Marian Allen's Blog, page 425

Summing Up SAGE

So the good folks at Hydra Publications bought SAGE as a trilogy. I’ve signed the contract, done the edits, and Book 1 is in the pipes for publication.

Now comes the hard part. Now I have to summarize it.

I managed a synopsis of 2-3 pages, but now I need to write one of those descriptions that sell a book online. As Kris Bock says, the thing that’s missing in most of those descriptions is the flavor of the book.

When Elsie, the pampered daughter of a minor official, is chosen as the ruler’s bride, her mother tells her what she’s always suspected: Elsie is a foundling. What Elsie didn’t know is that she was one of many children marked for death–marked by the man she’s been called to marry, the man suspected of murdering his first wife, who was the true ruler of Layounna. Elsie’s daring escape into the wilderness sets off a series of interlocking events that lead directly to the man who demands the throne as the illegitimate son of the dead ruler.

Or:

The land of Layounna is in disorder. Rumors are growing that the regent murdered his wife, the true ruler, with the help of his mother and sister. The young man, Kinnan, who claims to be the illegitimate true heir, has been driven into exile, but the people expect him to return. The girl the regent chooses for his second wife vanishes from the castle, and none of his mother’s arts can find her. And they say a unicorn has been sighted.

Or:

The House of Onagros ruled Layounna for generations. Then the House of Sarpa, led by the Tarkastrian adept Oliva, used marriage, murder, and fear to usurp the throne. But, when Landry of Sarpa decides to legitimate his regency by marrying and producing heirs, his chosen bride vanishes with the help of a young apprentice scribe. Bride and apprentice are separated in the northern woods, and the apprentice, in searching for her, stumbles like a spark into tinder when he tells her story to the man who just might be the true heir to the House of Onagros.

I also need a logline. Anne R. Allen (no relation) has a great post on all this stuff at her blog. My buddy Monti Sikes has a post on loglines in which she tries to sum up her stories in 25 words or fewer.

How’s this:

Yes, yes. Unrightful ruler. Lost heir. Runaway bride. But plots go astray when the Four Divine Animals get involved: Unicorn, Phoenix, Dragon, and … Tortoise?

Would any of that make you give the book a second’s glance? Jane, would those make you blip past it, even if it were free? Help?

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Try to sum up the flavor and content of a book you know well in 25 words or fewer.

MA

#SampleSunday – poem – Felony

All you fiction writers out there — yeah, I’m talking to you — yeah, you know what I’m sayin’.

Felony

by Marian Allen

If I blunder into the dark alley

of my past, my experience,

I meet myself there,

a masked thug,

lying in wait

to rob myself

of plain coin.

Honesty is helpless

before the twin fists of

encoding and indirection.

I am a martial artist

at telling what was

as it wasn’t,

shifting value

from one pocket

to another.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Write about something that affected you very strongly, but set it in another place and have it happen to somebody very different.

MA

#Caturday — The Cat From Hell

Yes, Jane, I’m talking about Tootsie.

Everybody knows bad-tempered cats, cats who have their little ways. C. Douglas Ramey, long-time director of Louisville’s Shakespeare in Central Park, had a cat who liked to hide under chairs and leap out and bite your ankle as you passed.

Tootsie took it to a whole ‘nother level.

Tootsie was Jane’s cat, the only one of Jane’s cats I didn’t like. Well, to be honest, it wasn’t that I didn’t like Tootsie. I would have loved to love her–I mean, she was a cat. She was, as I recall, petite and pretty. But Tootsie wanted the whole wide world to consist entirely and exclusively of herself and Jane. She hated everyone and everything that distracted from that.

I won’t even get into the reports of what Tootsie did to men foolish enough to come visit Jane. I believe they’ve banded together to form a choir. Of sopranos.

Let’s just talk about Tootsie’s attitude toward me. Hatred may be too mild a word. Psychotic hatred may come closer to it. She hid out under furniture and darted out and wrapped her talons around my ankle and bit plugs out of me. It was a relief to hear her blood-curdling growls, because then I knew where she was.

One time, I came visiting bringing with me a brand-new stylish blue plastic purse. I put it next to me on the couch. The next thing I knew, Tootsie had curled up on the other side of it, being very quiet and relaxed.

“Well!” Jane and I agreed that she must be resigned to my visits, and we were very pleased.

Then I got up to go, and my purse declined to accompany me. Tootsie had lain there and methodically and deliberately chewed through the strap. If it were leather, I would have thought it was just that it tasted kind of like food, but it was plastic, and the destruction was nothing but sheer, calculated malice.

I believe Jane finally decided she had to choose between Tootsie and the entire rest of the world and took Tootsie to a relative’s home in the country, where she (Tootsie, not Jane) lived out her days terrorizing the countryside.

A cat that shall live in infamy.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A friend’s animal hates your character.

