Stephanie Van Orman's Blog, page 4

Bad Boys in my Books

The other day, it came to my attention that the bad guys in my books have something in common. 

Luckily, no one pointed this out to me and it was just something I figured out for myself.  Let's go through them.  Be warned of SPOILERS.

Dominic - Whenever You Want

Dominic seems like he's interested in Christina, but he isn't.  He's putting up a facade because he thinks she matches girls he's used in the past to entertain and control his brother, Alexander.  So, he's more like a sex trafficker than a predator for his own needs.  This actually makes me feel better because he's a little different than the others in this way,

Rylan - Kiss of Tragedy

Rylan is Hades in different skin, so when he was the God of the Underworld, he was used to playing by a different set of rules.  Therefore, conquering his woman was par for the course, and if you know anything about pillaging, that means rape.  So, he does that.  Currently, no one likes men who do that.  So, he's a villain.  

Schroder - The Blood that Flows

Schroder is in love with Sweeper, but she's too young when he meets her and he doesn't want to kill her, so he keeps his hands and his fangs to himself.  Until he can't anymore, then he bites Sweeper's older sister, London, in order to get his jollies.  He claims repeatedly that he loves Sweeper and he could never hurt her, but in her place, he hurts her sister repeatedly.  

Armand - Rose Red

Armand wants Paige all to himself.  He wants all her rights stripped.  He wants her to be his slave and do whatever he wants.  It's pretty alarming how much he wants to make sure she is in a position lower than himself.  He arranges for someone else to hurt her in his place, so she'll turn to him for comfort.  He even wants her to be legally his possession with no money or resources of her own... only his.  

Evander - Behind His Mask

If you've read Behind His Mask, it's probably interesting for you that I am characterizing the main male lead as the antagonist, but he is.  All his hangups revolve around his fear of becoming a sexual predator.  He does not become one and in that way, the story is a success and the antagonist is defeated.

Charles - His 16th Face

I nearly wrote something that was HUGE spoiler for the second book in this series, 'If Diamonds Could Talk', but then I stopped myself.  Lucky me!

Antony - Hidden Library

Antony is super bad and I'm going to hold back on him because I have not released this book for free anywhere.  The book opens with him running invisible fingers down Veda's leg, so he's got a sexual fixation with her and it goes badly.

Carver - If I Tie U Down

Carver gets hung up on Shannon.  He sees her kidnap Fletch instead of him and he gets this idea that if she had kidnapped him instead of Fletch, they would have had this really hot romance.  Instead, Shannon is having that hot romance with Fletch and Carver is so jealous, he's about to lose it.

So... why are all the bad guys intent on being sexual predators?  Why don't I have any female antagonists?  Why isn't there another story?

I wondered at my own lack of creativity for about five seconds before I could answer this.  Very simply, I have endured an insane amount of sexual harassment.  I could count on one hand the number of times a girl treated me unkindly in jr. high and high school put together.  Frankly, I don't think any of them saw any point in getting in my face.  I was getting grabbed in the hallways of my school by guys in grades above me and instead of telling on the boy or waiting for someone to save me, I'd fight him in the hallway.  No one was going to save me.   The vulgar, hateful things guys said to me as a matter of course were handled... by me.  The truth is that I can't imagine what antagonism from a woman would even look like.  But I know exactly what an oxytocin switch looks like.  Frustrated lovers get like that.  They love you one day and hate you the next.  

I'd like to write a different kind of antagonist.  I really would, but the most natural enemy is a guy who wants to get with me who I'm refusing.  I wrote a book about my teenage life called A Little like Scarlett, but I left out so much of the sexual harassment.  You've heard it once, you've heard it a hundred times.  

Thinking of the contents of my book A Little Like Scarlett, I recall that I actually have been antagonized by women.  When I left home, I moved into a house with six girls and most of them hated me.  It stemmed from their rage at my popularity with guys, which they didn't experience, and they felt was unfair.  I dunno... it doesn't really feel like novel material.  Or at least, it doesn't feel like something that was not adequately discussed in Gone with the Wind.  Girls who have the audacity to talk to men and amuse them with their prattle are annoying to women who lack the talent.  HOWEVER... I come from a household where I wouldn't have learned how to talk if I wasn't willing to talk to men, so... let's all be nice to one another.  

I feel that settles it.  

I do have a female antagonist in the works, so perhaps all is not lost.  We'll see how she turns out.  

With love,

Stephanie Van Orman

Novelist

Negotiating with the Dead - Part Seven

Dear Margaret Atwood,

Today we are at a cemetery in Calgary.  It's the kind that doesn't have any raised gravestones.   There is snow on the ground and it has covered all the graves nicely, thus we do not know if we are stepping on a dead person's head, or their tail, on their ashes, or on their stones.  

It is to be our last meeting as this is the last chapter in your book.

Negotiating with the Dead

One time I had a conversation with my daughter about what different fascinations really mean.  She was telling me how she found the furry movement to be difficult to understand and how it led to cruelty to animals.  I told her that I thought that it was harmless in most cases.  The furry had probably just got overly hung up on being a helpless animal like a squirrel or a bunny.  They wanted to check out from the stresses of regular life and pretend to be a deer as that best represented their happy place.  

Then we talked about werewolves and the shifter thing when someone goes from being a person to being a wolf.  I told her that I thought it was a little different from the bunny thing.  In that case, a person craved freedom, nature, and close family ties.  They want to run with a pack. 

Then my daughter turned to me and asked me what my thing was.

