K.Z. Snow's Blog, page 14

Updates

Xylophone, my contemporary that deals with the aftermath of childhood sexual abuse, is finished and now under submission. And that means . . .

I've finally returned to Merman, the sequel to Mongrel. (I apologize to those of you who've been waiting for that sequel!)

This brings up an interesting aspect of the writer's life: how some of us can work on multiple stories simultaneously and some of us can't.

I'm in the latter group. My head needs to be in a particular place for each book, and I'm wary of what could be called cross-contamination. This might not be a factor if I stuck with one subgenre and consistently employed the same voice, but I don't. I'm a jumper. So in order to maintain a specific tone, and keep characters true to themselves, I have to concentrate on one piece of fiction at a time.

How I envy writers who have anywhere from two to five WIPs going at once. That obviously makes for greater productivity. If there's some WIP-juggling secret I'm not aware of, I'd love to hear it!  

Social Media

It appears social media can be as much of a bane-mixed-with-boon experience for athletes and fans as for authors and readers. Read this article published by NPR (National Public Radio) News about some situations generated by the 2012 Olympics.

Clearly, it's time to get a life when you take either books or sports too seriously.

In Praise of Skillz!

As more and more titles flood the m/m romance genre, I realize how highly I value a certain commodity. It was something I used to take for granted.

Not anymore.

I'm currently reading a novel I've found kind of boring thus far. It's slow-moving and, already, a little too angsty for my tastes. And I'm not entirely sure why the narrator so quickly began obsessing about the other MC, who seems more worthy of suspicion than obsession. (Insta-hots I can easily buy. Insta-bonding, not so much.)

I have plenty of other fiction to read, including stories that contain much more action than this one and move along at a brisker pace. So, each time I catch myself getting impatient and skimming over paragraphs and pages, I turn to another file on my Kindle or one of the print books I have stashed in four rooms of the house.

The attempted diversion doesn't last long. Invariably, I'll come back to that tortoise of a novel.

Why?

Because it's so well-written. The draw is as simple yet as complicated as that. This author can write. Thousands of people apparently have tales to tell, but very few are natural wordsmiths. When someone comes along who's so marvelously at ease with the language, and shows such mastery of it, I'm entranced. Hooked. And doubly hooked when I get a few chuckles along the way.

Even when certain sections go on too long (like descriptive scene-setting for the sake of local color, internal monologues, background-info dumps), I still feel driven to proceed. Losing myself in flawless prose has become a luxury, because there's so little of it out there. Engaging stories and characters are fairly easy to find, but smooth, beautifully crafted sentences that are devoid of errors to boot? Uh . . . no. That's a rare and precious thing.

Now don't get me wrong. I don't need Faulkner's or Updike's level of expression to keep me satisfied. Hundreds of pieces of fiction have held my interest and proved enjoyable reads. I'm talking here about something other than a knack for storytelling.

I'd love to name the authors whom I consider verbal artists, but I won't go there. I haven't read the work of every writer in the genre -- far from it, in fact -- so I'd be leaving out many worthy names. I just wanted to applaud the genre's true craftsmen and let them know how much I appreciate their talent. They might not be prolific or super-popular, might not be the biggest moneymakers around, but they're gold to me.        

I'm at Chicks & Dicks today.

As part of C&D's Abuse Awareness Month, I'm over there today, discussing the issue of sexual molestation. Fact: homeless GLBTQ* youths are at particular risk. 
Please stop by.

The time has come, the Walrus said

. . . not to speak of many things.

Voicing one's opinions, although still a civil right in much of the world, has become a right fraught with risk. Especially if you're part of a fairly insular community.

Lip off, and you can run afoul of the Moral Majority (the definition of which differs from one segment of society to another; liberals have their Moral Majority as much as conservatives do). Or you can run afoul of a Mean Minority (a smaller group of people loaded with bad attitude). In short, you're bound to run afoul of somebody unless your sentiments are a rubber-stamp version of theirs/his/hers, unless your voice harmonizes with whatever chorus is dominant in your vicinity.

I envy bloggers who spout off about whatever is on their minds, without fear of repercussion. I envy their freedom to indulge in pungent commentary and irreverent humor and occasional quirky rants. But those of us who write and/or review books must tiptoe through the blogosphere.

It's the height of irony -- isn't it? -- when word lovers are wary of words.

