Alison M. Diem's Blog

New, FREE, (Micro) Short Stories Available to Read!

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve updated here, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been working.

I’ve added a series of micro-short stories to the site, on a new page, for everyone’s reading pleasure.

These stories came out of a weekly writing group I’ve joined, after listening to a poem and getting a brief prompt to set me off. I mention that, if only to explain the variety of topics and themes that came out of that group and that writing.

My post-election poem, “Immediately Following the Tossing of the Ring In To Mount Doom” has been posted as well.

I’m trying to decide which of the stories need to be expanded on and which ones are fine as they are and don’t need any revisiting. All stories are open to comments, so if you read and have an opinion, one way or another, please let me know. It’s been a long time, I’m excited to hear what everyone thinks.

I’m excited about 2021 and all the things that are possible at the start of a new year. Looking forward to sharing more and hearing what you have to say as the year progresses!

New Short Story in Our Secret Nook Anthology!

Oh my gosh, you guys! I have a short story in an anthology called Our Secret Nook!

Check it out now, on Amazon, available on Kindle Unlimited. This is a limited time offer- the anthology is 100% for charity and will only be available for a short while longer.

My individual story is called Some Sunny Day and I’m super excited about it. It’s a time travel/soul mates story that reaches across time. Romance, art, history, and adventure, all in 5K words.

Cover art © 2018 Winterheart Design, winterheart.com

Summary:  

West has felt like half of her is missing as far back as she can remember. Finn dreams of the same girl, night after night, feeling they’re connected but he’s not able to reach out in the real world. What strange connection could lead to them being in the same work of art, painted over a hundred years before they were even born?

*

Eventually I’d like to expand on this story and build it out into it’s own book universe, so keep an eye on this space for more info on that in the future!

First Published Short Story!

Hey guys!

A Paranormal Easter: 14 Paranormal & Fantasy Romance Novellas by [Carby, Tiffany, Iblis, Kathia, Jaiyn, Lorah, McIntosh, Brandy, Guthrie, T. Elizabeth, Madison, J.C., Diem, Alison M., Bates, Natalie-Nicole, McKinzie, Skyler, Ruehle, Amanda, Marin, Rena, Brady, C., Swinson, Judy, Moorman, T. A.] Kindle App Ad A Paranormal Easter: 14 Paranormal & Fantasy Romance Novellas

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve updated this blog, but I’m back with some exciting news! My first published work was released today, as part of the Paranormal Easter Anthology, from After Glows Publishing.

This short is a m/m paranormal fantasy romance involving a selkie, which was super fun to write.

I’m planning to expand on this story, as I fell in love with the world as I wrote and just knew that a short story wasn’t long enough to do these characters justice, so I’m considering this an intro and a promise for more to come.

Please come on over and check us out- there are 13 other author’s stories in this collection, involving shifter creatures like gargoyles, bunnies, and dragons. There is a mix of heat levels as well, going from YA all the way up to explicit sexual content *cough*my story*cough*.

This was a lot of fun to do, and important for me, as I recently realized how much I had let my depression affect my ability to write and to make decisions about that writing. This was a breakthrough of sorts, in that I was finally able to force myself to just hit SEND and submit something, even if I didn’t think it was perfect.

I love my characters and I love my story, but I know it’s not perfect. Nothing is ever perfect, but it can be well loved.

I appreciate all of your support over the years and I look forward to hearing from those of you who pick this up, to hear what you think, not only about my story but about the other stories in the anthology.

Happy Easter, y’all!

A Paranormal Easter: 14 Paranormal & Fantasy Romance Novellas by [Carby, Tiffany, Iblis, Kathia, Jaiyn, Lorah, McIntosh, Brandy, Guthrie, T. Elizabeth, Madison, J.C., Diem, Alison M., Bates, Natalie-Nicole, McKinzie, Skyler, Ruehle, Amanda, Marin, Rena, Brady, C., Swinson, Judy, Moorman, T. A.] Kindle App Ad A Paranormal Easter: 14 Paranormal & Fantasy Romance Novellas

Greatness

Greatness is not believing people when they tell you that you CAN’T.

Greatness is ignoring the noise around you, from the people treading water, who want to hold you back, who can’t move forward themselves but can’t stand to see YOU do it instead.

Greatness is having that dream, hearing that song, and not brushing it off as something you must have heard on the radio or seen on the TV the other day. Greatness is realizing that the idea is YOURS and that YOU have to act on it or it’s going to slip away forever and disappear. Greatness is understanding the tragedy of losing whatever it is to the ether and getting it down on paper or on tape or on digital so that it lives and breathes and can be shared with the world. Greatness is understanding the power of creation and knowing that power isn’t just dollar signs. It’s ideas.

Greatness is the power to move hearts and minds.

Greatness is chasing your dream even when you don’t know where it’s going to lead, even when you don’t know if it’s going to be profitable or shower you with money or fame or power, but you do it because something inside of you tells you that it NEEDS to be done. When you can’t sleep until you write down that last little line, until you get that last bit of code, until you weld that last piece of metal.

It’s a story that HAS to be told. It’s a machine that HAS to be made. It’s a process that MUST be created because the world WILL NOT be the same without it.

You do it because your DNA will not let you get away with NOT doing it. You do it because if you don’t, you will be a lesser person for it and so will the rest of the world.

Greatness is knowing the power you have in the little gray cells in your brain. Greatness is knowing the power you have and being afraid. It’s being afraid and DOING IT ANYWAY because it needs to be done. Greatness is powering through fear and doubt and shame and danger because the IDEA is bigger than any one person, any one thing, and it needs to exist in the world or what’s the point?

