Linda Maye Adams's Blog, page 30
May 5, 2020
How I Got There: Writing Mystery, Science Fiction, and Fantasy (Part III)
Though Star Trek launched me into reading science fiction, I was also disappointed by it. ALL of the books I read either had a woman character who was wallpaper or didn’t have any women at all.
There was nothing that represented me.
So along came Marion Zimmer Bradley and her Sword and Sorceress series. All the stories were about women!
I devoured those and started looking for fantasy books with pictures of women on them. That was a big lie itself. Sometimes I’d get a book thinking the character on the cover would be prominent in the story. Nope. Not fair, not fair.
But I felt like I finally was seeing something that played to this audience of one.
Then there was that pesky thing called writing.
I had no clue what entailed each of the genres. During those first years, I followed entirely where the idea took me. That usually landed me in short stories that didn’t have a genre. I naively thought they might be literary. Didn’t realize the problem was my approach.
My first novel was a mystery/thriller. Thriller was still a category of mystery at the time. I did the amnesia story because, really, what better way to learn about a character than have them learn from a blank slate.
Of course, I didn’t realize that it was a TV trope. During the 1970s and 1980s, amnesia was a very common storyline.
Ralph hits a train on Greatest American Hero and forgets he’s a superhero. Steve crashes his plane on The Six Million Dollar Man and forgets he’s bionic.Data crashes on a planet on Star Trek The Next Generation and tangles with frightened village
I ended up abandoning the story and tried for a fantasy.
And then I ran into the terrifying aspect of fantasy: World Building.
It seemed like every writer was saying that to build a world, you have to get a three-ring binder, a pack of tabs, and answer a whole lot of questions.
That’s before you even write. Everyone said that you needed all this before you started writing. I was pantser, and it just shut me down. I didn’t write the fantasy.
Then enter co-writer. My writing was so messed up because of all the random writing advice that I had accumulated that I doubted I could ever write a novel-length book without help. So I joined up with another writer and produced my first completed book: A thriller.
We eventually broke up. Suddenly I had the realization that in all the time I’d been cowriting, I hadn’t learned how to solve my messy writing problems. So a fantasy became my “Get back on the horse book.” That book became Rogue God.
Science fiction came next. I was writing a story for an anthology call called Ghosts on Drugs. I’d aid previously I would probably never have a story that wanted to be a novel…and this one defied that. It became Crying Planet.
Mystery came last year with Golden Lies, after I took a class on Research from Dean Wesley Smith (great class, but you need Depth to take it). It helped me figure out that all my reading about Hollywood while I was growing up made for a good mystery.
What’s next? Probably a thriller!
More Reading
How I Got There: Writing Mystery, Science Fiction, and Fantasy (Part II)How I Got There: Writing Mystery, Science Fiction, and Fantasy (Part I)
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May 3, 2020
May Book Releases
Exciting new releases for May!
[image error]Spine tingling space adventures
Get your roller coaster ride of space opera with GALCOM Log One omnibus of the first three books in the series
[image error]Alien adventures!
Here Be Aliens features 10 books by different authors, including my novella Cursed Planet.
[image error]Pirates!
X Marks the Spot An Anthology of Treasure and Theft features 21 tales of pirates and treasure. With me, you never know what the treasure might be, except that it’s unexpected. My story is Magic Tidying. Proceeds goes to a scholarship to help writers who can’t afford it attend Superstars.
The Six Million Dollar Man Guide to Wish Fulfillment in Fiction Writing
Since my work went to teleworking full time in mid-March, I’ve been indulging at watching a TV show I grew up with: The Six Million Dollar Man. It’s also a startling example of the wish-fulfillment aspect of writing fiction.
(By the way, this has nothing to do with another aspect of wish fulfillment, the Mary Sue. That’s a whole other discussion.)
The show itself was cutting edge technology at the time, based on the novel Cyborg by Martin Caidin. The book itself was much darker (yup, I read that puppy). Astronaut Steve Austin suffers a devastating accident and loses both his legs, his right arm, and an eye.
But Dr. Rudy Wells has been working on a new project called bionics and replaces Steve’s arm, legs, and eye with technology. It integrates with the human body completely and looks normal. Except that he has incredible strength, can run 60 miles an hour, and see with infrared.
Every kid wanted to be bionic. Heck, we were working on a paper mache project in school and we did a giant, bionic caveman. (Kid logic, right?)
Who doesn’t want to stop bad guys by throwing them across a yard? Or run faster than a car? Bend steel with your bare hands?
Readers want it too. That’s how we ended up with Nancy Drew, the girl detective, as well as the entire romance genre. Even Jack Reacher and Dirk Pitt on the thriller side were wish fulfillment.
