S.L. Viehl's Blog, page 193

Taking Shelter

Seriously bad weather rolled into town here just after my family visitors left. Why this always seems to happen whenever I put people I love on planes I can't say, but fortunately they got home safely. Several power outtages later the heavens opened up and the Memorial Weekend deluge commenced.

While we didn't spot any arks floating by, there is a certain Biblical quality about finding yourself at the mercy of the weather. Here in our little town the phone lines and the cable always take a dive right after the power does, and it can take hours (sometimes days) to get everything back on. If we can get a signal on our mobile phones -- something that is forever dicey here -- we call our bosses and our kids and let them know we're out of commission for the duration. Then we light candles and try not to open the fridge too much.

In between lightning barrages, I sat on the back porch with the dogs to read and watched the rain come down. That was how I got this pic of our resident, camera-shy cardinal; during one of the worst downpours he took shelter in one of our bird feeders. I guess he figured if he was going to be stuck somewhere, might as well be where the sunflower seeds are.

While I was playing candid camera with the cardinal I realized just how insanely busy my life has been over the last two months. I starting sacrificing things back in March to have more time to work and promo while still taking care of the house and do for my guy and the kids and the family.

I stopped writing in my home journals and posting pictures on my photoblog. I resigned from my guild challenge and put three other sewing projects on hiatus. I hurried the dogs through our walks, made quick and easy dinners, folded laundry and put away dishes while making calls and waiting on hold. I combined my errand runs and multi-tasked my chores list and cleaned the entire house from top to bottom. This while hosting family, taking a road trip, maintaining the blog, giving interviews, writing guest posts, launching one e-book and a print release, final editing a second, and finishing the manuscript for a third. Somewhere in there I wrote up three proposals for new projects and subbed another three for reprints, too.

I'm always busy, but even for me that was a lot. No wonder I can't remember most of April and pretty much all of May. Now here's the kicker: all that, and up until the rain came I still felt as if I hadn't accomplished anything. I can tell you why: I'm not 100% prepared for our annual termite inspection (today) and a friend's graduation ceremony (Friday) and the online workshop I had planned for last week (cancelled that one due to visitors.) I get up every morning at six a.m. and stay busy until I go to bed at one a.m., but it doesn't matter. I'm never done.

The laundry I had finished three days ago? Has again assumed Everest proportions. The dogs? Have to go to the vet for shots. The closets? Are a mess. The roses? Need pruning. I can't find my sneakers. I have to get me and my daughter over to get our teeth cleaned. I ran out of tea on Thursday. We won't talk about e-mail; I'll just start crying all over you. And somehow, while my back was turned, an entire carton of perfectly good eggs expired on me. On May 9th, for God's sake. I'm surprised they didn't hatch.

There were a hundred other things I hadn't done, and thanks to the weather I still couldn't do, but at some point I stopped internally auditing the kick-myself list and did nothing but watch a cardinal take shelter from a storm. The dogs at my feet, the camera in my hands, and the rain keeping everything else on hold for a few hours.

Today I'm going to write, because I have a book due to my editor in eleven days. I'm also going to scale Mt. Laundry, and deal with the termite inspection, and make dental appointments, and dinner, and do my best to keep up. But I can tell you this: when it all starts to blur again, I'm going to take shelter out on my porch, and sit with my dogs, and watch the birds.



And if it's not raining, I might just pretend that it is.

Technical Difficulties

Just an FYI for everyone who has been stopping in and/or trying to reach me, some wicked storms knocked out our power, phones and internet service, and we're just now getting everything back up and put to rights.

Unless more of the same happens again today -- that was not a hint, God -- I'll be back to posting tomorrow. Until then, enjoy the rest of Memorial Day weekend.

Close Encounters

I was getting ready to walk the pups the other day when I spotted what at first glance I guessed to be a long twig in the grass under our big oak tree. Black oak tree twigs are gray, not black, though, and none of them grow perfectly straight. As I walked toward the black straight twig it slithered toward me, which confirmed my second guess: it was a snake.