Greatness is getting it done because it matters and you matter and you know it and everything else is just noise. And you ignore the noise and you just do it.

 

We are never, ever, ever, getting back together. Ever.

As an aside, before I get into the meat of this post, I wanted to bring up the following:

For Christmas, I was given the opportunity to pick up a copy of Scrivner.  I have never used this program but I have read about it and heard a lot of my writer friends talking about how much they love it.

So far, I am still working through the tutorial, which is a bit daunting.  I mean, there is a LOT to this program, and I am getting a bit intimidated about using this to write my stuff.

My goal is to find a central location to be able to do all my pre-writing stuff, all my organizing of my materials, notes, research, etc., as well as my writing and I think this might just be the thing but man, is it difficult to get into.  I’m sure I’ll get rolling eventually, but I’m just not there yet.

Is there anyone out there with some suggestions, personal stories, pros/cons, cautionary tales, etc. to give me about this program?  I’d really appreciate it!

 

 Okay.  So, the real stuff. 

That Depends A Good Deal On Where You Want To Get To

I do this every year.  I make a list of things that I want to achieve and I feel like I hit some, ignore others, and feel a bit adrift by the time December 31 passes.

I find myself unmotivated at times.  I have a few reasons for this, that I think I have used as excuses in the past but I need to deal with them, work with them, and move past them if I want to be successful moving forward.

I tend to write very quickly.  I can write 1000 words in 20 minutes, for example, if I sit down and actually write.  Because of this, I have a tendency to put writing off, knowing that I can pound out some words quickly later.

The problem with this is that I can WRITE the words but that’s not the end of it.  They need edited and polished and the first draft is never (well, not usually) the BEST draft for me.  My words need more work, and I tend to ignore that fact so that I can sit on the couch with Bear, reading fic or books or whatever while I watch TV.  (Yes, I can multitask but only with things that don’t get me anywhere, as opposed to stuff that could move my writing career forward.  *sigh*)

I also struggle with… not depression, I don’t think, but melancholy.  Maybe it is a mild form of depression, but I allow it, from time to time, to convince me that I should stay on the couch or in bed or wherever, reading and not creating.  I don’t know what I’m melancholy about.  I think I allow myself to be intimidated by other authors I’ve read, in the sense that their writing is so good or well-constructed that I don’t think I could ever match their skill, etc. so why bother trying.

Which is a bunch of crap.  I like my writing when I read it, and I know that others enjoy it as well.  I have a voice that is recognizable, according to some of my more regular readers, which means that I have reached a certain level in my career, where I have a voice, I just need to use it and polish it.  And I’m not doing that as often as I need to.

I also feel a bit guilty when I write, at times, especially if I am home with Bear and he wants to do things with me.  I feel like I am already at work for so much of my week, that I need to give more of my free time at home to him.

The screwed up logic here is that if I were to start publishing novels, I might get to the point where I wouldn’t need to work as often, perhaps even become a full time author.  But I’ll never get there if I don’t actually write the books that I would need to sell to get to that point.

I also fall into the trap of planning.  I spend a lot of time with worksheets and plotting out outlines and doing character work, but then never apply that to the actual manuscript.  I do all this thinking about the story and then never actually WRITE the story.

This happened when I was trying to finish a fanfic that I was writing as a gift in an exchange.  I had signed up late for the exchange but had agreed to be a pinch hitter.  I was asked to write for this person at the beginning of December, but I was thinking about my NaNo pages, and I had my Yuletide story to work on as well, so I put it off.

I ended up asking for an extension for the story, which I got, and only started writing the stupid story the evening it was due (on the extension day).  I had to ask for a second extension.  I woke up the next day and wrote out three pages of story notes, which basically figured the whole thing out.

And then I couldn’t make myself sit down and type it out.  It was like my brain had decided that I had ALREADY written it, so why do it again.  My story was incredibly late and while my recipient loved it, I felt terrible.

This is the kind of thing that I hate about myself and I know that I need to work on if I ever want to be a successful, professional writer.

Ugh.

So, after looking at those barriers, self-imposed or not, that I know I dealt with last year, I present my 2013 writing goals.  I am trying to be very specific about everything in order to work with my limitations and to work through my barriers that I know exist.  

 

Word Count Goal for 2013:  350,000

 

General Writing Goals

1) Set aside specific time to write, every day

2) Schedule what project I am writing on for each session

3) Make a project specific goal for each writing session- what I need/want to achieve in that span of time

4) Plan out each week in advance in my Writing Planner

5) Set time aside for critique partners/groups outside of normal writing time

6) Set word count goal for each day/week/month

7) Be sure to fill in word count/project spreadsheet after each session

 

 

Projects that I am Actively Working on in 2013

1) The Farmer and the Medic

2) [Super Secret Paranormal Project]

3) TW/Ladyhawke fusion story

4) Wolves of Indiana

5) Though the Heavens Should Fall

 

Project Goals 2013 (subject to change)

1) Finish Farmer and the Medic by February 15th, 2013

2) TW/Ladyhawke rough draft due to be submitted on March 13, 2013

3) Get full MS betaed by March 15, 2013

4) Get edits done by April 1, 2013

5) Submit Farmer and the Medic to the e-published for full read on April 1, 2013

6) Submit Farmer and the Medic to editor at Loose ID (per her request at RWA National last year)

7) Submit Farmer and the Medic to [editor’s name redacted] per her request at RWA National

