Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 304

Free from Anne Stuart

Krissie sends you all this with love:

For the next three days the first book in the Maggie Bennett series, ESCAPE OUT OF DARKNESS, is free at Amazon. (To be followed up with #2). It’s the first series I wrote (many many moons ago) and it’s spies and assassins and exotic locations and a literally kick-butt heroine, plus you can’t beat the price.

Get it while it’s free, folks.

Waiting for the Other Shoe . . .

So two days ago, in a fit of utter stupidity, I deleted Voodoo Pad and all its files. Thousands of files, no exaggeration. All of the world building I’d done for the fairy tale books, all of the notes and pieces of the writing book, and half a dozen other projects I’d organized in there. No, I hadn’t backed it up. Because I’m STUPID, that’s why.

Then Lani wrote today and said Milton has injured his back–dachshunds do that–so she’s been schlepping him to the vet–and thank you very much, Lani–but now he has to be crated and subdued forever so he doesn’t cripple himself. Since Milton is a canine ping pong ball, this is going to be difficult for him, so he’s the puppy I’ll bring back with me in three weeks, poor little guy. He’s going to hate being crated, but he’s going to love all the attention he gets as the Only Puppy in the House.

So now I’m sitting here waiting for the Third Thing. Bad news always comes in threes.

Tick. Tick. Tick . . .

Lost in New Jersey

I know where I am in New Jersey, but I’m lost in thought. I’m also drowning in work, but I’m having trouble getting to it, probably because I’m lost in Thought. They should get a road map for that sucker or at least put up signs. Reminds me of the day Bob and I had to drive to a hotel in Milwaukee and they were doing a Big Dig and they’d taken down all the road signs, and Bob, stifling his rage, said that Milwaukee was an old Indian word for “Land of No Road Signs.” Maybe you had to be there. But the hotel was fabulous except that Bob got the room with the fireplace and gloated. He gloated when he got the suite in Arizona, too. And people wonder why we’re not still writing together.

Where was I?

Right, lost in Thought. Actually if it was just one Thought, I could navigate. But there are many Thoughts, a plethora of Thoughts, and they keep stepping on each other. It’s Black Friday in my brain. I would never go out on Black Friday and yet there it is in my head. Why does anybody go out on Black Friday? They call it Black Friday, for Christ’s sake, who would rush toward that? “On sale now, the Black Death!” “Me, me, I want TWO RATS.” You can stay home and order online–does Amazon have Black Friday?–and then watch a movie online and I understand in some places you can even order food online. I wonder if you can do that here in New Jersey? Well, obviously in some places in New Jersey you can but this place is remote. But that’s okay because there’s nothing in New Jersey that’s really remote. I can get to a town in ten minutes here. Took me a lot longer than that in Ohio.

Where was I?

Right, Thoughts. So I’m thinking about rewriting You Again since I had the SBI, but my head keeps going to this probably un-sellable (unsalable?) idea that I really, really love. But I have this derelict cottage that I need to move into before the rent on this place puts me in the poor house, and that’ll take money, and You Again will definitely deliver money since it’s been under contract since 2003, plus there’s the SBI and one of the greatest Best Friends I’ve ever written. But still this other idea, plus there’s Liz and Vince, and now that I’m thinking about cutting most of the 40,000 word first act so we can get to the rock-throwing part earlier, that’s a lot crunchier, too. I have to stop over-thinking these things. And start writing. Pick a lane, Crusie, any lane, and start typing.

Except that I’m behind on my McDaniel stuff. Fortunately my students have the patience of saints. They also have the typing skills of a million deranged monkeys because keeping up with the discussion posts is insane. Also I hate Blackboard which is the interface McDaniel uses. I love everything else about McDaniel, but I would set fire to Blackboard if I could. So anyway, the discussion posts: they’re graded in an effort to make sure everybody participates. Snort. You’d have to mow these people down with a flamethrower to get them to stop posting. They’re all brilliant and I’m learning a lot from the stuff they come up with but sweet Jesus, they post a lot. And now I’m behind on the grading because @#$%^&* (that’s code for “fucking”) Blackboard will not let me at the Module One Discussion Questions. Plus I now have two major assignments to grade and eighteen critiques to do, plus the lecture on Writing Love and the third assignment to give out, so I’m behind. Which makes me cranky. I’m not pretty when I’m cranky. You wouldn’t like me cranky. Oh, wait, I’m cranky most of the time on here. Never mind.

