Amy Lane's Blog: Writer's Lane, page 166

Oh, Boy! C'mere Boy!

C'mere, darling, I want you to take down a memo.  Yes, yes, of course I know you're busy cleaning the kitchen table-- leave it alone for a moment while I turn the stair master down.  That's right.  Are you set?  Yes, here we go.

"Dear powers-that-be, in the future, when providing me with an assistant to clean my house, run my beauty appointments, walk my dog, pick the children up from school, do the shopping, the cooking, send my packages, keep track of my appointments, help schedule my travel itinerary, count my calories, remind me when to leave for my workout, blah blah blah blah blah, could you kindly, in the future, make sure this assistant is someone other than myself?"

There, boy, do you have that down?  Excellent.  So, what are you making me for dinner?  Slop.  Hmm... not my first choice, do you have anything else?  Asparagus?  Oh my, that's original.  Well, there is that pee-stink thing, maybe not.  How about something, I don't know... lo cal and green.  But not lettuce.  Or broccoli, or cauliflower, or stamped carrots, or green beans or... what do you mean that's about all my options?  Cucumber?  Oh, if I must.

And what will *I* be doing while you're doing this?

Nothing much really.  Dreaming.  Well, yes, they call it reading or writing, but really, what I'm doing is... you know.  Dreaming.  Wait.  Where are you going?  What do you mean you want to work somewhere your service is appreciated!  What am I supposed to do if you're not here to clean my table and cook my dinners and scrub my toilet?  You can't just quit!  You're my... my...

Uhm.  You're my imaginary employee.  *sigh*

Hey kids!  Bad news!  The houseboy quit, the house is a shithole, and we're having Taco Bell for dinner tonight!  What do you mean what was I doing all day?  Mommy was *think think think*  WORKING!  That's right!  Mommy was WORKING!  Yeah, I know it looks a lot like sitting at the computer and surfing, but I SWEAR there was some work going on there.  Honest.  Seriously.  I get paid and everything!  Wait... come back... who's gonna spring for my super awesome retirement home when all this dreaming gets to be too much!!

*double sigh*

This whole writing thing is a very odd business, isn't it?  Don't answer that.  Because I'm talking to myself, that's why!  Well, yes.  That IS  a good idea.  My character COULD do that!  Oh, wait--not only am I talking to myself, I'm answering back.  Uh-oh.  Shh... We'll just keep this between us, okay?

*waves*  Hi, everyone!  So, uhm, how's YOUR week?

This is What Will Be...

First of all, thank you everyone for your well wishes-- Zoomboy is feeling better now, and I for one am much relieved.  He sat on my lap again last night, and my back is NOT happy sitting in that chair anymore.  I'm so stiff I can barely move today!











Second of all, Squish and I have a new song:



It was the oddest thing.  I finished "Coming Home" the other day, my paean to Bruce Springsteen, and was in a serious mood for Bruce in general and the Magic album specifically.  So there I was, listening to that on the way home from gymnastics with the window open and the (depressingly mild) spring air blowing through the car, and Squish, my little music magnet, said, "Mom, I want to hear that song again."  So I played it again.  And again.  After the sixth time we were home, and both me and Squish were singing "This is what will be..." as tunefully as possible, along with the Boss himself.

Squish and I are on opposing camps of the zodiac wheel, and I foresee a day when we will NOT get along.  But in the meantime, knowing that we can sing Bruce Springsteen with her is going to make me VERY happy.

And third of all-- a few notes on Super Sock Man, the novella.

This was posted on Good Reads and somebody put up a rating for it--I think in the mistaken idea that if you'd read the short story, you were done with the whole affair, and that was the end.  The thing is, that's NOT the end.  In fact, if you've read the short story, you've read approximately 12% of the whole thing-- and that DOESN'T include the glimpses of Chase from Chase in Shadow which evolved later.  So, the short story and the novella?  Two rather different animals, sort of like the difference between a house-cat and a big, somnolent lynx, actually.  Besides.

The novella has a pattern.  You know, for the socks on the front?  So no.  The short story and the novella aren't really the same thing.  The novella was written for all of the people who wanted to see what happened to Donnie and Alejandro AFTER the short story ended--along with some character development beforehand.  And, as I said, there is a tragic glimpse of Chase from someone else's point of view--always a plus, if you liked Chase's story, right?

So, different.  Sort of the same, but no.  Mostly different.  Just sayin'.

And with that I'm going to leave you with this--it's the rabbit in my hat.  Do you want to come and see?  (Okay... you have to listen to the song for that to make ANY sense at all!)



