Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 196

Nita’s Punch List

When a contractor gets the big stuff done on a job, she or he and the homeowner makes a punch list: a list of all the little stuff needed to completely finish the job.  Technically it’s anything that did not conform to specifications, but it’s the little stuff, too, that just got lost in the big tasks.  It’s about this time in a book that I do a punch list for all the things that I’ve forgotten or let drop, changed in one place but not another, forgot to layer in, details that are important but not addressed yet, etc.  I have a much more complex list of big issues to solve for character, plot, and theme, but the punch list is little stuff that’s still important.  Such as . . .

Chloe wears glasses

They’re a big part of her personality, so they need to stay in there, not in every mention but definitely as something she deals with.

emphasis

Nick insists that he raises his voice for emphasis but it’s clearly because he’s gaining emotions.  There’s a three-beat in the first act, but then I drop it.  Have to figure out how to either make it a motif  and arc it or drop it, otherwise it’s just noise.

socks

Nita’s got a sock thing going and I don’t know why.  I know it plays a minor but important role in Act One, but if it’s motif, I have to figure out why.   I have some ideas–Keres gives them to her for Christmas and birthdays so they’re a form of love, Nita’s always cold so they’re practical, she wears black all the time so they’re the one spot of color she indulges in–I just have to pull them together.

Cthulhu

Cthulhu keeps turning up here, so I know he’s important and I have some thematic ideas as to why, but you can’t just put theme on the page.  

march 23 to april 2

Lovecraft says that Cthulhu always sinks below the waves on Apr. 2.  I don’t know why that’s the day the Old One goes belly up, but that’s the day the book’s gonna end.

Binky the Devil Bear

Nick smites him in the beginning and that’s it.  I need him in there to show the smite, but he can’t just exist to get blasted.  Three beat there and it has to mean something.

Layer in Hotels and Dorothy Idle

They’re going to be important later, so they need to be part of the wallpaper earlier.

Nita’s bag

Nita has a black canvas bag she carries everywhere (I found it on Amazon and bought it just to make sure it was what she’d carry, and now I carry it everywhere), so it needs to be layered in, too, and to have some kind of meaning in the things she carries.

iron at bridge and airport  

This is just a plot point that needs to be threaded through there so I can pay it off later.

Gate left open in Australia early on

This is a throwaway detail to show the importance of closing the gates.  It’s not in there yet.

Button as the new kid/red shirt

Button as a newbie, assumption is that she’s a red shirt, but she’s the most lethal thing on the island.  Layer that in.

Nita’s cracked windshield

Nita’s car gets both front and back windshields cracked and it’s never mentioned again.  She either has to drive with a cracked windshield or lose her car to get it fixed.

Rab puts in an expresso machine, Hotels go semi-dry

I don’t know why that ended up on the list, but clearly I had a plan.

Nita is cold all the time

I say this and then don’t deal with it until the baph stuff.   It has to be in there.

Nita never gets angry, just annoyed.

This really has to be in there because there’s a big pay-off later.

Leftover Chinese/Constant Food

Nick eats to fuel his facade; Nita eats to keep warm.  Lots of breakfast and Chinese, but they’d vary that.  Food in the apt. too–need a fridge–and arc that with their arcs.

Cars

Nita has a car.  Jeo and Rab must have rented one when they got to the island.  Mort has a car.  Button must have one.  Vinnie has one.   Sort those out.

Chlorophyll in blood

Get the hemoglobin/chlorophyll thing in, figure out why external iron brings demons down.

Stripe and Joyce

Make them mean something.

Rab’s romance.

The closest thing Rab has to a romance is Keres flirting with him.  Nita and Nick, Jeo and Daphne, Mort and his demon lover, Button and Max, all get HEAs right now while Rab tends bar.  That’s gotta change, so most of the hetero HEAs are going south or at least being delayed, and Rab’s gonna get a boyfriend.  I had one planned for him  (Button’s brother) for a later book, but you never save anything for a later book, and besides, I’m loving Rab’s character arc in this.     A real relationship should be part of that.  ARGH.  I’m not homophobic, I swear, I just dream in hetero.  Although I do have the OT3 of the Hotels going, so there’s that.

There’s more, but you get the drift: clean up all the details that don’t pay off, fix problems that I created without thinking, make motifs either mean something or disappear.  Punch list.

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

The post Nita’s Punch List appeared first on Argh Ink.

This is a Good Book Thursday

Ho, ho, the heck with it.  What are you reading?

The post This is a Good Book Thursday appeared first on Argh Ink.

THANK YOU, ALABAMA

Welp, that’s Christmas for me.  I was braced for another blow to my belief in my country and by damn . . . .  2018 just got a tiny bit brighter.   

