S.L. Viehl's Blog, page 204

Off to Do Lots of Stuff

I'm going to give myself the day off to regroup, write, and catch up on things. So that your stop here was not entirely wasted, I thought you might like to check out something strange and beautiful that I discovered this week:



This is a photo of a Jabuticaba tree, a native of South America, which bears fruit on its trunk. I'd never seen or even heard of this tree before I started poking around Kuriositas.com for some info on a chapel made from a lightning-struck tree (that's another story) and found this post about it.

I know, it doesn't have anything to do with writing. Or maybe it does. Either way, I love strange fruit.

Image credit: ign11

Bad News, Worry and Death

Bad News sits on the counter in the kitchen watching me make coffee for my guy. "I'm going to be dumped on you again today."

"You're dumped on me practically every day." I hand her the package of coffee filters, which I can never separate on my own. "Just don't make me cry. We're out of Kleenex and I don't have time to go shopping."

Bad News frowns. "There's a box that fell behind the work table upstairs when you were doing the taxes last week."

I yawn. "Thanks."

Death looks up from the obituaries he's reading. "Hey, want to play Who's Next?"

Worry, who is poking around in the fridge checking expiration dates, looks around the door. "It's not me."

"It's never you," I assure her.

Death stretches and scratches between his second and third ribs. "I'm hungry. Are there any Toaster Tarts left?"

"Those things are very bad for you," Bad News says, and searches through her innumerable pockets. "I've got the scientific study to prove it." She takes out a wad of papers and shuffles through them. "Here we go. Four out of five rats who were fed Toaster Tarts every day over a two year period developed cancer."

"Excellent." Death heads for the pantry.

"I bet for two years they were really happy rats, though." Worry makes a face. "Sorry, forgot myself." In a solemn voice she intones, "Everyone in this family who has ever eaten a Toaster Tart is probably going to develop cancer and die."

"We're not rats." I go over to the table and move Death's scythe to a safer spot next to the wall. "Come on, you guys, it's getting late. Let's do this."

Worry and Bad News come over to sit at Death's right and left side. Worry pokes a new little mystery lump on my left wrist but pulls her hand away before I smack her. Bad News hides a smile. Death opens a pack of Toaster Tarts and offers them around before he starts munching.

No one ever wants to start, so I do. "I have one orthodontist and two dentist appointments," I tell them as I check the planner. "PT on Friday, and nine and ten days respectively to finish two colliding deadlines for different publishers. Housework, laundry, dishes, decluttering the hall closet if possible, and the girls want to go to the art show this weekend so I need to get things done early. As always I'll try to accommodate you but you know how it goes. Family first, work second, whatever else third."

"You ever wonder why they call them deadlines?" Death asks no one in particular. "They're not deceased. They don't kill anyone. Usually. I really have nothing at all to do with them. Why didn't they call them last-day-to-turn-in-your-work-before-we-fire-your-asslines?"

We all look at Death.

"Right." He hunches his shoulders a little. "This week looks good for you, me-wise. You know, barring acts of God, runaway tractor-trailers and the undetected cerebral aneurysm going pop. And as usual I can't guarantee I won't drop in on your Dad or Mom, that sick friend in the hospital, anyone you know over forty . . . "

"Got it." I glance at Bad News. "You?"

"Counting the weekend, that conversation you have to have with your mother, and the stack of mail you haven't read yet, that makes . . . " She thinks for a minute. "Four incoming deliveries. No, five."

"Five?"

She sulks a little. "Okay, four." Before I can say anything, she adds, "And one more but that turns out to be a blessing in disguise."

"Yipee." My head is starting to hurt. "Next?"

"My turn." Worry starts rubbing her hands together. "That pain in your right foot could be a fracture. Or a tumor. You're a month late getting your mammogram. You're going to get breast cancer and die. The milk your guy used last night expired two days ago. Botulism. The date on the egg carton is too blurry to read. Salmonella. That possum in the neighbor's shed is probably rabid--"

I hold up a hand to stem the flood. "Do you have any new business?"

