Allison Hurd's Blog, page 19
August 1, 2016
Congrats winners!
Winners, I am sorry to say there was a delay in shipping the books to me, so please expect them in the mail late next week.
July 31, 2016
GUEST POST: Deus Ex Bangeration
Hi readers! This post is by the incomparable Jessica Woodard. She, like I, loves fairytale and myth and writes great stories on that topic with a romantic bent. Also, July 31 is the last day to enter for the giveaways on Amazon and Goodreads! Get a piece of that. And enjoy this post!
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I should just stop now. I’m never going to top a title like that.
Oh well…
Relationships are hard to write. It’s funny, because in a very real sense all the stories in the world are stories of relationships–with our families, with our partners, with ourselves–they take many shapes. Given that they’re such integral parts of our lives, and given the old adage that you should write what you know (and the possibly implied corollary that that’s the only thing you really can write) one might assume that any one of us could churn out a credible relationship in print.
And yet, in any given story, it is frequently the relationships that are hardest to bring to life. How do you paint in words those moments that cement a childhood friendship, so that it lasts through a future that carries both sorrow and joy? How do you describe the confusing, ecstatic panic of falling in love? How do you sketch two sisters so that you see beneath the banter to the bond, and the knowledge that either would rather die than let the other one down?
Too often, I think, storytellers cheat. They play on our widely-held cultural signifiers, hint at emotional content, and then trust the reader to fill in the rest. It’s a phenomenon I see across genre and across media. We all know these stories:
The thriller where the main character and the sidekick share no real knowledge of each other or their habits when they’re not racing to avert a worldwide apocalyptic event–yet somehow when it’s all over they kiss, realizing they’ve found their soulmate. Deus Ex Bangeration. The hand of god which shoves two people into bed together, and somehow solves everything.
Speed: Not just the name of the movie, also their philosophy on relationships.The romance where a spark of chemistry and one or two snarky interchanges leave the heroine willing to die rather than forsake her one true love, aka the man she just met a week ago. Deus Ex Obsessia, in which simply refusing to give up even when it’s odd and a little creepy eventually lands you everything you thought you wanted.
While You Were Sleeping…I stole your family.The action comedy in which two people become best friends mainly through an ever escalating series of events in which they annoy the crap out of each other. Deus Ex Siblus Sangrius, where living through an intense event can turn even your most hated enemy into family.
Emperor’s New Groove: Getting a bestieOf course, this only works because we, the audience, just accept it. Because that’s how stories work. Person meets person, hijinks ensue, and with very little further interaction person and other person become friends/partners/lovers/smizmars… whatever. We’ve got a whole culture built around the idea that all you need is intense chemistry (positive or negative, really) and a truly chicken-shit attitude regarding emotions in order to live happily ever after. The culture feeds the stories and the stories feed the culture, until it’s hard to tell which is the egg and which is the unhealthy-relationship-promoting dinosaur in this scenario.
What? Dinosaurs laid eggs. It was a perfectly valid metaphor.
Anyway, as a storyteller myself, I struggle with this. On the one hand, I want my characters to act like they have a modicum of adult sense. On the other hand, I want them to be (at least somewhat) realistic, and regardless of how silly it is, so many of us believe in lightning-strike connection. Perhaps we’ve been taught to behave this way by the stories we consume, or perhaps the stories simply reflect a truly bizarre human habit–I couldn’t say. What I can say is that in writing, as in life, I think the solution is both simple and terrifying. We make things real–we make them honest, and true–through intimacy.
But opening up your character’s head–or, for the more poetic among us, their heart–is like opening yourself up. We write ourselves. Maybe only a facet of ourselves, but if we tell you what they think and feel, then we’re telling you what we think and feel. It’s like doing an emotional strip tease for anyone who decides to read your work. Honestly, it’s no wonder so many of us fall back on Deus Ex Bangeration.
It’s safer. Less scary.