Despite their bad reputation (or maybe because of it) I love snakes. They're elegant, aloof and mysterious, and when treated with caution and respect can be a delight to observe. They're also quite useful and helpful critters, especially when it comes to keeping the local rodent population under control and cleaning up the remains of other critters who have gone on to their reward.

This little guy was about three feet long; probably one of the many offspring of the six-foot Mama who lives on our property and regularly nests under my pine trees. He wasn't afraid of me, so I retreated to get my camera and document him. He lay waiting in the exact same spot when I returned, and aside from tasting my air didn't object to having his picture taken.

I'm always grateful to have a chance to get a good close-up shot of a snake because they are such strange, beautiful creatures. It's easy to see why they've inspired so many myths over time. Their scales always look perfect, and the patterns and variations of color are gorgeous. Snakes always appear fastidiously clean -- when have you ever seen a dirty snake? -- and the look in those unblinking eyes seems both haughty and amazed, as if they can't quite believe what they see when they look at us. It always makes me wonder if snakes have their own myths about humans: I was out hunting rats the other day, and right out of the blue this white-haired giant thing walked up to me, and then . . .

Antagonists are quite often compared to snakes, and while this isn't strictly appropriate (despite Eve throwing them under the bus, snakes are really not bad guys) I understand why writers think of them that way. Snakes are scary, they've had a bad rep since Biblical times, and we want our antagonists to be just as disturbing and unsettling. You can show the reader an antagonist from a distance, just like a snake in the grass, and 99% are trained to immediately hate him; no need to get up close and personal at all.

Over the years I've gone the other way; I probably spend as much time now building my antagonists as I do my protagonists. I also like to explore the antagonist's character as thoroughly as possible; if not in the story then in my creation process. The more I know about any character, the more believable they come out on the page. Another writer philosophy I've always agreed with is that the antagonist is not always a villain or a bad guy in their own eyes, and often is not one to other characters in the story, particular those who have a reason to be sympathetic (like anyone who for whatever hates the protagonist; aka the enemy of my enemy is my pal and all that.) When viewed from these other angles and POVs, the antagonist can be as much a hero as the protagonist.

I don't think all antagonists should be tarred and feathered as irredeemable, either. The ones you don't kill off or otherwise kick into the abyss may inspire new stories where they get a chance to at least partially redeem themselves. Some of my finest protags were once antagonists in other stories before I turned them around. The romance genre, which never met a bad boy it did not want to reform into a good guy, in particular loves a turnaround protagonist.

What can you do to have more of a close encounter with the snake in your story's grass? I'd start right at the beginning with characterization, and build the antagonist exactly as you would any other important story character. Set aside any snakelike prejudice you might have and really take a good look at this character as a person. Ask my three questions: Who are you? What do you want? What's the worst thing I can do to you? Instead of writing scenes portaying only the antagonist's actions, consider handing that portion of your story over to the antagonist and let them tell it (I did this as an experiment with one character I absolutely despised because I couldn't write her any other way; I personally wanted her dead from the moment I created her. Worked great, plus it kept me from killing her off for two books.)

What are some of your favorite things to do with an antagonist? What challenges do you struggle with in building them and making them believable? Let us know in comments.

Related Links:

PBW's Ten Things I Hate About Your Antagonist

CapturingFantasy.com's Creating the Best Antagonists

Miriam Darnell's Creating an Interesting Bad Guy

HowToWriteANovel.net's Don't be an Antagonist to Your Readers

And last but not least, Peter Anspach's wonderful classic, The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord

Googling the Street View

Google may make armchair tourists out of all of us now that they are offering their Maps with Street View. This search engine allows you to enter an address, move a little figure onto the map and (if available) see a street-level view of that location.

