Janette Rallison's Blog, page 28

A better class of losers

It’s that special time of year when I’m home from the Whitneys and get to regale you all with descriptions of the gala event. For those of you who don’t know what the Whitneys are, they’re awards given out to books written by LDS authors. I have had seven books nominated for Whitney awards.  I’m zero for seven as far as actually winning a Whitney.

I can’t really claim to be a gracious loser, because I started my own tradition at the Whitneys—the loser cheesecake photos. (Affectionately called Loser Pie, by Julie Wright.)

Here we can see the beginning of the tradition as I lost the Whitney for My Fair Godmother.Chocolate = happiness. (Or close enough to it for practical purposes.)

Here James Dashner, Jessica Day George, and Julie Wright joined me in the first Loser Pie photo.

Here are some other years that come to mind.

Here are the 2014 pictures. I have to say that a few people in the back row didn’t look sad . Clearly they are all plotting to let the air out of certain tires in the parking lot.

 

We in the front row are pros. Sarah Eden and I belong to the 100% club. It’s a club started for people who have lost 100% of their nominations. I believe we’re the only two members left from the first Whitney awards. Not that we’re keeping track or anything.

Here Julie Wright and I photo bomb Jeff Savage and Traci  Abramson. Again, Julie and I never claimed to be gracious losers.

And here I am with a group of classy ladies proving that you don’t need alcohol to have a good time. Yes we can can!

Fun times and awesome people!

 

Why you should never wish for more time to read

Because if you do, God may answer that desire by letting you spend a few days sick in bed. Which I have. But on the plus side, I’m reading. I’ll put up pictures of the Whitneys soon. Really. Just as soon as the flames in my throat subside.

Utah peeps! I’m coming your way!

It’s that special time of year when I head up to Utah to do school visits and present at the LDStorymakers conference. If you’ve got a stack of Janette Rallison or CJ Hill books that you’d like signed–or if you need to make that stack bigger, come to the book signing on Saturday, April 26th from 4:15-5:30 p.m. (It’s free to go to the book signing.)

Location:

Davis Conference Center

1651 North 700 West

Layton, Utah 84041

For more information on the Storymaker conference and all the cool authors, editors, and agents who will be there go to:

http://ldstorymakers.com/conferences/2014-conference-2/

2-Day Conference: $215 
Friday-only Conference: $135
Saturday-only Conference: $110
Keynote-only tickets for Friday evening (includes dinner): $35

Women and the Priesthood, a Mormon woman’s perspective

This post is going to be long. But hey, my novels are even longer, and people pay money to read those. So just consider this post to be an awesome bargain.

A lot of people have been discussing the role of women in the Mormon (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) right now, and as it’s a subject I’ve talked extensively about with my three daughters–whether they wanted to hear my opinions or not–I decided to go public with my thoughts.

Disclaimer: I know that certain societies oppress women. And even in societies that don’t, there are still going to be oppressive, overbearing jerks in every society, religion, class, and walk of life. It can’t be helped. Some people are just jerks. Also, I’m pretty certain that in societies that oppress women, there are still plenty of great guys who love their mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters and treat them well. I’m not debating those issues. If you’ve been treated badly by someone, I’m sorry. I’m sure God is too.

Let’s talk about Mormonism.

When I was growing up, it bothered me that women couldn’t hold the priesthood. Different meant unequal, and giving men the privilege of holding the priesthood smacked of favoritism. Several passages in the Bible also bothered me, as they seemed to favor men over women. (I won’t go into those or the ancient society traditions because that would indeed be a book.)

My mother told me that women had the power of creation, so God had to give the men some sort of power to make things fair. Her answer struck me as patronizing because at the time motherhood didn’t seem all that great. It involved morning sickness, stretch marks, labor, and changing lots of diapers. I thought women totally got the short end of the bargain in life.