8) Submit Farmer and the Medic to any other editors that requested it at RWA National (check notes)

9) Final draft of TW/Ladyhawke to beta by April 1, 2013

10) TW/Ladyhawke story gets posted on or after April 10 (based on future assignment and artist)

11) Make a noble effort at outlining/plotting requested [Super Secret Paranormal Project] from [editor’s name redacted] at RWA National

12) Full outline of Wolves of Indiana

13) Full outline of Though the Heavens Should Fall

14) NaNoWriMo 2013

15) Yuletide 2013

 

Group Challenges I’ve Joined

1) Get Your Words Out

I signed up for this challenge AGAIN and once again, I pledged 350,000 words.  This is supposedly the last year that they’re going to run this challenge, so I wanted to participate and I wanted to take this last opportunity to hit the goal that I have made for the past three years.  This will be my fourth year and I think it could be the one.

No, it WILL be the one. 

Doctor Livingstone, I presume?

Oh, MAN.  It has been a long time since I’ve posted.  I don’t even know, you guys.  It feels like I’ve been lost in the jungle and I’ve just been “discovered” in the jungle by Mr. Stanley. 

First and foremost, I have relocated.  I was in Los Angeles, and now I am back in the Midwest, in the Detroit Metro region.

It was quite an adventure.  My company was bought out and the new owners decided they didn’t want or need an office in LA.  They let us all go but gave us all nice severance, which was nice.  Bear and I decided that it was time to move back home, to Michigan.

I ended up getting hired by a pretty awesome company in Detroit but they wanted me to start ASAP.  I put together a move in very little time- I was technically hired on August 14th and I start on September 4th.  I planned and executed a cross country move in two weeks.

TWO WEEKS.

This was AFTER our trip to the Outer Banks to help celebrate my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary.  60 YEARS, y’all.  That is quite an achievement and I was so happy and honored that I could join them in their celebration.

It was also a reminder of how long I’ve been with Bear, myself.  My grandparents took us all on a family cruise for their 50th anniversary 10 years ago and I was dating Bear at the time.  He wasn’t able to go with us, as we weren’t married yet.  I do distinctly recall being told that if he “put a ring on it” he could come a long.  Funny thing, it was pre-Single Ladies and it was from my super conservative, not particularly pop culture savvy aunt, which makes the comment even funnier to me.

ANYWHO.

I’ve been trying to get back into the groove of a Midwest winter and a new job, which has been fun.  I say that with only a LITTLE bit of sarcasm.  I’ve also had to get used to not attending my regular RWA meetings- EVA, LARA, and OCC!  I miss all you guys!!!

I did find a great chapter here in the area and have been attending somewhat regularly- Greater Detroit RWA.  At the Christmas dinner, I won a full manuscript read from an e-publisher that I am SUPER excited about, mostly because they sell m/m romances, which is the book I am working on right now and I think that I could have a real shot at publication once I submit to this editor. 

I’m trying to set my timeline for this- when do I want to have it completed by and then when do I want it submitted by.  Based on my production over the past month, I’m not sure what the best time frame is for me.

I wanted to do a 2012 year-end run down before I jump on what I want to accomplish in 2013, so here we go!

1) Final Word Count for 2012:  135,483

This is a pretty great word count.

Except.

I had signed up for the Get Your Words Out challenge AGAIN this year and had pledged 350,000 words again, in an attempt to hit that bar at least once.

Didn’t happen.  It should have, which is upsetting.  I could whine and complain that I was losing my job, moving cross country, blah blah blah, but those would be excuses.  Lots of people do a lot more under a lot worse conditions, so I have to stop giving myself outs for stuff like this.

Anyway, on the one hand, I am pleased with what I was able to accomplish.  On the other, I am disappointed with myself that I didn’t even break the 200,000 mark.

2) National Novel Writing Month final word count:  50,075

I made my NaNo word count just after midnight on the 30th.  It felt GOOD.

Especially because I was teaching a class on NaNoWriMo at the time.  I had offered to teach the class for OCC back in 2011 and they got me on the schedule for 2012.  I had a small but amazing class of ladies that pushed each other (and me) to meet that 50K goal and to keep writing every day.  It was an amazing experience and I am hoping to teach the same class this year, although I think that OCC already has something scheduled for the month.

If you are an RWA chapter that is interested in a NaNo class/group for your chapter, let me know!  I’d love to work with you!

Anyway, I met my 50K goal and I think I got a lot out of the experience.

I was working on my “Farmer and the Medic” m/m romance story (so I was breaking the rules by working on a project I had already started- so sue me) and managed to figure out a lot of things about my plot and about my characters.

I think I have a better feel for Xander than I did before, and Jake (as always) comes right off the page.  I think I need to work on Xander some more to make him really pop and feel just as real and fully realized as Jake does, but I’m happier than I was.  I also think that I have the voices down a little better for most of my characters, which feels great, too.

I have roughly 175 pages written in total, which I am working on editing into individual chapters.  I think I can get this pounded out over the next few months and should be able to submit my manuscript to the e-publisher that I won the full read from, and we’ll see what kind of feedback I get from her.

 

So, that’s my end of the year wrap up.  How did the rest of you do?

“If only you could frost someone to death.” – Peeta Mellark

Back in January, I wrote a post on why I haven’t read The Hunger Games series.  I promised at the end of that post to write a second post if and when I read past the second chapter of the book.

I have arrived at that point.

My original points regarding why I didn’t like the book and hadn’t gotten past page four were as follows:

1) It is in first person POV.

2) She wanted to kill the cat.