But less real, too. Less worth it. Intimacy leads to connection, and connection is what brings us back for more. In writing, it means we can fully invest in the character, because they become our champions, our avatars in a mythical world whom we follow, anxious to know how these champions fare in their trials.
In life, connection means we get to see where we overlap with those we love–all the wonderful weird ways we delight one another by sharing common ground. We get to see the gaps that can be filled however we want, or left open to allow breathing room. We get to see the specific places where we meet up perfectly, brushing together until they blend seamlessly from one to the next.
This is the story I think we all enjoy reading–the scarier, harder one, naturally, but also the one that is more satisfying than any incarnation of Deus Ex Bangeration.
July 27, 2016
Hobbit-Style Birthday BOOK GIVEAWAY!
Midweek post! Is she sick? Hobbit? Is she hallucinating??
The answer is: PROBABLY NOT!!
But it is my birthday this weekend, and I always loved Bilbo’s birthday scene, where everyone comes and gets gifts from him. I can’t actually do that, to my great dismay, so you’ll have to click a few buttons to see if you get the gift I wanted to give you. I’m sorry. I’m just a temporarily embarrassed millionaire, like all of us. Workin’ on it, one penny at a time.
As I will be gone this whole weekend, very happily engaged in moving someone else’s stuff, here are my wise birthday words:
The giveaways end Sunday.
Also: You’re all great and I’m happy to have the opportunities I do to speak with and see you. Smooches.
Enter while you can, tell your friends, and hopefully I’ll have a great post for you this week about something that isn’t me trying to give books away on Amazon and Goodreads. But no promises! That might be all I ever discuss again. I feel sort of like one of those traveling salesmen selling potions and the Thought Method of music instruction, which has a certain je ne sais quoi to it I find appealing.
Oo there’s gonna be Trouble! With a capital “T” and that rhymes with “P” and that stands for pool!
July 24, 2016
The Three Scariest Words (Not Those Three!)
It goes like this: 1. Forming. 2. Storming 3. Norming 4. Performing. Even the stories of long relationships seem to go like that. Old friends meet. Old friends argue about how they live their lives. Old friends help defend order in a town. Old friends shoot up the OK Corral.
And Hell’s comin’ with ’em! (Tombstone)Superheroes get picked up from their headquarters. Superheroes engage in un-super pissing contests with each other. Superheroes need to work together to avoid small crisis. Superheroes figure out how best to use each other’s powers to save the world.
Take off that suit and what are you? Welcome to hang with me any day. (Avengers)Girl starts at new school. Girl gets picked on or picks on someone. Girl finds her natural clique. Girl stops bullying problem in school.
I was gonna make it Buffy, but I talk about her a lot. Some say too much. (Mean Girls)It’s fun. We like patterns, and we like following stories whose endings we know. It’s like singing the catchy chorus along with the radio or at karaoke. We feel connected and it’s epic and lovely.
I, however, really only like the performing part. There isn’t drama in the first three–we know the performing will happen. But performing is really just trust, isn’t it? I know if I look at Captain America, he’ll aim his shield at me and I can shoot my laser-beam at it to deflect it to the bad guy.
But what if one time he doesn’t, or he won’t? What if one time he can’t be where he should be in time? That now, is a story worth watching. That’s Civil War! After we measure strengths and find compromise, we’re trading in trust, which is like floating currency. It’s there because everyone agrees it is, and it goes away when we stop believing. That’s the best we get as humans in groups–we buy in to the idea that the other person will always think about us and our needs, in exchange for a promise to do the same, followed by evidence of this truth.
That is terrifying. Even without commitment issues, we all hold our breath when the trapeze artist lets go of her swing, arms extended, waiting for her partner to catch her, even though they’ve been successful hundreds of times–thousands, even. That one, loud declaration of the three scariest words:
I trust you.
That’s where I want to live–that one moment.
Do you trust me?
You can trust me.