I replied that I had been a vampire in a previous life.  I told her that the creepiest forms of vampirism ranged from treating other people like food (to be used and abused to feed the vampire's appetite) to necrophilia.  I explained that I have the highest respect for other people's humanity and I have no interest in corpses.  My interest in vampirism stemmed from an interest in death.

As an author, I rewrite the story of Persephone in my novel Kiss of Tragedy where I turn Persephone into a body thief who has found that stealing a drowned young woman's body is the best way to escape the Underworld and Hades.  In that story, I hop over the lines between being dead and alive like hopscotch.  

In my novel His 16th Face, I jump to a different challenge.  How do we even begin to bridge the gap between being what we are now to becoming a god?  Let's break it down into smaller problems and see how we can solve them.

I've always thought my preoccupation with the subject was merely my personal preference, and now you say that all writers seek to answer questions about death as that is the most pressing question on most readers' minds.  How delightful.

Except, I am not concerned about my own death.  I am not rushing to write things down to ensure some kind of immortality for myself.  Having never experienced much popularity in life, it seems kind of hopeless to expect it after death.

And though what you wrote for the end of your book was so beautiful, I almost wept, I don't go down into the hole of the underworld to get the story like it already existed somewhere else and I am the medium that brings it into our world.  I'm a religious person, and yes, Moses says at the beginning of the Bible that all things were created in the spirit before they were created in the fresh.  Thus, spiritual instructions on how to make something like Noah's Ark and the Arc of the Covenant are not unheard of.  Sometimes I write things that way--not the way I want to write, but the way God wants my piece written.  The act is mostly reserved for when I am asked to deliver religious devotionals, which is not often.  When I write my books, I find that spiritual inspiration is there for when I'm stuck, but most of the time, I'm building something intentionally.  I mentioned in the beginning that I build a story with bricks and blocks.  I'm making it on purpose.  I'm not uncovering the blocks like an archeologist.  I'm making the cement that creates the blocks like a builder.

In my dealings with God, sometimes he has a story he wants me to tell.  When I share my testimony, I have felt Him pressing down on me to say what He wants everyone to hear.  In those cases, I am not the author, I am the medium, like a little prophetess who says the will of the Lord.

When I write a book, I am more like His daughter, and like any good father, He backs off so that I can grow up by trying something, failing--using the garbage can he gifted me--and trying again.  Because the story isn't just about whatever book I am writing right now.  It's also about me.  I hate to admit it, but the book might be nothing more than a byproduct of my growth, like I am an apple tree that blooms, bears fruit, and anyone is free to eat those apples since they would go to waste otherwise.  

Perhaps the book created by my growth is meant to be a substitute for the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  You read the book instead of partaking of the fruit (experiencing the story through the protagonist) and in so doing, you learn about a particular pitfall that can be avoided.  I've always thought that it was a pomegranate on that tree, the food of the dead.  And that's what books may be.  The dead give us books and we leave food on their graves because we cannot imagine what they want in the next life.  I imagine that what they really want is for us to tell them a bedtime story because even in death, the dead still hunger for more knowledge.

I realize it's time for us to say goodbye and I cry because I can't help it.  I'm a silly little thing.  I've always thought I was a silly writer because all I want to is teach my little reader what a healthy relationship looks like.  I write the Knowledge of Good part of the tree because literally, everyone has tasted the Knowledge of Evil part of the tree.

Now we're standing near the grave of my father.  He has enjoyed listening to our conversation, and he's trying to hide his annoyance because he wanted to be part of the conversation.  Just kidding, he wants us to quiet down and listen to him tell us all about death because we're clearly misguided in some way or another.  

You remind me that it's not really goodbye.  It's just a time to go there and come back again like a spirit going to get a body and coming home without one.  Or like a person giving up their body to visit the Underworld only to one day pick their body up again on the way out.  We will meet again.

Goodbye, Margaret.  I have enjoyed our chats.

Stephanie Van Orman

Novelist

P.S. Write me a few lines sometime.  I'd be happy to hear from you.

Negotiating with the Dead - Part Six

Dear Margaret Atwood,

Today, we don't meet in person, not even in my imagination.  Today, I am writing on this page and you are my reader, though I do not expect you to ever read what I have written to you.  

Nobody to Nobody

I dread this conversation.  The nobody to nobody dynamic is awesome.  It takes a great deal of imagination for me to conjure up a benign reader.  I imagine the woman in the hospital.  It's me in disguise (obviously).  That's my happy place (as unfortunate as that is).

I'm going to be honest with you, invisible Margaret.  Readers terrify me.  Anytime someone tells me to my face that they've been reading one of my books, my entire body seizes up and I think for a second that I might fold myself in half and puke between my feet.  

People I know are always apologizing for not reading my books.  Either they've bought them and not bothered to read them or they will never read one because I'm not their cup of tea, so they're apologizing for that.  I always tell them it's fine and I mean it.  People I know do not need to read my novels.  Most people want a few degrees of separation between them and the novelist they read whether they are aware of it or not.  Who the hell invented the signed copy?

The idea of a reader reading the way I read things spooks me.  Sometimes I think being a writer is the worst thing in the world. 

When I go somewhere to make a public appearance, I gear up like I'm going into battle.  My favorite thing to wear is metallics, like an actual suit of armor (I'll pair this with something very black so I don't look cheesy, only glamorous in a way most people wouldn't dare).  I'll curl my hair too so that I can look feminine and weak at the same time.  It is a two-pincered defense.  I decide which defense I'm going to take by the look on my face... because it does feel a little bit like everyone wants to attack me.

Them: "Did you go to university to become a writer?"

Me: "Most newspapers are written at a fourth-grade level.  Why would I need to go to university to write at a fourth-grade level?"

