Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 306

I Can’t Face Facebook

Facebook makes me crazy, so I never go there which is bad because I have a page there. Also, that’s where my tweets come from, so when I don’t go there, there are no tweets. Which is okay because Facebook stuff makes for lousy tweets. Mollie says I can stop, which is good since I really already have just from being overwhelmed, but I feel guilty. Which leads me to Twitter. 140 characters. I wouldn’t have to do it that often. And you don’t have to answer tweets, right?

How do you feel about Twitter? What do you like about it, either as writer or follower (or whatever they call people who read other people’s tweets)? How much damage could I do to my career tweeting whatever comes to mind randomly? What’s the best advice you could give somebody (say, oh, me) who’s contemplating doing it? “Don’t”? That’s what I thought.

NSFW: Dogs and Goddesses Plotting Chat for McDaniel

Hello, Argh. I’ve been on the road forever so I owe you a post, and the McDaniel students asked about how Krissie and Lani and I collaborated on Dogs and Goddesses so I’m posting a piece of a chat transcript here (with digressions edited out) that shows how we worked out the climax of the book while we were writing it. It’s NSFW, so if you’re squeamish do not keep reading.

And all of Argh Nation keeps reading.

Lani D. Okay – so climax. End of Act Three – the fire – Abby’s POV. Act Four starts – rising from the ashes, right? So they’re gonna be drinking the punch in that, right? Is that the moment Abby figures the punch out? After the fire?

Krissie O. Yes. Toasting each other. Originally I had her figure it out in the middle of the night while she was having sex with Christopher. Or around that time.

Lani D. Because here’s the thing – I’d like that punch to give them something they didn’t have before. “I feel kinda invincible.”* Would that work for you guys?

Krissie O. Oh, yes!!!!

Lani D. But it’s the first time the three of them have it, right?

Krissie O. Yup.

Lani D. Okay – so they drink the punch, they have their invincible moment, and they decide they need to kick some ass. Now – question Jenny – when does Sam run off to die? Is it before the fire? After the fire?

Jenny C. No, after. The fire is what makes him leave. He realizes that Kami’s going to take them one way or another, and he has to get rid of her before she hurts them, so he goes to tell her that they’re going back to Mesopotamia and she can sacrifice him there.

Lani D. Okay – so, will this work – if they drink the punch, get kinda invincible, and then Sam goes off to die. That needs to be in Shar’s POV – does Shar have an after-the-fire scene?

Jenny C. Not so far but she can have.

Krissie - I think Shar has to have the POV where Sam goes off to die, don’t you?

Jenny C. I’m open.

Krissie O. It makes sense — the scene for the POV of the person who has the most to lose.

Lani D. So maybe these can be shorter scenes – they rise from the fire (Abby) Sam goes off to die (Shar) They plan to kick some goddess ass (Daisy). Will that work?

Jenny C. Man, you just want to see her bleed to love him.**

Lani D. Oh, I’m sorry. Did you not get the memo? We’re writing ROMANCE.

Jenny C. LOL

Lani D. I’ll give you a minute to look it up on Wikipedia.

Jenny C. I was writing a dog story. Now if MILTON was going off to die. That would be entirely different.

Lani D. ROFL

Jenny C. Besides Sam’s not awestruck during sex so really, no loss.

Krissie O. Oh, I had a thought about Sam and sex. I don’t remember ever getting the sense that he really really wanted her. He was just bumbling around, fucking everything. I never got the sense that he would really do anything for her. Is there anything in an earlier scene that shows him really wanting her? Because I think we need that for the scene to have power.

Jenny C. Well, you know, women. Dime a dozen.

Krissie O. We know Shar’s been thinking about it.

Jenny C. I had notes on stuff. But I kind of ended up moving story.

Krissie O. But I don’t know that we get a sense of Sam really needing it from her.

Jenny C. Sigh. Second act rewrite.

Krissie O. Just a thought while it was zipping through my SCB.

Jenny C. I did a thing where they danced to “One Night,” but there was no place for it.

Lani D. I think there are hints with how he loved Sharrat. But yes, that needs to be in there.

Krissie O. Yup. But that was it.

Jenny C. No, you’re right.

Lani D. And just a little AMAZEMENT. That’s all I ask.

Jenny C. “My GOD, she has a VAGINA! And I’m IN IT.”

Krissie O. No, she has a glittery hooha.

