Allison Hurd's Blog, page 18

Don’t Look If You Hate Bargains

 

Oh, you don’t hate good deals?  How bizarre! I thought everyone did. Well then, since you’re here. . . In preparation for the release of Sacrifice, happening sometime soon, I’d like to give a group of you t advance copies! Here’s how it works:

Read and honestly review Feeding Frenzy before Sacrifice hits shelves
Follow me on Facebook or Goodreads
I give you Sacrifice for free, before it hits stores!

And, in case that’s not enough, I have three copies of Feeding Frenzy to give away! Comment for a chance to win

Google Thinks I’m Insane

This is a common refrain of authors.  Humans, generally, I think, but chances are you don’t idly wonder how you’d butcher a human or which part of a human is best to eat, and then Google it.  (Until now!)

So, here is a list of a few of the things that have really changed the sorts of ads I get now, and which I’m convinced have some sort of impact on the search terms Google tries to auto-populate for me:

If you get punched in the eye, can you get heterochromatic eyes?
How much blood would you lose if you cut a line from your forehead to your toes?
Most efficient way to remove someone’s clothing.
What is the dirt from ant hills made of?
What does a healed bullet hole look like?
How much would it cost to buy illegal body armor?
What does an eighth of coke go for these days?
Fashionable ways to conceal weapons?
Ancient feminine hygiene products.
How to strip common household appliances for valuable metals

For when you need your gun close to your heart more than you need your left breast.

As you may have guessed, Google now thinks I’m a heavily armed woman who refuses to wear anything that isn’t skin tight, gets her period probably too often and has myriad kinks.  I’m not gonna correct them, though, this is so much more interesting than the ads for Swiffers I used to get.

Got Your Goat

Today’s post is going to be a short one.  I’m dead set on getting the first draft DONE today for Sacrifice.  To apologize, here is a video of a talented yogi who is also an exceptional goat gym.

 

#fitnessgoals #teamClyde

If You Can’t Go Home, Where Is It?

At some point, home goes some place else.  It’s not longer where we learned to ride a bike or had our first kiss.  “Home” becomes a new place with new traditions and feelings associated with it, and your previous home becomes just a place to visit.

We do this when we move on from old friends, or fall in or out of love, or lose something or someone important.  The things before are not there any more.  There’s something new where that thing used to be in us.  Sort of like this:

That is what magic is, in my world.  We are all energy, exchanging energies.  I push you, your physical being changes a bit.  I push you away socially, your emotional being changes a bit.  We can measure kinetic and potential energies.  My world supposes that we can measure the energy of intent and connection as well, and that some of those exchanges are enough to reconfigure reality.  But it’s hard to recreate–there are so few things on the planet known to carry this energy that unless you’re prepared to do some hunting and to create some immense emotional backlash, you can only achieve moderate reality-bending with tried and true reagents.  Certain herbs and earths.  The power of the moon and sun on our hearts.  The loss of a life or the death of a dream.  The spark we feel when meeting kindred spirits.  These are the elements of magic.

I think there are aspects of this we’ve all felt, and called it different things: nostalgia, faith, home-sickness, soulmate and we know each of these to carry different value to us.  As my series is ultimately a story of humanity, I believe this is the heart of the human experience–our ability to reach out, to imbue something with more value than the sum of its parts.  That is the small magic we use every day, in every interaction we have.

This is explored in great detail in Sacrifice which, I’m pleased to say, should be about ready for beta readers by the end of this week!

A Day Off

Happy Labor Day, American friends!  Happy almost-Eid, Muslim friends!  I’m a day off, but in fairness it still feels like Sunday, so I’m counting it.  Things are very busy here.  I’m editing two books for other authors, reviewing cover designs for Sacrifice and damn near done with that interminable book.  I much preferred this “finish a manuscript in two months” thing.  But, I am very excited for you to read this one.  It’s got it all: magic, mystery, fights, friends, and green eyes.  I just need it to consider itself done.

If you’re waiting and bored, may I suggest writing a review?  That’d be a huge help to me.  I also may have a few copies of Feeding Frenzy to hand out–message me on Goodreads or Facebook (or Twitter or Google Plus or…) and I’d be delighted to work with you

Tens(e)ion!

It turns out book tense?  Gets people goin’!  I never realized that some English readers have chosen teams, and are staunch defenders of their tense!

Most of the team is the Past Tensers.  It’s sort of like when you played a team game in school, and one team got colored jerseys and the other team just wore their own gym clothes.  One team yells “They had only liked reading in past tense!” and they run around all fleet and coordinated, smashing with precision through the other team’s defenses.  The other team, however, is just sort of milling around going “to have, have, had, has had, will have had” like some sort of lost, bewildered-but-enchanted travelers in a foreign land.

I am the bewildered traveler, enthusiastically mucking up my “whens”, and tripping down paths just to see where they go.

This is, apparently, heresy.