Them: "Have you sold many books?"

Me: Crooked eyebrow.  "Are you casing my cashbox?"

Basically, I can't control how people are going to react to my writing.  Just now, I went and checked the reviews and ratings for my novel, His 16th Face, where I got two one-star ratings with no reviews attached to them.  I think that book is a major achievement, but apparently, not everyone thought so.  The reader gets to decide, and that's horrifying. 

The urge to live like a recluse and only have my novels published after I'm dead is pretty strong, except... sadly... that won't work at all.  Not everything is timeless and if there's a time that someone could appreciate my writing, then it's probably now.  

You talk about suicide a lot in your book because authors have been driven to it.  That seems likely.  The author parted the curtain of their skin, let someone else in, and the reader spat on the author's heart and lungs, told them they were no good... and that poor author felt that something was fundamentally wrong with them.  Was there even a place for them in this world?  Because they were chosen to be a writer and if they can't do that then they can't do anything.

Authors are supposed to have thick skin, but this whole subject matter makes me wish I had no skin.  And I want to go back to being a nobody who is writing to nobody.

Thanks for reading,

Nobody

Novelist

Negotiating with the Dead - Part Five

Dear Margaret Atwood,

Today for our meeting, we've come to a church, but no matter where we look or who we talk to, we can't seem to figure out who or what they worship.  The doors are locked, so we're walking around the grounds, looking at the inspiring arrangement of the garden and talking about the morality of the writer.

Prospero, the Wizard of Oz, Mephisto & Co.

I chuckle.  I enjoyed your chapter.  Once I wrote a character who wears a Mephisto mask revealing that he secretly wants to experiment with being the devil or that he's a devil under the persona he usually wears.  It was all quite wonderful.

Questions about the morality of the author don't bother me.  Regarding how I spend the money I earn as a novelist and do I have a social responsibility to give that money away?  

As a novelist, I am a beggar living.  Even though according to my inner accountant, I should have dropped dead already.  Frankly, I would love to have enough money as a novelist to have this problem.  I would wager that something crazy like 0.00001% of all people who call themselves novelists actually has this conundrum.  

I find most of the time, people use the words 'writer', 'author', and 'novelist' ignorantly when referring to themselves.  They don't write novels to instruct, delight, or even as a way of making money.  They don't write novels (plural) at all.  They use the labels as a way of boasting about themselves.  They want to seem interesting and mysterious and they think the one book they wrote on their laptop that one summer and they really want to finish, qualifies them to use the word.  After all, any person who picks up a pen and writes a sentence is a writer.  They wrote, so they're a writer.   

They're taking a gamble labeling themselves as such, but it's a measured risk.  Most people are not enthusiastic readers and vague words describing literary success are more than enough to achieve the desired effect of appearing as both an intellectual and a mystic.  The risk pays off... unless they are talking to me.  I have no desire to flatter the arrogant and the lazy, so I ask pointed questions like, "Where can I buy your book?", "When was this published?", and the ever painful, "Are you going to have a book published this year?"

They are exposed as charlatans and they are ashamed.  And that is the exact place where they are wrong.  

They are wrong because they misunderstood the true meaning of the words 'writer', 'author', and 'novelist'.  There is nothing particularly noble about being a writer.  All writing is derived from real life, real ideas, work other writers have created, and other things the author has seen.  It didn't come from nowhere.  A good author is someone who takes a truth they have discovered somewhere, picks it off the ground, puts it in their mouth, and chews on it until they can blow it out like bubblegum and no one can tell what it was to begin with.  

This can be done on the fly, thus that 'writer' should be able to, with the grace of their tongue, lead me away from the topic of their unpublished self so skillfully, so charmingly, that I don't even remember that they didn't really answer my questions.  

Me: "Where can I buy your book?"

Them: "Oh, it's not in print."

Me: "When was it published?"

Them: "On multiple dates.  I can't remember exactly.  Maybe it was the end of 2018.  Maybe the beginning of 2019."

Me: "Are you going to have a book published this year?"

Them: "It's hard to say.  I'm struggling with the cover art.  I have a limited budget, so I'm having a hard time deciding which artist to hire.  I only get one shot at this and I want the cover to represent my inner vision."

At that point, I'll start asking them questions about their 'inner vision' because the mentioning of it would remove my focus from anything with permanence.  It's the way most women get carried away.  However, most people lack the skill to BS on this level.  People are used to their dialogue reading like a news release, a history class, or a documentary.  Nothing but the truth.  They're not used to using their creative brain to make their dialogue every day more evocative.  

People who do that are liars--silver-tongued devils.

Now, we've arrived at the truth.  Writers are liars.  But we're good liars, right?  However, we can't just say it.  We have to prove it with our writing.  That's why we have to work so hard to justify the morality of the writer.  The true nature of what we're doing is fundamentally against the moral code of our society.  We have to convince our readers that our lying is for a good cause.  

When I was 13, my bishop (who was also one of my English teachers) approached my mother and told her that I was the best BS artist there ever was.  "That girl could convince anyone of anything," he said.  It is interesting to note that he said this with a smile, praising me.  Like that was a trait that was admirable.  

When reviewing the Ten Commandments given to Moses in the Old Testament, it is interesting to notice that 'Thou shalt not lie' is not one of them.  Instead, the Lord gives Moses the commandment, 'Thou shalt not bear false witness', which goes more along the lines of not digging a hole for your neighbor with the hope of them losing and you winning.  This means that... BIG BREATH IN... If you are trying to make encourage injustice with your writing--that's immoral.  

What's justice?

That's where you are absolutely right, Margaret.  The author doesn't get to decide what's justice and what's injustice.  That's for the reader to decide.  