(And Donna Lee if you're out there, baby?  My e-mail has lost your e-mail address-- get a hold of me if you can, and I'll give you the deets about NY--I'd love to say Hi!)
Ciaou! 
Amy

Aww... Little Man Down

Sick Little Man with Mandatory Attack Cat
Yes, tis true!  Zoomboy is sick today, and I should have known.  He has been getting gradually too big to sit on my lap--not that it's stopped him any, and hey!  It's not like the mama-chair doesn't have a six inch gap between seat and arm anyway, making it damned impossible to sit/knit/breathe in as it is, so why not?  But last night?  Last night I got one of those increasingly rare cuddles, with a kid on each side of me (remember when they happened every day?  *sniffle*) that lasted for more than two hours. Aww... poor miserable little market trout.  
Ah yes.  That should have been my first clue.
My second clue was when he woke me up at four in the morning (and remember, I'm usually up to 12:30 a.m. as it is!) to wander around the house like a lost soul, looking for the bright red first aid kit that I have so wisely crammed all of our first aid necessities into so that I might find them at four o'clock in the FRICKIN' MORNING when my kid wakes up with a sore throat!
It was in the car.  Mate found it at a more reasonable hour after I found MLM (most likely medicine) in the form of an unopened cough syrup purchased for reasons unknown.  It said cough suppressant.  I assumed that meant the kid wouldn't be able to feel his throat to cough--and that was good enough for me.  Good enough for Zoomboy too.  He slept until the magic red back appeared--but that doesn't mean Chicken isn't still haunted by the specter of mom, hovering around her doorway at the aforementioned dark-fucking-thirty, going, "Have you seen the first aid bag?"
"No. Can I go back to sleep now?"
"Yeah, sure.  Knock yourself out."
ZB, Chicken, and Squish are all in my bed now, watching cartoons, which is really sort of cute when you think about it, and me?  I'm revising a story that was supposed to be a quick, 20K paean to Bruce Springsteen, and which is now looking very short-novellish.  Yeesh.  Seriously-- Elizabeth keeps asking why I'm not submitting as much.  I figured it out--I'm writing just the same, I'm just all writing LONG instead of SHORT! On the one hand, that's good, right?  People don't complain when you write LONG because they wanted MORE.  On the other hand?  Not as many releases when you write LONG.  You grow afraid.  "Will they remember me?  Maybe they'll remember me.  Maybe they'll say, 'Oh yeah.  Amy Lane.  I used to like her work.  Then she broke my heart one too many times and went away.  I shall not buy her anymore forever.'"  Or, you know, something like that. 
So, anyway, I'm gearing up for New York-- trying to figure out the place in Chase in Shadow that I should read.  I read someone else's guidelines or suggestions for what to pick or not to pick--lessee:
Something that has not a lot of dialog in it--unless you're good with voices.Something that has only as much sex as you can stand to read to a group of people.Something that doesn't give away any spoilers. 
And I was like, aww, fuck!  The whole thing is (eye)balls deep in dialog--and a lot of it is IN CHASE'S HEAD!  And, HELLO, a lot of it is set on the GFP set, where, yeah.  Sorry.  Sex.  And the only parts that really aren't?  Yeah.  At the end of the book where the character stops talking to himself quite so much.  
Oh yeah-- and Tommy's got a South Boston accent that I can hear clearly in my head but that I can not mimic AT ALL.  

So folks, should anyone have any idea where I should read from?  Yeah.  I'll take suggestions.  Seriously.  
So wish my little man well--and Squish-- I'm betting she's the next domino to fall. (As Samurai Knitter said, even to a loving parent, every kid is Patient Zero.)  I'm betting Zoomboy won't be going to tomorrow night's King's Game which he was REALLY looking forward to, and let's all hope they're both better by Monday.  It sucks to be home from school when there's so much cool stuff to learn. 
Oh yeah--and the uber-cool picture?  If anyone's having as much sunspot difficulty as I am, this just helps you to think that rabid-crazy elemental forces can sometimes be benign. 

Oh Thank God, There's Nothing to Report!

Seriously--

Crises can be SO exhausting, can't they?  I had no idea how rough last week was until yesterday, when we went to see the Lorax (more on that in a minute) and I cried at the end.  Yes.  Cried.  Like a bitty baby.  The problem?

I didn't particularly like that movie.