When I went to college, I was also bothered by the idea that the church taught that motherhood was the greatest calling and job there was. Motherhood was more important than a career. This didn’t seem fair to me. It seemed like I was being told that men could be fathers and have careers, while women were just supposed to mothers.

And the idea that the husband presides in the home? That worried me too. Sure, the church taught that husbands and wives were supposed to council together–marriage wasn’t a dictatorship–but I didn’t like the idea that my future, yet-unknown husband might pull the I-preside-card every time we had a disagreement.

I remember talking about the subject to a religion teacher once. He kept stressing that marriage was about discussion and deciding matters jointly.

I asked, “What if there’s something my husband and I just can’t agree on? What if I want a dog and he doesn’t? How do we decide?”

My religion teacher (who may have thought I actually had a husband in mind and this was already an issue with us) looked at me and said, “If that’s the argument, I wouldn’t get a dog.”

I was not happy with that answer. It seemed to me that my religion teacher was saying the husband got 51% of the vote.

Now, with the wisdom of years, I look back on that question and realize that neither husband nor wife should get a pet without the other one’s agreement. Because you are basically asking your spouse to put up with a little furry child who never grows up.

The funny thing is, I actually got our first dog while my husband was out of town on a month long business trip. Our neighbors found a puppy in an industrial trashcan (Don’t even get me started about people who throw puppies in the trash) and the puppy was a darling mop of a dog. I had to keep him. I called my husband and cheerfully told him we now had a dog, and if he wanted to be a part of those sorts of decisions, he shouldn’t go out of town for an entire month. (He still does by the way, and I collect stray cats.)

Clearly, I have missed whatever point that long ago religion teacher was making. But my husband loved the dog. (He’s not so crazy about the cats.) And that puppy was the best dog ever, so it ended up being the right decision. But I digress.

Back to women and the priesthood. In twenty-eight years of marriage, my husband has never acted like he had 51% of the vote. Only once that I can remember did we ever have an issue where we firmly, immovably wanted different things. And it was an important issue. What did we do about that? We prayed to see what we should do. It turns out that really the Lord has 100% of the vote, and in that instance he let my husband know that we should follow the path that I wanted. (And in case my children are listening this time, that is the key to a happy marriage–having both husband and wife try to do the right thing.)

Age and wisdom teach many things. Remember how in college I silently steamed that men got to be fathers and have careers while women were supposed to just stay home with the kids?

I changed my mind about the fairness of that situation the moment my first daughter was born. I didn’t want a career anymore. I wanted to sleep in, take care of my baby, and spend all day playing with her. I think it would have caused me physical pain and emotional distress to have to leave her.

While my husband staggered out of bed early each morning, I waved goodbye and said, “Have fun slaving away at your job, dear! I’ll be home nurturing our offspring.”

If he looked at me enviously, I reminded him that it was my God-ordained role.

God clearly loves women best. Motherhood is the best and most important career.

Now lets talk about the priesthood. The priesthood is the power given to man to act in God’s name. Sounds important, and it is. Priesthood leaders give blessings–to other people, to women. A man can’t bless himself. All priesthood work is service. (And as just pointed out out in General Conference, women also give priesthood service in every calling they have.) Men are called to leadership positions in the church–things like Bishops and Stake Presidents. Women have similar callings as Relief Society Presidents and Stake Relief society presidents. Anyone who knows anything about the church knows that women are an integral, if not the driving force, behind the church’s activities.

Women in our church, far from being oppressed, are treated with more love and respect than anywhere else in the world I’ve seen. This is because men are taught that women are daughters of God, that we have divine destinies. Boys and men are taught that objectifying women is an evil with serious consequences. There are no double standards in our church. Boys and men are taught to keep themselves morally clean in act and thought. They are taught that family is the most important thing in life, and they should do all that they can to support their wives both financially and emotionally.  They are taught to be good, Christ-like people who will treat everyone with love and consideration.

Where else in the world are men taught to act that way? Certainly not by society in general.