Do you?
This is the whole story, this leap of faith, so I have to ask again:
Do you trust me?
July 17, 2016
Books Fo’ Free & A Quick Update
The giveaways at Goodreads and Amazon are still underway until Harry Potter’s birthday! What a great guy.
Sacrifice is rolling right along, but it’s making me work for it. So much foreshadowing from book one, such a fool I am! What was I thinking! But it’s gonna be great. I’m about three chapters from being done with the first draft with the first half edited, so I’m feeling pretty good! I hope you’re looking forward to it, this one moves quick.
That’s a pretty crappy update, though, so here it is, hot off the presses…
Books three and four have been named as follows:
Blood and Bone in which we’ll meet more of the sisters’ family.
War Locked which, in short, is about their vacation. Or is it?
Hope you’re having a great weekend and staying cool!
July 10, 2016
Putting “Strong” In SFP (Plus Giveaways!)
Hey uh…what’s the fitness secret that makes all our heroines so thin? They don’t seem to exercise. I guess we rarely see them eat, so they could be dealing with some food control disorders, but it is wrong to assume that. They’re often pining, it seems, so maybe there’s a low iron count issue?
I just don’t know, y’all. However, I do know what Summer and Lia’s explanation is:
They’re not actually healthy. They’re muscular, they’re dangerous, they train at least a couple of hours a day. But they’re not doing it right. If they were, they’d look more like this badass here.
It turns out protein bars and in-season produce aren’t actually conducive to lasting health. They are, however, cheap, and better than some of the other alternatives that do not require refrigeration and that’s sort of important to people who live in their car. I know. This is probably shocking news. I am personally stunned.
Aneta Florczyk definitely eats properly.Here’s my guess at the secret for everyone else, since it definitely doesn’t seem to be diet and exercise. They’re imaginary, and we all wish we could eat whatever we wanted, never go to the gym, and still look like twelve year olds with boobs, because somewhere along the way we were told that’s what people find attractive, and instead of contemplating how that’s FREAKIN’ CREEPY AF, we aspired to be that.
Girls, don’t be like Summer and Lia. If you’d like their training regimen, I’d be glad to provide that to you, but it’s really detrimental to your progress and health to do their workouts and eat like them, and they feel it constantly. Also, if they had a chance, here is what they would tell you:
Speaking of cake, it’s my birthday this month! To celebrate, I’ve got a giveaway for five paperbacks at Goodreads and ten e-books on Amazon. I would love it if you won and wanted to write a review or talk to me about it on the Social Media Option of Your Choice. So. Many. Media. I look forward to your thoughts! Good luck!
July 3, 2016
Adara Combs:The Miscommunication of Race in Literature
(Note from Allison. When I approached Adara about writing a post for this blog, she said great! And then we started discussing it and she said “so, for my first post…”
“Adara,” I said. “Adara. Are you suggesting you’d like to do a series? Shouldn’t I get a say in that?”
To which she reasonably replied, “Okay, yeah! I’ll send you a post and we shall see.”
Should have known that such cagey language would be a tease.)
Without further ado…
Race and culture are things that have been a part of society for as far back as time can tell. Despite this very evident fact, there is always a constant push to wipe away our physical differences and make everyone conform to being something that they actually have no chance of becoming. Although in recent years, progress has been made, the struggle maintains to cope with the idea that the world is comprised of different types of people, who come from different places, and look different.
Even in literature, where authors have the ability to create their own worlds, break rules, fix things that they see wrong with our reality, and basically do their heart’s desire, I constantly read books that do a sub par job on introducing characters without blatant offense, cliché, or mystery.
I find it disheartening that when describing characters that are meant to embrace the fact that the world is not now, nor has it ever been, completely white, authors shy away from full description, or give no description at all leaving the reader to guess as to what the character looks like.
