, but it can be a nice way to make a little extra money.
3) Money management
If you live paycheck-to-paycheck and figure that if you still have money in your account, you're free to spend it, you'll probably have some trouble surviving as a full-time writer or even getting to the point of making the leap to full-time writing. You don't get a monthly paycheck with your taxes and insurance costs already deducted. Advances get paid in lump sums, and it's easy to get giddy and go nuts when you get a single check that big, but that check may have to last you a couple of years before the next bit of money comes in. Royalties (once you earn out the advance, which can take a few years) are generally paid twice a year by the big publishers. The e-bookstores pay monthly if you're self-publishing, but you don't know how big that check may or may not be each month. You'll need to put aside money to pay income taxes, and you'll have to pay business expenses. For instance, most promotion these days comes out of the writer's pocket, not the publisher's. Managing my money before I took the leap into full-time writing so that I had a big financial cushion was one of the best things I did for my career. You can find books on money management, and that's also something they usually have classes and seminars on at community colleges.
4) Networking and other interpersonal business skills
Networking can be very helpful in building a career, but if you do it wrong it can also be detrimental. It's a good idea to learn what's professional and acceptable -- how to approach people without being annoying or creepy, how to draw upon your network without being presumptuous or coming across like a user. There's also a lot of business etiquette that I've found helpful in my writing career. Even simple things like writing thank-you notes can make a big impression. I learned most of this stuff in my old day-job career and from the professional organizations I joined in college, but you can find books on these subjects. There may also be panels and workshops on networking and business etiquette at writing conferences and conventions.
Is there something you'd like to know about the craft or career of writing? Let me know and I'll address it in future posts.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Spy Book Hangover
I'm having a book hangover kind of morning, since I stayed up way too late for my current sleeping patterns to finish reading a book and then that book triggered a lot of very intense dreams -- a whole chain of them that had me waking up and realizing it was just a dream, then going back to sleep and falling into a similar dream, over and over again. And then I woke at my usual early summer time, but I did try to let myself get back to sleep again. So I may be foggy today.
The book in question was Code Name: Verity by Elizabeth Wein, and it's a YA WWII spy story. Sort of. The story is told in a kind of manifesto written by one of the main characters, a British agent captured by the Gestapo in France who has broken under torture and agreed to tell them everything. So, this is what she writes, going back to the beginning to tell how she and her best friend both got involved in the war effort and all the events that led to where she is now. That's a really interesting story of a friendship between two girls who might never have met if it weren't for the war -- the titled lady who grew up in a Scottish castle and went to boarding school in Switzerland and the Jewish girl who works as a mechanic in her grandfather's motorcycle shop -- and how they meet when they're radio operators at an RAF base during the Battle of Britain.
But then what you have to keep in mind is that the narrator knows the Gestapo will be reading everything she writes, and that means you don't know exactly how true it is. It isn't until the second part of the book when we get things from the other girl's perspective that we start to see what's really been going on all along. Once I got to that part -- around my bedtime last night -- I couldn't put the book down. I may even have missed some things in my haste to find out what happens. It's the kind of book that you need to re-read once you know the whole story so you can spot the clues along the way, but it is pretty intense and I'm not sure I could bear to re-read the whole story right now.
This was published as YA, but I would definitely say it's adult-friendly because it's not very teenagery at all. The main characters are likely in their late teens at the beginning of the story-within-a-story, but they're in the middle of a war, so there are none of the stereotypical teen fiction tropes. There's no love triangle. There's not even really a hint of romance, unless you're inclined to read really hard between the lines and kind of imagine that two of the characters might end up together in the future. There's zero romantic angst, at any rate (and no vampires). This book is being cited as an example of what they're now calling "new adult" fiction -- for older teens to early 20s. Younger readers generally "read up," preferring to read about characters who are a bit older than they are and maybe in the next stage of life, so the main audience for books about high school is actually middle schoolers. Readers in their late teens are looking for books about the early 20s -- college and first job. Publishers seem to have figured out that since YA is the big moneymaker these days it's kind of silly to push those readers over to adult books where it's hard to narrow down which books are in the range they'd want, so they're publishing those early adult books within YA. I suspect that's how this book ended up in YA even though it could easily fit in adult fiction. I know as a teen I would have eaten this book up with a spoon and likely would have become scarily obsessed with it, reading it over and over again and then trying to write my own spy stories. It kind of is along the lines of some of the stuff I mentally wrote as a pre-teen/teen, except it's actually good and well-researched, unlike mine.
Plus, the author's history is in YA, which may influence the shelving. The book jacket doesn't mention this at all, but I thought her name sounded familiar, so I looked it up, and she is the same Elizabeth Wein that I had a really fun conversation about Star Wars with at the Nebula Awards. She wrote YA fantasy novels, and I guess they're hiding the fantasy past in relaunching her with a non-fantasy World War II book.
In other news, I think I'm going to make a leap of faith and replace my antique AC system. I'm not sure why I've put it off as long as I have. I've got the money, though my worry has been that I'll need that money for stuff like food in the coming years, since I don't know when more money will be coming in (I hope people buy these next two books! Tell all your friends!). Given interest rates, I'll save a lot more in electric costs than I'd earn in interest on that money. I think a lot of it is sheer stubbornness, but I think by now I've proved that the guy who told me ten years ago that this system wouldn't make it through the summer was wrong. It's currently working, but I get the sense it's having to work harder, and my Spidey sense is telling me it's time to do something soon. There's no point in doing major repairs on a 28-year-old air conditioner. And anything I get would have to be quieter than the current system, which would be a plus. Now I just have to deal with figuring out the right company to work with, figuring out what I need/want, figuring out if they're being honest with me, and then dealing with getting the work actually done. Ugh. I probably should have done this in the spring, but the Spidey sense hadn't kicked in yet then. It was yesterday while I was trying to work that all my instincts suddenly fired full-blast with "must replace air conditioner" impulses.