Where was I?

Oh, Writing Love. I used to do this insanely great workshop on Writing Love. The copulatory gaze, the dinner date, the whole thing was fabulous. And I’m sure I have the notes somewhere. Unfortunately they do not appear to be anywhere on either of my two computers. I do have the notes from the Yex and Violence workshop we used to do, so I can tell the McD students how to kill with their thumbs, but that’s not much of a help in writing romance. Although I would suppose that would depend on the romance. I also have the chat Lani and I did on romantic comedy. And I have miscellaneous notes. And a leaky memory, something about a Love Map, thought up by a guy named John Money. And all of that has to go into a lecture so I can hold up my end of this McDaniel deal. Lani says it might be on my Time Capsule. So now, all I have to do it figure out how to hook my Time Capsule to my laptop. I’m betting it involves a USB cord. By some miracle I actually know where the Time Capsule is. I think.

So after I do the Love Lecture and grade the assignments and do the critiques, I can get started on You Again again, except I have a TON of stuff from that–well, I’ve been working on it since 2003–which is going to have to go into Voodoo Pad and Scrivener. Voodoo Pad I’ve mastered, at least the minimum requirements, but Scrivener has just updated so I bought Scrivener for Dummies and now I must read it. That’s the hell of books, you actually have to read them. Lani was helping me clean out the bookcases and found How Not to Procrastinate or something like that, and she held it up and said, “Really?” and I said, “I don’t know, I never got around to reading it.” It’s like Thin Thighs in Thirty Days: if you buy the book, you should just get the thin thighs.

Speaking of Lani, I miss the people at Squalor on the River. I don’t miss Squalor, which is now evidently much less squalid since I threw out half of everything I own. Well, some of it went to Goodwill and some of it went to Lani and some of it went to Krissie but most of it went into big green trashbags. I had a lot of Stuff. Lani says I’m not a hoarder because I have no problem giving stuff away, but looking at the mass of things I’d accumulated, I have troubles seeing the difference. It really was appalling. And now it’s clean because they threw out everything I left behind that I hadn’t packed except for the dogs. I think they saved the dogs. I miss the dogs. I miss hearing Sweetness and Light giggling upstairs. I miss running into Alastair in the hall and having tea with Lani while we discussed Big Stuff. It helped tremendously that Krissie helped me move to NJ even though she tried to kill me on the road twice (“Mistakes were made”) because she stayed with me for a week so I could wander through the rental (which is about a third the size of Squalor on the River but still larger than Squalor on the Lake) and hear her tapping away on her laptop and then watch TV at night, although if she ever forces me to listen to her synopsizing an episode of The Twilight Zone again, we are going to have words.

Where was I?

Right. I’m having trouble concentrating in New Jersey even though I am buried in work and boxes of papers and I can’t find my T-shirts (although I did find my pjs and nightgowns so I have my work clothes) and I miss everybody. Somewhere along the way I turned into A Person Who Likes Living With People. And Dogs. Who knew?

Oh, and I’m also behind on posts for Argh. I have to figure out a way to put the SBI up in a way that I can take it down again, so probably not on Argh, maybe buried in the website? Oh, and I’m supposed to update the website. Except that I need to take pictures of the collages again but they’re in Ohio except they’re supposed to be on their way to Pam at McDaniel and I promised her whatever papers I found, too, which means I should go through these damn papers which I have to do anyway in case in a moment of briliance I actually printed out my notes on Writing Love. It’s possible. I found my old grad school papers, and I wrote those before I started writing fiction. Or maybe I’ll just break out the salsa and whole wheat chips and a Diet Coke and go watch HGTV which is like valium without the side effects although really, I never had any side effects on Valium, it just made me woozy which is why I flushed the rest of the bottle down the toilet. In Ohio.

Where was I?

Right. New Jersey. Things are going to be different here. As soon as I get these damn Thoughts straightened out.