Perhaps the most humiliating thing that could ever happen to a writer would be for the audience to feel that the work destroyed the principles the author was trying to promote.  That would be a good deal more embarrassing than merely being called out as being a bit of a phony, as happens to our wanna-be writers mentioned above.  

As it stands, even very earnest writers feel fake on the inside because no one can really measure up to what other authors have built in the minds of others.  Writers have the power to change the definition of words, therefore they can make the word 'author' mean anything they want.  They can create that dignity, power, mysticism, and authority they desire and the people around them are so suggestible, they believe it.   I blink funny when I read quotes from Stephen King or Earnest Hemmingway where they say that the best thing in the world is reading.  Yup boys, if you honestly felt that way you would never have written a word.  They're promoting themselves with every flick of their tongues.

We've walked all the way around the church now and there's a woman coming up the walk carrying armfuls of shopping bags wondering what we're doing on her property.  It turns out the building was a church once, but now it's someone's home.  We apologize and offer to help her with her bags, but she's very annoyed, so we try not to giggle while we run away.

Thank you for spending the afternoon with me,

Stephanie Van Orman

Novelist

 

The Blood that Flows

 

Hello Dear Ink Drinkers,

This has been a particularly busy week for me.  First, I am proud to present this new edition of my novel The Blood that Flows.  It's a unique piece in my collection.  It doesn't really feel like anything else I have published in the last ten years.  For starters, though it has romantic elements, it is not a romance novel.  I have been defining it as a horror, paranormal detective novel with a woman sleuth.  I don't normally write detective novels, perhaps because this novel was published over ten years ago and it was a flop (dear reader, please do not get spooked by the idea that it was a flop.  It was the first novel that I tried to publish and I didn't know much about launching a book.  I also had no reputation as Stephanie Van Orman and was only known under my pen name Sapphirefly.  However, even with all that against it, it did make me more money than I spent, so in that way, it was a success).  Because it was less successful than I felt it deserved to be, I thought I must not have written it very well.  

I released a half-edited version on my account on Quotev.  Sometimes doing something like that helps me understand if a project is worth revisiting or if it's better off dead.  When I reread portions of The Blood that Flows, I was actually impressed by how good it was.  If a baby author handed it to me and asked me to look at it, I would have told them it had a ton of potential and was worth working on.  So, why not say that to myself?

The low points in the preparation process were these.  First, I had to go through all the edits my old publishing company had suggested and decide which one of us was full of poo.  It turns out that I was more full of it than I thought and I ended up accepting more of their changes than I rejected.  I hate admitting that I don't always know the best way.  Second, there was a pirated version of this book available on Amazon before I even uploaded my ebook on Amazon.  Were they stealing it off Quotev? WTH?  

The high points were these. When I ran it through the editing software on the last go, I had very few errors.  That's never happened before.  It gave me a lot of confidence that my editing process is getting more effective.  I have read more than my fair share of articles over the years saying that you can't do your own editing,  You'll miss stuff.  You can't see it the way an editor can see it.  Blah, blah, blah... blah.  For another thing, I really enjoyed the tagline on the back of the book.  Would you rather die for love or kill for love?  Awesome!

Here's the synopsis:

My sister lives her life looking through rose-colored glasses. It comes from looking at the world through blood... a vampire's gaze. It's a world where everyone wants to drink her blood like she's wine. How much can she give before she flows over? And how many people do I have to kill to make it stop?

Here's the excerpt:

    My sister lay motionless on the bed with a glassy look in her eyes. Actually, she hadn’t looked sharp since before she became a vamp, but this expression was more vacant than usual. Her dark hair curled around her white face and she stared off into space like she hardly noticed my arrival.

    I closed the window, locked it, and drew the curtains. Then I went into the bathroom attached to her room and got a bandage to stop her bleeding. Vampire blood didn’t clot at all compared to human blood. After all, a vampire was only two steps from being a corpse. It would take ages for her cuts to close. As I wrapped her wounds, she yanked the blanket out from under her and pulled it over her chest. If she was cold, he must have drunk quite a bit.

    I  shuddered. What had London done to her body and for what? It would take her over a year to close up, even after she stitched herself shut. Sometimes I thought vampires were more like Frankenstein’s monster than Dracula.

    I whispered quietly, “How much has he drunk? A cup? A liter?”

    Silence.

    “Two liters?”

     She averted her eyes.

I was more pleased with this book than I expected to be.  Here are some goodie links:

YouTube link to the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1d9B...

Commaful link to the short version: https://commaful.com/play/sapphirefly/

Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09RYSLYCT/...

IN OTHER NEWS!

I gave my website a massive overhaul this past week, and it now looks almost completely different.  If you have a minute, why not go have a look?

https://tigrix1.wixsite.com/stephanie...

Because The Blood that Flows is not a steamy romance, it will not be very successful.  Nothing that is not a steamy romance is very successful these days, but I was pretty pleased to offer this book for free.  I was pleased when Free-ebooks.net featured it on the front of their website.  I was happy with the new cover that I bought ages ago and still looked good when I brushed it off.  I was happy with the last line of the book.  And even though I was too nervous with the gore level in this book to label it as anything lower than 18+, I would give it to my 15-year-old self and wish her the best.  She liked the gory stuff.  I hope all of you enjoy it.  In an odd way, it is probably the closest thing I have ever written to chick-lit.  

Negotiating with the Dead - Part Four

Dear Margaret Atwood,

Today we're talking about money and the God of Art, so I've brought you to a jewelry store.  It's supposed to represent both since someone has to design the pieces while someone else has to sell them.  Jewelry also has a 200% markup and that's something we can never enjoy as authors, so we're drooling a little bit.