The book in question was Code Name: Verity by Elizabeth Wein, and it's a YA WWII spy story. Sort of. The story is told in a kind of manifesto written by one of the main characters, a British agent captured by the Gestapo in France who has broken under torture and agreed to tell them everything. So, this is what she writes, going back to the beginning to tell how she and her best friend both got involved in the war effort and all the events that led to where she is now. That's a really interesting story of a friendship between two girls who might never have met if it weren't for the war -- the titled lady who grew up in a Scottish castle and went to boarding school in Switzerland and the Jewish girl who works as a mechanic in her grandfather's motorcycle shop -- and how they meet when they're radio operators at an RAF base during the Battle of Britain.
But then what you have to keep in mind is that the narrator knows the Gestapo will be reading everything she writes, and that means you don't know exactly how true it is. It isn't until the second part of the book when we get things from the other girl's perspective that we start to see what's really been going on all along. Once I got to that part -- around my bedtime last night -- I couldn't put the book down. I may even have missed some things in my haste to find out what happens. It's the kind of book that you need to re-read once you know the whole story so you can spot the clues along the way, but it is pretty intense and I'm not sure I could bear to re-read the whole story right now.
This was published as YA, but I would definitely say it's adult-friendly because it's not very teenagery at all. The main characters are likely in their late teens at the beginning of the story-within-a-story, but they're in the middle of a war, so there are none of the stereotypical teen fiction tropes. There's no love triangle. There's not even really a hint of romance, unless you're inclined to read really hard between the lines and kind of imagine that two of the characters might end up together in the future. There's zero romantic angst, at any rate (and no vampires). This book is being cited as an example of what they're now calling "new adult" fiction -- for older teens to early 20s. Younger readers generally "read up," preferring to read about characters who are a bit older than they are and maybe in the next stage of life, so the main audience for books about high school is actually middle schoolers. Readers in their late teens are looking for books about the early 20s -- college and first job. Publishers seem to have figured out that since YA is the big moneymaker these days it's kind of silly to push those readers over to adult books where it's hard to narrow down which books are in the range they'd want, so they're publishing those early adult books within YA. I suspect that's how this book ended up in YA even though it could easily fit in adult fiction. I know as a teen I would have eaten this book up with a spoon and likely would have become scarily obsessed with it, reading it over and over again and then trying to write my own spy stories. It kind of is along the lines of some of the stuff I mentally wrote as a pre-teen/teen, except it's actually good and well-researched, unlike mine.
Plus, the author's history is in YA, which may influence the shelving. The book jacket doesn't mention this at all, but I thought her name sounded familiar, so I looked it up, and she is the same Elizabeth Wein that I had a really fun conversation about Star Wars with at the Nebula Awards. She wrote YA fantasy novels, and I guess they're hiding the fantasy past in relaunching her with a non-fantasy World War II book.
In other news, I think I'm going to make a leap of faith and replace my antique AC system. I'm not sure why I've put it off as long as I have. I've got the money, though my worry has been that I'll need that money for stuff like food in the coming years, since I don't know when more money will be coming in (I hope people buy these next two books! Tell all your friends!). Given interest rates, I'll save a lot more in electric costs than I'd earn in interest on that money. I think a lot of it is sheer stubbornness, but I think by now I've proved that the guy who told me ten years ago that this system wouldn't make it through the summer was wrong. It's currently working, but I get the sense it's having to work harder, and my Spidey sense is telling me it's time to do something soon. There's no point in doing major repairs on a 28-year-old air conditioner. And anything I get would have to be quieter than the current system, which would be a plus. Now I just have to deal with figuring out the right company to work with, figuring out what I need/want, figuring out if they're being honest with me, and then dealing with getting the work actually done. Ugh. I probably should have done this in the spring, but the Spidey sense hadn't kicked in yet then. It was yesterday while I was trying to work that all my instincts suddenly fired full-blast with "must replace air conditioner" impulses.
Monday, July 09, 2012
Creative Overload
It was a weird weekend for me because I had this sudden need for silence. I didn't even want to watch movies. I spent Friday night and much of Saturday lying on the sofa and reading a book about France during the Nazi occupation. Then because contrast is fun, I spent much of Sunday lying on the sofa and reading a really ditzy chick lit book. When I did watch movies, they were very strange choices (for me). Saturday afternoon I got the most bizarre inclination to watch the second X-Men movie on one of the HBO channels. I thought I'd seen it, but I didn't remember much in the way of events, so maybe it was imagery from the first and third (which I did watch on HBO when they were first on). The beginning of this one seemed most familiar, so it's possible I started trying to watch it and turned it off. Mostly, this was on as background noise while I read so I could hear Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen talk. I didn't much care what they said as long as I could listen to their accents/voices.
My biggest impression out of this was: Why isn't James Marsden a bigger star? Not that he had a big role in this (they kept him off-stage through most of the movie), but it reminded me of other movies he's been in. He's gorgeous, can sing and is capable of being really, really funny. He just about stole both Hairspray and Enchanted, and was so hilariously dorky and charming as the "Mr. Wrong" in Enchanted that I was actually a little disappointed to see her end up with "Mr. Right" instead of getting to know her prince and falling in love with him for real. This is a guy made for romantic comedies, and he was as good in 27 Dresses as that horrid script would allow anyone to be. I don't know if he considers that a fate worse than death (some actors do) and takes just about anything else that comes along, but he doesn't even seem to be making it as an action/horror star, either. (I have a growing list of actors I'd like to see in good romantic comedies, but then I suppose that requires that someone write good romantic comedy scripts and that studios know a good romantic comedy script when it bites them on the nose and are willing to fund and produce such scripts.)