Jenny C. And the blue glitter is AWESOME.

Krissie O. lapis blue

Lani D. heh heh heh

Krissie O. or do I mean labia blue?

Lani D. Oh dear

Krissie O. stop that!

Jenny C. Penicillin clears that right up. So, glitter, awestruck, loves her more than Milton. Got it.

Lani D. Lol. She’s on it.

Jenny C. Jamie had any yet?

Lani D. Jamie will get some, don’t you worry. Nice deflection, by the way, Crusie.

Jenny C. ON THE PAGE?

Lani D. YES ON THE PAGE. Jesus.

Jenny C. None of this “and later they had great sex” stuff.

Lani D. You give me amazement, I’ll get Jamie laid. Deal?

Jenny C. I want to see the AWE IN HIS EYES.

Lani D. YOU WILL.

Jenny C. LOL.

Lani D. Hey, babe, you had dick, but I had AWE.

Jenny C. Awe without dick is meaningless.

Lani D. Can I quote you on that?

Jenny C. Absolutely. Just spell my name right.

Lani D. OOOH on the header at the site. “Jennie Cruise says…”

Jenny C. I SAID SPELL MY NAME RIGHT. Jesus.

Lani D. Dick and awe? Kinda like shock and awe only effective.

Krissie O. A new slogan.

Jenny C. Dick and Awe. The old vaudeville team.

Lani D. SERIOUS. WORKING. PROFESSIONAL. Oh, hell.

Jenny C. Okay, I think the fourth act was a little short without the extra scenes so I think it’s good.

Lani D. So that’ll work? Then we storm the castle.

Jenny C. Works for me.

Lani D. Abby gets us there, starts the chant.

Jenny C. Although I have to write that goddamn emotion again. You know, I’m just not GOOD at that.

Lani D. Daisy takes it, they get knocked on their asses, Kami stabs Sam . . .takes it from there when the Three regroup – Mina tries to kill Shar – Kami saves Shar, gets banished for her trouble. And then, Shar’s POV when they raise Sam. Heh heh heh.

[Major Buffy Digression)

Lani D. You know, it just occurred to me that I don’t think we’re gonna work tonight.

Jenny C. I have to write that freaking drunk scene since I got NOTHING done today.

Lani D. Well, the mood we’re in now works great for the drunk scene.

Krissie O. I wrote two lousy pages of my love scene. But I intend to persevere.

Jenny C. It happens after a FUNERAL. I gotta get them from “My GOD she’s dead,” to “She said, ‘Awe’ heh heh heh.”

Lani D. No, it doesn’t happen after the funeral. It happens after they witness a traumatic death.

Jenny C. Oh, right, that’s BETTER.

Krissie O. Yeah, but Daisy doesn’t care, remember?

Jenny C. “MY GOD SHE DIED, pass the punch.”

Krissie O. Not a tear was shed.

Lani D. Oh, hell.

Jenny C. Heartless bitch.

Lani D. “I never liked that tramp…”

Jenny C. There’s an idea. Let’s kill Karen. None of us liked her.

Lani D. Yes! One more to the body count…

Jenny C. We have a body count of one. And it doesn’t really count because it’s a human being, not a dog.

Krissie O. Karen? I’ve forgotten her. Which means she’s expendible.

Lani D. Right.

Jenny C. Now if we killed a DOG . . .

Krissie O. Body count of two. Sam dies.

Lani D. Tallie needs company. It’s no fun being dead by yourself.

Jenny C. Yeah, Sam and Tallie in the afterlife. Sam would rise just to get away from her.

Krissie O. He’d fuck her. You know he would. He’s equal opportunity. Since he’s not awed by Shar.

Jenny C. OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD . . .

And it all went downhill from there.

But yes, that’s how we collaborated.

*Quote from Big Trouble in Little China

** Fleetwood Mac reference

Bravery Lives in the Heart, and Some Day It Will Be Summoned

Joe Biden’s speech on 9/11 2012.

Banksy in Motion, Courtesy of ABVH

If you ever wanted to know what motion does to pictures . . .



Animated Banksy (via Gawker).

More great animation of static images by the same artist, ABVH, here.

Although the static ones are also pretty good (Dr. Who, signing his name):

Do-Your-Own Amazon Reviews: Don’t

Another author just got caught posting 5 star reviews of his own books and trashing the books of other writers on Amazon. He’s certainly not the first, and he won’t be the last, but it still stuns me every time.