She ducks her head and mutters something under her breath.

"Excuse me?"

"The dogs could kill you." As Death chuckles, she glares at him. "Well, they could!"

"They're Shelties," Death chides. "What are they going to do, lick her to death?"

"There was that article online about people who've gotten sick from touching their pets and kissing them and sleeping with them and stuff," Worry says, indignant now. "Some of them even died."

"Pitiful. Truly pitiful." Death slowly shakes his head. "If the dogs were a valid concern, I could have iced her decades ago."

"I don't sleep with the pets, I don't kiss them on the mouth, and I wash my hands after I handle them," I tell Worry. "You know that."

"One time you might forget." She looks exasperated. "Oh, all right. I guess I don't have new business. Unless you eat those Toaster Tarts, in which case--" she sees the look on my face and sighs. "Okay, okay. That's all I've got."

"Thank you." I sit back and start sorting out priorities. "Bad News, I need to focus on work in the mornings, so I'd appreciate it if you'd hold off deliveries until the afternoons. Worry, you and I will do our usual one hour in the morning meditation sessions." I face Death. "I think you and I spent enough time together last week."

He shrugs.

"That should wrap it up." I stand, hesitate, and then pick up a Toaster Tart and take a bite.

Worry gives me a warm smile and takes one for herself. "You're such a good sport."

"Sure, I am." I hate Toaster Tarts. "Anyone want to help me wake up the teenager?"

Bad News coughs, Worry chokes and Death pales right before they all vanish.

I take another bite of the Toaster Tart. "Wimps."

(Dedicated to my Uncle Frank, who decided to go on to the next place. He wasn't afraid, and he didn't want tears or grief, so I wrote this as a tribute for him. Safe journey, Uncle. We love you and miss you.)

Diana Norman

We've lost another gifted author this past week; Diana Norman, who also wrote as Ariana Franklin, passed away last Thursday after a serious illness.

After reading Ms. Norman's novel City of Shadows I hunted down everything she had in print. Her Mistress of the Art of Death is one of only two audio books I keep permanently in my car because I never get tired of hearing the story.

I also deeply admired the lady's gift for story, and a few years ago had the chance to discuss some questions about it with author Rosina Lippi right before she interviewed Ms. Norman. Rosina has just reposted it over on her blog here as a memorial.

Safe journey, Diana.

Multiversing

I caught part of a radio interview on NPR the other day where a physicist was talking about the possibility of parallel universes, how matter can only arrange itself in a certain number of ways and why this virtually guarantees multiple versions of the same matter (thus if I'm writing this post in my universe, there are other PBWs in other universes who are doing the same or similar things.) Later, when I checked NPR's web site I saw the interview was really promo for his latest book (and you can listen the broadcast, read a condensed version of the concept and the first chapter of the physicist's book here.)

I'm a bit reluctant to buy into this theory. No offense to the quantum-minded, but parallel universes are the sort of thing you think about the first time you get stoned, or all the time when you're suffering from incurable narcissism. I think one human race is beyond plenty. Although if this theory is true, my multiverse selves had better remember to pick up the puppy's heart worm medication today. While we're at it, we should defrost that chicken for dinner, baste the sides of block #4 for the quilt in progress and fix that blind in the dining room.

Multiversing in writing, on the other hand, is fun to play with and use as a worldbuilding tool. The most common example of fiction multiversing is alternate history stories, where a writer takes a significant time period or historic figure(s) and changes what happened just enough to generate a new version. What would have happened if the dinosaurs hadn't become extinct? Harry Harrison told us one interesting version in his West of Eden novel trilogy.

I've frequently employed multiversing on many figures from history and legend to create or conglomerate new characters (just about every protagonist in the Darkyn novels was based on one or more real people; William Harvey even played himself in my AH short story A Matter of Consultation.) This is when the writer's paranoid conspiracy theorist side comes in handy; you can take a historic event that happened and suggest an alternative reason behind it. In my multiverse the Knights Templar were rounded up and subjected to torture and execution not because they were too rich and powerful, but because they weren't human anymore.