FREE BOOK: Lani Diane Rich’s Ex and the Single Girl on Kindle

I’ll be back later with a real post but in the meantime:

FREE BOOK:

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You Again Again, Part 3: The Scathingly Brilliant Idea

Note: I didn’t put the SBI in here because it would be a spoiler. I can put it in another post that says SPOILER DON’T READ THIS at the top, but you’ll all read it anyway. Which is fine as long as you don’t yell at me later.



I always liked You Again. I didn’t like most of what I had written, but I loved the book. The heroine kicked butt, her best friend was a lot of fun to write, the musician was cranky with snark, the godmother had flair, the annoying family (the Awful Inglethorpes) churned the waters, the setting was based on a Clue board, and the hero was a Good Guy, if a little bland. There was Stuff. But it wasn’t enough, you can’t write a book with just Stuff, even if it’s really good Stuff, you have to have Juice. There was no Juice. All the elements were there, but the story wouldn’t go. So I went back to it again and again, trying to find the Juice. Nada.

Ten years later, while I’m trying to figure out what the hell I’m doing with my career, my life, my body, my mind, I become fascinated by two child characters. One is Delphie from Wild Ride who is still in utero in that book but who has fabulous potential: her mother is descended from two human whack jobs plus the fallen Etruscan goddess of the underworld (now a demon) and the Etruscan Devil, and her father was a mechanic possessed by the fallen Etruscan god of happiness (now a demon). Plus she’s growing up in a haunted amusement park with a mother who’s now a seer and a godmother who’s a sorceress–little dragons everywhere–and a stepfather who’s a completely normal expert on demons and their care and feeding. This kid I want to watch grow up. Maybe in a series of short stories. I don’t know, I’m cogitating.

The other kid has had a tragic early childhood, losing her mother at birth, her father at six, and her aunt at eight, all while living with her older brother in a haunted house (the aunt sticks around after death) being taken care of by harridan of a housekeeper and two ancient murderous spirits. That’s Alice. But when Alice is eight, her soon-to-be stepmother arrives on the scene and kicks supernatural ass and takes the little girl and her brother back to normality or as close to normality as this kid is ever going to get. This, I figure, is actually not very normal; Andie and North can make Alice secure and safe, but they can’t get rid of the ghosts who seek her out with their last wishes. So I tried a short story with Alice in elementary school (“Spooky Alice”), and I started a novella with Alice in junior high (“Ghost of Chance”), all because I wanted to spend more time with Alice.

What does this have to do with You Again? Well, all of this is swimming around in the back of my brain along with Claire and Rosie and Liz and Vince and Zo and Ecks and Petulia and Wyland and Gleep and Owl (turns out if you don’t write for three years, the ideas build up) and there tends to be some leakage between stories. Which is how I ended up wondering what would happen if Alice showed up at Rosemore.

Maybe This Time was a house book in the sense that the setting determined the boundaries: Alice couldn’t leave the house because the ghosts would kill if she left. Getting Alice out of the house was Andie’s biggest goal because it meant saving Alice. You Again is a house book in the same sense: the house isn’t the goal, but getting everybody out of the house before they’re all dead becomes the hero’s goal (subplot). Then in the adult Alice book I’ve been thinking about for three years (Haunting Alice and its companion book Stealing Nadine), Alice goes back to Archer House as an adult to a final confrontation with her now entirely batshit Aunt May. So I had Alice at eight (Maybe This Time), Alice at nine (“Spooky Alice”), Alice at fifteen (“Ghost of a Chance”) and Alice at thirty (Haunting Alice). There was a big leap in there, so while I was idly thinking of where Alice would be between fifteen and thirty, and thinking in terms of “Alice” and “trapped in big houses,” I remembered You Again, which had been intended to be my homage to Agatha Christie. What if there were three Alice Big House books? She’d only be the protagonist in the first one and the last one, but in between eight and thirty, maybe she could show up as a major supporting character, a teenager, wise beyond her years, stuck in a big house in southern Ohio again.

Of course, that meant there would be ghosts in You Again, which would mean that those two damn huge back story house parties could become part of the now because the people who had been killed at each of them could still be roaming the house. And my practical, just-the-facts driven heroine would be confronted with the antithesis of her world view. And her dreamy, life-is-a-movie-and-I’m-the-star best friend would think she’d lost her mind and have to change to take care of her. And the hero who’s the practical sort–he’s a lawyer–would have to accept that she can see ghosts.

