Victoria Janssen's Blog, page 98

Occupied Lands in World War One

The novel I'm working on now, a sequel to The Moonlight Mistress, focuses on the main werewolf characters from that novel and their marriage of convenience. Tanneken, the female werewolf, was working as a spy in the previous novel, so I decided to make her activities central to the plot.These are the books I've used so far. I recommend them all highly.I mentioned Tammy Proctor's Female

Carl Sandburg, "Among the Red Guns"

Among the Red GunsAfter waking at dawn one morning when the wind sang low among dry leaves in an elm Among the red guns, In the hearts of soldiers Running free blood In the long, long campaign: Dreams go on.Among the leather saddles, In the heads of soldiers Heavy in the wracks and kills Of all straight fighting: Dreams go on.Among the hot muzzles, In the hands of soldiers Brought from

The Bashful Hero

I wish more romance novels featured bashful heroes.I've never been a huge fan of the romance novel hero who's physically large and good at everything and gorgeous to boot. Except, I don't mind that combination of traits if the hero is bashful about being good at everything, or embarrassed because he's so tall, or just interesting in some way. To me, there's no point in reading about someone

Sex for the Oppositional

I'm sure I've seen another discussion, somewhere on the Internet at somewhen, a discussion of villains and sex. If I could remember where or when, I would hunt it up and post the links for your reading pleasure. But since I can't, I'll just ramble in my usual fashion.The villain of a story doesn't necessarily need to be Evil. They usually have more depth if they're like everyone else, and

Less Is Enough

There's a reason stories aren't made up of eighty percent description. It's because there has to be room for the reader.Reading is a collaborative exercise, between the writer and the reader. The writer has a shape or picture (or insert preferred visualization here) in her mind. She approximates that shape with words, intending to communicate them to readers. (Does any writer ever think their

Conflict

This is one of those posts where I'm writing about something obvious, but writing about it helps me to internalize it.You can't have a story without plot, and you can't have a plot without conflict.Conflict is wanting what you can't have. Barriers between you and what you want mean you have to make choices, either to face the issue or flee from it, or find that third decision which is something

Wordles for my novels!

I made some Wordles. Actually, I did this before, but I didn't save them. Click to see a larger version - you'll be sent to the main site. It's an application that transforms a large chunk of text (in this case, a novel) into a cluster of the most common words. Larger words appear more often in the text. You can then play with the layout to some extent, mainly the orientation of the words,

Siegfried Sassoon, "Editorial Impressions"

Editorial ImpressionsHe seemed so certain 'all was going well', As he discussed the glorious time he'd had While visiting the trenches. 'One can tell You've gathered big impressions!' grinned the lad Who'd been severely wounded in the back In some wiped-out impossible Attack. 'Impressions? Yes, most vivid! I am writing A little book called Europe on the Rack

"Water Music" free read!

I've put a new, downloadable free read up on my website. It's my first published story from December 2000, lesbian erotica titled "Water Music."You can download it here.When I participated in a reading for this anthology, at Bluestockings in New York City, not only did I meet other writers whom I still correspond with today, I was also privileged to see my story interpreted in American Sign

Line Editing, Up Close and Personal

I spent a large portion of the month of April revising The Duke and the Pirate Queen; some of the revisions responded to my editor's comments, some responded to a workshop critique, and some came from my fevered brain.I thought it would be interesting to share some of the line edits I made in the manuscript.Original version:Imena was far more devious than he'd predicted.Revised version:Imena was