3) I can be, on occasion, contrary.

I break it down, below the cut.  Spoilers for all three Hunger Games books, and the movie.

 

THE FIRST PERSON POV

Still not a fan.  I think the first person is pretty necessary, for a few reasons, but I think that choosing to write the book this was has actually taken away from the story, much in the same way that JK Rowling’s choice to use deep third person POV painted her into a corner in book seven, or how the climactic battle at the end of Twilight was totally missing from the book because Bella (our first person POV) gets knocked out.

The Good

– We get a lot of details about the world, including personal impressions, through Katniss herself, in ways that just wouldn’t work if the novel had been in third person.

– I think if we saw Katniss through a third person lens, she would be unbearable.  Her personality and behavior is such that I felt like having access to her inner thoughts and processes was the one thing that kept me reading, in that while I hated her choices and thought she was acting like an idiot about certain things, I could understand where she was coming from a bit better when I was in her head.

However, after watching The Hunger Games movie, I think I may have to re-revaluate my position on that.  The film was outside POV- we didn’t get any internal monologues or narration that would have allowed the filmmakers to incorporate more of Katniss’s personality and voice into the film.  Instead, we had outside POV, even though she was clearly the main character, and I liked her so much MORE in the movie. 

– Her voice is pretty compelling.  I don’t like her, but I was drawn in to her world view and how she saw things based on her experiences in District 12.  She has a sarcastic wit that I enjoyed, and in certain circumstances could really cut people down to the quick.  Sadly, she wasn’t able to do that everyone (hello, Peeta!).

– The one moment in the story that we really, really need to understand what’s in her head is the reaping scene.  I don’t think it would have had the power it did if it had come from an outside POV.  We needed to understand her desperation, the sheer terror that she was feeling that made her, in those brief seconds, decide to throw herself into the literal ring in place of her sister.  That moment really, really worked.

The Bad

– Still not a fan of first person and while the later pages and books are much better than the first few pages of Hunger Games, I still had a lot of issues with the first person usage.  While I feel like Collins is a powerful world builder and has given us this unique view on a world that we all hope we never see, I feel that her prose isn’t as strong as it could have been or should have been.  This is one of those series where the story itself transcends the actual writing, to become a massive hit.  I think we’re seeing something similar with E. L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey.  The writing itself has a number of pretty serious flaws but the world building, the overarching story, and the characters overcome the mediocre box they were born in.

– The first person POV, especially as used in Mockingjay, was a “get out of jail free” card, in terms of giving up actual details of what’s happening in the world.  When we’re with Katniss, we can only see what she sees, know what she knows, etc.  So, if there are exciting things happening beyond the scope of that POV, the reader only finds out about them when KATNISS finds out about them.

Which means that there is a lot of telling in these books, especially in Mockingjay.  There were a lot of really fascinating plot points that were dropped on us in this offhanded way, almost like Collins just didn’t want to write that scene so she just didn’t.  I wanted more from the scene where Peeta attacks Katniss.  I wanted to know more about how it went down, how they pulled him off of her, who helped, who didn’t- that is the kind of scene that really SHOWS us character.  Instead, Collins continued to resort to TELLING us who these people were and it’s not nearly as much fun.

 

SHE WANTED TO KILL THE CAT

 I found it really funny, in a kind of “fuck you, Katniss” kind of way that Buttercup makes it all the way to the end of the series.  The use of the cat is really well done later in the book, although I don’t think the initial introduction to the cat or to Katniss’s relationship with the cat was even close to being as effective.

Did this element of the book show me that Katniss is logical and that extra mouth to feed was a real danger?  No.  It’s pretty clear that Buttercup takes care of himself.  If that’s the case, then what the fuck did it matter if she let him live?  And clearly, the cat takes care of himself better than Katniss ever could, seeing as he survives both the District 12 and District 13 bombings, and makes it through the revolution alive and willing to give Katniss a second chance to be awesome.

Was Collins trying to show us Katniss as an anti-hero, or trying to twist the “save the cat” moment by having her not kill the cat but not being happy about it?

Either way, I thought it was poorly done and not a particularly good way to introduce us to Katniss.

 

I CAN, ON OCCASION, BE CONTRARY

I will admit that there was a part of me that wanted to be the one dissenter in this whole Hunger Games whirlwind. 

I mentioned in my last post on this that I had purchased the e-book version of the first novel, and my husband decided that he wanted to read it.  He finished it very quickly and told me that I would need to read it ASAP, as we would be going to see the film that weekend and I needed to have it read before then.

I wanted to argue the point, and there was a part of me that wanted to wait and just watch the movie first.  I find that if I do that, I tend to like both mediums, instead of loving the book and being annoyed with the movie.  However, Bear was standing his ground, so I told him I would read it.

I didn’t like Katniss the first few times I tried to read it and that did not change this time.  I don’t see Katniss as particularly heroic.  She’s a survivor and she does what she needs to in order to survive.  I don’t see that as particularly heroic.  She makes a lot of stupid decisions and her interpretation of other people’s motives (*ahem*Peeta*ahem*) are TERRIBLE.

One of the moments that really stood out to me is Katniss’s unwillingness to ask for help.  When her father dies, and her mother checks out of reality for a while, their family is struggling.  Katniss decides that it would be better to pretend that everything was okay, because if people found out that her mother was not taking care of them, then they could be taken away and sent to the Hunger Games equivalent of the County Home.  All the kids who live there have really horrible lives and Katniss can’t let that happen to her dear sister Prim.  So she pretends that all is well and they slowly (oh, so slowly) begin to starve to death.