Here's what a street in Paris looks like (click any image to see larger version):



You can also move around your location, street by street, block by block, and zoom in and around in all sorts of interesting ways. If you've never had the chance to explore a particular city or other location and/or can't travel there, this allows you to take a virtual walking tour of most places (there were a few places I tried to pull up that only offered a still shot, so it seems Google hasn't mapped every square inch of the Earth (yet).

I can't tell exactly how old these street views are, but I'd say probably at least six months but no more than two years old (if there is a note of exactly when the images were taken I didn't bother to look for it.) While faces and license plates are mainly blurred out, businesses, signs and other details are not. Here's a street where I used to go shopping in San Francisco's Chinatown:



I think this service is especially helpful for writers if you want to include a setting in your story that is a real place you've actually visited but haven't been back to visit in a long time. There was this spot out on the west coast where I used to sit and watch the sunset that I wanted to use in a story. Unfortunately I lived there many years ago, and as much as I'd love to go back there, I don't have the time or justification for the expense.

Relying on my memory, I wrote the location into the story with a lone bench, some rocks and the water. When I pulled up that spot on the street view, however, I saw that someone had put up a big ugly fence near my bench:



It takes some practice to learn how to use the different symbols and zooms to move around your street view, but I think it's worth taking the time to play with and learn. Plus if you can't afford to take a research trip, it may be the next best thing to being there.

Off to Chauffeur

I am in charge of providing airport limo service for the family, so I will be off today hunting for overpriced parking, standing in line for hours and then watching security search my loved ones (try explaining to an eighty-year-old with Alzheimer's why he has to submit to a pat-down by a complete stranger when he can't remember who the hell you are. As futility goes, there is no better exercise.)

So that your stop here was not entirely wasted, you might want to check out This Into That, the web site of artist Jim Rosenau, who makes vintage books into shelves, chairs, tables and other interesting works of art.

Part of me cringes when I see books treated as construction materials, but he's got a great sense of humor, as demonstrated by his bookmark:



See you tomorrow.

Apocalypse Not Now

A few things I learned this weekend, before, during and after the End of the World Fail:

You can actually be too busy cleaning the house and getting ready for family to visit to remember that the end is nigh.

Returning a rental car at a busy metropolitan airport sometimes means you have to drive over two rows of nasty-looking spikes (while a younger, impatient driver yells They only pop the tires if you go the other way, lady!) As you are exiting the drop-off area, someone will hand you a really nasty pamphlet explaining Revelations and why you're going to be burning in hell in tomorrow. P.S., You will be so rattled by the spike thing that you will thank them for it.

When you contemplate what will happen to you if the Apocalypse ever does occur during your lifetime, you become absolutely convinced that you will be the one who has to do all the dirty laundry left behind by the Rapture.

$822.00 is what one pays for one month's supply of six of the nineteen medications keeping an elderly person alive when the computer refuses to accept their out-of-state insurance card. The computer also refuses to accept "Armageddon is right around the corner, you know" as a reason to give you the cheaper prices.

You decide the Apocalypse needs a funny T-shirt, and think up the one you want to wear, and then post it in a comment on someone's weblog (don't hit me, Raine.)

When you sign a book for someone who lives in a beautiful, exotic part of the world that you have missed for years, you will write "I wish I could pack myself in this box" which is weird but not as creepy as your first idea, which was "When the end is nigh, can I come and hang out with you?"

You can drive hundred miles on a busy interstate and miss all the billboards about the end of the world because you're too preoccupied dodging guys in expensive sedans who are texting while they're doing 80 mph while you simultaneously argue with a loved one about the care and feeding of elderly dogs.

You realize that the prospect of the complete, total destruction of all that you know and love does not frighten you as much as what will happen if you don't get the teenager's favorite outfit washed before school tomorrow.

So what, if anything, did the Apocalypse Not Now teach you? Let us know in comments.