Seriously, haven’t you been in a store or a bank and imagined what you would do if armed robbers burst in? Would you imagine screaming from the room and hiding? No, of course not. You’d be heroic in the face of danger!
Wish fulfillment is an escape from the realities of life. We all want to have the fantasy.
More Reading
Science Fiction & Fantasy as Wish Fulfillment – Includes a quote from pulp writer Lester Dent.
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April 29, 2020
Publisher’s Weekly
My short story, Alien Pizza, got a mention in Publisher’s Weekly!
April 27, 2020
Cover Refresh: Healer’s Tent
I’ve spent the last week crashing on a short story that was very stubborn. I finally figured out what direction it was supposed to go and got it out on the last day of the deadline.
So I zoomed through some cover refreshes on Saturday. It looks like all the sites are still publishing. I’d thought they’re suspended that (due to a software change in the user interface). So some have already gone up, and more are coming.
First up:
Healer’s Tent
[image error][image error]
Cover on the left is the original. Cover on the right is the new one.
This was a piece that published four years ago. It was only four years ago, but it feels like a lifetime in how the image styles have changed.
At the time, there weren’t as many that could be used for a book cover. Many of the images were too busy or didn’t have enough contrast to sample colors for the titles. Some were even too simple (i.e., no setting background).
So I think the artists realized their big business is in covers. The images have better settings and aren’t as busy. There’s always more contrast.
Words of Rain and Shadows
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Left is the original. Right is the new.
Looking at this one, I can see why I chose the original. But it defitely needed the refresh.
Note the placement of the titles on the left one, versus the right. When I create this, I was thinking: “PowerPoint presentation.”
I used to do PowerPoints and you can get right up against the edge. The program has a built-in gutter around each slide that you can’t see. But in a cover, this is the bleed area.
A bleed area is a little margin for printing in case the paper moves around. If this had gone to print, I’d probably have lost the bottom and left side of my title! Also the the top of my name.
My new template has guides around all the edges that mark the bleed areas. The guides also help make the covers look more consistent overall.
More to come. I was making a list and am shocked at how many I still have.
It’s time for a cover refresh!
I’ve spent the last week crashing on a short story that was very stubborn. I finally figured out what direction it was supposed to go and got it out on the last day of the deadline.
So I zoomed through some cover refreshes on Saturday. It looks like all the sites are still publishing. I’d thought they’re suspended that (due to a software change in the user interface). So some have already gone up, and more are coming.
First up:
Healer’s Tent
[image error][image error]
Cover on the left is the original. Cover on the right is the new one.
This was a piece that published four years ago. It was only four years ago, but it feels like a lifetime in how the image styles have changed.
At the time, there weren’t as many that could be used for a book cover. Many of the images were too busy or didn’t have enough contrast to sample colors for the titles. Some were even too simple (i.e., no setting background).
So I think the artists realized their big business is in covers. The images have better settings and aren’t as busy. There’s always more contrast.
Words of Rain and Shadows
[image error][image error]
Left is the original. Right is the new.
Looking at this one, I can see why I chose the original. But it defitely needed the refresh.
Note the placement of the titles on the left one, versus the right. When I create this, I was thinking: “PowerPoint presentation.”
I used to do PowerPoints and you can get right up against the edge. The program has a built-in gutter around each slide that you can’t see. But in a cover, this is the bleed area.
A bleed area is a little margin for printing in case the paper moves around. If this had gone to print, I’d probably have lost the bottom and left side of my title! Also the the top of my name.
My new template has guides around all the edges that mark the bleed areas. The guides also help make the covers look more consistent overall.
More to come. I was making a list and am shocked at how many I still have.
April 26, 2020
X Marks the Spot Available Now!
Set sail on the high seas with dashing rogues, daring rebels, and wily pirates searching for treasures of all kinds.
X Marks the Spot is a collection of 21 unforgettable stories about those men and women who live on the fringes of society, who are beholden to no man, no law, and who always have one eye on the horizon.
Available from all your favorite booksellers.
April 12, 2020
3 Post-COVID-19 Predictions
No matter what happens, once the COVID-19 winds down—and it will—we’re going to be changed as people.
I keep returning in my head to my experience during Desert Storm. In January 1990, we were 43 miles from the border of Kuwait. The enemy was close enough that we could have been overrun. And 24X7 fear of that did terrible things to us.
People I thought I could trust? That was ripped away and I saw was underneath. Not everyone I had thought was a good person was. Then there was the unit screw-up who ended up finding something inside himself he didn’t know he had.
We’re seeing that here, too. Some people have the spirit to do good and are reaching out. Others…well, you’ve seen examples of extreme behavior, too.