One of the key moments in the book is what happens when Katniss first meets Peeta, the boy with the bread.  She is mere days (possibly one day) away from LITERALLY DYING of starvation, when, while she’s trying to find something in the trash by his family’s bakery, Peeta burns some bread and throws it to her.  He takes a good wallop from his mother for his trouble but he does it anyway.  His burnt bread quite literally is the turning point for Katniss and her family- without it, and without that moment, they would all be dead and Katniss would never have become the Girl Who Was on Fire.

My problem here?  Katniss had so much pride, or she truly didn’t understand the consequences of her actions, that she was willing to let her sister die rather than ask for help and risk the County Home.  I get it- she didn’t want them to get split up, she didn’t want them to have to live in those kinds of conditions, but a shitty life is better than being dead, and it’s certainly better than starving to death.  It’s not a quick way to die, nor is it pleasant. 

I have to ask- were there no other people that she could have gone to for help?  Her father seemed like a pretty cool guy- he didn’t have any friends that would help them out, with a little bit of bread or a bit of meat?  REALLY?

I saw this and just thought Katniss was an idiot.  Yes, I understand that she’s twelve.  But I have known tweleve year olds with much more sense than this, although that isn’t hard because Katniss is kind of stupid.  She is capable and she is savvy in the woods, hunting and what not, but she is rather dumb about people, about relationships, about why people (Peeta, for example) would choose to help her without wanting anything in return.

Regarding the whole contrary issue, I’m glad I was forced into reading this.  If I didn’t have anyone waiting for me to finish reading so we could discuss it, I think I would have stopped on page six.

I did like reading about the world.  It was really well drawn, and the darkness and danger inherent in it really pushed my “dark and fucked up” buttons.  I liked a lot of the other characters, and have spent a lot of time thinking about who these people really are, as opposed to who Katniss THINKS they are through the filter of her brain.

I fell in love with Peeta.  I can see so much of my husband in him, and my husband made a few comments about how he saw himself in Peeta as well, so it makes sense that I am a Peeta girl, as opposed to Gale.  My love for Peeta makes me even more judgmental of Katniss, because I just don’t understand how she is unable to see him for who he is, or why she continually questions his motives.  I just don’t get it.

 

Yes, please. I'll take all three.

Katniss is the kind of girl that has always driven me crazy, even when I was a kid.  She can’t decide between two dudes, but she’ll keep them both on the hook because what happens if she lets one go and it’s the wrong choice?  I feel like she’s incredibly unfair and even cruel to Peeta and his feelings. 

Regarding Gale, I feel like he’s been done a terrible disservice by Collins, in that I don’t think there is a whole lot of substance to him, beyond his anger at the Capital.  His entire personality revolves around his dissatisfaction with his life and the circumstances of his world, but there aren’t any hints of what he would be like if/when anything changed.  What would he do or be if the Capital fell?  All of who he is, is caught up in this desire to change the world and not a lot of time is spent on what he’d do once that change happened.

Peeta, on the other hand, feels like someone who could figure out his place just about anywhere.  He’s the kind of guy that can take things as they come and be happy with simple and small.  I don’t think Gale would be happy with the same.  That’s not to say that I don’t think Peeta wants change, because I know that he does, but he’s not wallowing in his misery in the same way that Gale seems to be.

And in color. Words are failing me.

I wanted her to choose Peeta from the beginning, except for the fact that Peeta is too good for Katniss.  I actually feel like it would have been a better ending if Katniss had ended up alone, with a million cats, all of whom followed Buttercup to her house, and none of which she actually wants but she just can’t get them to leave.

My husband brought up an interesting point.  The book is from Katniss’s POV, but what if Peeta is actually the main character?  That makes the book MUCH more interesting for the reader, if you have an outside POV telling the story instead of the actual main character.  This is a trope that I absolutely adore in fanfic, so the idea that Suzanne Collins could have used it in her novels is amazing to me, and super fun.   Doesn’t the thought just blow your mind?  I love it!

 

 

I think, in the end, these books made feel a lot of feelings.  I’m still cataloguing everything that is swirling around in my brain, trying to figure out just where I fall.  Expect, perhaps, to see another post or two as I work through ALL THESE FEELINGS that I have. 

I think that’s actually one of the truly brilliant elements of these books- it’s hard to nail down just one way to feel about them.  Despite my issues with certain elements of these novels, I found them to be engaging and thought provoking, and I really wanted to know more about how they got to the epilogue.  I’ll give Collins this much- her epilogue was WAY better that Rowling’s (not that it’s all that hard to do, sadly).

I’m admitting here, in public and on the interwebs (so we all know it will NEVER GO AWAY) that I have changed my mind, mostly, about The Hunger Games.

What do YOU think about them?

“That’s why they put the “I” in FBI.” – Fox Mulder

Yesterday was a major milestone.  It was the 20th anniversary of the day that Agent Fox Mulder met Agent Dana Scully.

First of all, TWENTY YEARS?  Holy shit.  I feel incredibly old right now. 

The X-Files premiered on September 10, 1993, but with the on-screen date of March 6, 1992.

Why does this matter?  Why should anyone, including you or I care?

Well, for me, The X-Files was a life changing event.  The show changed the way I looked at the world around me, for good or ill, and it helped me hang on when I was so depressed that I wasn’t sure if I wanted to make it to the next episode or not.  For the record, my obsession was so great that I honestly think my need to find out what would happen next (and when would they hook up, damn it) trumped any suicidal thoughts that I possibly had at the time.    