Sub Ops Ten

Black Moon Books has an open call for their annual Mirror Shards antho: "Augmented reality holds the promise of great social change in both the near and far-flung futures. It's also a wonderful medium for storytelling as information and graphics overlain eye-screens challenges the doors of perception and creates mixed-reality worlds to work and play. Black Moon Books is seeking stories between 3000 and 6000 words (soft edges) that utilize augmented reality as a way to explore the human condition. The stories can be set in any place, time, or genre, as long as the story cannot exist bereft of augmented reality. Feel free to explore the edges of the technology." Payment: "from $0.02/word to $0.05/word. A few slots will be offered to established professionals, but at least one pro paying slot will be given through the slush pile (Gold Prize). Minimum payment per word will be $0.02 for all accepted slush stories." Also: "One copy will be provided for each author in the anthology." No reprints, electronic submissions only, see guidelines for more details. Deadline: July 8, 2011.

Blue Mountain Arts/SPS Studios is "Actively seeking freelancers; Pay: card=$300; poem in anthology=$50; GLs send on request via e-mail. Range of cards: Family, friends, occasions, inspiration, encouragement.
Style of cards: Sentimental and conversational; a few lines to two and a half pages. No humor or one-liners, please. Postal and e-mail submissions welcome. Format for submission: Postal: typewritten, one poem per page, name on each page; e-mail: type work in the body of the e-mail, we won't accept attachments or website links. In either case, please include mailing address and phone number. Submit any number of poems at a time. E-mail address for questions, queries and submissions: editorial@sps.com. Snail mail address: Editorial Department, P.O. Box 1007, Boulder CO 80306 U.S.A. Ralan notes: "Now also reviewing poetry/prose for Christmas cards to friends/family & general seasonal greetings; deadline July 15, 2011."

Evolutions Publishing has an update regarding subs for their Darwin's Evolutions webzine: "Our original webzine free-content model has been abandoned. Instead, we are now focusing on the production of e-book single stories and anthologies and novels in e-book plus print or print-on-demand formats." They are offering minimal advances and shared royalties for SF and Fantasy adventure stories, length varies; see guidelines update for more details.

Garden State Horror Writers are holding their 17th Annual GSHW Short Story Contest. The $7.50 entry fee they require annoys me, but it's not as criminally outrageous as what RWA or some of the other writer orgs charge for their nonsense, so I reluctantly added it to this ten list. Length: up to 4K; contest theme is [*sigh*] "The End of the World as We Know it." Prizes: "First prize is $75, the Graversen Award, and publication in Space and Time Magazine. The second prize is $40, and third prize $20. Each eligible entry will be scored and critiqued by published authors and/or editors and the top five entries will be judged by award winning editor, Ellen Datlow, and Hildy Silverman, editor of Space and Time Magazine and Vice President of the GSHW." No reprints, electronic submissions only, see contest page for more details. Deadline: July 31, 2011.

A heads-up for the freelance copywriters out there: Harlequin Romance is currently looking to hire experienced copywriters; go here to read more.

Although technically not a sub op, I know a lot of unemployed editors are out there, so here's another interesting current job listing from Harlequin Romance, this time for an editor for their Superromance line.

Beginning with their August issue, Linger Fiction will be publishing flash fiction only: "We want stuff that's unforgettable; stories that grab us from the first paragraph and won't release us until the last word. Even then, the stories should stay with us. We want to think about it on the bus the next morning, and tell our friends about it. If your story requires graphic violence, sex or profanity, include it. If it is not necessary for your story, leave it out." Length: 150 to 1K words; Payment: $20.00 (via Paypal only.) No reprints, electronic submissions only, see guidelines for more details.