Sunday I watched Girl With a Pearl Earring on one of the HBO channels because I'd read the book and Colin Firth was in it. I'm not sure what I thought of it, to be honest. It seemed to be fairly faithful to what I remembered of the book, and it seemed to capture that world pretty well. It's very minimalist, focusing a lot more on imagery than character/plot/dialogue. Colin Firth is rather charming, but has hideous hair. I did get a giggle fit when I realized that the whole movie is essentially the Colin Firth Love Actually plot, only he's a painter instead of a writer and at least he and the maid speak the same language, though she doesn't speak much at all. After that, it was hard to take it too seriously because I was adding Love Actually dialogue. (And now you know why seeing movies with me can be a fun/irritating/surreal experience.)
My real issue all weekend was that my brain seemed to kick into creative overdrive, generating ideas at an alarming pace. Everything seemed to send me spiraling off into some tangent. I think that may have been why I needed to reduce sensory input. But it wasn't the kind of creativity I could act on immediately. I'm not an artist, so I couldn't just rush to the canvas. I got a few ideas I might be able to play with in the current project, but mostly I was furiously spinning out ideas for a future project that with any luck (if the book on submission sells and I have to write the rest of the trilogy) I won't be able to write for a couple of years. I got out my notebook and wrote down those ideas as they hit me, and they came from the weirdest places -- from books I was reading to things I saw on TV. When I finally get around to writing this book, it should be awesome. At least, it is in my head. It always loses something in the transition to paper.
But for now I need to work on a publicity plan for the new releases and then get back to revising the current project and maybe implementing those new ideas.
My biggest impression out of this was: Why isn't James Marsden a bigger star? Not that he had a big role in this (they kept him off-stage through most of the movie), but it reminded me of other movies he's been in. He's gorgeous, can sing and is capable of being really, really funny. He just about stole both Hairspray and Enchanted, and was so hilariously dorky and charming as the "Mr. Wrong" in Enchanted that I was actually a little disappointed to see her end up with "Mr. Right" instead of getting to know her prince and falling in love with him for real. This is a guy made for romantic comedies, and he was as good in 27 Dresses as that horrid script would allow anyone to be. I don't know if he considers that a fate worse than death (some actors do) and takes just about anything else that comes along, but he doesn't even seem to be making it as an action/horror star, either. (I have a growing list of actors I'd like to see in good romantic comedies, but then I suppose that requires that someone write good romantic comedy scripts and that studios know a good romantic comedy script when it bites them on the nose and are willing to fund and produce such scripts.)
Sunday I watched Girl With a Pearl Earring on one of the HBO channels because I'd read the book and Colin Firth was in it. I'm not sure what I thought of it, to be honest. It seemed to be fairly faithful to what I remembered of the book, and it seemed to capture that world pretty well. It's very minimalist, focusing a lot more on imagery than character/plot/dialogue. Colin Firth is rather charming, but has hideous hair. I did get a giggle fit when I realized that the whole movie is essentially the Colin Firth Love Actually plot, only he's a painter instead of a writer and at least he and the maid speak the same language, though she doesn't speak much at all. After that, it was hard to take it too seriously because I was adding Love Actually dialogue. (And now you know why seeing movies with me can be a fun/irritating/surreal experience.)
My real issue all weekend was that my brain seemed to kick into creative overdrive, generating ideas at an alarming pace. Everything seemed to send me spiraling off into some tangent. I think that may have been why I needed to reduce sensory input. But it wasn't the kind of creativity I could act on immediately. I'm not an artist, so I couldn't just rush to the canvas. I got a few ideas I might be able to play with in the current project, but mostly I was furiously spinning out ideas for a future project that with any luck (if the book on submission sells and I have to write the rest of the trilogy) I won't be able to write for a couple of years. I got out my notebook and wrote down those ideas as they hit me, and they came from the weirdest places -- from books I was reading to things I saw on TV. When I finally get around to writing this book, it should be awesome. At least, it is in my head. It always loses something in the transition to paper.
But for now I need to work on a publicity plan for the new releases and then get back to revising the current project and maybe implementing those new ideas.
Friday, July 06, 2012
The Hazards of Early Rising
One benefit of my early waking in the summer is that I can get to Target almost as soon as it opens, when no one's there, and then to the grocery store before it gets crowded. I do sometimes have to dodge employees stocking the shelves, but I don't have to wait to check out. The real downside is that this also seems to be when the crotchety old people shop (not that I'm saying all old people are this way, just that this seems to be when that particular subset comes out). Take the encounter I had in Target this morning: Their automatic doors apparently have a safety mechanism that keeps them from opening when someone is standing on the wrong side, so they won't be smacked in the face by the doors flying open, which is also why they have so many signs around the doors letting you know that this is an entrance/exit, don't try to do the opposite, and if you want the opposite, those doors are over there. Well, as I approached the entry doors, there was an elderly lady standing on the opposite side, trying to get out. But not only did the doors not open for her (because she was trying to go out the in doors), the doors wouldn't open for me because she was standing there. But she just kept standing there, like she was waiting for the doors to be triggered by my approach, and that meant I couldn't get in and she couldn't get out. She finally figured this out and moved aside, and the doors opened for me. She then griped about how the doors wouldn't let her out, and I smiled and sweetly said, "Well, they are the entry doors. The exit doors are over there." She just snarled, "I know!" I figured it wasn't worth a fight (though I could have totally taken her), so I didn't ask why, if she knew that, she didn't walk a few feet and go out the designated door that would have opened for her. Then in the grocery store, there was some old person with their cart parked square in the middle of the aisle in just about every aisle, so that no one could get past while they stood there, carefully perusing labels, and they got in a snit if anyone dared say, "Excuse me," or nudge their cart to the side so they could pass. It seems like the nice old people tend to be there in the afternoons when the retirement home van brings them (though that bunch is most fun at the movie theater). These were the people you kind of want to put on an ice floe and set adrift.