When The X-Files premiered, my parents were fairly recently divorced and I was spending the majority of my time with my mother, in a town that was roughly 30 miles away from where my dad was living.  My sister and I spent every other weekend with him, when he would drive over, pick us up, and take us to his place.

Which sounds all well and good, except that my father worked in construction, as an electrical contractor, and he had very early mornings.  He needed to be out at the shop by 6:30am, so he would hit the hay very early, sometimes before 8pm the night before.

What this meant for my sister and me was that we would get to his house, have a weirdly uncomfortable dinner with his wife at the time (number 2, he is now on number 3) and possibly my step-sisters (who were way cooler and way thinner than I was, and they knew it, so I wasn’t exactly the person they wanted to hang with on a Friday night), then my dad would hit the sack, and everyone else would shuffle off and do whatever.  My little sister would be reading or playing, and if I didn’t have a strong desire to join her, it meant that I was on my own. 

Let me just say that getting dragged out into the country, ostensibly to spend time with your father, and then he goes to sleep before most senior citizens, does not feel great.  In fact, it feels pretty shitty.  The additional fact that he would do all sorts of things around the house over the weekend, many things which did not include giving us his undivided attention, also felt shitty.  It’s the kind of thing that makes a person feel more like a possession than a child who is loved and adored.

(Look, I get that this is all first world problems.  Really, I do.  I’m working on it, okay?  Also, as a side note, someday my father is going to read this blog and he is going to be really upset that I’ve thrown all my dirty laundry out there.  Can I just say that I could give two shits?)

On this particular Friday night, I was alone in the den, trying to figure out what to watch on TV.  My father’s house was (and still is, come to think of it) in the middle of nowhere and he did not have cable. (Although not for lack of trying.  The cable company refused to run lines out to his house, even though he was less than a mile from the city line.  He offered to run the line himself [remember- contractor] but they still refused him the service.  The magic of DirectTV had not yet been invented, or at least was not a reasonable choice at this time.) 

He did have an antenna that allowed us to get a few different stations.  The TV up in the den was older, and still had the two dials, one for UHF (which always made me happy, if only because of the mental UHF/Weird Al references that I would make in my head).  I could get the Toledo NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, and PBS stations, as well as some religious station, and that was about it.

I had been flipping through channels, which required that I stand in front of the TV and turn the knob, which was actually harder than it sounds, because there was some serious resistance on that knob and sometimes you had to work to make that bad boy click over to the next fuzzy station. 

My plan, I believe, looking back 19 years, was to get around the commercials and watch some TGIF on ABC.  However, I stopped turning the dial when I hit the following:

“Inspired by actual documented accounts.”  Whoo, boy, did that grab me.  So I stopped turning and I sat down, and started watching.  And I was hooked.

The X-Files is one of the first shows that I can think of that I got in on at the ground floor, but that I didn’t MEAN to get in on.  I chose seaQuest DSV like I would choose a puppy.  I jumped on the Firefly train because I was obsessed with Buffy (which I didn’t get into until season 3) and Angel (which I was in on the ground floor BECAUSE of Buffy).  I hated the pilot of Supernatural on first viewing, only falling into the series when season 1 came out on DVD and I was suffering from extreme food poisoning.

The X-Files was a lucky mistake.  I’d like to believe that I would have found it anyway, even if it was later, but I love the fact that I was there on opening day, so to speak.

The X-Files spoke to me (and still speaks to me) on a level that very few things ever have.  There was something about the trust between Mulder and Scully that I was envious of and longed for in my own life.  There was a loyalty there that I wished I could have with my own friends and family.  I think, looking back, that I did have a loyalty like that but it just hadn’t manifested in the same way.  Either way, I watched that show and I wanted the kind of emotional connection that they had, even with the banter (or perhaps ESPECIALLY because of the banter) and the bickering.

There was an unspoken language that Mulder and Scully had.  Looks they exchanged that said more than words ever could.  Small touches, like when he would guide her around crime scenes (and everywhere else) with his hand at the small of her back.  The way that he became overprotective after her abduction, the way that he fought with her and for her when she was diagnosed with cancer.  The way she could say things to Mulder that were snarky and condescending but woe to the outside person who tried the same thing. 

It was more than just dialogue, more than just words, that tied them together, that showed that they cared, that they loved each other (even if you never believed that they were IN LOVE with each other).  I soaked in all those little details, classified and catalogued everything as I watched, memorizing everything part of it because it was what I wanted, what I hoped for, what I wished my life could have in it.

I became obsessed with the show.  I bought TV shirts, I taped every episode and watched them multiple times.  I knew (and still do, to some extent) the names of every episode through season 7.  I had X-Files viewing parties in high school, made easier when the show moved to Sunday nights, and continued those events when I went to college. 

Stupid story: I, and others in my dorm, made angry calls to the Detroit Fox station when they started cutting off the previews for the next episode during the credits of the current episode with a preview of the upcoming news program.  I mean, the news is going to be on in less than a MINUTE (which they helpfully told us, as they were cutting off Mulder’s face with the inset of the evening news set)- why do we need a preview like that?  It’s not like we have to wait a whole week or anything.

We burned pictures of the news anchor in effigy, mostly as a joke, but from that point on, I refused to watch any segment or program with that guy as the lead.  My little circle of college friends laughed about it, but a part of me, deep inside, wasn’t kidding.  This ass was the reason that I missed the trailer for next week- he kept me from my fix and I was ANGRY about that. 