Lyrical Press is seeking "gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender stories that are lightyears outside the proverbial box. Dark and stormy nights full of deep and steamy romance. Sleek and edgy sci-fi with savvy, sexy characters. Suave swashbucklers who capture more than ships—they capture hearts. Lyrical Press is accepting all forms of LGBT, with a focus on romance and erotica. If you've got a story that'll steam up the windows and steal the reader's heart, we'd love to hear from you. Sensuality level: All – with a focus on romance/erotica. Length: 30,000 – 80,000 words. Key Characteristic: Central romance must be LGBT. Please follow Lyrical Press' guidelines found here: http://www.lyricalpress.com/submissions when submitting. Send submissions to carinbrumal@lyricalpress.com." (via AbsoluteWrite.com)

Machine of Death has an open call for their themed MOD 2 Anthology, and this is what they have to say about the them: "All stories in the book start with the idea of a machine that can use a blood test to tell you how you're going to die — sometimes vaguely, but always accurately." Length: "Stories can be any length, but we recommend a length of 1,500 – 7,500 words"; Payment: $200.00 US upon acceptance. No reprints, electronic submissions only, see guidelines for more details. [Note from PBW: Do be sure to read these guidelines thoroughly before you submit; among other things they are asking for film rights.] Deadline: July 15, 2011.

UK webzine SpineTinglers is looking for stories: "For us there are no specific formulae that a spine tingling story must conform to. It doesn't have to be macabre and morose; it can be light-hearted or even uplifting. Whether it is filled with ghosts or ghouls, possessions or poltergeists, or merely the suggestion of something supernatural, anything is acceptable. We want you to let your imagination run wild and come up with the story or stories that make our spine tingle." Preferred length: up to 5K; Payment: "Each month we publish on the website the best five stories submitted. The overall monthly winner, as well as receiving publication will also receive a £100 (stg) prize! Second place receives £50, with 3rd, 4th and 5th all receiving £25 each. The prizes quoted are in Sterling (British Pounds) but if you live outside of the UK you will be paid the equivalent amount in your local currency." Reprints okay, electronic submissions only, see guidelines for more details.

Most of the above submission opportunities were found among the many terrific market listings over at Ralan.com.

Winner

I am seriously impressed with the range of YA recs you guys made for the latest giveaway. I think I'm going to carry this over into another post; one I'll write after I take your comments with me to the book store and see what I can find on the shelves.

The magic hat got busy tonight, and the winner of the YA to Read giveaway is:

S.J. Noir

S.J., when you have a chance please send your ship-to info to LynnViehl@aol.com so I can get your package out to you. My thanks to everyone for joining in.

Interesting Sub Op/Contest

Specialty press publisher Cemetery Dance is holding a short story contest to promote their forums:

"The three winning stories will be featured in a Cemetery Dance chapbook alongside 3 well-known authors. Each winner will receive a $75 dollar prize, payable upon signing the contract. (Contract will be for a one-time printing of the chapbook, all other rights remain with the author.) Each winner will also receive 5 free copies of the finished chapbook and a 50% discount on additional copies."

The stories must be submitted via their forum, where the submissions will then be judged by members of the forum. Genre is not specified, but since CD is a horror/dark suspense press my guess is that's probably what they'd like to see (I'd query for details.) The length limit is "10,000 characters" (that would fall roughly into the 5 to 10 manuscript page range, I think.) The contest is open to "amateur" writers (their term, not mine) but they provide a confusing description of who they consider amateurs; I interpret it to mean writers who are as yet unpublished or with very limited publication credits. If you're not sure you qualify, you might query them first.

I think Cemetery Dance is fairly well-known around the horror community; they've published some nice reprints and limited editions for Doug Clegg, Stephen King and Peter Straub. If you're a horror or dark suspense writer, this one seems like a good opportunity for exposure as well as publication.

Also, they mention another that they'll be holding another contest to find a title for the story contest chapbook: "The winner of this contest will receive a $50 Store Gift Certificate and a free copy of the chapbook."

The Art of Pop-Up Books

I don't know how many of you can get to Maine before June 5th, but Bowdoin College in Brunswick has an amazing exhibition of pop-up books. Here's a video about the exhibition and a little of the history of this wonderful fusion of art and book (warning, plays a little background music and is narrated):



Bowdoin is also offering an online tour of the exhibition here.

Video credit: Pop-ups! They're Not JUST for Kids from Bowdoin College on Vimeo.