I didn't--but then, there's probably been one Dr. Seuss remake I've approved of besides the Grinch, and that was the stage play Seussicals, which has a kickass soundtrack if you're interested.  The thing about most of the others is that they try to take something really simple and perfect and pad it to make it complicated.  That's not how Dr. Seuss works.  HE WAS TALKING TO CHILDREN.  He wanted simple, and he understood that simple was profound.

Mary and I were texting about Ted Geisel yesterday, and we realized that many of our big lessons--the ones we hope make us good human beings with something to pass along to another generation, much less a (small) audience of readers, we learned from Dr. Seuss.

Are you wondering if you should join the culture of misanthropic greed and the blind abuse of power that seems to have taken over our country?

Read Yertle the Turtle-- Dr. Seuss tells you what happens to tyrants and he tells you why.

Are you upset because you don't resemble one of those horrible housewife people on reality television?  Gertrude McFuzz has the lesson right there.

Are you a politician, trying to block rights to adoption?  Horton Lays an Egg.  Wondering if your stand on homophobia promotes bullying?  Horton Hears a Who.  


Are you tired of watching the land you grew up in become uninhabitable  for humans and other animals?  The Lorax.  


Politics aren't brain surgery.  Treat other people decent.  Don't shit in your own pool.  All turtles should be happy.  If you have the resources, help the world. Greed and self-absorption are really really bad things. Dr. Seuss knew this--and he wrote them so easily, a child could understand.  He didn't use 3-D animation, and he didn't use big soundtracks or uber-bright colors.

He used a few important images.  He used words.

So I got done with the movie, with it's bright colors and craptacular script and cried, because, instead of a Dr. Seuss book, which makes me feel like I can help solve the world, I was left with this big artistic train wreck and this idea that it didn't matter what I was doing or how much I was doing, it wasn't enough to fix the world which is, apparently, being run by fascist poo-heads who would rather destroy my rights and my children's natural resources than feed the guy on the corner.

So it was in this frame of mind that I went on Twitter before I set about writing my REALLY depressing, Bruce Springsteen inspired story and lamented about how I wanted to pick one thing, just one thing to do to feel like I should change the world.

And it was there that I ran into Samurai Knitter, who said the following about changing the world.

"Knit a uterus.  Send it to your congresstwat and say that now that they have one of their own, they can leave yours the fuck alone.  Pattern on knitty.com."

And sure enough?  There was. 

Now I may not get to that pattern--I've got a scarf for Big T I've been working on for AGES and a hat that I knit in exchange for some kick ass face cream from my friend, Lori, who runs a business, but I did laugh my ass off.  And I remembered that one way or another, knitting CAN make everything better.

And that Dr. Seuss was right.  The best things in life really ARE simple.

There's home and then there's "Ah, home!"

Okay-- I hate to disappoint anyone who is checking back to this blog for more on the controversy-- seriously, all I've got is the official Dreamspinner Press links to their official statements.  I think they're both classy as hell, myself--but then, y'all already know where my loyalties lie.  The first one is Elizabeth North--Executive Director of DSP--and this is her statement about the plagiarism issue:

You'll find the link on the DSP website.

The second one is Julianne Bentley, who wrote the attacked blogpost on fan fiction, and it is, essentially, clarification:
It is, in effect, an addendum to her original blogpost.

And I hope that's mostly an end to it, because me?

I've got some squishier fish to fry:-)

Finally, finally, I was able to settle down and write today.  It was sort of a victory for me, because besides the brouhaha, and the enormous amount of time it seemed to suck up, there was also dance lessons and my husband attending two basketball games ("But... but... I've got season tickets!  It may be their last season!"  Yeah, hope springs eternal-- his that the team will stay in Sacramento, mine that they will win and not break his heart.)  And then there was this:

THIS is a musical presentation that the kids went to last night--it was pretty cool.  They got to make toad croakers out of plastic cups and dental floss, bee buzzers out of combs and wax paper, and duck quackers out of straws.  (For the record-- auto correct has now tried to correct "duck quackers" two different ways, and BOTH of them are dirty.  I SWEAR it's not my fault, and shame on the computer for thinking the word "quackers" is really like "suckers" and that there should be an "i" in DUCK!)  They also got to make didgeridoos out of PVC pipe and scotch tape.  Dudes.  The kids were in heaven.  They were toad-croaking and didgeridoo-ing all over the frickin cafeteria.  The guy was pretty awesome--he did sound-stories and had the kids participate and then had them make their own instruments and taught them major lessons on reading comprehension using sound. I was very impressed by the multi-media presentation, and also by the fact that, once again, throwing away anything in my house has no been verboten.  I'm going to be up to my eyeballs in old drinking straws, plastic cups and (ugh!) used dental floss in no time at all!