The Great God Pen

I loved this chapter.  I have loved all the chapters.  So, the question is whether or not we write for money or for the art of it.  

I started writing novels at thirteen and I knew that writing was going to play a major role in my life because I was good at precious little else.  It did feel like the God of Art chose me and sometimes I've felt like that was quite cruel of him.  The thing that they never tell you is that there is no satisfying conclusion to your art.  There's no end.  If you've finished writing your novel, there's a bug in your ear whispering that you should start another.  If you failed, you have to try again.  If you won, you have to win again.  Go. Go. Go.  Forever.  

At a tender age, I knew that I was not going to be able to write for a job in my adulthood.  My cousin was a journalist and a photographer.  Sometimes, she took her younger sister and me out on assignments.  It wasn't terrible as far as work goes, but neither was it the high I experienced when I wrote a novel.  That was a good time, even if I ended up with a bad novel.

I also knew I wasn't going to be able to make any money as a novelist.  The only person I had ever met who had written a book and had it published was another cousin of mine who published one YA book and I couldn't see how the royalties from that could pay the water bill.  After all, there was only one copy in the school library and everyone read that one copy.

Yet, I was bit by this hellish bug.  

I already knew all about what poverty was like.  I had an accountant in my brain pushing numbers into a calculator and shaking her head.  "You can't be a novelist," she'd say, "the numbers don't add up."

She was quite right.  Most people don't know how the $20 they spend for a book is divided, how little the author gets, and how quickly that tiny stash of money is swallowed by expenses that don't feed the author or pay their rent.  They are expenses that exist just to give the author the opportunity to keep on writing.

My inner accountant screams a lot.  Yet, I've already done so much to placate her.  

When I left home, I did not go to university.  University had a different price tag attached to it for me than it would have had for you, Margaret.  The university education would have put a burden of writer's debt around my neck that I might never have been able to pay off.  Instead of that, I went to college and then got jobs working in offices in universities.  So, I worked and wrote at the same time.  

I have to say that is not an ideal situation for a novelist.  Maybe it would work for someone who wrote something smaller, but a novel requires great hunks of open brain to formulate.  Typing all day at work only to return home to type some more left crinks in my fingers and shards of steel in my back.  

My inner accountant was happy during this time because instead of using my spare cash to pay off a student loan, I was putting money aside for when my writing was better.  By this point, I had begun publishing my books online and it was quite clear from reader feedback that I had a long way to go.

I did not marry money, but I had my eyes out for the right sort of man to marry.  I was very much aware that marrying the wrong person could ruin my artist life and thus, make me wish I was dead.  So, the man I was going to marry needed to be the sort of man who was understanding toward writing, thought that books were worthwhile creations, and enjoyed books himself.  If I was really lucky, he would also be the sort of man who could make enough money that he wouldn't share the same views as my inner accountant about how my art needed to be profitable.

I became a good enough writer to be published by the time I was 25.  However, getting published was a completely different matter than I had been led to believe and the situation has only gotten worse since then.  I was a good enough writer, but I was also throwing up into an empty ice cream bucket and breastfeeding, so I didn't get a book published with a publishing company until I was 29.  

It was then that I made a startling discovery.  I knew much more about publishing than I thought I did.  In the years that I worked and squirreled money away, I had learned heaps about graphic design, publishing, PR, and advertising.  The publishing contract I'd been able to land was with an honest publishing company, so there was that, but they weren't going to be able to give me a launch as fancy as one I could give myself.  Not only that, but I knew authors who wrote well, landed contracts with publishing companies (after dozens of attempts), and still lost money.  

I didn't lose money, but I fell out of love with the idea of getting a publishing company.  It didn't make sense to send my books off to publishing companies where they would sit waiting for someone to decide whether or not my book could make money for them.  My books were intended to be casual reading, but they were not pornographic or titillating, and that felt like the only type of thing that made money.  

I put the whole thing on pause.

For a season of my life, I was quite busy, caring for others, caring for myself, and holding back floods. I only wrote one book in six years.  That was unprecedented for me.  I had written 19 novels in 17 years.  When the storm stopped, I was quietly cleaning up the water and wondering what I ought to do with the rest of my life.

I didn't want to go back to writing novels, even though the money was lined up better than it had ever been before.  By this point, I knew there was no happy ending to being a writer.  I'm an inventive person and I had a crafting business, so I thought maybe I'd do that.  I decided, most seriously, that when I crossed the threshold out of my bathroom, I'd stop being a writer.  I'd put all that away and focus on crafting.  But the God of Art stopped me before I could take that final step.  He stood behind me and told me that I had to continue writing.  I had been chosen to write.

I cried.

The unseen God of Art explained things and pointed me in the right direction.  What was most notable about the experience in retrospect was that the elusive God never once said that I'd make money.  I've been working as an independent author for several years now and I still haven't spent all the coin I set aside when I was a young warthog taking money from a university instead of giving them any. 

My inner accountant is still unhappy.  I made more money last year from my writing than I ever did before, but she's squawking, angry I lost that sweet contract.  She doesn't want me to whore myself off.  I'll tell you what she really wants.  She wants my balance sheet to show that I didn't spend money, but I made money.  She wants me to pull money out of thin air.  Not even successful publishing campaigns do that.  No one does that, but it's what she wants.

I need her to shut up.  It has never occurred to me that my inner accountant should be silenced, but I see now that would probably offer me greater peace and strength than anything else.  

