Suze Reese's Blog, page 9
October 18, 2011
Belated Blog Action Day Post
There are thousands of posts out there that start by saying "Today is Blog Action Day" or "World Food Day". And there are a few that say "Sunday was Blog Action Day or World Food Day." I'm in that second group. A little late, but still there, right? (I've never been famous for my promptness.)
I don't have any profound, save-the-world kind of commentary, but I do have some thoughts on the subject of food and world-wide implications. At least fictional ones. When I began making plans in my novel ExtraNormal for my main character Mira to travel from the planet of Nreim to Earth, I realized that food had to be one of her major transitions. And as I pondered the possible implications of a different food system on not just Mira but on Nreim, the possibilities became endless.
Food has the power to be its own Marvel Comic-worthy multi-faceted and multi-faced super hero and villain all wrapped up into one. In excess we turn into near-combustible rolly pollies. But with deprivation, the unthinkable and unacceptable happens.
Food keeps most of us occupied throughout every hour of every day of our lives, as we each attempt to strike the perfect balance between intake and deprivation in order to adequately provide for our physical, emotional, and social well-beings. When we strike the wrong balance, and most of us do at one time or another, the results can be disastrous. When a nation fails to provide the correct balance, entire races of people can suffer.
And it is with this dilemma that the first hint of Nreim's dystopic society are introduced in ExtraNormal. I think I'll post a bit of a scene from when Mira gets her first taste of earth food, since it shows both Mira's and Nreim's dilemmas better than I can tell them. (Warning: this excerpt has not yet been through my brilliant editor's hands).
"I'd ignored the cheeseburger as long as I could. I picked itup again, and did possibly the most rebellious thing of my entire seventeen yearsof life.
I took a bite.
And moaned with pleasure. I rolled the juicy meat around inmy mouth, reveling in the unfamiliar texture on my tongue. I swallowed. Thenimmediately filled my mouth again, tears forming in my eyes. I savored thejuice that splashed against the inside of my cheek, the smooth texture of themelted cheese.
Then I looked up. Three sets of eyes watched me. I grinned,realized how disgusting I must look, and clamped my mouth shut.
Until my arrival on this planet yesterday, my nutrition hadcome in the form of a cube, ingested five times daily. The development of the cubeas a nutrition source was hailed as the single most important advancement ofall mankind. It would normally take dozens of generations to implement such adrastic change, but somehow the brilliant geneticists on Nreim had done it inonly four. The cube had wiped out many major illnesses and freed a multitude ofvaluable economic resources. Not to mention all the good it supposedly did forthe goal of purified genetics. At least that's what they taught us in school.
I shoved three fries in my mouth and decided that the cubewas, in reality, a wide-scale tragedy of untold proportions."
The novel, or this excerpt, are not intended as political commentary. Just a few moments of fun escapism. But if there is a commentary to be made, perhaps it is simply to be careful what you wish for. Solving one problem can create ten others. I don't offer up solutions to the problem of world hunger, though I wish I could. The best I can do is to not suggest the cube.
I don't have any profound, save-the-world kind of commentary, but I do have some thoughts on the subject of food and world-wide implications. At least fictional ones. When I began making plans in my novel ExtraNormal for my main character Mira to travel from the planet of Nreim to Earth, I realized that food had to be one of her major transitions. And as I pondered the possible implications of a different food system on not just Mira but on Nreim, the possibilities became endless.
Food has the power to be its own Marvel Comic-worthy multi-faceted and multi-faced super hero and villain all wrapped up into one. In excess we turn into near-combustible rolly pollies. But with deprivation, the unthinkable and unacceptable happens.
Food keeps most of us occupied throughout every hour of every day of our lives, as we each attempt to strike the perfect balance between intake and deprivation in order to adequately provide for our physical, emotional, and social well-beings. When we strike the wrong balance, and most of us do at one time or another, the results can be disastrous. When a nation fails to provide the correct balance, entire races of people can suffer.
And it is with this dilemma that the first hint of Nreim's dystopic society are introduced in ExtraNormal. I think I'll post a bit of a scene from when Mira gets her first taste of earth food, since it shows both Mira's and Nreim's dilemmas better than I can tell them. (Warning: this excerpt has not yet been through my brilliant editor's hands).
"I'd ignored the cheeseburger as long as I could. I picked itup again, and did possibly the most rebellious thing of my entire seventeen yearsof life.
I took a bite.
And moaned with pleasure. I rolled the juicy meat around inmy mouth, reveling in the unfamiliar texture on my tongue. I swallowed. Thenimmediately filled my mouth again, tears forming in my eyes. I savored thejuice that splashed against the inside of my cheek, the smooth texture of themelted cheese.
Then I looked up. Three sets of eyes watched me. I grinned,realized how disgusting I must look, and clamped my mouth shut.
Until my arrival on this planet yesterday, my nutrition hadcome in the form of a cube, ingested five times daily. The development of the cubeas a nutrition source was hailed as the single most important advancement ofall mankind. It would normally take dozens of generations to implement such adrastic change, but somehow the brilliant geneticists on Nreim had done it inonly four. The cube had wiped out many major illnesses and freed a multitude ofvaluable economic resources. Not to mention all the good it supposedly did forthe goal of purified genetics. At least that's what they taught us in school.
I shoved three fries in my mouth and decided that the cubewas, in reality, a wide-scale tragedy of untold proportions."
The novel, or this excerpt, are not intended as political commentary. Just a few moments of fun escapism. But if there is a commentary to be made, perhaps it is simply to be careful what you wish for. Solving one problem can create ten others. I don't offer up solutions to the problem of world hunger, though I wish I could. The best I can do is to not suggest the cube.