Except why would Zelda start seeing ghosts?

Which is when the Scathingly Brilliant Idea occurred. I’d put it here, but it would be a spoiler and I’m not sure how we all feel about spoilers here. But trust me, it is SCATHINGLY brilliant. Even now, three months after I first had this SBI, I am stunned by its simplicity and its beauty. Sometimes I just get it right.

So then all I had to do was get Alice there, and part of the plot is that Rose is trying to get everybody to help her turn Rosemore into a B&B and then run it for her (she’s broke, but working herself would be tacky) and that her marketing strategy is that Rosemore is haunted, so she invited a medium to the Christmas party as entertainment, and since the medium is in her seventies, she brings her assistant (that would Isolde bringing Alice) and then there’s a snowstorm and they’re all snowed in . . .

See? Juice. All you need is a Scathingly Brilliant Idea and you’ve got juice. I think. I still have to sort out the plot, but I’m thinking that with three deaths, one at each turning point, and a big fight-to-the-death-in-a-raging-Ohio-River at the end, I may have a book here. Maybe. Probably. Kind of.

Back to work.

You Again Again, Part 2: What the Hell Is This Book About?

I have such a mass of stuff from trying to write You Again that going through it is going to be a nightmare. That means I need a touchstone, something that I can hold up beside each piece I find to see if it fits the concept of the book I’m writing now. Which means I need a concept. After which, I design the touchstone, which in this case is revamping my old collage. And after that, I go through a ten-year backlog of notes, pictures, drafts, outlines, e-mails from beta-readers, hoping that some of it strikes a chord and can be used again. Thank god it’s the Mercury retrograde; this stuff is perfect for that astrological clusterfuck.

The first thing I need is my protagonist. That’s Zelda. I’ve called her Esme and Roxie and a couple of other things, but she’s really always been Zelda. I’ve tried twice as many placeholders for her as I’ve had names, but what I’m really looking for is an attitude: No-nonsense, efficient, sharp sense of humor, driven, running so hard she’s forgotten she’s human, good heart, loyal friend, pushed to the breaking point as the story opens. She’s got dark hair and sharp eyes, and she’s not taking any more crap from anybody. So that’s good.

I had a lot of trouble with Zelda in the past because she didn’t have a reason to want what she wanted. That is, she wanted to find out who her father was, but if she didn’t, nothing awful would happen to her. So this time around, I’m giving her an incurable blood disease that might turn into leukemia (write what you know), and a need to discover who her paternal family is since the maternal side has died out. Zelda is the kind of person who will not rest until she has the answers she needs, and as the story progresses and somebody tries to kill her to stop her from finding out, she digs in deeper. That’s always a problem with protagonists and conflicts: why don’t they stop when the going gets rough? But for Zelda, the fact that the going is getting rough is more motivation to find out what about her past is so dangerous that somebody will kill her for it. Also, attempted murder pisses her off.

The question is, Why? What’s at stake? Many years ago, I told Bob Mayer I had a book I couldn’t fix, and he said, “Send it to me, I can fix anything.” Since that was pretty much true, I sent it to him to work on over the weekend. On Monday, he e-mailed me and said, “I’m going to need a little more time.” On Wednesday, he e-mailed me and said, “I’ll get this to you Friday.” On Friday, he e-mailed me and said, “What the hell did you do to this book?” On Sunday, he e-mailed me and said, “It’s about the house.” I e-mailed back and said, “It’s not about the house. I don’t know what it’s about, but it’s not about the house.” Because it wasn’t about the house. Fast forward ten years, and it’s still not about the house. I think it’s about money, about the money Zelda will gain and somebody else will lose if she finds out who her father was. But it’s more than that, it’s about belonging and family, too. So I have to cogitate. But I know who the antagonist is, and that’s huge. Well, I think I know who the antagonist is. I have it narrowed down to two.

Argh.