But I did manage to score two $5 Target gift cards by stocking up on things I buy regularly. Now to decide if I'm going to be a grownup and use them on my regular necessities of daily life Target shopping or if I'm going to treat it like "found money" and spend it on something fun. I suppose it depends on whether something fun strikes my fancy.
I ended up not needing to watch a movie to switch mental gears yesterday. I just played the soundtrack I put together for this book while I did something else, and that got me right back into it. And from there I was lost in that world. I'm making a few minor tweaks, but otherwise I still love this book. I think that's part of why I keep delaying submitting it, because I love it enough that it would really hurt if my agent thought I was nuts, and loving it that much means I know I can't be objective about it, so I don't know if it's actually good or if I just love it for my own personal reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the story or the writing. But I enjoy reading it, no matter how many drafts I've done, so after this round and after a round of brutal proofreading, I'm going to bite the bullet and send it to my agent. At which time she may suggest I get professional help and maybe medication.
I may work this weekend, since I don't have any other plans and I want to get this done. This is, however, a new Inspector Lewis on PBS Sunday night. And I have new fresh flowers because they had a bunch of the same kind on clearance again. I think that's a trait that's bleeding from the heroine of the book I'm working on. It doesn't come up in the book, but she just seems like the kind of person who'd always have fresh flowers around the house (and if the flowers know what's good for them, they'd better not wilt).
But I did manage to score two $5 Target gift cards by stocking up on things I buy regularly. Now to decide if I'm going to be a grownup and use them on my regular necessities of daily life Target shopping or if I'm going to treat it like "found money" and spend it on something fun. I suppose it depends on whether something fun strikes my fancy.
I ended up not needing to watch a movie to switch mental gears yesterday. I just played the soundtrack I put together for this book while I did something else, and that got me right back into it. And from there I was lost in that world. I'm making a few minor tweaks, but otherwise I still love this book. I think that's part of why I keep delaying submitting it, because I love it enough that it would really hurt if my agent thought I was nuts, and loving it that much means I know I can't be objective about it, so I don't know if it's actually good or if I just love it for my own personal reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the story or the writing. But I enjoy reading it, no matter how many drafts I've done, so after this round and after a round of brutal proofreading, I'm going to bite the bullet and send it to my agent. At which time she may suggest I get professional help and maybe medication.
I may work this weekend, since I don't have any other plans and I want to get this done. This is, however, a new Inspector Lewis on PBS Sunday night. And I have new fresh flowers because they had a bunch of the same kind on clearance again. I think that's a trait that's bleeding from the heroine of the book I'm working on. It doesn't come up in the book, but she just seems like the kind of person who'd always have fresh flowers around the house (and if the flowers know what's good for them, they'd better not wilt).
Thursday, July 05, 2012
Release Dates and Other Stuff
I finished proofreading book 6 on Tuesday, then gave myself a day off for the Independence Day holiday (though I did do some research reading for an upcoming project). I did some housework and baking, but otherwise it was a lazy day until it was time to head with some friends to the lake to watch fireworks. They were shooting the fireworks from across the lake, so it looked really cool with the reflection in the water, but we were far enough away that we didn't get that visceral "under fire" feeling I like about fireworks. From where we were sitting, we could see at least three other fireworks displays off in the distance, even after our show was over. We're still working out the optimal fireworks experience -- a good show from the right vantage point that doesn't require getting there too terribly early and has enough access points that it's not too hard to leave. There's one show in the area that's awesome and that has all-day entertainment, including a vintage aircraft airshow before the fireworks, but about half a million people (literally, not an exaggeration) come to that, so you have to get there by about 4 in the afternoon, and then it takes hours for the crowds to clear out.
Now, it's back to work. I've been working on a book for a few years, off and on (more off than on) in between other projects. It was initially my response to rejections I was getting on everything else I tried to write that went along the lines of "We love Shanna's work, but we were hoping for something more like Enchanted, Inc. But not something in that series." So I came up with something that had some of the same elements but that was entirely separate. And I think it veered off to be very different, but possibly falling into the same category. I don't know. It's a maddening book, but I do love it in so many ways, and I think it's very close to being ready. On the off chance that books 5 and 6 turn out to make any kind of splash, then it would be nice to have something ready to submit to capitalize on that. And then I can devote myself to book 7.
I for some reason thought I'd announced the release dates for those upcoming books, but apparently I didn't. The planned release date for Much Ado About Magic is August 15. The planned release date for No Quest for the Wicked is currently October 1. Mind you, these are the dates when we'll have everything ready to go with the various online booksellers. The bigger ones apparently launch almost instantly while the others have been known to trickle out. I guess it's like the regular bookstores, where some will shelve a book on release day and others may or may not get around to it for a while. I don't know yet if there will be a hard copy option anywhere. I've got a list of questions in to my agent, and that's one of them. When we were discussing doing this a while ago, that was mentioned as something that could happen, but I don't know the specifics. This is all a brave new world for me and something of an experiment.
Now I need to switch mental gears into this other universe. Would it be considered procrastinating to spend part of the day watching a mood-setting movie?
Now, it's back to work. I've been working on a book for a few years, off and on (more off than on) in between other projects. It was initially my response to rejections I was getting on everything else I tried to write that went along the lines of "We love Shanna's work, but we were hoping for something more like Enchanted, Inc. But not something in that series." So I came up with something that had some of the same elements but that was entirely separate. And I think it veered off to be very different, but possibly falling into the same category. I don't know. It's a maddening book, but I do love it in so many ways, and I think it's very close to being ready. On the off chance that books 5 and 6 turn out to make any kind of splash, then it would be nice to have something ready to submit to capitalize on that. And then I can devote myself to book 7.