You don't mention an inner accountant in your chapter.  You say that you need to write to the market if you want to make money, but you don't talk much about what compromises you made, or if you didn't have to make any at all.  Instead, you dedicate the majority of the chapter discussing how terrible it is to serve the God of Art, who doesn't care if you're fed.  I'd like to say that the inner accountant doesn't care if you're satisfied with your art, as long as the numbers look right.  Now, I'd like to say something rude about both the inner accountant and the God of Art since they both seem heartless, but I can't afford to offend the God of Art.  I still have to finish my trilogy.

Thank you, Margaret.  I feel refreshed.  Can I offer you one of the free pamphlets advertising diamonds that they have on the counter of the jewelry store?  They're free!

With a sparkle in my eye that I hope is as charming as a diamond,

Stephanie Van Orman 

Novelist

Negotiating with the Dead - Part Three

Dear Margaret Atwood,

Today as we talk about our unseen selves and the monsters we hide within, we're in a costume store.  It's not like one of those tacky places where both of us would be concerned about contracting an illness placing unfamiliar masks over our faces.  Everything around us is glittery and clean.  We're Canadian girls in our hearts, so we like the fox's pointed faces and the deer horns.  We wonder which one of the masks suits us best as we go from being virginal princesses to devils with a wave of our hands.  I settle on a raccoon face because I have always thought of a raccoon as my spirit animal.  In creating my art, I have always sorted through trash with my hands and broken crabs on the rocks.  I feel a raccoon suits me best with black and white fur outlining my eyes.  You look at everything and decide on nothing.  As a polished author, you've turned yourself into so many things, choosing one when we've no place to wear our costumes seems unnecessary.  You wear all of them at least once.

The jekyll hand, the hyde hand, and the slippery double

It's very interesting to me that you didn't capitalize any of that.  Once a poet.  Always a poet.

I found your observations on this subject most intriguing because I have never thought of the version of myself that writes as something different from the part of me who cleans the toilet.  Sometimes my characters clean toilets.  They come along with me and I go along with them.  They're not real.  I'm imagining them.  I'm alone.  I'm talking to myself and I hear myself.  Sometimes I think I sound stupid.  Sometimes I think I sound mean.  I am the self observing myself, but I can't make my left hand do something my right hand hasn't already done.

However, after I considered duplicity in regards to writing, I discovered a few different ways that it applies to me.  I am curious about what you might think of them.  Are they the same thing as what you describe or something completely different?

Here's one way.  When I write the first draft of my book, I am the creator--the writer.  I don't often keep track of how many drafts I've done, or if I do so, it is only in the broadest way.  I often do extra that I don't keep track of, going through the novel with the intent to correct one particular aspect.  I go and go and go and then I stamp FINAL DRAFT on it.  I'm satisfied with the story.  It's going out like that.

I send it to the editor.

Except, I'm the editor.  There is no point in sending it to a professional editor before I've edited it myself.  I'll edit it five times and by then, there's very little work for an editor to improve upon that has much importance.  I've already cut 10,000 words and trimmed all the fat.

When I become the editor, I can't believe the crap my writer self thought was brilliant.  I'm stunned as I slash sentences, whole paragraphs, and sometimes, whole chapters.   I look at excerpts with a crook in my eyebrow.  Did I really write that?  I make notes for what is missing.  Sometimes my editor self can fill in the missing parts.  Sometimes she can't.  She has to wait for the writer to wake up.

I've always thought this was the difference between my right and left brain.  That one half of me is a novelist with a beautiful word resting like a caramel on her tongue, and the other half of me is a stodgy accountant with a runny nose and bad news.

The other way I show duplicity is that I am supplying the dialogue for our sweet princess, but I am also supplying the dialogue for the wicked witch.  This means that though I look like a perfectly ordinary person on the outside, I am capable of saying something that is so awful that if an onlooker were watching and I delivered my line and was thereafter immediately slapped, the onlooker would nod and say, "That's fair."  Heaven help the person who provokes me to say the worst thing I can think of, cause it is bad, and it's personalized, so it's extra bad.

Actually, I haven't had cause to say something like that out loud in so long most people would scarcely believe that a monster of that strength and foulness exists under my pale skin

Naturally, this runs me into your next chapter, so I'll save the introduction to the half of me that is an accountant for the next entry.

I think the mermaid mask looks best on you.

With love,

Stephanie Van Orman

Novelist

Negotiating with the Dead - Part Two

Dear Margaret Atwood,

I used to visit my grandmother at one o'clock in the morning.  When I would visit the area when my children were infants, I wouldn't have much time, so instead of sleeping the night before I left, I would go to her house and chat with her until three.  She didn't mind.  She said she didn't sleep.  Visiting with her in those quiet hours has become one of my most precious memories.   Instead of having a little tea party like I did in my last post, this time, I'm visiting you at one o'clock in the morning.  I haven't decided yet if we're still wearing our makeup or if our faces are very clean.  I guess it depends on how much I want to hide who I really am.

Who do you think you are?  What is a writer and how did you become one?

I was a particularly talentless child.  All I wanted was to play pretend.  I grew up in a poverty-stricken household in rural Alberta and though I had a few toys, I preferred my imagination.  When I began to read, I found the exercise to be unbearable.  Why were all the books so boring?  It was like the author of every single story had found the most mundane way to approach their subject matter and we were all supposed to go along with it because those were the books that had been 'chosen'.  If I had to read a book about solving the mystery of who left the cookie crumbs in the sink or go babysitting within the pages of a book, I'd drop the book.  That was as a preteen, but even as a tiny child bouncing on my mother's knee, I wanted to rewrite the story, fix their outdated wording, simplify their meaning, and write about something interesting.  That was on the inside.  On the outside, the only talent others recognized was that I had an unusually large vocabulary for a child.