If you're not interested in multiversing an era, civilization, historic event or any other expansive story element, you can still try it out on a smaller scale. In Dreamveil I used recombinant DNA to create a new character from two that already existed, which allowed me to build an alternative persona and a different timeline. I asked myself What would happen to him if I changed this, and took away this, and added this? until I had a new construct (who still retained many of the traits of the original.)

Characters who grow up or live in the same setting can have multiversal attitudes. The same town is very different through the eyes of a privileged boy and a poor girl, or two characters of different ethnicity or background. Two babies accidentally switched at birth who grow up in contrasting circumstances is a popular theme; so is identical twins who are separated at birth and raised in dissimilar situations. Even reincarnation can be used as a multiversing character device; Robert Silverberg probably did the best job I've ever read with pre-programmed reincarnation in To Live Again.

When employing multiversing as a worldbuilding or character tool remember to think about what stays the same as well as what might change. No matter what universe we inhabit, some of our traits will likely remain the same. Picasso might not be a painter in all of his multiverses, but creativity probably plays a significant role in the lives of his other selves. Opinions on the validity of congenital personality traits differ, but I think certain things like horrible shyness and eternal optimism can be genetic as well as learned behaviors.

Use multiversing as an opportunity to explore the role gender plays in our lives, our attitudes, and what we're able to accomplish. In another universe, how would a King Victor have influenced the Victorian era? If James Austen had written Pride & Prejudice, would Mr. Darcy and Lizzie still end up together? Would Charlotte Lindbergh have been the first woman to fly across the Atlantic?

Now I and my infinite number of multiverse selves have to log off and get to work on the day's schedule. Somehow I have the feeling none of the other PBWs finished the laundry over the weekend, either . . . .

Related links:

Some interesting FAQs about alternate history from AlternateHistory.com

i09's A Brief History of Alternate History Fiction

Alexandra Lupu's softpedia article Our Personality - Is It Genetically Inherited or Determined by The Environmental Factors?

Image credit: David Hughes

Ways to Save Ten

Ten Things to Help Writers Save $$$

Attend Local/Regional Events Versus National Conferences: Here are two examples of actual lodging and registration costs for attending national conferences: RWA National: $1175.00; Romantic Times: cost $965.00 (and these figures do not include airfare or other transportation costs, meals, parking etc., which can run an additional $500.00 - $1000.00.) Skipping national conferences and attending a regional or local event will cost considerably less, such as Lori Foster's Annual Reader & Author Get Together for $332.00 lodging & registration. Author Shiloh Walker (who kindly provided the figures for me) also mentioned that at Lori Foster's event writers are given plenty of time to interact with readers, attend workshops, and have appointments with agents and editors (and my thanks to Shiloh for sharing the financial info and advice.)

Barter for What You Can't Afford Now: Offer to barter for something you need with another writer friend. It can be an even trade, i.e. "You proof my manuscript, and I'll proof yours" or an exchange of specialties, such as a techno-savvy writer making a flash web site for an artistic writer who trades an e-book cover art design. The idea is for you both to end up with something of equal value that you need but can't do yourself and/or afford to buy. Your specialty doesn't have to be writing-related, either -- I once restored an heirloom family quilt for a friend who paid me in some hard-to-find research books I needed.

Brew Your Own Coffee: I know how much writers love coffee and convenience; the first place they go to when they want to write in public is a bookstore coffee shop. But buying that $2-$3 cup of coffee can over time add up to a major expense, as per Barbara Thau's article Savings Experiment: The Perks of Brewing versus Buying Coffee over at Wallet Pop: "A 6-ounce cup of coffee made at home, at about 17 cents a cup per day, adds up to $1.19 a week and $62.05 a year. A 16-ounce grande coffee from Starbucks, at $2.29 per day, adds up to $16.03 per week, and a hefty $835.85 per year -- the price of a mini vacation." Or a new laptop, for that matter.