I frequently get email from girls stating that the guys in real life are never as good as the guys in my books. They ask where they can meet guys like that.

I always want to tell them to try looking at church. That’s where the good guys are.

But I digress again.

Here’s what I think about women not having the priesthood. Allow me to be an author for a few moments and tell you a story–fiction, of course, because that’s what I do. (I am not preaching doctrine. Do not write me angry letters telling me I’m being blasphemous. I’m only illustrating a principal through story-telling which is something Christ did himself. Also, see the book of Job.)

Imagine that we’ve just finished participating in that great council in heaven that took place before we came to earth. We have learned about earth life and how it would work. We were excited, of course (Chocolate! Nutella!) but also concerned about several things.  Now picture that after the meeting while everyone is departing to go off to time management classes or whatever (I clearly skipped out on those classes) a group of women approaches God to have a word with Him.

“Pardon us, but we were looking over our responsibilities,” one of the women tells God, “and we’ve noticed that we’ve got a lot of work to do. We’re supposed to raise children, make sure the family doesn’t starve or go naked, be active in the community, do service work, do church work, develop our talents, and see to it that our children develop theirs as well. Plus there’s all this stuff about temple work, gardening, journaling, family history, missionary work,  baking bread, and something called scrapbooking . . .”

“Right,” God says, “You’ll be busy. That’s why I’ve implemented a day of rest every Sunday. Well, you’ll sort of be resting. This might be a good time to mention that you’ll be in charge of Primary and will need to come up with entertaining ways to teach the gospel to antsy four-year-olds. And antsy five-year-olds. And–well, you get the picture.”

“Listen,” one of the women says, “we don’t want to complain or anything, but we’re going to need lots of help with all of this.”

“No problem,” God says, “The men will help you. Just ask them.”

The women give each other knowing looks. “Um, a lot of the men are already talking about sitting around all day watching something called football. They seem to think it’s really important.”

“But if you ask them for help, they’ll help you,” God says. “They’ll step up to the plate. Oh, sorry,” he adds seeing the women’s confusion, “that’s a baseball term. It’s another game that men will spend a lot of time watching.”

“Okay,” one of the women says. “We know men, and they’re not going to help unless you make them.”

Another woman nods. “Assign them service that they have to do in the church. Tell them it’s stuff only they can do.”

God considers this for a moment. “You want me to give men jobs and tell them that women aren’t allowed to do it? Don’t you think they’ll be resentful and angry about that?”

The women shake their heads. “Nah, give it an important sounding name.”

“Tell them that they’re bishops and Stake Presidents,” Another woman says. “General Authorities and Seventies. It sounds cool.”

God rubs his chin in thought. “And you think if I do that, men won’t notice that they’re stuck in extra meetings every week?”

“Probably not,” the women chime optimistically. “It’s worth a try.”

A woman raises her hand to get God’s attention. “And make them dress up in suits and ties while they do it. Because they’ll never dress up on their own.”

Another woman adds, “And make sure they give us the soft seats in Relief Society, and have the Deacons set up and take down the chairs every week.”

God walks off before the women can make any more suggestions.

And here we are on earth, and for some reason a few women want to change what is clearly a very good deal for us.  Ladies, having the priesthood means you do unpaid service work for others. Personally, I’m happy with the amount of unpaid service work I currently do. If you want to do more, go ahead. In fact, I could put you to work at my house, and if you like, I can give you the title Stake President of errands, yard-work, and dishes. Really.

We have every blessing given to men, and some extra to boot. I wouldn’t change my role for anything.

 

Why authors shouldn’t ask me to blurb their books. Sigh.

Every so often I get requests from authors to blurb their books. Sometimes I can wholeheartedly offer a great blurb, but usually it ends up being a disaster.

Not long ago, a new author asked me for a blur, and I did what I should have done all along. I dispensed with what Miss Manners would tell me to do and laid my cards on the table.