But back to my protagonist. When I went back to my collage, which is still a great touchstone, I realized that there was no there there: Zelda was buried in the mass of images:

So I found a picture that seemed to sum up her attitude, glued a lot of play money to it, and stuck it in the middle. I had to print the picture out three times, making it bigger each time, but now, at last, Zelda dominates her story concept. Progress:

(Lousy picture on my make-shift desk late at night. I’ll come back to it when I’ve updated the whole thing.)

So I have protagonist, goal, and motivation, plus identity (Independent Fixer). I love this protagonist and I want to write her. I love the love interest, Our Guy, and I want to write the love story. But the basic plot? Clogged with back story (two, count ‘em, TWO previous house parties) and nothing in there that’s fun or new. Until I had a scathingly brilliant idea . . .

Coming in Part 3: The Scathingly Brilliant Idea.

You Again Again, Part 1: Begin at the Beginning

So the computers are unpacked, the printer is hooked up, my collage unearthed, my coffee perked, and my giant post-its on the wall. It’s time to go back to Titanic. Or as I call it, You Again.

I have drafts of this damn novel from 2002. Also from 2003, 2004 . . . well, just look at this collection of first lines. They span ten years and they all suck. (That’s a technical writing term.)

March 31, 2002

“Zelda stood at the leaded glass window and watched the the old limo bounce over the broken drive down from the highway, fairly sure that the people on board were going to make her life particular hell for the next week.”

[That's not a bad opening. Unfortunately, it's not where the trouble starts.]

June 10, 2002

“Esme Whittier thought about bashing her godmother over the head with the Art Deco onyx elephant that sat on the Stickley table by her side and decided it wasn’t worth it.”

[Because nothing says "riveting opening" like a bunch of pretentious modifiers.]

March 28, 2004

“Zelda Banks stood in the chill, dark hall at Rosemore, clutching with equal firmness a heavy silver tray of martinis and her temper.”

[This is the "God, I'm clever with language" open. STOP THAT.]

April 19, 2004

“The December afternoon sun smudged through the heavy terrace doors and backlit Zelda Banks’s godmother, who looked treacherously lovely against the frosted panes, another reason Zelda wanted to kick her.”

["Smudged" as a verb for the sun? I must have been on drugs.]

May 2, 2004

“Esme Banks saw the two ugly stone pillars before Beth did and slowed the car, trying not to skid on the slush that was rapidly hardening into lumpy ice.”

[Welcome to a book about Careful Drivers. For the State Farm Agent Audience.]

May 17, 2004

Roxy Banks eased her ancient Volvo down the narrow lane, trying not to slide off the snow-covered road and into one of the ancient trees.

[Not as bad as some of the others but still, if this chippie's worst problem is sliding off a road . . .]

June 29, 2004

“Zelda Brass looked into the stony blue eyes of her best friend and thought, This is not good.”

[Not as bad as some of the others, at least there's conflict. Kind of. But I have to stop using that "This is not good" construction. I use it all the time in real life, but it's time to retire it in my fiction. Lazy writing.]

Mar. 7, 2009

“Roxy Banks eased her ancient Volvo down the narrow lane, trying not to slide off the snow-covered road and into one of the ancient trees.”

[Five years later, still trying to make this one work. No.]

July 28, 2011

Zelda Banks turned her ancient Camry down into the snow-crusted lane and thought, I am cheerfully optimistic and completely in control.

[This one has possibilities. At least there's personality on the page. Hmmmm. No.]

Nov. 23, 2011

“The lane to Rosemore was icy and full of potholes, twisting under heavy, snow-laden trees and a threatening December sky, and Zelda Banks said, “This is not good.”

[Oh, dear god.]

Also from about that time, I have a writing exercise on first lines from my MFA classes. I think the prof gave us a list of possible first lines and then had us choose six of them to open our books. For the record, most of these possible approaches are terrible ways to open a book. (Description of setting? REALLY?)

Jenny Smith

ENG 765

First Lines Exercise: Rose More

1. Generalization/God-like Pronouncement:

There are people for whom the world is completely relational; that is, it only exists in relation to them. Rose Montgomery Parker-Ray Baker was one of those people. She had three deceased husbands she referred to by their last names since that was all they’d left her (besides stocks, bonds, real estate, and a mass of very expensive jewelry), and twenty-eight ex-lovers she didn’t refer to all since she’d spent what they’d had when she was with them. She also had thirteen godchildren whom she referred to as “my Roses” in spite of the fact that two of them were named Martin and Gabriel.