I for some reason thought I'd announced the release dates for those upcoming books, but apparently I didn't. The planned release date for Much Ado About Magic is August 15. The planned release date for No Quest for the Wicked is currently October 1. Mind you, these are the dates when we'll have everything ready to go with the various online booksellers. The bigger ones apparently launch almost instantly while the others have been known to trickle out. I guess it's like the regular bookstores, where some will shelve a book on release day and others may or may not get around to it for a while. I don't know yet if there will be a hard copy option anywhere. I've got a list of questions in to my agent, and that's one of them. When we were discussing doing this a while ago, that was mentioned as something that could happen, but I don't know the specifics. This is all a brave new world for me and something of an experiment.
Now I need to switch mental gears into this other universe. Would it be considered procrastinating to spend part of the day watching a mood-setting movie?
Tuesday, July 03, 2012
Romantic Comedy: Crazy, Stupid, Love
Yesterday I made five jars of strawberry jam, went to the library and proofread almost half of book 6. This morning, I was at my desk by 8, so I can only wonder what I'll accomplish today.
The one other movie I watched over the weekend was Crazy, Stupid, Love (that was the way it was punctuated on the HBO listings). I found it to be a very frustrating movie because while most of it was very generic and paint-by-numbers, there was a really intriguing story with some truly surprising twists buried in it. If they'd jettisoned a couple of the plot lines and focused on the one with the fun twists, they might have had something good, but I think they were trying for a Love Actually effect with all the various plot lines showing ways that people can be crazy or stupid for love. Or something like that.
So, what's it about? You may need to make a chart. Going by my sense of amount of screentime devoted to the plots, we had Plot A: After 25 years of marriage, Emily (Julianne Moore) tells her husband Cal (Steve Carell) that she's been sleeping with a co-worker (Kevin Bacon) and wants a divorce. He numbly moves out, and then when he's loudly bemoaning his fate while drowning his sorrows at a bar, the player who stalks his prey in that bar (Ryan Gosling) takes pity on him and starts tutoring him in how to be a single man. Meanwhile, Emily finds that her co-worker is kind of annoying and she misses her husband, but she's hurt that he didn't even put up a fight when she asked for a divorce, and now that he's become quite the ladies' man, she worries that she's lost him/is pissed off at him. Or something like that.
Plot B involves their thirteen-year-old son, who's in love with the seventeen-year-old babysitter. He stalks her, sends her non-stop text messages and stages public events at which he declares his undying devotion. He's convinced that they're soulmates and that one day she'll realize that their age difference doesn't matter, so he disregards all of her rejections and her pleas to leave her alone. His ardent devotion teaches his parents A Valuable Lesson in not giving up on love. Or something like that not involving a restraining order. Meanwhile, the babysitter is in love with Cal, and when he becomes single she hopes it's her chance, if only she can make him see her as something other than a kid.
Plot C centers on the player, who finally comes across a woman on whom his lines don't work (Emma Stone). She recognizes them for the lines they are and laughs at them as being seriously cheesy. She's also not interested because she has a lawyer boyfriend who's the exact opposite of the player type (Josh Groban -- yes, the singer, but as an actor he seems to be cornering the market on clueless dorks). But when her boyfriend disappoints her by not proposing, she goes back to the bar, orders the player to take her home, and very soon the player finds himself needing to ask his married friend for advice on how to have a relationship because he has no clue what to do when he actually wants to keep seeing a woman after the initial conquest.
Plot C was the one with all the real surprises and fun and with the actors/characters with any real life to them. Almost all of the laughs in the movie for me came from this plot, and it had one of the most surprising and romantic scenes I've seen in a romantic comedy in a long time when the player takes the challenging woman home, and she proceeds to analyze and laugh at each step of his usual seduction process, and along the way he ends up breaking every one of his own seduction rules, which leads to the night being far more intimate than either of them planned, and in a totally different way. As far as I was concerned, you could drop Plot B entirely because it was seriously creepy and led to the worst and most contrived scenes in the movie. I did like the turnaround of the single guy tutoring the long-married guy in being single and kind of saving his marriage and then the single guy needing the married guy to tutor him in having a relationship, so we'd need to keep parts of that plot, but we could keep it mostly offscreen. Then we could actually develop the context. We didn't see enough of Emma Stone's relationship with her boyfriend to understand why she turned from him to the player, and they didn't capitalize on that turnabout where he suddenly needed tutoring from his married friend. They skipped straight to a few weeks later so we didn't see those fumbling first steps where he was totally clueless. There was also a lot of fun potential with her snarky best friend, who could easily have stolen the movie. I spent the whole movie thinking she looked familiar and figuring she must have been some teen actor grown up, but then after I saw the closing credits I realized she was just seriously out of context because I knew her as Agent Lee from NCIS, the lawyer-turned-agent who had the semi-kinky affair with Jimmy Palmer and then turned out to be the mole stealing secrets. She was so funny and perfect as the romantic comedy snarky best friend that I couldn't place her from a more serious role in a crime show.