Even in books where the world has basically ended and society is being rebirthed, the safety net of the world as we know it oftentimes keeps writers from using their talent for word selection to introduce characters in a way that will never leave us guessing as to who is black, white, brown, or tan.
The miscommunication of race and culture is displayed when novels are brought to cinema, and there is a huge uproar because someone who is not white portrays a character that originated in a book. When Amanda Stenberg portrayed Rue in the first Hunger Games, it didn’t really matter what color she was, only that she was from District 11, and a great ally and friend to Katniss. However, based on the reaction of some moviegoers who were outright offended, one would think that a) it mattered and that b) there was no hint to her color in the book.
I think the problem is that writers tend to shy away from race as a taboo topic, not realizing that it is now and always will be a fact of life. Race and culture do not have to be the heart of the book for it to be addressed. The fact that by default everyone is thought to be white is extremely troubling for the large population of readers who are not. When authors do a good job of describing the characters, and make it known that there are racial and cultural representations that are non-white, it makes those of use who for so long have been written out and casted feel included and proud.
With so many types of people on the face of this earth, who are beautiful in their own right, we should celebrate them every chance we get. Especially in literature, when beautiful words can paint a picture of a character and take the reader to where they are and look them eye to eye in their imagination.
Ah! And that’s where she leaves it, the sly dog. It’s seven days in a week you say? We have to wait?! Whose blog is this! They should intervene.
July 1, 2016
FREE BOOK TODAY!
Happy Fourth of July, may you have a great one!
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June 26, 2016
A Noob’s Guide to Marketing Books
As you can tell from my place on the Bestsellers List, I’m an expert…at being a marketing noob. Knowledge is power, they say, so I thought I’d share with you my experiences.
Get your social media game up. I got a blog. I got a Facebook page. I tweet, for some reason. I even push stuff out to Google Plus for the druids that live in that forest. And now apparently I need to make this a picture book because I’m supposed to be on Pinterest, Instagram, and Snapchat, too, and I’m like THESE PEOPLE AREN’T REAL. THEY DON’T TAKE SELFIES. And then I wonder how much time I should be spending on orchestrating pictures they might take, which leads me to a dark, dark place. I am going to get micro-chipped next time I take my pets to the vet, in case I get lost.
Do the Goodreads Things. Feel inadequate about the number and variety of books you read while trying to sound erudite yet hilarious. Even reading is a goddamned popularity contest now. Listen. I started reading books because I was being badly beaten in the popularity contest. At least the conversations are good and I now have a whole host of new things to try so I can go back to calling myself well-read.
Here’s me at the height of my teen-aged wild days. Look how trendy I wasn’t. Isn’t he cute though?
Self-promotion. What a Catch-22 this fathermugger is. Like, it’s one thing to ask people to read something professionally. But to ask people to read it for enjoyment is a paradoxical combination of rudeness, conceit, and desperation. If you don’t tell people about it, however, they won’t hear about it. And if you sign up for those services that are meant to promote your book for you without it coming from your mouth, you look even worse! THIS IS TERRIBLE. IT IS WORSE THAN BRUSSEL-SPROUT-FLAVORED NETWORKING. HOW DO I GET OUT OF HERE.
Promote Others. Oh, this is much nicer! I like interviewing my amazingly talented friends and acquaintances and having them do guest blogs. I think it gets a lot more exposure, too, because you can combine the audience of people who like you and the people who like them. The problem is…if you spend all your time promoting them then you still haven’t…you know. Marketed yourself. Huh.
Write guest blogs and interviews. This is awesome and we should all do this! But we are all trying to do this. So much so that it’s created a market for this kind of promotion to the point that often you have to pay for the pleasure of creating content for someone else which is absolutely bananas. People die from exposure, and here we are paying cash money for the chance. Spend money to make money, I get it, but for the love of God, there are limits. I haven’t geared myself up to do this, yet. I’m told I should. I should also get life insurance and learn how to change the oil in my car. It could happen any day now.