And other than that-- a lot of folks have asked me this, so I'll put it out there:  Yes, I am going to GRL this year, without my Mary, but with my Ariel and Andrew and ZAM and I think a few other folks who will help me not be lost without my Mary.  And maybe Galad will get to come visit me in Albuquerque, which I'm probably going to say about six-thousand times between now and October, a'la Bugs Bunny.

Oh yeah.  This picture.  This is Squishie-- note the sash, sword, and concern for the poor victim of the vicious beast.  She wants to be Brave.  I think she already is!
So thems the news mostly.  Oh yeah-- that, and I picked up some yarn while in San Diego-- SHOCKER. Actually, the big shocker is that it's lace weight... but non-shocker is that these colors called to me like shameless hussies, and I fondled them until we all purred.

Oh-- and the alpaca is just for fun!

Fan Fiction, Plagiarism, and Writer's Back Up

"So I fired two warning shots.  Into his head."
"Cell Block Tango"
Chicago




Okay-- I'm trying not to be irritated, because that usually makes me rant, and when I rant, I'm like a race car which can, at any moment, veer off into a big tank of jet fuel and explode.  I don't want to explode--I have too much to do!

One of the crap things about vacation (no, surprisingly enough, not constipation, which I managed to defeat this time with a cunning use of fruits, vegetables, and drinking water!) is the work back-up waiting for you at your desk.  Unlike summer vacation at my other job, where I left my room and my desk and my responsibilities for weeks at a time and came back without anything being touched (well, sometimes they cleaned the carpets) taking a vacation in this business means you leave the stuff you can't get to when you're on your smart phone.  Hence, this plagiarism thing sitting in a big steaming heap in the middle of my computer.  Since I know some of you follow for the knitting (which I've been doing, dammit!)  and not the m/m I'm going to start roughly at the beginning.

Last year, Dreamspinner Press--my main publishing house-- put out a book titled Bear, Otter, and the Kid which sold a zillion copies.  It featured a young man and his much younger brother, who had been abandoned by their mother.  In the last few days, this book has been blatantly accused of borrowing much of it's plot and characterization from a movie called Shelter.  Now, I don't know if this is true or not--I have neither read the book nor seen the movie--I'm quite simply not in a position to say.  But as this accusation was being made, a number of other accusations were being thrown about, and, quite frankly, it's not fair to paint the whole mural the same color, just because you're seeing red.

"Universal affirmatives can only be partially converted: all of Alma Cogan is dead, but only some of the class of dead people are Alma Cogan."
"The Logician"
Monty Python


The basic shit in this particular storm has three different textures, and I'm going to address them separately, because they SHOULD remain separate and part of the problem in this matter is that they're not being treated that way.


A. People at Dreamspinner were aware of the plagiary and did nothing about it.  


This is not true.  Elizabeth, my publisher, had heard nothing about the possibility of plagiary until the folks at Dear Author contacted her and told her that they were upset that she hadn't done anything about it.  Now, at this point I understand that these accusations have been floating around on a couple of sites for a while--but just as I have been too busy to visit these sites, so has she.  Nobody e-mailed her or called her up and said, "Hey!  Here's the breakdown--isn't this plagiary?"  The article that accuses her of knowing doesn't provide any such instance because there is none.  Now, if this were a case of print journalism instead of a book blog, this would be time for a libel suit--or at least a severe dressing down for checking facts and sources, but that's not the case.  Unfortunately, the people being accused actually RUN a publishing company, and this allegation is serious.  So this blog doing the accusing?  It gets all of the buzz and faces none of the responsibility for the mess it is creating, and it has given the accused no forum in which to defend themselves.  Aces.  American journalism at it's best.  


B.  That Dreamspinner doesn't care about plagiary because it encourages fan fiction.  


And wow.  Right here is a logical fallacy of gargantuan proportions. Fan fiction is not plagiary unless someone tries to pass off as their own work.  Fan fiction is ALSO not plagiary when it has changed the initial elements beyond recognition and ceased to be fan fiction anymore. Taking an idea you started in someone else's sandbox and then carrying it to fruition in your own garage is not stealing.  Fan fiction began because people wanted to capture a feeling, an idea, a dynamic between characters and they wanted to make it their own. If a piece of fan fiction changes universe, setting, plot, characteris, and theme, hello and voila, it's no longer FAN FICTION.  It has become an original work.  You may have used somebody else's tools to start with, but that's no different than using an archetype--and there are not that many of those, so just sitting down to write a story means you're going to be doing SOMETHING that's been done before.  So, essentially, it's like being given a friend's old Ford Escort, and eventually, after you've cranked on it for a while, changed a socket wrench for a crescent wrench, rebored the engine, refitted the bearings, cut down the body, changed the fenders for those racing jobs, switched out the rims, added a spoiler in the back, changed the suspension, added a chain-link steering wheel, tricked out the pinstriped paint job, and suddenly, it bears absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to a Ford Escort--you have created your own damned car.  