In general, there were some great moments, but otherwise there was a lot that annoyed me about this movie. I was watching some of the featurettes on the When Harry Met Sally DVD, and in one of them, they were talking about something I hadn't realized about that movie that's probably one of the reasons I love it so much: the man and woman are given equal weight. Neither is made the buffoon or butt of the joke, neither is totally right or wrong, neither is the bad guy. I've found that a lot of romantic comedies, especially the ones I consider "cynical," have the policy that the man is always wrong, probably because they figure that women will make up most of the audience, and it's a way to pander to the audience. That's one of the problems with this movie. With Plot A, the wife was the one who cheated and who asks for a divorce, and yet the movie acts like she's right and he's wrong, he's the one who didn't fight for her, he has to move out, he's in the wrong for having other relationships after she cheats and asks for the divorce, and he's the one who has to win her back. It's very one-sided in a situation where there's wrong on both sides. If she hadn't cheated and if it had just been about her feeling like he'd given up, it would have made more sense, but if you're unhappy with your marriage, maybe you should talk to your husband about that, go into marriage counseling, take a vacation together, or something other than cheat and jump straight to divorce. If asking for divorce was meant to shake him up and force him to fight, that's a rather passive-aggressive way of going about it because it's no-win for him. If he does put up a fight, then he looks like he's controlling and not respecting her wishes, but if he doesn't fight it means he doesn't care. I felt like, given the circumstances, she should have been the one trying to get him back when she realized divorce wasn't really what she wanted. Then even in the plot I liked there was a bit of that "the woman is always right" thing going on. We didn't get the context to know what their relationship was like, but she was the one who decided that he was going to propose when he promised a surprise. I thought his actual surprise was far more appropriate to the situation and it would have been a bad time to propose, and I thought his reason for not proposing, that he wasn't ready for it, was perfectly valid. And yet that was apparently meant to be reasonable grounds for her rushing off and flinging herself at the hot guy who tried to pick her up in a bar once. Now, maybe if we'd learned that he always had some excuse for not proposing and she'd realized he was never going to commit it would have made sense, but as shown in the movie, he was a jerk because he didn't propose when she thought he was going to, even though she wasn't sure she wanted him to -- another no-win. If he had proposed, it would have probably been one of those humiliating public "I'll have to think about it" situations. I hate it when movies do stuff like that (the reason I can't watch the end of Notting Hill -- I hate that he's the one who has to do the chase and the public humiliation show of devotion when she's the one who's jerked him around, denied being with him and wrongfully mistrusted him at every turn. She should have had to be the one to publicly acknowledge and apologize to him). As a woman, I can hold my own without being propped up by screenwriters, and I'm okay with a woman being in the wrong when she really is wrong. I don't hate men and want to see them suffer for me even when I'm wrong.
But the really frustrating thing for me is that I can't steal this story. I sometimes get some of my best ideas from books or movies that have some spark of something interesting that wasn't capitalized on, and by the time I've written the story that I think it should have been, no one would recognize the source. But the parts of this one I liked had just enough originality and just enough really surprising twists that I can't take the parts that worked and write what should have been without the source being really obvious, and without those parts it would be a pretty generic story.
The one other movie I watched over the weekend was Crazy, Stupid, Love (that was the way it was punctuated on the HBO listings). I found it to be a very frustrating movie because while most of it was very generic and paint-by-numbers, there was a really intriguing story with some truly surprising twists buried in it. If they'd jettisoned a couple of the plot lines and focused on the one with the fun twists, they might have had something good, but I think they were trying for a Love Actually effect with all the various plot lines showing ways that people can be crazy or stupid for love. Or something like that.
So, what's it about? You may need to make a chart. Going by my sense of amount of screentime devoted to the plots, we had Plot A: After 25 years of marriage, Emily (Julianne Moore) tells her husband Cal (Steve Carell) that she's been sleeping with a co-worker (Kevin Bacon) and wants a divorce. He numbly moves out, and then when he's loudly bemoaning his fate while drowning his sorrows at a bar, the player who stalks his prey in that bar (Ryan Gosling) takes pity on him and starts tutoring him in how to be a single man. Meanwhile, Emily finds that her co-worker is kind of annoying and she misses her husband, but she's hurt that he didn't even put up a fight when she asked for a divorce, and now that he's become quite the ladies' man, she worries that she's lost him/is pissed off at him. Or something like that.
Plot B involves their thirteen-year-old son, who's in love with the seventeen-year-old babysitter. He stalks her, sends her non-stop text messages and stages public events at which he declares his undying devotion. He's convinced that they're soulmates and that one day she'll realize that their age difference doesn't matter, so he disregards all of her rejections and her pleas to leave her alone. His ardent devotion teaches his parents A Valuable Lesson in not giving up on love. Or something like that not involving a restraining order. Meanwhile, the babysitter is in love with Cal, and when he becomes single she hopes it's her chance, if only she can make him see her as something other than a kid.
Plot C centers on the player, who finally comes across a woman on whom his lines don't work (Emma Stone). She recognizes them for the lines they are and laughs at them as being seriously cheesy. She's also not interested because she has a lawyer boyfriend who's the exact opposite of the player type (Josh Groban -- yes, the singer, but as an actor he seems to be cornering the market on clueless dorks). But when her boyfriend disappoints her by not proposing, she goes back to the bar, orders the player to take her home, and very soon the player finds himself needing to ask his married friend for advice on how to have a relationship because he has no clue what to do when he actually wants to keep seeing a woman after the initial conquest.
Plot C was the one with all the real surprises and fun and with the actors/characters with any real life to them. Almost all of the laughs in the movie for me came from this plot, and it had one of the most surprising and romantic scenes I've seen in a romantic comedy in a long time when the player takes the challenging woman home, and she proceeds to analyze and laugh at each step of his usual seduction process, and along the way he ends up breaking every one of his own seduction rules, which leads to the night being far more intimate than either of them planned, and in a totally different way. As far as I was concerned, you could drop Plot B entirely because it was seriously creepy and led to the worst and most contrived scenes in the movie. I did like the turnaround of the single guy tutoring the long-married guy in being single and kind of saving his marriage and then the single guy needing the married guy to tutor him in having a relationship, so we'd need to keep parts of that plot, but we could keep it mostly offscreen. Then we could actually develop the context. We didn't see enough of Emma Stone's relationship with her boyfriend to understand why she turned from him to the player, and they didn't capitalize on that turnabout where he suddenly needed tutoring from his married friend. They skipped straight to a few weeks later so we didn't see those fumbling first steps where he was totally clueless. There was also a lot of fun potential with her snarky best friend, who could easily have stolen the movie. I spent the whole movie thinking she looked familiar and figuring she must have been some teen actor grown up, but then after I saw the closing credits I realized she was just seriously out of context because I knew her as Agent Lee from NCIS, the lawyer-turned-agent who had the semi-kinky affair with Jimmy Palmer and then turned out to be the mole stealing secrets. She was so funny and perfect as the romantic comedy snarky best friend that I couldn't place her from a more serious role in a crime show.