Give up and mope on your blog. Ah yes! This is much more my speed! I hope it’s working.
June 19, 2016
Daddy Issues: Fathers in Fiction
Happy Father’s Day! Here’s a picture from my favorite holiday, Thanksgiving, of me and my awesome Dad (and also my awesome aunt, his sister!)
A herd of Hurds. Copyright Christopher Glenn.We’re a good lookin’ family, ain’t we? I know so many amazing dads and father figures, I wish you all a wonderful day, and thanks for being you.
So what is it about books that makes us rag so hard on dads? Here’s my take on the three biggest tropes for pops, and a little bit about how I intend to portray Summer and Lia’s dad, who you’ll totally meet and love (I hope!) in book three.
The Dad Joke
The trope: This is a favorite among younger reader books, but continues up through YA. This is the dad who is so uncool, he wears clothes un-ironically, perhaps even with a shirt tucked into belted jeans. They set fire to the kitchen trying to microwave popcorn because their wives do that, darn it! They end up having existential crises over their child’s math homework. They don’t notice anything going on in their family. Eight year olds rightfully roll their eyes at them.
The reason: Kids know it all, after all. They’re the ones that have it all figured out. This to me feels like the writer’s equivalent to the phrase “I was a kid once, too.” Like, they know that 10-18 year olds think their parents don’t “get it” and have forgotten that what they don’t get has nothing to do with microwaving food, and everything to do with social pressures that teens face. So, they exaggerate fatherly incompetence well past curfew-negotiation to include difficulty with Scotch tape. I guess they also think it’s more interesting/easier to believe that a dad wouldn’t know the things that their kids do, rather than knowing or guessing what their kids are doing, and allowing it to happen anyways. If I’ve learned anything from children’s tv, it’s that if a kid is gonna build a rocket or equally dangerous machine, there is literally no way to stop it from happening.
The Dead(beat) Dad
The trope: Holy Dead Parents, Batman! Why are there so many absent fathers! Like, no superheroes have dads that see them graduate college. It often feels that there are no heriones who know even who their fathers are. Need a convenient dramatic moment? Have a showdown with the dad who doesn’t even send birthday cards and now pops up, lookin’ for money. The bastard kids are sick of the bastards.
The reason: I poke fun, but I think a lot of people do feel a little let down in their own experiences. Divorce is so common, and society has done such a great job reminding us that only moms actually have to be parents while dads get to opt in, that I think there’s some resentment, or at least an assumed well of it to tap. Aw. *Hugs dad for being there*.
The Tough Love Tyrant
The trope: I’ll just say it. There are a lot of stories of abuse in books. Dads who tell sick kids to “walk it off” or who try to make them ready for the real world through brute force. Dads who don’t want to have anything to do with kids that don’t conform to their exacting, cruel expectations.
The reason: Like I said before, I think a lot of writers are workin’ through some stuff. There are a lot of ways to leave scars, and not all of them draw blood, even if it feels like it. I won’t belittle that. We should all have our outlets, no matter what they are, so long as they don’t hurt others. But sometimes I get the feeling this isn’t the writer seeking justice for their own lives. I think people sometimes think that humans need some sort of great big catalyst for being a certain way. And while it’s true that abuse does have long-lasting and far reaching consequences, goodness is it not the only way for someone to grow up with triggers or a little larceny in them. Like, it really takes no effort to realize your feet have wandered off the beaten path a little, and now you’re lost.
Another Suggestion
I don’t know about y’all, but I’m hoping to cut dads some slack. So many are wonderful, loving, strong men and I’d like to see them in our fiction. I’d like to honor father-child relationships that are robust and healthy, even if life took an unexpected turn. It doesn’t take much to change a future, but it takes a lot to undo the past, and the past Summer remembers of her father is a good one, featuring a man she loves dearly, as I think you will, too!
Here’s to dads, father figures and role models around the world. I hope it’s lovely!