MA

Jay Noel And His Amazing Cliche List

I had a comment yesterday from Jay Noel, and followed his link to his post called My Personal List of Sci-Fi and Fantasy Cliches.

It’s a pretty comprehensive list, and reminds me of conversations my friend Jane and I have about downloading free books. She did a post for me about how to turn readers off with your free sample. It’s such a good post, I feature it in the sidebar. But entire free books have become so common, we’ve been talking about how we decide to try or not try a totally free book based on the description on Pixel of Ink.

There are some we click past blip blip blip. Chosen one — blip. Discovers her unexpected ability to — blip. How can her heart decide between two men who — blip. The fate of the world hangs in the balance and only one man can — blip. We probably miss out on a lot of good reads, but the ones we — I should only speak for myself — the ones I pick are the ones that have an obvious originality. My descriptions for my own books are boring; I need to work on them big time!

Jay’s list is a good one to go through, whether you’re a reader or a writer. What do you WANT to see in a book? Maybe you’ll always go for a love triangle. Maybe knowing what’s going to happen from the first page is a comfort to you. Me, I will always read a book with a chick on the cover all darkish and tattooed and holding a bladed weapon. ALWAYS. If MR. AND MRS. BOJO JONES had had a picture of a tattooed, blade-wielding chick on the cover, I would have read it.

Well, that’s enough of that. Have a nice weekend. Tomorrow is Caturday and the next day is Sample Sunday. See ya!

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Take one of Jay’s chichés and turn it on its ear.

MA

There I Go Again

The new parts for my computer came today, and I got a painless edit on SAGE from my new editor at Hydra Publications, so I celebrated by entering another Blog Hop. It’s like the A-to-Z April Blog Challenge that I did the past two years, only it’s just one day: September 10.

I’ll give a free book to anybody besides Jane who knows the significance to me of that date.

A Blog Hop is an event for which bloggers sign up, pledging to do what the Hop requires. This particular one is about chocolate, so how could I resist? I couldn’t, that’s how.

One of the peeps hosting the hop is science fiction and fantasy author M. Pax. Here’s the link to where you can see who has already signed up and can sign up yourself, if you like: http://mpaxauthor.com/blog/whats-your-chocolate/

Feel free to join the fun!

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Write a scene with chocolate in it.

MA

Nourish The Beast

“Nourish The Beast” is probably my favorite play of all time. My mother and I saw it on PBS almost 40 years ago, and we’ve never forgotten it. The slack-jawed delight of it has never faded, and it’s on my bucket list to will a copy of it into existence so we can watch it again.

Here is a link to it on IMDB, for all the good that does me. I’ve Googled until my Googler is sore, but I can’t find a video recording of that performance. ~sigh~

The title comes from the scene in which Goya (the main character) and her current husband, Mario (who came in answer to an ad: “Wanted. A man”, which delighted him because here was finally a position for which he was qualified), discuss the matters that need to be attended to. One is feeding the dog. Mario writes it down as “nourish the beast”; if he should drop dead in the street, he would like anyone who searches his pockets to find such a note.

ZOMG I love this play!!!

Here is a link to the publisher, Samuel French, which is where I bought the copy I gave my mother. And here is a link to a PDF of one of the scenes turned into a monologue. And here is a link to a wonderful actor named Alex Robertson doing a stellar job performing that monologue.

I’m trying to get my meathooks on a video of that PBS performance. In researching this post (Yes, I do research them; I bet you thought I must made them up out of my head), I found that the UCLA Film & TV Archive has preserved it, and I’ve tweeted them on Twitter asking where I can get a copy. They’ll probably make me one for eleventy bazillion bucks. Ah, well, I can but try.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character writes a want ad for an unusual object, or writes an unusual ad for a common object.

MA

Song of the Geek

Two 1gb memory sticks have been ordered, as has a new hard drive. I tried to fire up the old desktop today to make sure I had everything off it I wanted, and it was ALL dead. Nothing left to do but go through its clothes and look for loose change. And so, of course, I wrote a poem, if “poem” is the word I want.

SONG OF THE GEEK

by Marian Allen

My computer wasn’t loading

Wasn’t booting up the system

Wasn’t booting, but was hanging,

Hanging, showing module failure.

A corruption in the OS?

After all, it was Mandriva.

Known, Mandriva, to be buggy.

So I reinstalled Mandriva.

Days went by without a problem

Then, once more, bootloader problems.

Many were the online fora

I perused in search of answers

Many were the Linux gurus’

Brains I picked in vain for guidance.

Many were the Linux flavors

I downloaded, but all failed me. 

Maybe if I start with “format”….

Wiped the drive and all my data.

Nothing but Mandriva loaded.

Who knew hard drives mate forever? 

Now I’m thinking, “Hard drive failure.”

Now I’ve ordered up a new one.