I didn’t even know!  You’re supposed to warn heretics before they go around, publishing books and whatall.

What I like about first person, present tense is its sense of immediacy and the intimacy with the character.  I don’t think it works super well for all books–The Lord of the Rings is divine as is, thanks.  Please do not go around changing how it happened.  But sometimes, in some cases, it’s fun knowing that no one knows what’s about to happen, and watching them react real time.  Past tense means time for reflection and self-editing. Present tense means “your guess is as good as mine, bub,” and we get to unravel it as the character does.

As The Other One likes to say, “there’s a vast difference between ‘and then everything went dark,’ and “and then everything goes dark.”

Personally, for me and my books, I like the second tension better. (The pun lands! Perfect routine!)  I like that readers feel like Summer does, that “how did this happen!” is sort of a constant mantra in their/your heads as it is in Summer’s.  It’s already working!  I told my dad the plots of the next couple books and he went “why does everything happen to Lia!” and I was like…they really don’t.  Summer sure as Hell thinks so though, so hooray!  You believe that Summer is Truth.  She’ll be so pleased.

What do you think? Are you Varsity or Latin Club? Do you like the tension of not knowing or does it, to quote another, “make your teeth itch?”

Jessica and Dante send pictures for a blog. They will see what happens next! They had no idea! 

The Problem of Us and Them

A serious post for probably the first time.  I wanna talk race.  Not in the clench up and prepare for impact kind of way though!  Race in literature.  Specifically, my series.

In Feeding Frenzy I’ve mostly ignored it.  I think I clarify that the main characters are white, and the sorority girls are mostly white.  Other than that?  You should feel free to assume that the other characters are nonwhite.

I chose this route purposefully.  It is called erasure when you don’t clarify, when you say you are “color blind,” and it is a problem.  I knew that as I wrote it, and I did it anyways.

It’s a problem because when we don’t clarify, we read characters as white, by and large, because in our culture, white is the default (See: Band-Aids, TV shows, make up…).  There’s nothing wrong with being white, of course, it’s just that a lot of the world isn’t white, so it’s sort of strange to be reading something and only see creamy white skin and hear pasty white voices.

Here are some voices I’d like to hear more often.

I chose to do this in Feeding Frenzy because I was a wimp.  Writing a book is scary enough, I thought, and I don’t want to get it super wrong when I say how the doctor, the cops, the prosecutor…all not white.  Plus, I rationalized, it’s not really relevant to my characters.  There is a strong us and them in the book, but it’s humans versus monsters, because the girls are privileged enough not to have to worry about looks in daily life.  And anyways, Lia doesn’t have most of the same hang ups we all have because she had the prejudices and messages of her childhood removed. This is all true, but it is insufficient, so I’m working to correct that in Sacrifice.

I will probably get some things wrong.  I am extremely fortunate to have many diverse people in my life who can read and tell me if the characters sound interesting to them, personally, but there isn’t like…the NAACP White People Certificate Program you can attend to be declared Not Racist and gain access to All Plates at Cookouts Nationally.  That isn’t a thing, so chances are I may do something unconsciously that will be somewhat problematic.  But it’s important to try, I think.  My friends and loved ones deserve to have stories that reflect the lives we share, and I would like to honor how amazing they are to me.

She is awesome. I wish I could crystallize this moment and gift it to people who deserve a friend like her.

 

 

So, please consider this an apology for my cowardly behavior in Feeding Frenzy, and if you have any advice on things you’d like to see in stories of people of color or other sexualities, genders, religions, and lived experiences generally, I would adore to hear about them.  Otherwise, please know that I’ve course corrected for Sacrifice and will continue to try to learn, apologize when I goof, and strive to do better.

Thanks very much for being wonderful humans, I hope to be the same.

 

THINK FAST!

Well, probably not that fast. Giveaway winners: books comin' atcha! They're flying at the speed of the USPS! Faster than a crawling snail! Sorry it took me so long, but I hope it's worth it! Thanks again for participating :-D

What I’m Lookin’ For In A Woman

I’ve been catching up on books lately.  Yada yada, an artist must be an observer but also have you read books?  Books are great.  They are sustenance to my little heart.

But I wanna talk again about writing women, and specifically why we can’t seem to get away from sexism.

I get it for some sub-genres–urban fantasy, for example.  If you want to set it in a world that is currently real, then, make it real.  It’s not like everything’s fine and then assault jumps out of the blue.  That isn’t how it works like 95% of the time.  There are SO MANY THINGS outside of that one thing that make this society the way it is, and those things are noticed and corrected for all the time.

But if you’re making a world from scratch, why on whatever-planet-this-book-is-on is gender always a thing?  You could have anything be a thing, and it always comes down to innies and outies.  What’s up with that?  Fantasy lets us experiment.  I recommend trying it.  Try imagining what it would be like if men could have friends that weren’t bros or lovers, and if women never had to worry about feelings for their own survival.  I bet it’d be really interesting.

Or pretty creepy.