Buy Used Instead of New Books: Most authors frown on this because we make our living off new book sales, but for half of my life I couldn't afford any new books so I'm not one of them. Buying from used book stores is simply common sense when money is tight, as is checking out library book sales, thrift stores, junk shops and garage sales. Make up a list of books you're looking for and keep it in your wallet for unexpected finds. You can also hunt for used books online; one place I still use to find out-of-print titles is Alibris.com, and they almost always have what I need in a range of prices. I've never had a single problem with condition of the books I've bought or their sellers, and I can't say that about any of the bigger online chain booksellers.

Cancel or Swap Trade Mag Subscriptions: There are a limited number of writing and Publishing magazines out there, and I think Publishers Weekly is the most expensive (according to their web site, they're currently charging $249.99 per year for US subscribers, $299.99 for Canada and $399.99 for international. The digital edition is only slightly better at $180.00 per year, but the site doesn't specify if this is US-only or global, so don't hold me to that price.) The quality of the content of the trades in general has gone down to the point that they are utterly useless to me, so I've cancelled all my subscriptions, and this saves me a couple hundred dollars a year. I know how hard it is to let go of them, though, and it's not necessary to give them up entirely if you form a monthly issue swap with some writer friends. This is when everyone agrees on a list of mags they want, and each of you subscribe to one of them. After you're finished reading each issue of the mag you've subscribed to, you pass it along to the next person in the group, who do the same with theirs, and repeat until everyone in the group gets a chance to read the mag, which then returns to the person who subscribed to it. If you live close to a bunch of other writers, you can also use an issue swap as a reason to get together (at which point you can discuss the articles and share info.) This works great with a crit group that meets every month, too.

Go Laser instead of Inkjet: When it's time to replace your old inkjet printer, consider buying a laser printer instead. Over the years I've used many types of inkjet and monochrome laser printers, and laser is superior to inkjet in almost every category: they print faster, are designed for high-volume printing (which writers need for manuscripts), last longer and have fewer problems. Even the toner for a laser printer is cheaper (depending on where you shop, about 50%-75% less than inkjet.) Inkjet printers themselves are much cheaper, and therefore less pricey to replace, but with the supplies you end up paying more for using them. According to this article over at SmallBusinessComputing.com "Monochrome laser costs about two-to-three cents per page (about half that is for consumables, the rest for hardware). Color laser printing runs 10 to 15 cents, and a personal inkjet is about double that price."

Recycle Old Manuscripts and Used Printer Paper: Put a box by your computer for old manuscripts and other printed papers you don't need and place them in it with the blank side in the printing position (usually up, but run a test on your printer to be sure.) When you collect a stack, put them in your printer paper tray instead of new paper (and save new paper for formal use like business correpondence, submissions, etc.) By using paper twice you can cut up to 50% of the cost.

Refill Toner Cartridges Instead of Replacing Them: Depending on the type of printer you use, you're probably paying $30.00 - $70.00 every time you need a new toner cartridge. Office Depot sells a bunch of black and color toner refill kits under $20.00, and they often last for up to three uses, which would save you anywhere from $30.00 to $150.00 dollars. If you're not in love with the idea of refilling cartridges, which can get messy, try to buy remanufactured replacements, which are usually 25%-50% cheaper than brand-new.

Replace Your Web Site with a Free Blog: WebPageFX says that the average cost of an informational or small business web site runs from $2,000.00 to $6,000.00 per year. I've paid even more than that, and cutting that expense permanently from my budget was a huge savings. Blogger/Google, which provides the space for PBW and its archives, charges me nothing. Last year they gave me an additional ten pages where I've parked a lot of my author info. I've had no major issues with Blogger since I started using it for my old blog back in 2000. As for those people who say you have to pay in order to draw traffic, PBW is also usually in the top 200 book blogs listed on Technorati, so I'm proof that you can make a free blog just as popular as a pricey web site.