Now I’ve ordered RAM sticks mighty.

Mighty RAM sticks, nice bare hard drive.

Soon, I will install the hard drive,

Pop in place the mighty RAM sticks.

Soon, I will install the Linux —

Mint, Ubuntu, XUbuntu –

Possibly some other distro.

But it will not be Mandriva.

Stay tuned, boys and girls.

Meanwhile, I’m posting today at Fatal Foodies with the promise of blood on the countertop and at The Write Type on the subject of Sue Grafton scraping poop off her shoes.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character has to replace a tool he or she has used for a long time with success and satisfaction.

MA

Doug Corleone – Last Lawyer Standing

Don’t get excited; that was neither a mean joke nor a promise of a non-litigious future. LAST LAWYER STANDING is the title of Douglas Corleone’s latest — and last — Kevin Corvelli legal thriller.

Douglas has honored me with a guest post on how he feels about the end of this series as he moves on to a new one.

Take it away, Doug!

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~

The release of Last Lawyer Standing has been a bittersweet experience for me. This is the third and final book in the Kevin Corvelli series of legal thrillers published by Minotaur Books. In the Spring, Minotaur will release Good as Gone, the first book in a new series of international thrillers featuring a former U.S. Marshal named Simon Fisk, who now specializes in retrieving kidnap victims overseas. While I couldn’t be more excited to start a new chapter in my career, closing the first chapter is more difficult than I ever imagined it would be.

The Kevin Corvelli series began when my debut novel One Man’s Paradise won the 2009 Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Award. In the novel, a hotshot criminal defense attorney named Kevin Corvelli flees New York City for Honolulu after blowing a sensational case that ultimately cost a client his life. Although Kevin intends to keep a low profile in Hawaii – to take on petty violations and traffic tickets – Kevin soon finds himself again in the national spotlight, representing a young law student accused of killing his beautiful ex-girlfriend on Oahu’s world-famous Waikiki Beach.

One Man’s Paradise went on to be nominated for the 2010 Shamus Award for Best First Novel. The entire experience was all the more incredible for me, because Kevin Corvelli’s life at the time very much mirrored my own. Prior to becoming a writer in Hawaii, I too was practicing criminal law in New York City. And although I left New York and the law for very different reasons, I faced many of the challenges Kevin faced after moving from the Empire State to the Aloha State. During the writing of One Man’s Paradise and its sequel Night on Fire, I fell in love with the Hawaiian Islands and the people who populate them. Having a genuine paradise as my setting for a series of crime novels created unique challenges but also made the research feel a lot less like work and a lot more like play.

In Last Lawyer Standing, Kevin takes on two of the toughest cases of his legal career. In one case, Kevin represents Hawaii’s governor who is suspected of killing his pregnant mistress, which again places Kevin square in the national spotlight. In the second, Kevin must risk everything to defend the career criminal who once saved Kevin’s life. By the third and final novel, Kevin is understandably world-weary, and he must make several key decisions that will affect the rest of his life. Last Lawyer Standing provides the reader a definite feeling of closure for the Kevin Corvelli series. The book also represents closure for its author. The release of Last Lawyer Standing brings to a close a crucial chapter in my own life, one that gave me the opportunity to leave the law and to begin writing full-time. For that, I will always be grateful to Kevin Corvelli and to the people at Minotaur Books who helped me bring him to life.   

For more information, visit DouglasCorleone.com.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~

Full-time writer in Hawaii. Tough life.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Write the paragraph wherein a character either ends one part of life to begin another, or first solidly realized that the change must happen or is happening.

MA

#SampleSunday – Pile-Up

Leslie R. Lee challenged me to use this spomment (a spam comment left on a blog) for my writing prompt: “unwanted fat men and women piled up about”. Never one to refuse a challenge (unless I darnded well WANT to refuse it), I accept.

PILE-UP

copyright August 19, 2012

 The jingle played again on the radio, the third time I’d heard it this morning, to and from shopping at the Lady Plus outlet:

The fatter you are, the better you fly!

Successful dieters need not apply.

For some reason, I actually listened to the man in the ad this time, instead of dismissing the announcement as a particularly insensitive commercial for a diet club.

 Are you overweight? Have you tried everything and been unsuccessful? Sky-High Support is now taking applications for its new training program. Some risk is involved, so applicants without dependents are preferred.

He gave the time and location — now and nearby. 

I was the perfect applicant: In my mid-twenties, I’d started picking up weight. I’d cut back on calories, stepped up exercise, and still gained weight. When I reached — years old and pounds over my optimal size — my husband filed for divorce. We had no children. My parents were financially solid. So, no dependents. And risk sounded good this morning. 

I walked into the lobby of the hotel hosting the application fair I saw I wasn’t the only one attracted by the offer. Unwanted fat men and women piled up about the conference room door like teens at a rock concert, but with fewer of us per square inch. 