The post THANK YOU, ALABAMA appeared first on Argh Ink.

In Praise of Comfort Stories, Edited

I’ve been thinking about comfort stories.  They’re like comfort food, warm and familiar with no surprises, just more of what we already know we like.  As a writer, I’m not interested in writing the same story again (I have a very short attention span), but as a reader, I devour Dick Francis and Rex Stout and Georgette Heyer, and my repeat watchings of Leverage and Person of Interest have no end.  I’ve watched Big Trouble in Little China so many times, I can recite the dialogue ahead of time.  And yet, I go back again and again.

I started thinking about comfort stories this weekend after I watched The Hitman’s Bodyguard, a movie with Samuel Jackson and Ryan Reynolds playing Samuel Jackson and Ryan Reynolds.  That is, it was about Jackson and Reynolds being cool and snarky and violent and shooting guns; and the bad-but-really-good guys won over the bad-no-really-bad guy who was played by Gary Oldman playing the Gary Oldman Bad Guy.  There wasn’t a surprise in it anywhere since these three guys can do this beautifully in their sleep now, but it was still fun to watch (fave moment: Reynolds bitching that Jackson had ruined the word “motherfucker,” “which isn’t easy to do.”).  Wait, I lied about the surprise: Salma Hayek spitting scenery was always a wake-up moment.  Reynold’s love interest was the cookie-cutter  beautiful-instantly-forgettable-hot-former-girlfriend-who-still-cares, a trope I am becoming more and more annoyed with.  (I’m still bitter that Darcy didn’t get Thor in the first Thor movie.  Now THAT would have been a romance.)  Mostly it was Jackson and Reynolds flirting with guns and each other (of course it’s a bromance, and for once I didn’t wish they’d just go for it because Hayek was so perfect for Jackson), and for one night that was plenty.  It was a comfort story.  

I get the same feeling from the billionaire books on BookBub.  I had a thought at one point that I should buy half a dozen of them, read them and take notes (once an academic, always an academic) and then do a snarky billionaire book. Maybe SHE can be the billionaire.  No, that makes him a fortune hunter.  Maybe he isn’t a billionaire.  No, that cuts the juice out of the trope.  Maybe he’s not that good-looking and is kind of bumbling, but then you find out why he’s a billionaire . . . no, Heyer did that in Sprig Muslin.  NO, NO, IN COTILLION.  Maybe she’s a . . . 

Can’t do it.  If you strip the comfort out of a comfort story, it’s just another story..  

Maybe that’s why the Marriage of Convenience story has survived in the twenty-first century , a time pretty much made for walking away from people you don’t want to be with..  That they’re-trapped-with-each-other-until-they-fall-in-love story has morphed into a dozen variations on the theme–they’re snowed in, they’re trapped in an elevator, he’s hired to protect her and can’t leave her side (I’d really like a she’s-hired-to-protect-him, but hey), they’re pretending to be married to solve a crime (any trope that’s good enough for X-Files, Person of Interest, and Leverage is good enough for me no matter how many times it’s been used)–and I still greet them with delight.  Come on, who didn’t squeal when Reese and Zoe went undercover with Bear in suburbia?   The MOC is the uber-comfort story.  It’s the non-sociopathic version of the rape romance: I didn’t want to but I had no choice (because I had to solve the crime, save the ranch, defeat the forces of evil).  And then once I got to know him . . . . (I’ve decided all rape romances, regardless of historical significance, should die in a fire, but that’s just me.  And a hundred million American women who have had it up to here with men who don’t understand that you are not allowed to touch unless invited.  Specifically invited.  Preferably in writing since so many men are so damn bad at reading body language.  And undestanding the word “No.”.)

Of course there are comfort stories that are stand-alone and wonderful.  We just did Hogfather,, and there’s Thief of Time and Going Postal and Good Omens.  Pratchett is a comfort read because he repeats the same world and characters, but he makes a new and different story each time.  I think that’s voice and world view even more than character and place.  I go back to Pratchett because I want to spend time with Susan, but even more because I want to spend time with Practchett.

And of course the other reason I’m thinking about comfort stories is that I’m hauling out my Christmas trees and plugging in lights and wrapping packages and doing all the other things that tell my Christmas story.  I even have a creche that I Iove; it’s a Mexican clay set with cactuses with chickens on top of them.  I’m not a practicing Christian beyond “Try to be a good person,” but I love that manger scene.  Because of the chickens.   And I love my Christmas trees which stay decorated so that all I have to do is plug them in every year. They’re my comfort story for December.  