There’s no way I could write a review of my own book like this guy did of his:

Shortlisted for the Barry Award for Best British Crime Fiction 2008, also shortlisted for the Quebec Booksellers’ Prize, the 813 Trophy, the Europeen Du Point, and then Winner of the Inaugural Prix Roman Noir Nouvel Observateur (up against James Lee Burke, Don Winslow, Carl Hiaasen and Dennis Lehane), this is a modern masterpiece.

I don’t need to really say anything about the plot of this book. All I will say is that there are paragraphs and chapters that just stopped me dead in my tracks. Some of it was chilling, some of it raced along, some of it was poetic and langorous and had to be read twice and three times to really appreciate the depth of the prose…it really is a magnificent book.

Ignore all dissentors and naysayers, this book is not trying to be anything other than a great story, brilliantly told. Just buy it, read it, and make up your own mind. Whatever else it might do, it will touch your soul.

Honest to god, you can write that about your own book? I think my books are great, but if I were reviewing them, I’d be forced to say things like, “Unfortunately, Faking It begins in the wrong place, giving us an entire unnecessary scene before the story starts,” or “The inclusion of the dog in Welcome to Temptation seems arbitrary, especially as Crusie appears to forget he exists for the last three-quarters of the book,” or “Maybe This Time might have been stronger had Crusie emphasized the romance more in the first half of the book,” or . . .

Well, you get the idea.

Maybe if I used his self-review as an example:

Shortlisted for the longest-past-deadline novel in the history of St. Martin’s Press, Lavender’s Blue is a modern miracle since nobody ever thought the author would finish, the author included.

I don’t need to really say anything about the plot of this book. All I will say is that there are paragraphs and chapters that just stopped the author dead in her tracks because she had no clue where to go from there. Some of it was funny, some of it raced along, some of it was so incoherent that it had to be read twice and three times for an even vague understanding of the prose…it really is a troubled book.

Ignore all defenders and apologists, this book is not trying to be anything other than a finished story, finally told. Just buy it, read it, and make up your own mind. Whatever else it might do, it will touch your wallet.

So another reason why I don’t write my Amazon reviews is that I’d be no good at it.

But if that wasn’t enough, I also wouldn’t do it because I couldn’t live with myself. I do have to sleep at night. Even if I didn’t get caught, the guilt would haunt me until I finally went back to Amazon and posted “You know that glowing review by Artemesia Smith? I wrote that. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m a lousy lousy person, I’m really, really sorry.”

The sad thing is, his book already had hundreds of five star reviews. it’s evidently a great book. And yet he felt the need to add to the praise it had legitimately garnered while trashing those he saw as competitors. I always find it odd when people like that write good books. Shouldn’t their lack of values, of human empathy, make them awful writers? But evidently not, when you think how many of the great writers like Robert Frost and Ernest Hemingway were sons of bitches.

Even so, I feel secure in thinking that Bob and Ernie would never stoop this low.

Dear Campbell: I’ll Be Buying Your Soup This Weekend

From brainless marketing to brilliant: Campbell is celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Andy Warhol’s soup can painting by selling cans of soup at Target this weekend in wrappers inspired by the painting, godawful gaudy and more fun than any soup can should ever be:

Dear Bic: WTF?

I’d rant about this but some things just speak for themselves (or Gawker speaks for them):

Amazon customers review the Bic for Her Pen

I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people jump on something and make mock so well. Amazon should be proud. Bic, on the other hand . . .

Being Somewhere Else

I’ve been reading Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer in which she says that she read voraciously as a child “to repeat the dependable out-of-body sensation of being somewhere else” (italics hers). I think that’s true of any kind of story, but I think it’s true in spades of fantasy. The key is to not make Somewhere Else so different that it’s not understandable. Okay, that’s a terrible sentence but you get my drift.

So Buffy is working in the real world, but the real world is Sunnydale and full of demons. Nick in Grimm is working in Portland, but it’s Portland full of hexenbeasts and reapers and Monroe. (Come to think of it, Leverage is in Portland this season, too. Is Portland giving great film tax credits or something?) The Doctor ends up god-knows-where every episode, but there’s always a human-like hierarchy and psychology at work; it’s never completely alien to our understanding. The Discworld is insane, but it’s clearly an analog of our world. Farscape is a big quarreling family trapped together in an RV, alien members not withstanding.