Yeah.  THAT'S converting fan fiction to an original piece of writing.  


An example of this?  I told my husband about one of my favorite books--a hit-man with a heart of gold trope, where the supposed hit was a doctor, and the hit-man had been saving victims for quite some time.  


"Yeah?" said Mate.  "What did that start out as?"


"Brokeback Mountain." 


Mate just giggled.  "You know, when something changes THAT much..."


"Yeah," I said, nodding.  "It's an original piece of work."  


Now there is some absolutely lovely, lyrical, amazing fan fiction out there--some stuff that deserves to be read in it's own right, and not as an extension of someone else's work.  Why shouldn't it be "converted"--you know, from a Ford Escort to a tricked-out Fiat?  Why shouldn't people get to read it and appreciate the prose and the character nuances and the plot devices and the irony that were not present in the inspirational work?  


Like I said, once you've changed the characters, plot, universe, setting, and theme, it has ceased to have all connection with it's origins, and has, instead, become an original work on it's own.  You know, sort of like Hollinshed's Chronicles.  You all know about Hollinshed's Chronicles, right?  It was an epic work of history that every school boy knew in England in the 1500ds.  It has the history of the War of the Roses, a little town in Italy, the exploits of Rome in Egypt, and all sorts of other things in it.  Shakespeare knew Hollinshed's Chronicles like the back of his hand, but we don't praise Hollinshed as a great writer, now do we?  


So plagiarism IS bad--but fan fiction?  Fan fiction is not necessarily plagiarism, and therefore not necessarily bad, and not all of the classification of dead people is Alma Cogen.


Editing is the difference between "Your shit don't stink!" and "You're shit: don't stink!"
Writer's truism


And that brings us to 


C.  Editing.  See-- this is, again, where the whole logic of the shitstorm breaks down.  Plagiarism is not fan fiction, and fan fiction is not editing, but for some reason, this entire brouhaha has dragged up the rotting corpse of this dead horse to flagellate for fun.  


Now editing is a touchy subject with me, for two reasons.


The first reason is that you all remember my self-published days, when I was flayed up one side and down the other for editing.  When DSP started publishing me, I was both thrilled to have a professional editing job and trepidatious: I had developed a rather independent approach to grammar and punctuation and I was afraid that my own stubbornness would not make me any friends.


Well, I've managed to make friends in spite of the fact that I get two very thorough edits per manuscript, and I'm sure my editors have been devising ways to crawl through cyberspace and strangle me because I tend to color outside the lines.  Some examples of reasons that I personally should be kissing my editors' toes at the moment?


Hmm...


*  Making me change the name of Deacon's lover from Declan to Carrick, because NOBODY would have read that book if I hadn't!


*  Teaching me that there IS a right way to spell "hallefuckinglujia"-- even if I don't remember if that's it or not.


*  Saving me from all sorts of painful lawsuits involving misuse of printed material for all of the song quotes at the beginnings of the chapters in Making Promises.  


*  Checking my facts on basketball, because I had NO idea North Carolina didn't have a Freshman basketball team--or at least one that a superstar would play in.


*  Letting me include parts of dialog in the same line because I liked the flow, because even though the CMOS doesn't recommend the style as a rule, that doesn't mean that it's wrong--just out of fashion.


*  Helping me pare down the outrageous number of Em-dashes in Truth in the Dark.


*  Occasionally indulging my Em-dash habit when I need a fix, but generally making me behave in that department as a whole.  


*  Helping me with continuity, because sometimes I'm no better at plot math than I am at the regular kind.


*  Letting me lecture on metonymy and synecdoche and conceit without ever once calling me a pompous prick-bag in the margins of my manuscript as they probably should have.


*  Letting me edit a heinous piece of prose in the GALLEY STAGES of Bewitching Bella's Brother that had been left there because of my own fuckery and not theirs.


* In general, helping me produce the best possible product that I possibly can and working very hard at not letting me make an ass of myself.


Does DSP have a brisk editing process?  You betcha.  Does DSP ever tell an author how to write a book, or what plot points he or she MUST fix?  If the book they accepted is not good enough to go out, they wouldn't have accepted it.  