I finally gave myself permission to read books intended for an adult audience when I was 13 and I was surprised by those books.  The words used to make them were more interesting than the YA books I had access to, but they were awfully wordy for seemingly no reason.  I wanted to rip up their paragraphs and turn them into single sentences that accomplished as much.  What I learned from those books was that authors were morons.  Clearly, any idiot with a pen could write.  So, I started writing my first book at age thirteen.

I finished it.

I read it, recognized it was crap, forgave myself, and began a new novel with an emphasis on the parts that I particularly failed at in the last book.

I did this over and over again.

It has been almost thirty years and I still do this.  

Sadly, I do not think that being an author is a miraculous thing.  You make a book the same way you make anything else.  You twist your yarn around your knitting needles.  You fling a few words on a page and they add up like the thousands of stitches needed to construct a sweater.  I don't think being a writer makes me high-minded or more worthy of praise or love than the person who knits the sweater.  

When people attach academic prowess to the construction of a novel, I think they misunderstand the assignment.  The goal as a novelist is to get the reader to finish reading your novel.  If they drop the book, you've lost.  Thus, the main goal is to be interesting and you have a collection of tools to accomplish that.  One of those tools is your juicy brain, but that isn't your only tool.  You have every part of your unseen self - things no one would ever imagine about you: your feelings, dreams, memories, pain, and anything else that happens inside you that the casual observer cannot see.  That is the purpose of writing anything... to part the curtain of your skin and allow someone in.

How far in is a different question.

When I think of my ideal reader, I think of a woman who has just received some unpleasant news in a hospital.   Whether she has to stay in the hospital because she needs treatment herself or she needs to be there to support someone close to her, it doesn't matter.  She can't leave.  Even if she's not receiving treatment, she's somewhere unfamiliar and the next few hours will be difficult.  It's not going to help to stress over what she's just learned.  There is nothing she can do, except stay in the hospital and wait for the test results.  She opens a copy of one of my books and begins to read.  The story takes over.  It's different from what she usually reads, so it keeps her guessing and the hours fly by as her eyes race across my words.  When she has finished the novel, all is well.  The book has not taken an emotional toll on her.  It has been surprising but like a grown-up version of a pop-up book.  It has not unsettled her already unsettled mind.  It has made her wonder and given her a pleasant way to pass the time when she needed it most.

Though I was not personally in the hospital, I was there for her in an out-of-body way like the ghost of a storyteller that can be revived with the cracking of a spine... or a click on a phone.  Whichever you prefer.

However, this is where it gets tricky.

I have been the woman in the hospital, waiting, sick myself, trying not to think of the frozen veins the IV is giving me.  I'm going to be that woman again.  When it happens, it may last the rest of my life, and I think and wonder what I'll need to pack for myself when I go on the trip that I can't return from.  It's not death.  Death would be awesome.  No, it's a kind of mind madness that can last so many years, it can turn into decades.  I know exactly what I'll want.  I'll want some fine reading material and only I can make it.  Even when I can no longer read, I'll still want to hold the cover.  

Next time I'll talk about which one of me does the living and which one of me does the writing.

With love,

Stephanie Van Orman

Novelist

P.S. I no longer think novelists are morons.  I think I was reading the wrong books.   

Negotiating with the Dead - Part One

Dear Margaret Atwood,

I have begun reading your book Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing.   I am far too shy to write to you or trouble you with the wonderings of my mind.  I doubt you reading this would add anything to your day, but as I read I find that I very much want to reply to you like we were having tea and having a conversation.  You say to me the words that you have written in the book and I reply in a way that is so quiet, you can't hear me and I can't interrupt you.  I doubt my reflection on your thoughts would add anything to your great vault of knowledge and experience, but I'd like to dissect them more carefully.  

Into the Labrinth

Who are you writing for?   Why do you do it?  Where does it come from?

I'm taking from your list of why people write and commenting on the ones that apply to me.  

1. Because I knew I had to keep writing or else I would die.

I feel this all the time.  I am working on a trilogy right now and I am writing all three volumes at the same time.  I wonder why I'm writing it.  No one cares whether I write it or not.  I have done very little to raise any hype for it.  Reader hype for my books stresses me out.  Promising the reader a good time makes me think of a hooker who promises vague sexual favors saying her customer will be 'satisfied', but how does she know what will satisfy him?  And how will an unsatisfied customer react when his anticipation was not rewarded?  But that is another issue.  What does matter is that I must write my trilogy and I don't exactly know why.  

2. To delight and instruct.

If I was serious about delighting my reader, I probably wouldn't write what I do.  My readers often have tiny complaints that my books are not heartfelt enough or sexy enough.  I recently lost a valuable book contract and all signs point to the fact that I am not sexy enough as the reason why.  As for instructing my reader... I want to show my reader what a healthy romantic relationship looks like.  I find a lot of romance novels model poor relationships and I'd like to correct that.  It doesn't make me popular when everyone these days wants to be owned with a contract, whipped six times, controlled, sexually abused until they like it, and more.  I cry at the absurd contradiction of entertaining someone and informing them.  Only a select few are entertained by information.   

3. To please myself.

This is the one comfort that no one can take from me and it was very hard to earn.  I think a lot of writers quit because they have an idea of what they want their story to feel like.  They write and during the process they feel like they're on fire.  Time passes and they read what they wrote and they see it for what it is - a first attempt.   They hate that.  They want to be an excellent writer already.  They feel like an excellent writer inside themselves.  They are very entertained by their own thoughts.  Why doesn't that come across in their writing?  It's terrible to have to explain to someone that I didn't enjoy reading my own work until my twelfth book.  They hate the idea of writing eleven books that don't satisfy them.  Yeah, well, I hate listening to them whine about how they don't want to work.