So is part of the lure of fantasy that Somewhere Else, that somewhere new but not too new, a place we know but different or a place we don’t know but not that different?

(I may be obsessing on this fantasy thing for awhile, so apologies to those of you who aren’t supernatural wonks.)

The Magic of Magic

I’m still sedating myself with supernatural TV in between bouts of honest work, and I’m trying to figure out why. I’m not a fan of horror at all (not trashing it, good horror is a thing of beauty, it’s just not my thing), but Dr. Who and his monsters are still my go-to drug of choice (tried three episodes of Farscape and I’ll go back for more but really, it’s the Doctor for me). Some of it is just good storytelling (“Love and Monsters” not withstanding; Davies must have been on drugs when he wrote that awful episode) but it’s more than that. I just can’t figure out what it is.

I was thinking it might be in the truly great Monsters: the best seasons of Buffy had the best Big Bads (there will never be a villain as wonderfully awful as the Mayor again). But then I look at the Daleks, possibly the worst antagonists ever designed–for many years they couldn’t climb stairs which is a big flaw for those multi-storied interior battles–and think “maybe not.” The Cybermen, the Silence, the Slitheen . . . there’s not a supernatural Hannibal Lecter in the bunch. Okay, the Master comes close, but still, it’s not the antagonists.

Then I thought maybe it was the ‘shipper in me: the Doctor and Rose, the Doctor and Martha, the Doctor and Donna, the Doctor and Amy, those intense relationships that are rarely romantic, at least not reciprocated romantic, but are completely, intensely devoted in a simple, up front way. When the Master turns everybody in the world into a clone of himself and only Donna is left unchanged, he rages at the Doctor, “What did you do?” and the Doctor says, “Did you think I’d leave my best friend unprotected?” and it’s lovely in its simplicity and truth. They were never lovers but they loved each other and that’s incredibly powerful. (Don’t get me started on the Doctor’s farewells to his one real romantic love, Rose; those leave me weeping helplessly every time.)

But now I’m thinking it’s the heroes. Farscape’s matter-of-fact everyday astronaut hero who rolls with whatever the universe sends him, Sam and Dean fighting the unworldly and breaking for a beer when the demon battle’s won, Jack Carter of the normal IQ keeping the world safe for geniuses, the everyday guy with otherworldly powers. I think the Doctor is That Guy with 900 years of experience fighting the Big Bads of every galaxy, still with enough enthusiasm to yell, “Fantastic!” every time he sees something new.

But I’m guessing. I’ll have to watch all the Whos again to be sure, plus Farscape and Warehouse 13 (YAY a new series!) and everything else on the list (must make that list). In the meantime, I want to know why you respond to the supernatural stories (or why you don’t; that’s good, too). I know it’s a lot more complex than the stuff I’ve sketched above, and I know you have answers because The Truth is Out There. (Gotta rewatch those, too.)

What is it about this stuff that’s so powerful?

Things That Go Bump on TV

I’m on a major TV fantasy kick right now. Fantasy in books goes back a long way for me, starting with Andre Norton’s Witch World books and the early McCaffrey Dragon books and Marion Zimmer Bradley . . . I’m big on butt-kicking fantasy heroines. But there wasn’t that much on TV until Buffy came along (no, I am not counting Bewitched) except for that one glorious season of Charmed when Phoebe was Queen of the Damned. Buffy, of course, is the Greatest TV Show Ever, Fantasy Division, although Dr. Who runs a very close second (I consider Angel part of the Buffy-verse). Grimm has huge potential which I wish it would get off its ass and fulfill (if Juliette wakes up from that coma with black eyes and a thirst for vengeance on that witch of a blonde that her boyfriend bit on the tongue and made powerless, I will be MUCH happier). I had a great time with the single season of Dresden Files, too. But now I’m working my way through the ninth, tenth, and eleventh Dr. Whos for the fourth time (I told Krissie who my favorite Doctor was and she said, “You’ll have to fight me for him,” so I think that tells you we’re sisters, right there), which means it’s time for new Things That Go Bump on the Screen. Come through for me, Argh People. I need fantasy TV (or movies, but I’m liking episodic series at the moment) that’s smartly written with strong women characters and a sense of humor (although not necessarily a comedy, just story that doesn’t take itself too seriously, and no I don’t mean Eureka, thanks anyway). What do you recommend?