That's the way it's become. For whatever reason, more and more bookpeople are taking themselves and each other very, very seriously. Step out of line, and you risk being browbeaten or cold-shouldered into a corner. (Don't ask me what or where the "line" is. Dicked if I know. I've seen so many lines over the years, related to so many different issues, I can't keep track of them and certainly can't anticipate their appearances.) Other authors far wiser than I -- and I'm not being facetious -- have either removed themselves completely from the Internet reading community or limited their presence to release announcements, promotional posts, answers to questions about their books, and similarly neutral stuff.

So, given Publishing World's current environment, I've decided to change my online color palette. It's the prudent thing to do. Sunny yellow is safe; beige is probably safer. And, as always, silence is golden. I'll be switching among the three.

It's time I expressed myself primarily through my fiction.

          

Creative Name-calling: a Rally Cry

Authors and readers need to hone their name-calling skills. It reflects poorly on us when spectators in the Coliseum of Controversy see the same overused epithets -- so tired they hardly pack a glancing touch, much less a wallop -- and the same meaningless amalgams of body parts, growths, fluids, and/or functions.

Troll, homophobe, idiot, hater, asshole, scumbag, bigot, ass pimple, puke-mouth, troll, sexist pig, douche, douche bag, douche nozzle, misogynist, shamer, blamer, hypocrite, apologist, shit-stirrer, sack of shit, piece of shit, pus bucket, bottom feeder, fuckwad, troll, douche, TROLLDOUCHE SLIMY RESIDUE!


==========yawn=========
Come on, people, get creative! Start strutting your literary stuff! Any butt-garden dingleberry of an adolescent texter or MySpace gifaholic can toss out terms like the ones above (except maybe misogynist and apologist, although they've still been worn the hell out by book people). So how about:

Jungle rot at the heart of darkness!
Deformed sperm of a demon-spawned sperm whale!
Distillation of the stink at the Canterbury pilgrims' cracks and crotches!
Scarlet alphabet!
Embittered and aging Lolita!
Bestial wet-dream of Sancho Panza!
Blast of Bovary's arsenic breath!
Dirty, calloused finger of a Bradbury fireman!

See? It requires no effort, just a little thought. Your audiences would be so much more entertained -- and end up educated, to boot!

Hell yes, spelling cunts . . . uh, counts!

Another Perspective Check

What the hell is wrong with people who write and read books? A surfeit of egotism? A dearth of humor? An oft-misguided fondness for drama?

So the big flap now is about "bullying." Authors bullying reviewers; reviewers bullying authors; authors bullying each other.

WTF?

You know why this irks me? (Well, of course you don't, unless you're psychic.) I'll tell you why. Because there are kids and adults, queer and straight, who are psychologically and physically broken by bullying. Some of them lose their lives to it or take their lives because of it. They're stalked, harassed, humiliated, threatened, and hurt. THIS is bullying. (And I won't even get into the issue of cruelty against innocent animals, because I'll wind myself up to the point of raving incoherence.)

I've lost patience with the whining. On both sides. Unless a serious threat is posed to your privacy, peace of mind, and/or physical well-being, and the execution of that threat seems imminent or at least probable, quit your bellyaching. Suck it up, if for no other reason than out of deference to the victims of genuine, hardcore bullies -- schoolyard and street thugs, horrific parents, fundie ignoramuses, controlling, abusive partners, sexual predators, terrorist organizations, authoritarian and militaristic regimes. The list goes on. These are the kinds of individuals and groups who do real damage to others.

Please, stop devaluing the worldwide, species-wide problem of bullying by lumping it together with (often inadvertent) insensitivity, lack of civility, and criticism. I've gotten my butt whupped by reviewers, and I've seen reviewers get their butts whupped by authors -- and, yeah, it stings -- but never have I thought of these behaviors as anything but a result of putting a product on the market.

The way I see it, one person's perception of another person's shitheadedness is usually the result of some fairly common breakdown in communication. The Internet fosters misunderstanding. So do the normal variables of human nature. We're not all compatible: we don't share the same level of literacy, intelligence, intuition, and insight; we don't share the same sense of humor, tastes, and life experiences. If somebody's words bother you, or if you find his/her manner abrasive, walk away from that person and go about your business. Cry if you feel like crying. Vent to friends and family members. But resist joining the confederacy of dunces (apologies to Mr. Swift and Mr. Toole) who are distinguished chiefly by their eagerness to take umbrage at . . . well, at just about anything.