4. To spin a fascinating tale.

As a child, I was always impressed by how predictable everything around me was.  When I write, I want to take the reader down a different avenue.  When I get praised for my writing, this is almost always what I am praised for.    

5. Compulsive logorrhea.

If you sat me down, blindfolded me, and told me that I was allowed to talk about whatever I wanted to for as long as I wanted...  I would never shut up.  Under normal circumstances, I am not really allowed to talk.  I use a remarkable amount of restraint so I can compliment others by hearing what they have to say.  I was practically taught that it is wrong to talk. I had to have an outlet, or I'd die, so I write.

See?  Wasn't that informative?  Didn't it make a pretty circle?

Most of the other reasons you listed why people write were far loftier than mine.  Out of dozens of political, religious, psychological, and academic reasons, I probably chose the five humblest... aside from revenge.  I would actually love to take revenge on someone by writing (how elegant), but who and for what?  Most of the people I'd like revenge on are dead.  That happened to me at a surprisingly early age.

One of the reasons that surprised me was writing to earn the love of a particular person or anyone in general.  If I wanted to earn the love of a particular person with my writing, I'd write them a love letter. I'm quite good at writing those.  Their reaction would make it clear whether they could love me or not.  If not, it was not the fault of the letter, but my fault... because something inside me didn't fit with something inside them.  And if I wanted to earn the love of the world at large, I wouldn't have lost that sweet contract.  

When I think of myself and the author inside me, I do not think that I am important in the grand scheme of most people's lives or humanity at large.  I'm going to live and die like a little dandilion growing by the side of the road.  And when I am gone, I want no grave to mark where I am, because book covers work just fine for gravestones.  At least, they have better art.  Don't you think?

I feel as though that answers the first two questions of: Who are you writing for?   Why do you do it?  Now I must answer the last question: Where does it come from?

In your book, you describe people working it out in the darkness, fumbling in the dark, wrestling invisible angels, until everything becomes clear, the author is the victor.  You stressed firmly that the strongest commonality between different writer's processes was the darkness--twilight.  I agree most wholeheartedly.

When I write, I imagine that I am standing in twilight and there is a star above me.  It is high above my head, but it is possible to reach it.  I start by placing a brick on the ground.  The brick is my premise and it is connected to my star by cords that cannot be seen.  When I go to write the next chapter after my premise is established, that chapter is the next brick.  I cannot place the second brick just anywhere willy nilly.  I have to place it on top of the brick I've already set down.  The contents of the second brick are always the same thing... they are the most interesting thing I can think of after the premise.  I cannot do anything that would send me in a different direction then the way that would lead me to my star.  I go on like this until I reach the climax, the conclusion, and at last, I land with my feet square on the surface of my star.  I am quite good at wrapping up stories because what needs to be done is so clear in my mind.

In my next blog post, we'll talk about how I began a writer.

With sincere appreciation, 

Stephanie Van Orman

Novelist

In the End

I knew it wasn't going to work out.  

Three months ago, I wrote that I was all excited because Galatea had offered me a publishing contract for this book.  I was over the moon because their reading application seemed to be of a higher quality than a lot of the other apps I get offers from.  

Here's a list of complaints I have about the contracts offered by the other apps:

They want the stories to be over 200,000 words.  A book becomes a novel when it hits 40,000 words.  It takes an incredible amount of material to make something 200,000 words long.  I have written only one thing over 200,000 words long.  That was my Mark of a Dragon trilogy, and I'm not certain I have any interest in writing anything else that long for the rest of my life.They want updates every day.  That either means cutting stories up into teeny, tiny, bite-sized pieces, or it means churning out stuff that's only purpose is to perpetuate itself.  They want you to hand over TV and movie rights as part of the contract and they are paying you a song for your work.  That means that if your story ever did hit the big time, and get made into a movie, you wouldn't get a penny for writing it.  They won't show you how many people are reading your work or how popular it is.They want exclusive rights, so only they can host your story, and they are only willing to pay you dimes for the privilege.   Galatea did not show me my stats, but they also didn't pay me pennies.  They actually forked over reasonable paycheques.  I was DE-LIGHTED! 
I installed Galatea's app on my phone and I started getting notifications about what was trending and it was not stuff that I would be interested in reading, or interested in writing.  I joined a Facebook group that showed what Galatea readers were interested in and I knew I was going to get thrown out.  It was only a matter of time.
Here's the thing... my book isn't about an alpha male, or a werewolf, or a shifter, or a billionaire, or about naughty sex, or sweet sex, or... whatever it is that they're selling.  The Facebook page was mostly pictures of guys with huge muscles, and tattoos, with dirty looks on their faces.  To be honest, there was something about them that repelled me.  Which is weird.  I like romance novels.  I think falling in love is one of the best experiences to be had in life, but something about those men made me feel like them symbolizing love was ripping love apart.  Like the authors romanticized the drama of a toxic relationship because you can get 200,000 words out of it.  I feel just as ripped off in a different way when I see fuzzy cozy Christmas romances too, except the love is getting watered down with lists of reasons why you love someone or crushed into something you can buy like a heart-shaped locket. 

Anyway... I used to think I just needed to become a better writer in order to succeed.  I don't think that anymore.   Instead, I think there might not be a place where people want the kind of romance novel I write in the commercial world.  

Whatever, I'll do what I want.

Whenever I Want.  HA!