I imagine that this behavior is similar to that of an addict.  I am sure that I was.  I am sure that the way I behaved was a combination of addictive personality and the desperate attempts of someone drowning in depression to find something, anything, to cling to in order to make things better.  I latched my hooks in The X-Files and for a brief moment, it was better. 

I read fan fiction, I posted on group e-mail loops, I forced my friends to watch the show, to talk about it.  I found friends who were just as obsessed as I was.  We had in-jokes, things that we understood in mere seconds but would take me at least ten minutes to explain to an outsider.

I took my X-Files seriously and expected others to do the same, if not being as obsessed as I was, then respecting my obsession and not calling me on X-Files nights.

I suffered from depression in college, I realize as I look back on those days.  I was never officially diagnosed or medicated, but I contemplated suicide once or twice.  I’m not sure it was chemical depression- my step-sister suffers from that and I wouldn’t want to marginalize or lessen her issues by comparing them to my own- but it was more than just melancholy.  I was angry, with a hair trigger temper, and I was sad.  My heart hurt, all the time. 

My father left my mother when I was in the 3rd grade.  From that point forward, I had anger issues, issues with authority, and problems with trusting people.  I was sad, I was mad, and I was desperate to find someone or something to believe in.  My father left his second wife in the fall of 1997, when I was a freshman in college, and took up with a woman that he told me was new in his life but turned out that she had been his mistress for over five years before that.  This did not help with my issues, as I had long been connecting my personal happiness and satisfaction with my relationship with my father. 

I felt betrayed by him, not because he had cheated on me, personally, or that he had cheated on my mother (although it was revealed that he had done that as well, when they had been married).  I felt betrayed because my father had forced this second family on me, had forced me to accept these new people into my life with all kinds of rules and expectations that it turned out he had no intention of keeping himself.  To add insult to injury, he lied to my face on more than one occasion regarding his girlfriend and how his marriage ended, meaning I felt used and manipulated and small.

I spent many of my college years feeling that betrayal and wishing that I could trust my father, in any way.  That I could believe the words that came out of his mouth.  That I could trust that he would choose to be with my sister and I, and that he hadn’t used us as excuses for when he would sneak away to see his mistress, or that he would choose to be with her in the brief free time he had, instead of us.

TRUST NO ONE was a pretty powerful message to me.  It was reminder that trust was a precious thing that shouldn’t be given out willy, nilly.  You only break this rule with the people who have really earned it.

I watched The X-Files with all of this baggage and there was something very powerful about these two people who only really had each other.  They could only really trust and count on one another, because there wasn’t anyone else that they could trust out there in the world.  There was a devotion to their relationship that bordered on obsessive and unhealthy, which the show touched on, but in the end, time and again, it was proven that their paranoia was not unfounded, and their love and respect for each other was stronger than any annoyance or anger could ever be.

It wasn’t a perfect relationship, by any means, but it was something that I longed for, that I dreamt of.  Someone I could trust, someone who could and would trust me, someone that I could count on to have my back, when I had theirs, and that would love me no matter how stupid I acted or how selfish I could be. 

I realize, in all this introspection, that I am totally Fox Mulder, as lame as that is. 

Feeling betrayed by the parents that he should have been able to trust and count on completely?  CHECK

Selfish and self-absorbed?  CHECK

Obsessed with things that other people think are crazy?  CHECK

Believer in the supernatural, mystical, magical, and just plain weird?  CHECK

In love with a red-head (Bear is kind of red-headed, at least his beard is, so I’m counting it.) who puts up with my shit but gives me a lot of shit for it?  CHECK 

I watch The X-Files now, as an adult who is in a committed, trusting relationship, with slightly different eyes.  I can appreciate the conspiracy episodes more now than I did in the past.  I’m not quite as invested in the “are they/aren’t they” relationship stuff as I was when I was a teenager.  I understand why Mulder is an asshole and why Scully would react to him the way she does better than I ever did in the past. 

But I still see all those things that originally drew me to the show in the past.  I can still see why I loved it then, why I felt like it saved me, why I thought it was something that I could hang on to when times were really emotionally tough for me.    

So, yeah, the 20th anniversary of the meeting of Mulder and Scully is a big deal for me.  Happy anniversary, you crazy kids!  Glad I could be there from the beginning.  It’s meant the world to me.

They see me trollin’. They be hatin’.

Katie(babs) pointed out an… infuriating blog post from a sci-fi writer named Cale McCaskey.  (He was answering comments, which is where he really digs his hole deeper, but he has since decided to stop replying.  So, check out his post but you won’t be able to engage at this point.  Not sure if that’s a good or bad thing at this point.) 

On January 18, Cale made a post titled “The Problem with Romance Novels” and proceeded to denigrate the entire genre of romance.  This, of course, made a lot of people on the internet angry.  Quelle surprise!

Cale claims to be a “sexy, single white male with a really big, uh, wallet.”  There is one claim in that list that I’d believe, and that’s the “single, white male” part. 

But I digress.

For those who don’t want to give this guy more hits on his site, here’s a breakdown of what he’s saying.

His claims:

1) Romance novels and authors demanding respect is similar to people demanding respect for finger paintings.  Translation: it’s ridiculous.

2) Romance is responsible for the “almost 50%” illiteracy rate in this country. (Not sure where he’s getting his numbers- he didn’t source them, although throughout his post, he required others to reference all of THEIR claims.  Just saying, is all.)

3) Romance writers do not deserve the same respect as “authors of much higher standing.”  (It reads like he doesn’t think they deserve any respect at all.)