The door opened and we filed in. A man who could have been a poster boy for the organization handed us each a clipboard equipped with a stack of papers and a tethered pen. 

“Take a seat and fill these out. Take a seat and fill these out.” His voice never lost its animation, no matter how often he said it. His eyes sparkled as brightly as the buckle on his triple-X belt. 

They ran out of applicants before they ran out of chairs. Not all unwanted fat men and women are willing to admit to either state. 

I looked over the papers while I waited for the doors to close and for somebody to tell me what this was all about. The papers gave nothing away. They were health histories, HIPA forms, employment histories, interest evaluations, and personality tests. Nothing about them. 

After about fifteen minutes, the man at the door closed it and said, “Anybody finished filling out the papers?” Some hands went up. “Anybody started?” A few more hands. “Okay, if you’ve started or finished, please move to the next room.” 

When they were gone and the door had shut behind them, he said, “Those are the first wash-outs. We’re not looking for the kind of people who would fill out papers without knowing what the papers were for. As for the rest of you, welcome to the first cut for the Support Program. Here’s what we do: We train you to go into dangerous situations and retrieve people. Might be hostage situations, might be a fall in hard-to-reach terrain, might be the debris of a wreck or a collapsed building.”

More than one voice couldn’t help saying, “Fat people?” 

“Fat people.” He patted his chest. “I’ve logged over a thousand hours in field rescue. The Sky-High Support Program tests you to make sure you can’t lose weight under any normal circumstances, does blood work to make sure you’re healthy, then, if you get through those cuts, we train you for rescues.” 

We all cut looks at each other. I couldn’t picture myself climbing up and down mountains or working my way through train wrecks. And it seemed like, if somebody was trapped under ten tons of rubble, the last thing they’d want is another two hundred or so on top of that. Still, the opportunity was too good to pass up. The worst that could happen would be that we’d fail the second cut by losing weight  – not a failure any of us would regret. 

The rest of the story is posted at Race to the Hugo Award. Hop over and read it, and read the rest of the stories there, too, while you’re at it.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Grab a random phrase and plot a story around it.

MA

#Caturday – Sounds of the Tiff

I don’t mean “tiff”, as in “a petty quarrel”. I’m talking about Miss Tiffany, my still-lamented late old cat. I’ve written about her before, like this post which included my poem about her, “The Styrofoam Kitty”. Although “kitty” was never appropriate a cat who was soured on all other life forms from kittenhood. Here is a picture of her sinking her claws into a cute little panda head. It would have been the same, had the cute little panda been real.

There may be many cats who growl, but Tiffany is the only cat I’ve ever heard do it. It must be her early days in the animal shelter; she picked it up from the dogs. I’ve always said it never hurts to be bilingual.

When she reached the Embarrassing Time of her growth, I took her to the vet to have her spayed — as all responsible pet owners should, unless they plan to breed the animal. When I went to pick her up, I could hear her displeasure as soon as I walked in the door. The vet’s assistant carried the cage out to me, and you never heard such a cacaphony of low growls, articulated yowls, hisses, and damn near roars. I don’t know who she knew in the Merchant Marines, but she was cussing in at least seven languages. Maybe the vet had a parrot back there.

The other lady in the waiting room stepped back, her eyes round with terror. In a voice that bravely attempted to be neutral, she nodded to the carrier and said, “What is that?”

I could only say, “It was a cat when I brought it in.”

The vet advised me to put the carrier in a room with a door that closed, open the carrier, and run like hell, closing the room door behind me. I did that, but Tiff recovered what passed for her good humor soon after she got home.

When I married, Tiffany was not happy with not being an only cat, but she didn’t mind it when we all moved to the country. She was a climber, and could avoid anything she couldn’t bluff or smack into submission. When #4 daughter was born, she and Tiffany adored each other. Tiffany, who would bite or scratch anybody but me who was impudent enough to try to touch her without permission, would let #4 do anything without any response but a “hellllp meeee” meow. On one famous occasion, little #4 closed the door to her room so the desperate Tiff couldn’t get away and hugged her and hugged her and hugged her … until she squeezed the pee out of her, which was why Tiff was so desperate to leave.

A high school friend of #4′s, who had never been around cats much, came over to visit. She scooped Tiffany up and held her. “Oh!” The friend was delighted. “She’s purring! Listen! Is that purring?”

“No,” said #4. “That’s growling. Put her down slowly. Slowwwly.”

In her later years, Tiffany lost her voice. It was so sad and so precious when she would look up and make a meow face, but nothing would come out but the slightest, breathiest, “Eh-eh-eh-eh-eh.”

And now she’s been gone for many years, but you can see she’s still very present in my memory and in my heart. Bad old cat. ~sniff~

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: An animal makes an unusual noise.

MA