Are there still errors?  I dunno--are there still humans involved in the process?  Probably.


"Troll!  In the dungeon!  TROLL!  IN THE DUNGEON! I thought you'd want to know."  
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone--movie
based on the book by
J.K. Rowling


I have stuff to do.  I need to work on the Bodi/Peter story, because it's eating me alive.  I need to edit Country Mouse, because I promised my co-writer on that one that I would get it done today so we can have it out by April.  I need to shower and get ready to go teach Art History to third graders, because they LOVE it when the art lady comes, and I don't want to let them down.  I have to take my daughter to dance lessons tonight and fix some sort of sustenance and maybe clean the kitchen table so the kids can eat at it, because they think that sort of thing is only for holidays and vacations and that makes me feel bad.  The one thing I did not want to spend my morning doing was addressing an attack on the company that gave me my start when I was weary of forging my own, and that held my hand when I thought I had lost every friend and ruined my life with this strange obsession to write about people treating each other as people.  


But there was a troll in the dungeon, and it was wreaking all sorts of bloody havoc on the people I loved.  I thought you'd want to know.  

Trips and the Trip

Okay, so the trip was awesome.  Seriously.  Amazing.  It sucked that the whole plagiarism/fanfiction thing erupted while I was still out of town--and I'm going to address that tomorrow.  It needs to be addressed.  The brunt of it is covered here at Chicks-n-dicks, including links to the site that started the whole thing.  The one thing I will say is that I was deeply offended for my house, Dreamspinner Press--and really irritated that people who presuppose some weight in this particular genre TRULY are clueless about the differences between "plagiarized" and "inspired by" when it comes to fan fiction.  I will also say that  if the original book in question (and you need to follow the links--seriously, it's REALLY convoluted!) WAS plagiarized, the people at Dreamspinner were unaware.  And as to that fan fiction thing?  Next post.  Seriously.  But not now.  Now?  My family and I had a kick-ass time, and I sorta wanna cover that!

Now, let's get to coming home-- but since about 12 hours of my yesterday consisted of this picture here, it's not going to be done in any particular order, kay?

One of the short people's greatest thrills on this vacation was a clean kitchen table.  You think I kid.  Mate and I came home to a table that had been OBLITERATED by oldest sone and almost cried.  As you can see, they're thrilled not to be eating breakfast on yarn boxes, and it's going to take some long work to make that happen in the real world.


I loved this picture, so it needed revisiting.  This is Zoomboy with Chimp baby and Gorilla baby.  He's trying to look all cool--and, well, it's his two favorite apes.  What's not to be cool?
 And this was at Sea World at the otter show.  This sweet couple was there to see the fish (okay--not fish, and the shows?  Were SPECTACULAR!)  But I took the picture because suddenly my mommy reared up her ugly head, and it was all I could do not to tap the one on the left on the shoulder and say, "Oh, honey, you're BURNING!  Here, I've got some 70 proof in my bag."
And we saw Elmo.  This trip around, Mate and I left the tchotchkes mostly for the children--the only thing we really bought into was the constant barrage of photo ops, which was how we ended up with one picture of Elmo and Squish, and one with Elmo and Zoomboy.  We THOUGHT it was going to be both kids in one picture, but Squish had other thoughts.  She REFUSED to get into the picture until Zoomboy was off the stage.


Okay, so Zoomboy DID have his moments in the spotlight.  This here is a giant's shark's jaw.  The picture is inside, which his why the quality is so crap, but you can see by the delight on his bloodthirsty little face that he's impressed.  So were we:-)
This was a cool idea-- it's the family drier for everyone who went on the water ride.  *I* wanted to go on the water ride--but the whole family dumped all their luggage on me in the assumption that I wouldn't.  I'm not bitter.  Swear.  Well... look at all that happiness.  I guess I'm REALLY not that bitter.  And the lovely young woman in the foreground is Chicken's bestie, Stivie.  She had a very good time--and her mother brought her by with a thank you note today.  Nice.  
And this is Rhys Ford.  Yes,  THAT Rhys Ford--and she treated us to some seriously kick-ass Chines Cuisine at Golden City Panda Dragon (Okay--not the real name of the restaurant, but I understand that its a common mistake!)  Anyway, Rhys was tres awesome, and ordered of menu and played with my kids and made us laugh and generally?  Was just way too much fun for someone who heard me ooh-ing and aah-ing over San Diego on Twitter and said, "WE MUST MEET!"  Of course we had to meet.  We'd barely seen each other at yaoi-con, and I had NO idea of the incredible coolness that awaited me.  Meeting was predestined, and now I am in love:-)

And here is Zoomboy, at the Lego hero factory.  He probably could have spent the entire two days right here--we didn't let him.  But we DID buckle and buy him AND his sister some cool Lego kits to take back to the hotel room, and then back home.  They were entranced, as we knew they would be.  For him, it was the chance to build something while paying exacting attention to detail.  For her, it was the fact that it was a Lego dollhouse.  Either way?  Legos... Dude.