[I don't write omniscient, so this was a non-starter before I started.]

2. Description of a Person

People who wrote about Rose Baker always mentioned her knowing gray eyes and her generous mouth, but if you asked Rose what her best feature was she said, “My breasts, darling. They were perfect, and they stayed that way for years and years. Men will do almost anything for perfect breasts. God knows they did for mine.”

[Again, omniscient. If I were going to write omniscient and use this, I'd start with "If you asked . . ." But I'm not going to. Because I don't write omniscient.]

3. Description of a Place

RoseMore looked like a stately home designed by Walt Disney after a couple of brandies. “Carve some more of those stone roses,” Walt would have said. “Can’t have too many stone roses. And throw in some pink stained glass.” The most disconcerting touch was the bas relief heads of the lady of the house that bracketed the carved walnut front doors. Rumor had it that Rose Parker-Ray had taken one look at the reliefs and promptly gone off for what was to become known as the best damn face lift in the world, returning to make the sculptor refinish the likenesses to match. Martin looked at the reliefs now and shook his head. “Before the face lift,” he said. “Look at the eyes.”

[There's a reason people make fun of "It was a dark and stormy night." Opening with setting is boring because it's not about character.]

6. Reminiscent Narrator

“Rose had her own way of handling financial disasters,” Isobel said. “She’d go to whomever she was sleeping with at the time and say, “But darling, what are we going to do with these?” and the bills would be paid. The only one it didn’t work with was Quentin. I was there when he came by one day, and she showed him the bills and looked adorable, and he said, ‘Try it on somebody else, love. There’ll be a new one along any minute.’ And of course, there was, but that was the last time Rose slept with a musician.”

[I could use this somewhere in the book, but as an opening line, it's awful. Also, it's freaking back story. Start where the damn story starts.]

8. Line of Dialogue

“You know, Nell,” Rose said to her goddaughter, “you’re getting damn close to middle age, and your family has all that German blood, and if you don’t start exercising, you’re going to turn into the same little troll your mother did.”

[I don't have any huge objections to starting with dialogue as long as it's tagged so people know who's speaking, but it's not one of my faves.]

11. Establish POV in 1st person, voice

“People called me the greatest whore of the twentieth century, but that’s just middle class morality. If God had meant me to support myself, he wouldn’t have made me fascinating.”

[Actually not a bad opening. Unfortunately, Rose is the antagonist, not the protagonist. Back to the drawing board.]

Yes, it was called Rosemore then. Yes, the heroine has had several names. So has the hero. It’s been set in several different time periods. It’s been a romance, a romantic suspense, and now it’s paranormal, too. Yes, I have a plan. Hell, I have a COLLAGE. That also needs updated. More about that later.

Tonight, I sort through ten years of drafts and broken dreams. Tomorrow, I go back into the sea of broken drafts and find a way to raise the Titanic fix this book.

Icebergs everywhere and not a raft in sight.

Anne Stuart is the Deal of the Day

Well, Anne Stuart is always the Deal of the Day in my book, but right now her On Thin Ice is the Kindle Deal of the Day, a steal at $1.99.

Update

I will be back to go through all the recommendations (Thank you!) and to catch up some time next week. We put off the move to NJ because of Sandy, so the three of us–Krissie, Lani, and Jenny, together again–will be on the road come Thursday. In the meantime, I’m still going through sixty-three years of stuff here and throwing things out like mad, sending the rest to Goodwill, including well over a thousand books (I don’t think I’ve ever gotten rid of a book in my life so they were everywhere). We moved up the date because the dry AMD in my right eye turned to wet AMD about three weeks ago, which ups the chances of the same thing happening in my left eye, at which point I won’t be able to drive. So we move now. Stay tuned for posts on low vision coping devices and how to write while rehabbing a cottage, coming some time in the last half of the month. And thank you again for all the book recommendations; this is going to be fun.

The Wind Map

There’s something very Zen about watching this . . . until you look at the East Coast:

The Wind Map