Jordan Castillo Price's Blog, page 93

Hemovore Under the Hood #2 - Exposition

Show, don't tell. Writing advice books have been giving us this order for so long it's lost its meaning, kind of like if you say the word "cheese" over and over until it doesn't sound like a word anymore. (Or, if you really want to freak yourself out, you can do it with "the." But I digress...)

So if "show don't tell" is so old-hat that it no longer means anything, then what's the whole deal with exposition, and why should we care?

Exposition is when you tell readers what's going on rather than wr

Hemovore Under the Hood #1 - Characterization

I thought I’d use my new novel Hemovore to talk about some writing mechanics.

 

Character -- quirky vs. annoying

 

It’s a fine line, I think, between a memorable character with a distinctive voice, and a character who annoys a reader so badly that they have to go have an Internet rant at the author’s expense. The fact that many popular characters delight some readers while making other readers cringe goes to show that intriguing and annoying are in pretty close proximity of each other on t

Catch Hemovore Today

Hemovore went up for sale approximately two seconds ago. I'm happy it hit the web before I had to go to work. It would make me crazy if I couldn't post a link to the story of my heart before I had to start slogging through the salt mines. (Well, okay, I'm working on a digital history project that I actually proposed. It's kinda fun.)

Buy Hemovore here

Obsidian Bookshelf has a deliciously lengthy, cerebral and spoiler-free review in which Val says,
"[Hemovore:] is character-driven fiction with a lot

Win win win!

I'm donating a ebook copy of Camp Hell for Wave to give away on her blog today. Leave a comment if you wish to enter! So far chances are good -- only three comments there!
http://www.reviewsbyjessewave.com/?p=1618

Cat surgery

Those of you who get my newsletter know Frankie's angelic mug by now. He had surgery to remove a lump in his neck this morning. It turned out to be a benign cyst. He's doing well and I should see him when I get home from work today.

PHEW.

I'd been trying my best not to worry, but you know...worry leaks through anyway. I come from a long line of worriers. 

Refilling the Well -- Circus World Trip

Today was a Circus World kind of adventure. We stopped at a casino for lunch on the way and met a Native American guy making and selling beaded jewelry, so we got this necklace for Pete's sister. We figured she'd like it better if it had a cool story to go with it, so we had the artist take a picture of us with it in the bear's mouth. The bear was named Bob. He died in 1954. (you can click on the pix for bigger images; I'll put the rest under a cut.)


Whatever we expected at Circus World, it wasn'

July JCP News is Out!

It's a bird -- it's a plane -- it's my monthly newsletter!

Gear up for my new novel Hemovore, a vampire thriller coming in two short weeks! Check out some short stories in brand new formats, including Sony Reader, Palm, and Stanza for iPhone. And most importantly, get a cat update! (Crazy cat people of the world are rejoicing...everyone else rolling their eyes. Sorry, can't help it -- I think it's in my genes.)

Find JCP News though the archive at
http://psycop.com/NL

Subscribe to it at
http://ti

For those of you who read M/F too

I've been making some of my existing short stories available in new formats lately, and I decided that my readers wouldn't be too terribly confused if I decided to publish an m/f story, and that probably some occasionally read both m/m and m/f. And mostly I just always loved this story, because it's dark and funny and weird. It originally appeared in the Mammoth Book of the Kama Sutra.

The Serpent in the Garden
Shirina has been studying an arcane scroll scrawled with tinctures and potions, and she

Worth the chill

Yes, it's July and therefore summer here, but I was still a bit iffy about going lake swimming seeing as how it can take a while for things to really warm up in Wisconsin. But we got there and I thought, well, I'm here, I might as well. And it was hideously cold as I stepped in, but eventually I adjusted and inched out a bit farther, and a bit farther. And once my butt was wet, I figured I might as well start swimming.

In my work-in-progress, I was concerned that I might not be conveying my love-

Cell phone question

Preemptively, in my own defense, I assert that I'm not a total technophobe. I don't know how this would work because I've lived in cell phone dead zone for eight years, so my phone is usually turned off and floating around my car somewhere. I guess I may have to admit to being phone-phobic. I loathe talking on the phone and avoid it at any cost.

So here's my question, to keep my phone phobia from showing in my fiction:

If someone calls you for the first time on your cell phone from their cell phon