In an effort to save other authors from this disaster, I’m putting my reply to her on my blog. (I edited out her identity to protect her privacy.)

Dear *****

Congratulations on being a newly minted author. You’re all shiny and optimistic! (I did not add, but perhaps should have: Soon you will be cynical and disillusioned like the rest of us.)

Here’s the thing about me and blurbs. I want to help new authors–and old authors too–I really do. But there are two reasons why you shouldn’t ask me for blurbs. One is that I only read (non-audibook) books on Sunday, and since that’s also when I do any and all good deeds, blurbs, critiques, and judging, I’m really slow. The other reason is that in my zeal to help new authors, I end up critiquing their books instead of blurbing them. Seriously. It makes me look like a real jerk. Authors think they’re done with their book. They think it’s amazing and going to take the world by storm. Their editors have already passed off on the book, and then I come along and tell them they need a better first line, and they need more description in scene two and more internal thought in scene five and their character could be more likable if instead of doing x, she did y instead.

I have to tell authors these things because I really feel their book will have a better chance commercially if they rewrite it, but most of the time they end up hating me and not speaking to me for a long time.

Unless ******* publisher has new editors that do things differently, they don’t offer the level of editing that they should, and so ******* authors especially hate me. You probably hate me already for suggesting your editor didn’t do a good enough job–or you’re really optimistic and you’re thinking, “But she won’t critique my book. It’s perfect.”

Sorry, I’ll end up critiquing your book too, and then we’ll both be in that awkward situation where if you don’t rewrite the stuff I suggested, you’ll think that I think you blew off my advice. (Actually, I will think that.) But if you do take my advice, you’ll have to rewrite stuff which you most likely don’t want to do, and which your editor probably doesn’t want you to do if the book is already copy edited.

One of my author friends had to rewrite her whole ending and a bunch of stuff in the middle because of my critique. (She had been warned though, and wasn’t in the last stage of editing.) ***** and ***** are both victims of asking for me to blurb their books. Neither of them send me Christmas cards.

That said, if you want to risk it, I’ll see if I can get to it. No promises. And while I’m at it, let me tell you how you can improve the cover blurb that you included in your email. See, you thought I was joking, didn’t you? But no. It’s like sickness.

I then went on to suggest three changes to the her book’s cover blurb. (And had to stop myself from making two other suggestions because, you know, maybe some of that description really was in the character’s point of view and not the author’s. I only saw a short section so I can’t be certain whether she meant the book to be in omnescient point of view, or whether she hadn’t mastered third person point of view.)

Seriously guys, I am either an awesome teacher or a complete jerk, and I can’t decide which it is. I keep thinking about my first few books, which had these same sorts of problems. I wish someone had told me back then how I could improve my writing instead of having to learn it after I’d already published a bunch of stuff.

Maybe sometimes politeness isn’t the best answer. Anyway, from now on anytime an author asks me to blurb something, I’m going to refer them to this blog. That way they’ve been warned.

(I just told my teen daughter what I’d done.  She shook her head at me and said, “Mom, that’s like someone reaching out to shake your hand and you punching them in the face.”)

Yep, that’s pretty much me.

 

In praise of spam

We all hate spam. It clogs up our inboxes and wastes our time, but today as I was deleting it, I started thinking about the plus side. Okay, actually I made up a plus side.  Writers are allowed to make up things. Let’s look at spam symbollically. If spam was a friend, it would never leave you.

Spam is there for you, day and night.

No matter how many times you yell at it, spam never gives up on you.

Spam is constant. Spam is devoted.

Spam tells you that you’re a winnner. Frequently. Even if you never entered the lottery.

How many friends can you say that about?

Okay, actually now that I think about it, Spam is actually more like a stalker friend.

And yes, these are the sorts of things one thinks about after long rounds of revisisons.