But, like the soldiers coming out of the war, we’ll be changed too. So I have some predictions:
Cooking
There’s going to be a resurgence in learning to cook. Not the kind of classes I saw pre-virus. You know, those ones where a chef teaches you how to make his signature Italian meal.
No, we’re going to see classes on cooking basics, and possibly even how to shop.
Might also affect significantly affect the culture food magazines and TV shows have created.
Books/Movies/TV
I think we’re going to see stories finally veer away the call of the dark. We’ve been languishing here for too long, frankly.
It’ll probably push a lot of writers out, too. Some won’t know how to write a story that isn’t dark.
Hollywood’s going to be forced into change, as well. Not sure what direction that will go since the path they need to take won’t agree with them. Their market in the U.S. was in decline because they weren’t producing movies audiences wanted to flock to. So they focused on overseas—guess where? Something is going to change.
Productivity/Time Management
I’ve followed it for several years, mainly because of so much overwhelm that technology has created. Everyone said that computers would make it easier to do things…instead, it’s made everything more complicated.
Now people chase impossible goals, pushing to jam more and more into the finite resource of time. They try to get even more by multi-tasking.
The overwhelm from COVID-19 stopped that dead in its tracks. The impact will show people that trying to do so much isn’t healthy. Minimalism and simplicity were growing before COVID-19. They’ll gain momentum now.
What are your predictions?
April 8, 2020
Cover Refreshes: 5 Fantasy Heroines
No writing doesn’t mean no progress. While I’m waiting for the world to settle down, I’m still still updating some of my older book covers and interiors.
Onward to the next batch!
5 Fantasy Heroines
[image error][image error]
Original cover is on the left. New cover on the right.
I can see why I liked the original cover, and yet it’s not what I would pick now. When I saw this new picture, I got it because I knew I would use it somewhere. The artwork is by the same person I picked for Action Tales I.
This book has a title change to 5 Fantasy Heroines, just make it more consistent with the others I’ve already done.
This one in particular has a visible demonstration of my cover template. I have guides set on the template so the text doesn’t get too close to the margins. On the old ones, I was lining them right up along the edges, like I would do in a PowerPoint (where there is an additional margin built in).
Devil Winds
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One of the great things about doing your own covers is that if you run across a better image later on, it’s easy to update.
In this case, the left one is a refresh from last year, but when I saw the one of the right, it was perfect for Devil Winds. The artist is the same one from above.
For Pantsers: A Guide to Writing
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As before, old cover (refresh from a few years ago) on the left, new cover on the right.
This was a hard cover to do. Fiction writing is an incredibly difficult subject to illustrate. The left one looks more like my fiction covers in the formatting. I had also changed the title to remove the subtitle with that refresh (Pantser’s Guide to Writing: You are Not Broken). Edited to add: new title is Writer’s Guide 1: Writing for Pantsers. Cover is changing again…
But a non-fiction book needs a subtitle. So the new one looks more like a non-fiction book and has a title change. The search to find this image was “imagination.” Lots of fun images for that, but it took forever to find the image.
I wrote this book four years ago, and the content feels very dated to me now because I’ve learned so much. I’m debating an update to the content or possibly another book.
More Cover Refreshes
No writing doesn’t mean no progress. While I’m waiting for the world to settle down, I’m still still updating some of my older book covers and interiors.
Onward to the next batch!
5 Fantasy Heroines
[image error][image error]
Original cover is on the left. New cover on the right.
I can see why I liked the original cover, and yet it’s not what I would pick now. When I saw this new picture, I got it because I knew I would use it somewhere. The artwork is by the same person I picked for Action Tales I.
This book has a title change, just make it more consistent with the others I’ve already done.
This one in particular has a visible demonstration of my cover template. I have guides set on the template so the text doesn’t get too close to the margins. On the old ones, I was lining them right up along the edges, like I would do in a PowerPoint (where there is an additional margin built in).
Devil Winds
[image error][image error]
One of the great things about doing your own covers is that if you run across a better image later on, it’s easy to update.
In this case, the left one is a refresh from last year, but when I saw the one of the right, it was perfect for this story. The artist is the same one from above.
For Pantsers: A Guide to Writing
[image error][image error]
As before, old cover (refresh from a few years ago) on the left, new cover on the right.
This was a hard cover to do. Fiction writing is an incredibly difficult subject to illustrate. The left one looks more like my fiction covers in the formatting. I had also changed the title to remove the subtitle with that refresh (Pantser’s Guide to Writing: You are Not Broken).
But a non-fiction book needs a subtitle. So the new one looks more like a non-fiction book and has a title change. The search to find this image was “imagination.” Lots of fun images for that, but it took forever to find the image.
I wrote this book four years ago, and the content feels very dated to me now because I’ve learned so much. I’m debating an update to the content or possibly another book.