In general, there were some great moments, but otherwise there was a lot that annoyed me about this movie. I was watching some of the featurettes on the When Harry Met Sally DVD, and in one of them, they were talking about something I hadn't realized about that movie that's probably one of the reasons I love it so much: the man and woman are given equal weight. Neither is made the buffoon or butt of the joke, neither is totally right or wrong, neither is the bad guy. I've found that a lot of romantic comedies, especially the ones I consider "cynical," have the policy that the man is always wrong, probably because they figure that women will make up most of the audience, and it's a way to pander to the audience. That's one of the problems with this movie. With Plot A, the wife was the one who cheated and who asks for a divorce, and yet the movie acts like she's right and he's wrong, he's the one who didn't fight for her, he has to move out, he's in the wrong for having other relationships after she cheats and asks for the divorce, and he's the one who has to win her back. It's very one-sided in a situation where there's wrong on both sides. If she hadn't cheated and if it had just been about her feeling like he'd given up, it would have made more sense, but if you're unhappy with your marriage, maybe you should talk to your husband about that, go into marriage counseling, take a vacation together, or something other than cheat and jump straight to divorce. If asking for divorce was meant to shake him up and force him to fight, that's a rather passive-aggressive way of going about it because it's no-win for him. If he does put up a fight, then he looks like he's controlling and not respecting her wishes, but if he doesn't fight it means he doesn't care. I felt like, given the circumstances, she should have been the one trying to get him back when she realized divorce wasn't really what she wanted. Then even in the plot I liked there was a bit of that "the woman is always right" thing going on. We didn't get the context to know what their relationship was like, but she was the one who decided that he was going to propose when he promised a surprise. I thought his actual surprise was far more appropriate to the situation and it would have been a bad time to propose, and I thought his reason for not proposing, that he wasn't ready for it, was perfectly valid. And yet that was apparently meant to be reasonable grounds for her rushing off and flinging herself at the hot guy who tried to pick her up in a bar once. Now, maybe if we'd learned that he always had some excuse for not proposing and she'd realized he was never going to commit it would have made sense, but as shown in the movie, he was a jerk because he didn't propose when she thought he was going to, even though she wasn't sure she wanted him to -- another no-win. If he had proposed, it would have probably been one of those humiliating public "I'll have to think about it" situations. I hate it when movies do stuff like that (the reason I can't watch the end of Notting Hill -- I hate that he's the one who has to do the chase and the public humiliation show of devotion when she's the one who's jerked him around, denied being with him and wrongfully mistrusted him at every turn. She should have had to be the one to publicly acknowledge and apologize to him). As a woman, I can hold my own without being propped up by screenwriters, and I'm okay with a woman being in the wrong when she really is wrong. I don't hate men and want to see them suffer for me even when I'm wrong.
But the really frustrating thing for me is that I can't steal this story. I sometimes get some of my best ideas from books or movies that have some spark of something interesting that wasn't capitalized on, and by the time I've written the story that I think it should have been, no one would recognize the source. But the parts of this one I liked had just enough originality and just enough really surprising twists that I can't take the parts that worked and write what should have been without the source being really obvious, and without those parts it would be a pretty generic story.
Monday, July 02, 2012
Brave and Curly Hair
I think this is going to be a very productive day. Before noon, I've proofread two chapters, made a batch of strawberry jam (the cooking part, now it has to cool, cook again, and then go in jars), and walked to the library (which counts as both errand and exercise). Some of this is because of what I call the summer insomnia, which means I wake up freakishly early (for me), no matter what time I went to bed or how badly I slept the night before. Without setting an alarm, I was up in time to go to the early church service yesterday. I may as well make use of the time, especially since I more than make up for it during winter hibernation mode. I could do without the weird sleep pattern of going to sleep, then waking up from a deep sleep and thinking it's darker than when I usually get up and wondering if it's worthwhile to go back to sleep or if I should just get up -- and then I look at the clock and discover that it's an hour since I went to bed, and then it takes me a couple of hours to really get back to sleep.
I kind of gave up on Project Bad Romantic Comedy. There's a certain formulaic type that I need for what I'm working on, and there are some not-so-hideous examples. You've Got Mail fits pretty perfectly, and while it is rather formulaic and I have some issues with it, it doesn't strike me as too cynical. I don't feel like the people making it thought it was stupid. I think I came to this realization when I just couldn't force myself to watch Life As We Know It, and then it occurred to me that it doesn't fit the pattern I want, anyway. There are plot contrivances that make that movie sound awful (really, talk to the people you want to raise your child if something happens to you, and don't use your orphaned child as a matchmaking tool), but it isn't the kind of awful I need.
I went with a big group of friends to see Brave, and I wonder if we got a special edition that was different from what the critics saw because way too many critics sneered at it as "Pixar makes a Disney princess movie." And it was so not a Disney princess movie. There's no Prince Charming anywhere in sight, no hint of romance, no hint that the heroine is even looking for a romance, ever. A character who happens to be a princess doesn't make something a Disney princess movie. I kind of get the feeling that some of the reviews were a subconscious expression of "ewww, girl cooties!" -- that it was judged on some different standard just because it had a girl as the main character.