Track Expenses, Evaluate and Weed Out the Unnecessary: If you don't know what you're spending your money on, how can you save any at all? It's like trying to diet without knowing how many calories you're consuming. For fixed expenses you can add up your monthly bills. To track personal expenditures like food, gas and entertainment, get a receipt for every penny you spend, put all the receipts in your wallet, and at the end of the month take them out and add them up. Seeing how much you spend on a monthly basis on non-fixed expenses is usually an eye-opener, especially when you discover you spend more on McDonald's than you do for medical insurance. It will also help you discover areas where you can eliminate wasteful spending or try a cheaper alternative (like brown-bagging your lunch.)

This/That

I know the very first time I bought a book because of a video was after I watched Kinsey Holley's Kiss and Kin book video; that was also the only time a book video interested me enough to make a purchase -- ever. Alas, Kinsey will now have to share her Got-PBW title, because seeing Brent Hartinger's wry and funny book video for his new novel Shadow Walkers convinced me to buy a copy. The author made me laugh, and the story sounds cool, but I'm pretty sure it was the cat who clinched the sale.

Gerard over at The Presurfer shared a link to a new (or, at least, new-to-me) kind of search engine called Qwiki. I tried it out and it shows you images and tells you via a mechanical? voice some brief information about your search topic (why, I don't know. Since it's image-heavy it's obviously not designed for the visually impaired. Are we supposed to be too lazy to read stuff now?) Although the front page claims Qwiki knows millions of things, it didn't know anything about the first five common terms I searched for, so it may be a few mil short of all-knowing. Since it's based on Wikipedia info it's also likely to be quite inaccurate, so caveat emptor.

Last but not least, I've always been interested in recording my dreams, working them into my stories and otherwise exploring the last inviolate refuge of the imagination. I also see a lot of weird stuff when I'm out hunting for freeware on the internet. Did I ever think those two things would someday intersect? No. You can't hack dreams. Well, guess what.

Blast from the Past

I've been hunting down my favorite old music videos to share with my daughter (who has no idea how cool MTV used to be) and in the process I found one I haven't seen in at least twenty years or better:



I know, by today's standards it's pretty dorky, but I loved it. Back when music videos were in their infancy they often told little mini-stories like this. They fascinated me and no doubt influenced me in innumerable ways. The song is still a heartbreaker, too.

What are some of your favorite old (pre-2000) music videos that told stories?

28th of Snowfall, Year of the Vulture

The Fantasy World News Network is an automated generator that uses word replacements to transform our planet's news into headlines from a mirror-universe world, where things like the month of January are called Snowfall and personal computers become valesylvers. The host site also has another headline generator that does the same thing with a SF spin here.

Making up newspaper headlines is fun, and good practice for learning how to condense ideas and make them attractive (like a story premise you might mention in a query letter, or a tagline for your upcoming release.) The trick of writing a great headline is to offer just enough information and provocation to make the reader want to keep reading:

Improve Your Love Life and Lose Weight (Have That Secret Baby!)

The Scroll That Makes You Immortal -- Or Dead -- in 3 Days

Mayan Miscalculation Means New Date for Apocalypse: Tomorrow

If you want to use headlines as a way to create a non-traditional outline of your story, write up one for each scene or chapter that provides a quick overview or general idea of what happens in them, i.e.:

Faceless Vampire First Kidnaps Then Infects World's Fastest Surgeon

Socialite Slashed by Ghost While Sleeping, Spell Breaker to Investigate

First Day of School, Worst Day of Life

Headline-writing is also a great way to explore the unfamiliar territory of copy-writing, which sometimes authors are called upon to proof for their back covers. When you've got space for only a couple of paragraphs, being able to relate your story in a brief but alluring way is a handy skill, especially when the copy you get is less than stellar.