So, in the event that you’re interested in making women sound like humans, and you are perhaps not a woman, here is some free insight into our so-called mysteries.

Friends

 

Ye gads, what is it with these books of lady people with no friends, only male friends, or friends who just wanna talk about feelings and sexual positions all day!  Women have friends! Often more than one! Usually at least a few are also women, who are interested in things the woman friend likes.  Things like eating food, and social awkwardness, and new movies.  She also has straight men friends who are either friends with her for shared interests, or if they are there for one thing, they have the decency not to say it because they know that isn’t what friends do.  Otherwise, they aren’t her friend.  Men who stick around women they find attractive and remind them all the time of this aren’t called friends.  They are now entourage or stalkers.  Totally different dynamic, stop calling them friends, that’s gross.

Fashion

Unless you’re really into it, discussion of fashion almost universally revolves around the following:

1. Economy (Thanks! Macy’s is having a sale)

2. Boob wrangling (HOW DOES THIS DRESS WORK! WHERE DO PARTS GO)

3.Period mitigation (These pants fit, even when I’m PMSing like a champ)

4. How nothing fits or has pockets (WHY CAN’T WE HAVE POCKETS OR STANDARD SIZING)

End of discussion.

Q: Should it have pockets? A: Less talking, more pockets.

 

Relationships

I’m not sure how this got started?  But we don’t actually talk like women do in Rom Coms by and large.  I think if we could just not, any more, that’d be great.  The last conversation I had with a woman about her guy? Was about how he was debating with his best friend which NSYNC album was best.  That tells me a lot more about her happiness with him than her gushing about the things he does to prove he loves her.

I think we’re done here. BYE BYE BYE

Also?

No one beats their fists or tears at their hair or wrings their hands.  I just need…y’all to stop.  If your character is in a relationship that makes her act like a caricature of a failed Shakespearean actor?  Your character may have some other things going on in her life you may want to tend to.  If you actually think this is how life works, I need you to have a Rom Com conversation with a lady friend stat.  Drinking will have to be involved.  You will have a lot to learn.  Stay away from Goldschlager, tonight’s gonna be rough.

Work

I work in a male dominated field.  Wanna know who the chatty Cathies are?  His name is Chris, and he’s never at his desk.  He has been promoted four times in the past five years.  No, we don’t dress like Mad Men.  We actively avoid wovens because the fashion industry knows men need their buttoned shirts to be comfy, but is convinced women are just looking for straight jackets.  Saggy butt pants and knee length skirts are bought on purpose so we can avoid any hint of asking for anything that doesn’t come from our mouth lips, and so conversations address the questions from our mouth lips, and heed the answers those mouth lips give.  This is not a given if you wear a nice dress.  Apparently things that fit well are holding up horrendous signs without our knowledge, and cannot be trusted to give sound business advice.

Once you’ve figured out a way to dress that is a right balance of “promotable professional” and “leave me alone,” you spend your day discussing spreadsheets, work jargon, and occasional jokes about things you see on the news.  It’s pretty boring, except when you accidentally wear a shirt you find out too late is see through, and then it’s exciting in a bad way.

Rage levels

Our secret is that we are always angry.  The Hulk in Avengers is actually a metaphor for working with modern misogyny.  I think this is the hardest thing to explain.  All the emotions men feel?  Women feel, too. Being extremely capable, however, we can both exercise face muscles and punch things at the same time, so don’t worry about telling us to smile.  We will be soon.

Your character should also get mad.  Eventually she will be Done, and Done looks like a lot of things.  Note if your character is also not straight or white, or is trans,  and is in a Western style culture, the rage level is way closer to Done than if she is just a white girl. She is never 100% Not Done, because always somewhere in books, there’s someone who says dumb stuff like “you’re different from the others” or “quit acting like a woman!” or “you’re pretty when you’re not scowling” and there are so few ways for these thoughts to be communicated in a way that isn’t enraging that it’s better just to assume they always are.  When you become fluent in feminine rage, then you can experiment with the vocab a little.  Pro tip, if you start a sentence with “not all…” your woman character is about to be immediately and irrevocably Done.

And there you have it.  I hope this helps build more complex humanoids who want to navigate the world as women in our stories.

Book Relay!

Hi all!

We have a few lucky winners of the giveaways that ended last week, BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

I have an extra copy of Feeding Frenzy and in honor of the Olympics, I think it’d be really fun to send it along and see how far it gets.  Basically, I’m going to give this book to someone who will read it and give it to someone else.  You sign your name on the back cover and when either there isn’t anyone nearby to give it to or the back cover fills up, let me know at any of my media interfaces, and I’ll pay to have it sent back, where I’ll cherish it always!

I’m really excited to see where it goes.  Bonus points if you share a picture of you with it on our Facebook page!

Would you be interested in participating?

P.S. Go, athletes, go!  Be safe, be amazing!

 

Photo credit: AP/ Petros Giannakouris