Which cover do you like best

As they say, tenth time is a charm. At least that is probably what Su at EarthlyCharms is hoping, since I keep making her redo the covers. She said to tell you these are really rough. The final one, which ever it is, will be spiffed up. These are just mock ups. (for a bigger view of the second girl, scroll down.)

So . . . We’ve got the new title on it now. And per suggestions of the couple of people who have actually read the book, I went looking for a girl who looked sweeter. My daughter saw the picture of the first model and said it was just how she imagined Aislynn to be. Now as I’m editing the novel, that model is stuck in my mind.

I liked the second model because she looked a bit chaosy, you know, to match with the title. Don’t ask why she’s in heels and nylons at the Karnak temple. She just is.

Let me know which you like best. Thanks! If you want to see them bigger:

Why I’ll never run out of plot ideas

I woke up yesterday morning to youngest daughter’s announcement, “Mom, come quick! There are huge puddles of red and blue stuff in the laundry room!” I staggered out of bed, and went downstairs to find that a gallon of red paint had fallen from the shelf and now covered the floor. Along side it, was a puddle of blue laundry soap. The soap container,oddly enough, sat several feet away on the dryer. It’s still a mystery to me how a large soap puddle accumulated next to the paint on the floor. Aliens? Ghosts? The evil house cats at work?

None of the aforementioned groups was considerate enough to clean up the mess. That was left to me. Youngest daughter trotted off to school while I unrolled paper towels over the mess. I soon got red paint on the bottom of my pajamas. Not wanting to ruin them, I took them off and put them in a bucket of water. This by the way, left red footprints across the kitchen. Moments later, I realized none of my clothes were safe as long as I was dripping paint covered paper towels into a trash bag, so I took my other clothes off too.

Have you ever noticed how slippery liquid laundry detergent is? I couldn’t help but notice this fact as I stepped on it and slid around like a beginning ice skater.

The problem with being a writer is that I have a vivid imagination, and I could easily imagine what would happen next. I was going to fall, break something important, and have to call 911. Several paramedics–undoubtedly some that I knew–would come to my house and carry my naked, paint covered body to the ER. I’d look like an aging porn star that was trying her hand at horror movies. Someone with a cell phone would capture the event and post it on Youtube.

It wasn’t a happy thought. But it was one that I could use in a book someday.One of my heroines will have to have a painting accident. I’m foreseeing a hot paramedic in her future.

Luckily, I didn’t fall and break anything, and the shower washed away my ax murderer appearance. The door needs to be repainted, but the floor is mostly back to normal.

Hopefully the ghosts will now find something else to do besides mess up my laundry room.

What’s your favorite title?

Maureen, one of my official minions, told me that the title Hunters and Hunted wasn’t her favorite. To tell you the truth, it’s been my working title for so many years that I’ve lost all objectivity about it. Maybe it’s an awesome title, or maybe not. Since I’m asking you’all about covers, I figured I would get your input on titles, too.

I don’t want to give away any spoilers from the book so I’ll just say this. There are two ancient Egyptian groups which are basically continuing the war between Horus and Set and my main character, Aislynn, finds herself caught up in their war.

They both have different superpowers.  Oh, and there are flesh eating scarabs. And of course hot guys. It’s contemporary.

Here are some possible title that a couple of author friends (Dougless Rees and Leah Cypess) suggested:

Pharoah’s Hunters

Twisting Fates

Daughter of War

Daughter of Set, Daughter of Horus

The Endless War

If you can think of something cool, by all means suggest it. Or if you think Hunters and Hunters works best, let me know.

Thanks!!

 

New covers to chose from. Which do you like best now?

Thanks for all your input–and now I’m going to ask you for more. A lot of people said they wanted more emphasis on the Egyptian angle–which is great advice. So Su whipped up these two covers. (Su is amazing.) Now that you’ve seen these ones, does it change your vote? Which do you like best of these two?

Here’s smaller (because smaller is the way you would see the cover if you were searching on Amazon or Goodreads) and then bigger.

And here are the originals for you to compare.