 And this?  Batman.  Now, the entire Lego place was full of assembled Lego-amazingness.  New York City, Las Vegas (complete with little mini hookers!) San Francisco, dragons, dinosaurs... just... Dudes.  The legos were a little faded, but the amazing content of accomplishment?  I don't even LIKE putting together Legos--but that didn't mean I wasn't just chock full of awe!  And Batman?  Who knew that Legos could have such raw sex appeal.  Sincerely.  He's awesome.
 And Squish begged so pretty-- and got her face painted.  And about FIVE MINUTES later, tripped and bumped her lip--and I was so agonized for her, I dragged her back to the face painter who completely redid her make up for a small touch up fee--and she was, once again, ravishing.
Lego land was big on rides--I'm not so big on rides, but there were other attractions there, so I got to be the ride documentarian.  And here, you see shiny happy faces, and can live in the knowledge that I have done my duty.






And here is the ocean.  On our second day of Legodom, we left early, got food at a local eatery (we'd been bringing sandwiches and crackers to all the theme parks, and were VERY proud of ourselves because we saved SCADS of money on food, which we felt very comfortable spending on souvenirs! Anyway, the primary reason we left early was to go to the beach.  And we did.  And it was gray and stormy-- my favorite kind of day on the beach--and epic.  And I loved it.  And so did they.  And it totally makes up for the fact that I had to bypass all that earlier ugliness for today while I slept on the couch through Bambi and all sorts of other Disney abominations, and really didn't get much done in work at all.
 It was BEAUTIFUL--don't you think?  Yeah.  Definitely.  Me too:-)