The other great thing about headlines is that they're kind of like writing haiku -- the more often you write them, the better you get. While I was putting together this post and making up headline examples, a tagline I've been trying to think up in more conventional ways finally popped in my head:

It's After Midnight -- Are You Ready to Ride?

Now it's your turn: what would be a fun headline for what you're working on right now? Let us know in comments.

Related links:

Copyblogger has a post here that defines the different types of headlines and why they hook a reader's attention.

Melissa Donovan's Writing Exercises for Titles and Headlines explains how to write them and gives you some exercises for practice.

Vision and Visibility

Last night I had an epiphany moment while I was re-reading Journaling Without Borders, an article Carrie Todd wrote in the Summer 2010 issue of Art Journaling. I'd gone back to the magazine to study a technique, and then read the rest just for fun. See, I don't save all these magazines for nothing, I do re-read them. It only takes a couple years to work my way through the collection.

Anyway, on one of her journal pages in the issue Carrie had glued a surrealistic circus figure, the word "bizarre" in all caps, and had written a short passage about her own reaction to another article in Rolling Stone about U2's frontman Bono, and the motto he lives by: "Vision over Visibility" (a bit more on that here.) Magazines, especially creative-theme ones, often have that quasi-droste effect: one good article always makes me want to read another.

The motto poses an interesting dilemma for a writer: Which comes first, your vision, or your visibility?

Vision has been a cornerstone of professional writing, or at least it was before visibility became so important. The first time I read an agent talking about the vital importance of a writer's "platform" over the work itself, I knew vision had taken a backseat to visibility. If things keep going in that direction, craft, quality and personal commitment will be joining it. Or at least the old lady storyteller inside me is muttering that under her breath.

Publishing wants visibility over vision. It's the foundation of the business attitude, and it makes a lot of money. We might not like it, but no one can deny that visibility is important to us as well. As professionals we want to sell what we write, and if no one notices what we've published, we don't sell. Every year the market becomes more crowded, and now that no-cost digital self-publishing has successfully eliminated the submission process, I expect the number of titles available will soar right out of the stratosphere.

I think you can have the best of both worlds -- vision and visibility -- if you don't compromise on one for the sake of the other. If you are so exhausted from spending all your time networking and socializing and getting your name out there, you're not going to write well, if at all. Same goes for walling yourself away in your ivory writing tower and spending all your time with the work -- you lose touch with the market, what the competition and the publishers are doing; you fall behind the times.

I'm not in either camp. I believe one can combine vision and visibility and make them work together. You're looking at what I do almost every day to have a professional presence online. It's simply one thing, and I know every other author does a lot more, but sometimes just one thing is enough. PBW has become an integral part of my writing life, one that allows me to be visible and yet do exactly what I want at the same time. Over the years doing just this one thing has not only brought new readers for my books, it's provided me with a global circle of friends and colleagues who share their visions, too.

Just last week I got an e-mail from a writer who is being published for the first time. The story will appear in an anthology that had an open call I listed in one of my sub ops posts last fall. That's visibility. The writer discovered the opportunity here, wrote a story for it, and now is turning pro. That's vision.

It goes both ways, too. A comment one of you left here about a year ago led me to a piece written by an editor I didn't know. It was a terrific piece, and impressed me so much that I printed it out and put it in my editor info file. I keep that file because I never know who I might be working with, and having a little info in advance helps. A few weeks ago when I lost my editor, I pulled my file, re-read that article, did a bit more research and decided to request that editor. Now we're working together. It definitely wouldn't have happened if I hadn't read that article.

Now it's your turn: which do you think is more important, vision or visibility? How are you juggling them, if at all? Let us know in comments.

Elsewhere

Today I am also guest blogging again, this time over at Word Nerd, where I'll be talking about that little line from Frostfire that spooked me so much. My very kind hosts are also giving away this lovely Kyndred gift basket filled with a signed set of all three Kyndred novels, a mug, hot cocoa, teas, and nibblies:



Stop in if you have a chance and say hi.