4) Romance novels are DESIGNED to be inferior.

5) Romance and love stories are things belonging to junior high school girls and should be left behind when girls become women. (I don’t even know.  I mean, seriously?  WTF?)

6) “If a romance story were that good, it would no longer be referred to as romance, but would instead simply be known as drama or literary fiction or a classic love story.” (*blinks*)

I tried to engage the guy in genial, polite discourse, and he stuck to his guns.  Romance is for little kids, he seems to think.  I was dismissed with a wave of the guy’s hand.

As an aside, I’m disturbed by this.  Romance, with all the sexy times and serious emotional connections, are for kids?  What does he think adults are doing when they date and get married, etc?  Does he think it’s all rational, logical decisions based on cost analysis and future projections of wealth, or possibly a decision based on genetic compatibility alone?  There is a reason this guy is single and I think this might be a big part of it.

He makes a big deal about Ivy League schools not treating romance as “real” literature, as well.  He even goes so far as to research people that are mentioned in comments so he can discount their academic status (“He’s not a REAL Harvard professor, he’s just a guest lecturer,” blah, blah, blah).  The pretention is just oozing off the page by the time you get to these comment replies.  I think I threw up a little in my mouth.

I was really incensed for a bit, until I figured it out.

The dude is a troll.

Read that again and let it sink in.

THE DUDE IS A TROLL.

Dude is a douche canoe. And sadly, I'll bet he doesn't even float.

He’s not trolling someone’s blog in the comments, he’s trolling the entire romance/reading COMMUNITY in order to get traffic to his blog.  He clearly needs it.  The guy is at the same level that I am- he’s trying to get published, make a name for himself, but he hasn’t gotten there yet.  He’s trying to build his readership, get some eyes to his blog to check him out.  He’s not getting the kind of traffic that he wants (prob. because he’s pretentious and derogatory as shit, but that might just be me) so he’s decided to try something new.

He nukes the romance community from space (it’s the only way to be sure!!!) and watches the traffic to his site just skyrocket.

My guess?  He’s seen what’s been happening with all of the reviewer vs. author stuff and knows that controversy will get you a lot of attention.  And boy, is he getting it.

The problem with his plan, is that he looks like a total toolbox.  Why?  Because the people he’s drawn to his site are ROMANCE READERS who are not going to agree with him.  And the more dismissive and condescending he gets with his comments, the less likely it is that these people are going to be swayed to his perspective.

Am I going to go back and read more of this guy’s stuff? 

Not a chance in hell.

So, he gets a post with a ton of comments and a lot of traffic that isn’t, for the most part, going to last for him.

I’m sure he’ll get a few new followers, but let’s do a cost analysis on this.  Will the value he gets from new readers outweigh the bad will that he’s engendering in other members of the reading/writing community?  Is INFAMOUS preferable to famous? 

The other question I keep asking myself is if he actually, true facts, believes the crap that he’s spouting.  If he does, he may be in trouble.  He gives me the impression that he is not a listener.  He doesn’t hear what people are saying, because he’s so convinced that he’s right that he doesn’t need to bother. 

This guy is going to have issues in the future.  What if an editor or agent decides they want to pick up one of his books, but he needs to do some story editing?  Is this the guy that’s going to be open to suggestions or is he going to argue over every little change and not bend at all?

He strikes me as the type of person that will self-publish if only because he thinks he knows better than the editorial professionals and doesn’t believe he needs to change anything in his manuscript.

Translation: the kind of guy to avoid when you’re clicking around amazon.com and come across his book.

I also imagine that he’s this way in his personal life, so he’s either going to have to find a woman who agrees with everything he says or who won’t say anything even if she doesn’t.  Good luck with that, buddy.

Funny thing- I’ve been reading Chuck Wendig’s 500 Ways to be a Better Writer (which is totally worth the $2.99- you should all pick it up!) and I just read the bit where he talks about not being a “book racist.”  In Wendig’s case, he’s talking about not denigrating other storytelling mediums, like TV or movies.  However, I think his point can apply here as well.

There are those of us that are so sure that our medium is the only one that matters or that has value, and we are not afraid to express that opinion.  This is true within each medium- look at the film world.  The people who will argue the value of Speilberg vs. Tarintino, romantic comedies vs. indie dramas vs. sci-fi vs. blockbusters of all kinds.

Clearly, this guy is one of those who wants to place a value on each genre of books and rank them according to value to the world.  But as I read over his comments, it makes me wonder what value he’s actually looking for in his literature.  Whatever it is, it’s clear that he’s not truly willing to experiment or try new things.  He’s already decided what he likes and what he doesn’t and isn’t willing to bend on that at all, which I believe is to his detriment as a writer of fiction.

There are many genres of books out there.  Literature, with a capital ‘L’, westerns, mysteries, sci-fi, fantasy, romance, etc.  To quote Wendig, “the storytelling cults can learn much from each other.”  You won’t like everything you read, but you should never just write it off as a lesser form.  You can learn something from everything. 

Some of the best storytelling lessons I’ve learned have come from bad books, bad TV shows, and bad movies, or stories that I haven’t liked, even if I could agree that the writing was well done.  If you can’t learn from what you engage in and encounter, then you may be missing a large part of what has kept humans on the top of the pile for so long.  Adaptability.

I’ve learned a lot from his posts, point of fact, and I will be using the lessons I learned as I move forward, hopefully making myself a better writer and a better person.

But in the end, it all boils down to the fact that, no matter what he ACTUALLY believes or doesn’t, the guy is a troll and not worth worrying about.