The Evolution of Chase in Shadow

Okay, let's see if we can get this straight.  It all started with a free story I wrote last year.
Good Reads did this thing-- someone posted a picture, and one of the writers who frequented the group would pick up the picture and write a story.  I was, as usual, timed out.  "No, no," I protested.  "I'd love to!  You guys know I adore you!  But I really don't have time!"
"But Amy," somebody taunted, "We have a picture that features SOCKS!" Because, yanno, my status as an m/m writer who also knits is sort of well known.  Anyway, THAT'S how I came to write Super Sock Man, because somebody posted that picture with the pretty blond boy putting on the sock, and I went from there.  It was a short piece-- about 3K, and I had fun writing it, and, well, sent it to Elizabeth, my publisher.  "Yeah," I said, "people keep saying they want to know what happens next."
"Okay," Elizabeth said, "tell us what comes next.  I'll publish it as a novella.  But make sure you include a pattern for the socks."Oh boy--you all remember that, right?  But it's okay--the novella is coming out in March because, well, that's when it's scheduled, and I'm still really proud of the socks, and the fact that the same photographer took that picture as took the original one in the first place?  I love that.  But the thing is, there's more.  When I wrote Super Sock Man -- the novella the free short story, Donnie mentioned that his past lovers amounted to a couple of guys giving blow jobs and some heavy petting.  When I wrote the novella?  Suddenly, there was his buddy, Chase in the picture--but Chase, well... he wasn't nearly as excited about Donnie to explore his sexuality.  In fact, at the end of the story, he had a girlfriend instead of a boyfriend, and Donnie was worried about him.
And so was I.
In the meantime, I was experiencing legal things.  Weird legal things.  Apparently, my old district (the current residence of the Libelous Pigfucking Bureaucrat, if you may remember) was trying desperately to find a reason to fire me.  They hired somebody to go back into my blogs.
Yup, you heard me.  All of my blogs.  There they were.  Printed up and bookmarked for all the interesting spots where I may have fucked up in some way that could be used to destroy my career. 
Now, interestingly enough, NOTHING in those blogs actually worked in that capacity--I was apparently cognizant enough of my pen name and my real name to keep them separate--huzzah for me, legal crisis averted.  But I was stressed, and unhappy, at the same time I was thinking about Chase...
And I started thinking about duality... about keeping a part of your identity SO secret that nobody, not your friends, not your family, not your lover, knew who you really were.  I know *I* couldn't do it.  Amy Lane has to have children because *I* have children, and Amy Lane had a job teaching because *I* had a job teaching.  Just sitting down and putting words on the screen was an act of intimacy for me.  I could not make it a lie.What would it do to me, to make that a lie?
Well, it would probably destroy me.  I'm not wired that way.  And in the meantime, I'd been thinking about porn.  No, no--get your mind out of the gutter--not everything is about sex, even porn!  See, the thing is, there is an industry titled "gay-for-pay"-- straight boys get paid to have sex with straight boys, and it's used as a trope a lot in m/m.  Get it?  Two friends are really gay, but they're broke, and they HAVE to have sex, and-- Well, yeah.  Why not.  Pretty Woman launched Julia Roberts's career, right?  It's sexy wish fulfillment, and I've read some REALLY wonderful stories with this trope.  But see, I wasn't in a place where I could do sexy wish fulfillment.  
And I was still worried about Chase.  So I watched me some porn--and did me some research, and interviewed me a very willing film editor who had a bit to say about the industry, and I got a feel for this "trope"--and I was, in my way, charmed.  Say hi to "Chase", btw-- that's him and Tommy up there, Chase is the blond and Tommy is the dark haired one, but in real life they have different names, and on the porn screen they have other names and basically?  They ARE duality, pretty smiles, pretty bodies, and all.  
And they're also regular young men, play ball, work out, don't have much to say on camera but obviously have lives that (hopefully!) the rest of us will never see off of it, and I wanted very much for Chase and Tommy to capture that for us.  And Dex (he's the guy in the middle) and Kane (the dark haired guy with the soul patch and the impish smile)--well, they're another story, one I've yet to write--but they're important too.
But back to Chase.  His story is not happy.  I want to make it clear that I'm pretty sure the guys I'm watching for research (stop laughing!) are happy.  But Chase, MY guy--his story is not happy, because his story really isn't about the porn and the trope and the omygod he's a gay guy pretending to be straight pretending to be gay.  His story is really about the red door behind him.  It's about why Donnie was worried about him.  It's about why Tommy was his salvation.  It's about why he's got a razor blade to his wrist in the first chapter and a girlfriend who doesn't know his porn name and a mind that's unravelling with every come-shot.  THAT'S Chase.  And he's going to be out on Friday, the 24th of February and I'm worried.

I mean, I've spent a couple of years trying to prove that I'm competent in my craft, but every time I try to tackle something that's so much bigger than myself, I have doubts.  It's funny--someone said to me today, "Well, if YOU can worry, I guess it's okay that *I* can worry!" and I'm thinking, "Who doesn't worry?  Writing is so personal--how can you put it out for critics to spit on and not worry?"  I think I wrote back to her and said that critics' spit was the bacterial breeding ground of insecurities, but it goes bigger than that.  I don't just want to tell an entertaining story--I want these people to mean something to the reader as they have meant something to me.  I worry.  Especially when their story is so much bigger than I am.  


So, here's Chase.  He started out as a picture of a pretty boy with a pair of socks and evolved from there.  Everybody want to join me for this one?  


Holy Goddess, Merciful God, LET IT NOT SUCK!  Cannyagimmehallelujiathankyaverymuchamen!

A bunch of pictures-- not many words...

 The beach and the zoo, and kids in various stages of anxiety and joy.  Zoomboy LOVED the zoo--the primate pens were his favorites'  Squish loved the beach, of course, and Chicken and her friend just liked hanging out together.  Zoomboy has been ADHD boy--when we forget his meds, he looks a lot like this--


But most of the time?  It's gorgeous, and the kids are happy, and I'm gonna let the pictures speak for me... cause I'm sort of tired...

Godspeed, Brave Traveler

Okay... so, we're going on vacation.   Yes, you heard me.  It's February, and my kids' school has something called "President's Week"-- no, I don't understand it either.  It's a week off and it's not Spring Break--seriously!  I'm not making this up!

So we're going to San Diego.  Because it's by the sea and we could get the time share (I don't know--I think Mate sacrificed some sort of small animal under the full moon, because I was starting to think the time share was a myth again.)  Anyway, Big T can't come with, and I've stocked the freezer with Hungry Man dinners for him, but other than that?

Yeah.  Chicken's friend, Stevy is coming with us, and... well...

We're leaving at 8:00 am.

So, wish me well.  I've got a post for a new release scheduled for Thursday morning, and I'll try to send random pictures for random things in the meantime... but...

Wish us well!  We're off to see the fish!