All of which has convinced me that comfort stories are necessary to mental health.  We can’t always be challenged, surprised, thrilled, and terrified.  For Americans, that’s our everyday reality now, (Go, Kristin Gillibrand!) so fantasy has to step in to save us.   As 2017 finally comes to a close (please let 2018 be better, please, please, please), I am now here to praise comfort stories.

Also, if you live in Alabama, go vote against that lying child molester.  I need some surprising but good news tonight as I watch Brokenwood again.

THANK  YOU, ALABAMA!

SaveSave

The post In Praise of Comfort Stories, Edited appeared first on Argh Ink.

Cherry Saturday, December 9, 2017

Today is International Anti-Corruption Day.  Yes, the irony is strong in this one.  It’s also Vet Day, Pastry Day, and Christmas Card Day.  Any of those are better.  Which means I should take my dogs to the vet, give them cookies, and then write my Christmas cards,  

But it’s going to snow and I have a lot of work to do, so maybe just the cookies.  Although I did get a great “Do Not Bend” rubber stamp for my fancy-schmancy Christmas cards.  Hmmm . . . 

 

The post Cherry Saturday, December 9, 2017 appeared first on Argh Ink.

Argh, Name Question in Nita, SPOILER

I have a quick spoiler question for anybody who’s read the last version of Act One (weeks ago). So if you don’t want spoiled, don’t read below or in the comments.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

SPOILER!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Okay, if you’re still here, you’re on your own.

Remember how Nick had lost an agent named Sadiel and then Nita bought Mort’s birthday present from Sadie’s Demonista?  I don’t care if people saw that reveal coming, but I do care if people are wondering why the hell Nick and Nita don’t get it sooner or, even more important, Jeo and Rab, who are not stupid and who have been there longer and investigated the town.  I like the idea that she doesn’t want to change her name, but I’m afraid it’s just so obvious that it makes everybody in the story idiots.  So when you read the first act, did you make the connection and wonder why none of the people in the story did?  

Because I think I have to change her alias.

SaveSave

The post appeared first on Argh Ink.

This is a Good Book Thursday

It’s cold here and I have a fireplace, so I’m reading in front of it with hot chocolate and a warm puppy.  Three puppies, actually, and the chair is not that big, but by god, we’re together.  What are you reading?

SaveSave

The post This is a Good Book Thursday appeared first on Argh Ink.

Exploiting You Again: Last of HQ Hardcovers in the Crusie Store

Remember last year when we did the signed edition thing in the Crusie Book Store?  Mollie just put the last of the signed Harlequin and SMP  hardcovers in there (that’s a drop down menu on the page, there are more than just Strange Bedpersons).  Mollie is usually pretty swift on the shipping (ask those who bought last year), but it’s the Christmas shopping season and evidently everybody is ordering online which means the shipping services are swamped, so be warned.  

Harlequin hardcovers:

Strange Bedpersons  

Getting Rid of Bradley 

And in SMP hardcover:

Maybe This Time  

There are also signed paperbacks, so feel free to browse around.  Audio sold out fast, so thank you!.but there are a few cassette sets left and they’re free with any order, if anybody still has a cassette player..  We’re giving half of the profits to Planned Parenthood and the ACLU again; last year that was over $2000, but the shop is pretty bare at this point, so it won’t be nearly that this year.  And unless I clean out the garage and find more copies (not impossible) this’ll be it for hardcovers until I finish Nita and that comes out.   In other words, do not hold your breath.

ETA: Mollie says we’re almost out of the large print books for five bucks, only one or two left of every title except Strange Bedpersons (five of those).  The covers on those are always ugly, but the words are the same.  Just bigger.

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

The post Exploiting You Again: Last of HQ Hardcovers in the Crusie Store appeared first on Argh Ink.

Cherry Saturday, Dec 2, 2017

Today is National Fritter Day.

 

Okay, this I didn’t know: a fritter is ANY food baked in batter.  Like even tempura is a fritter.  I prefer the apple fritters that are mostly doughnut and glaze, but you do you.  That picture up above?  Bacon-Apple Fritters.  And then there’s , , ,

So go fritter your day away, it’s Fritter Day.

SaveSave

The post Cherry Saturday, Dec 2, 2017 appeared first on Argh Ink.

The Argh Ink Book Club: Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather

Welcome to our discussion of Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather.  We can talk about anything you want, but especially:

Susan: Best protagonist or best protagonist ever?

Teatime: Is a batshit crazy antagonist that compelling?

Belief: Not just the power of belief in this story, the power of belief in all story.

Gift-giving: The complexity of exchanging (or just giving) things of value (or not so much value).

The movie: Good adaptation or bad?

Or whatever else you want to talk about. 

 

The post The Argh Ink Book Club: Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather appeared first on Argh Ink.