Most important, don't diminish the suffering of bullying's true victims. Pause and think about Matthew Shepard, or Jerry Sandusky's young prey. Think of an anonymous black man hanging from a tree. Or the casualties of the 9-11 attacks. Maybe you won't feel quite so "bullied" anymore.

Syrian mass funeral, courtesy of the National Post (Canada)

More Truth

This rant is pretty much right on the money. I can vouch for it. WARNING for those of you unfamiliar with comedian Lewis Black: he does not censor himself.

Excerpt from my WIP, Xylophone

A difficult write, finally nearing completion, about the burdensome secret of sexual abuse (past, not present), and its effects on victims' lives.

Two men in their twenties, quite different men from different backgrounds, end up sharing their experiences with each other, and with a candor they'd never before exercised with anybody else. One is openly gay but quails from relationships. The other is afraid to explore his sexuality at all. There are other issues as well; both young men are psychologically and emotionally scrambled. Coping mechanisms have essentially been holding their lives together, but not particularly well.  
Through a series of painful, cathartic revelations -- not just of events, but of the feelings instilled by those events -- Dare Boothe and Jonah Day take the first steps toward exorcising their demons, learning how to trust again, and possibly forging a profoundly intimate, fulfilling bond. There's no Magical Healing Penis in this story. 

The current-day narrative is in third person. The sections in which the men relate their traumas -- and not in the kind of detail that would constitute kiddie porn -- are in first person. Below is the beginning of one character's tale.         


DareJune, 1999    I saw it from the bus as I was coming back from my first clarinet lesson. First private lesson, that is, with a music teacher who wasn’t my band director. My mother wanted to drive me to and from Mr. Eger's studio, but I told her no. I was thirteen and starting to stretch my wings. Independence felt good. Only, that’s what put the rainbow and the windows in my path. A sparkling rainbow arching over an otherwise plain storefront, with bluebirds hovering at each end. And display windows packed with a jumble of things that didn’t look new. The sight was captivating. A thirteen-year-old boy—especially a quirky and somewhat rebellious boy like me—couldn’t possibly resist such a lure. Later I’d think, If only I’d been sitting on the other side of the bus, I wouldn’t have seen it. Over the Rainbow Resale would never have intruded on my life.I was deluding myself. Seeing the store was inevitable. Fate had made it inevitable. I know that sounds crazy, but I believed that for years.The following week I got off the bus just a few doors down from the shop. Since I had a bus pass, I wouldn’t have to walk the remaining distance, maybe a mile or so, to my house. This mattered because I was carrying my clarinet. Not that it was heavy, but I was afraid someone might snatch it from me. I was more slightly built than even most girls my age. If I’d been mugged (and it never occurred to me most muggers weren’t after clarinets), I couldn’t have hung on to my most treasured possession.At first I dawdled on the sidewalk, hugging the case to my chest, and studied the stuff in the windows. A manikin wearing a polka-dot bikini and a Creature from the Black Lagoon mask. A barbecue grill heaped with molded plastic food and a rubber plucked chicken. Painted wood fish and frogs sitting on the rungs of a swimming pool ladder. African-looking busts draped in costume jewelry. An old-fashioned picnic basket stuffed with garden tools. A red bicycle. An alto sax with silk flowers erupting from its bell.Beyond this summery mad mess, the shop looked dim and dingy inside. But a multicolored OPEN sign hung crookedly on the door. I set my clarinet case at my feet, cupped my hands around my eyes, and peered inside. The ceiling lights were on. I saw shelving units, brimming with merchandise, set at odd angles to each other, and more weird stand-alone displays, and even a few racks of clothing. But no one was manning the old office desk that sat near the wall to the left of the door. It must have been the checkout area, I thought, because a scrolled-brass behemoth of a cash register weighed down a counter behind the desk.Someone had to be there.

I crept inside…and immediately heard it. Magical music dancing behind the buzzer sound that wavered from somewhere in the back of the shop. Notes like a fusion of dripping water and muffled bells.He’d seen me. I didn’t know it then but I know it now. He’d seen me staring enrapt at the junk in the windows, a clarinet case clutched to my heart, and he’d scurried away to set his trap.