I happened to love it because it was a different twist on the princess story that was more about figuring out how to be yourself and how to get the other people in your life to let you be yourself. It was also about how there's more than one way to be a girl, and no one way is 100 percent right or wrong. You have to find what works for you in your situation, and you have to let the other girls/women in your life find their own way. That's an incredibly powerful message for girls, who seem to have these all-or-nothing ideals thrown at them -- you must be a Disney Princess! You must not be anything like a Disney Princess! I recently read a really good rant on that topic, criticizing one of those "those girly girls are stupid and awful and only the girls who fit this particular mode of being a geek girl are on the money" things that tend to get passed around Facebook. Whatever your age, see it with your mother or your daughter.
But the truly important thing about the movie was the hair. I understand they had to practically invent new technology to do it, but they got the hair right. It was wild and curly, and it looked like wild, curly hair really looks. Naturally curly hair isn't uniform. Some curls are tighter than others. Some form into perfect ringlets while others are just wavy frizz, and they got this right. They also got the way this kind of hair looks wet right. I was really impressed. Merida's hair looks exactly like mine when I don't use styling products and let it dry loose (though mine is much darker and more of an auburn than a red). Even better, they never straightened her hair. It was the way it was. If this movie had come out when I was a kid, I think it would have totally changed my self image and I'd have come to terms with my curls a lot earlier. I was a child in the 70s, when stick straight was the way to go. The Disney princesses may have had a bit of bounce to their hair, but they didn't have real curls. When a movie or TV show did have a character with truly curly hair, she was usually considered the awkward, geeky one (Sarah Jessica Parker in Square Pegs). If a curly haired character ever went through a transformation to become the love interest or be considered beautiful, her hair got straightened. The overall message from the media was that sleek, straight, shiny hair was the only way to be beautiful, and no matter how many times your parents tell you how great curly hair is, if you're being bombarded by those images, it's hard to get past the brainwashing that your kind of hair is something that needs to be corrected. Brave never actually tells us whether or not Merida is supposed to be considered beautiful. That's not really an issue for her (something else that keeps this from being a Disney princess movie). But she's shown as fierce and powerful and all kinds of wonderful, and she has that hair that she never has to change, and there will be dolls and costumes and action figures with that hair. I know how much it would have meant to me as a kid to have a doll with hair like mine. I came out of the theater saying in awe, "They got the hair right!"
I have another movie to discuss, but that will have to wait until tomorrow because I suspect it will be a long rant.
I kind of gave up on Project Bad Romantic Comedy. There's a certain formulaic type that I need for what I'm working on, and there are some not-so-hideous examples. You've Got Mail fits pretty perfectly, and while it is rather formulaic and I have some issues with it, it doesn't strike me as too cynical. I don't feel like the people making it thought it was stupid. I think I came to this realization when I just couldn't force myself to watch Life As We Know It, and then it occurred to me that it doesn't fit the pattern I want, anyway. There are plot contrivances that make that movie sound awful (really, talk to the people you want to raise your child if something happens to you, and don't use your orphaned child as a matchmaking tool), but it isn't the kind of awful I need.
I went with a big group of friends to see Brave, and I wonder if we got a special edition that was different from what the critics saw because way too many critics sneered at it as "Pixar makes a Disney princess movie." And it was so not a Disney princess movie. There's no Prince Charming anywhere in sight, no hint of romance, no hint that the heroine is even looking for a romance, ever. A character who happens to be a princess doesn't make something a Disney princess movie. I kind of get the feeling that some of the reviews were a subconscious expression of "ewww, girl cooties!" -- that it was judged on some different standard just because it had a girl as the main character.
I happened to love it because it was a different twist on the princess story that was more about figuring out how to be yourself and how to get the other people in your life to let you be yourself. It was also about how there's more than one way to be a girl, and no one way is 100 percent right or wrong. You have to find what works for you in your situation, and you have to let the other girls/women in your life find their own way. That's an incredibly powerful message for girls, who seem to have these all-or-nothing ideals thrown at them -- you must be a Disney Princess! You must not be anything like a Disney Princess! I recently read a really good rant on that topic, criticizing one of those "those girly girls are stupid and awful and only the girls who fit this particular mode of being a geek girl are on the money" things that tend to get passed around Facebook. Whatever your age, see it with your mother or your daughter.
But the truly important thing about the movie was the hair. I understand they had to practically invent new technology to do it, but they got the hair right. It was wild and curly, and it looked like wild, curly hair really looks. Naturally curly hair isn't uniform. Some curls are tighter than others. Some form into perfect ringlets while others are just wavy frizz, and they got this right. They also got the way this kind of hair looks wet right. I was really impressed. Merida's hair looks exactly like mine when I don't use styling products and let it dry loose (though mine is much darker and more of an auburn than a red). Even better, they never straightened her hair. It was the way it was. If this movie had come out when I was a kid, I think it would have totally changed my self image and I'd have come to terms with my curls a lot earlier. I was a child in the 70s, when stick straight was the way to go. The Disney princesses may have had a bit of bounce to their hair, but they didn't have real curls. When a movie or TV show did have a character with truly curly hair, she was usually considered the awkward, geeky one (Sarah Jessica Parker in Square Pegs). If a curly haired character ever went through a transformation to become the love interest or be considered beautiful, her hair got straightened. The overall message from the media was that sleek, straight, shiny hair was the only way to be beautiful, and no matter how many times your parents tell you how great curly hair is, if you're being bombarded by those images, it's hard to get past the brainwashing that your kind of hair is something that needs to be corrected. Brave never actually tells us whether or not Merida is supposed to be considered beautiful. That's not really an issue for her (something else that keeps this from being a Disney princess movie). But she's shown as fierce and powerful and all kinds of wonderful, and she has that hair that she never has to change, and there will be dolls and costumes and action figures with that hair. I know how much it would have meant to me as a kid to have a doll with hair like mine. I came out of the theater saying in awe, "They got the hair right!"
I have another movie to discuss, but that will have to wait until tomorrow because I suspect it will be a long rant.
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