October 14, 2011
'Scuse Me, There's an Alien in My Paranormal
When I was back in the idea stage of my novel ExtraNormal, I very comfortably considered the genre to be YA paranormal romance. I worked on it for months with that in mind. It wasn't until I got into the marketing stage that I realized my choice of genres might be a tad bit scandalous. Okay, maybe not scandalous. But at least not completely black and white.
My first hint was when I started a search for bloggers and book groups who follow paranormal romance. I came across greetings that went something like this: "This group is for fans of romance books that feature werewolves, vampires, fairies, angels, shape shifters, mermaids, mermen, monsters, robots, Bigfoot, ghosts, creepy clowns, telepaths, unicorns, purple frogs, pink furry bunnies, and gnomes.
Seriously there was one group that had an entire page with links of each category like the ones listed above. Like fifty of them. And do you think one of those links was aliens? Or even extraterrestrials? Nope. Tooth fairy yes. Aliens no.
I have to admit that at first I was a little huffy.
I mean, like, what the? Are they saying they don't like aliens or what? We're talking PARANORMAL here! P-A-R-A-N-O-R-M-A-L. The word was made popular during the whole Roswell controversy thing many many decades ago. We all know what that is, right? Little green men supposedly came for a visit and the government supposedly covered it up. People converged on the place. Groups were formed dedicated to uncovering the truth. Paranormal groups. Ask anybody. Aliens are paranormal. They just are.
I pranced around all wanting to pick a fight like that for a while. But then my rational side kicked in and I decided I'd better calmly figure this thing out. So I did a search for aliens in paranormal romance, and came up with group discussions that went like this:
Q: Are there any good paranormal romance books that have aliens?A: Uh, no. You'll have to look for futuristic romance.
Or
Q: I'm trying to find a paranormal romance with aliens.A: I think you mean science fiction. Bozo.
And on it went. (By the way, while I have no problem with the genre of science fiction, it is not my genre. And while I might kind of like Star Wars, and even possibly Star Trek, it's just not where I hang. That's my husband's domain (A computer programmer, of course. Not that that's geeky. It's actually very sexy. Even if he does watch Doctor Who incessantly.) But I digress, and I'm in double parenthesis, which is always a bad idea. But my point is science fiction is not my first choice in genre labels. And the futuristic thing? Well, ExtraNormal is contemporary, so that doesn't work.)
Plus, I really really like the term paranormal romance because it fits so well with the title. I mean, consider which of these you'd read:
"Science fiction romance ExtraNormal"
vs
"ExtraNormal, a paranormal romance".
No contest, right? I'd totally rather read the second one. Especially if you read it in a deep, dark sexy and mysterious voice. Try it again. Good, hah?
So what's a girl to do?
More research, of course.
Wikipedia puts paranormal activity into three camps: ghosts & other spiritual creatures; aliens or extraterrestrials; and what they call cryptics, which is basically anything else mysterious. So if aliens are one of three categories of paranormal, why aren't they more accepted in the genre of paranormal romance?
That is the big question. Can aliens fit into the genre of paranormal romance? Is the reason they don't have a strong showing just that the good books haven't been written yet? (Host is the one book that came up frequently in my searches, but interestingly it's not young adult.) Could there be a of a turn off of aliens combined with romance? (I can see how that could make you go eww. But more so than hooking up with cold pale vampires or Bigfoot?) Are aliens suffering from a deep underlying prejudice within our very own society? Can werewolves and monsters be accepted into mainstream but aliens are just too green and creepy?
I don't know. But as an author, my biggest worry is that a fan of paranormal romance will pick up my book and be disappointed with it, simply because the main character is an alien. Honestly, no author wants a reader to be disappointed.
So I'm calling out to all two of you who might stumble across this blog (It's new, the book's new, what can I say?) to answer the questions above.
If you answer please also tell me if it would make any difference to know that my alien, Mira, is not a traditional alien. She is technically from another planet, (a fairly messed up planet) but the folks on her world have the same DNA as the folks on our world. They do have some neat abilities, that one might call telepathy, except Mira doesn't like to call it that since telepathy is unexplained communication and her streaming is just a science-based form of communicating that the folks on our planet haven't figured out. Yet.
Oh, and it's cool. A cool book with a cool story. And a cool alien.
So there.
My first hint was when I started a search for bloggers and book groups who follow paranormal romance. I came across greetings that went something like this: "This group is for fans of romance books that feature werewolves, vampires, fairies, angels, shape shifters, mermaids, mermen, monsters, robots, Bigfoot, ghosts, creepy clowns, telepaths, unicorns, purple frogs, pink furry bunnies, and gnomes.
Seriously there was one group that had an entire page with links of each category like the ones listed above. Like fifty of them. And do you think one of those links was aliens? Or even extraterrestrials? Nope. Tooth fairy yes. Aliens no.
I have to admit that at first I was a little huffy.
I mean, like, what the? Are they saying they don't like aliens or what? We're talking PARANORMAL here! P-A-R-A-N-O-R-M-A-L. The word was made popular during the whole Roswell controversy thing many many decades ago. We all know what that is, right? Little green men supposedly came for a visit and the government supposedly covered it up. People converged on the place. Groups were formed dedicated to uncovering the truth. Paranormal groups. Ask anybody. Aliens are paranormal. They just are.
I pranced around all wanting to pick a fight like that for a while. But then my rational side kicked in and I decided I'd better calmly figure this thing out. So I did a search for aliens in paranormal romance, and came up with group discussions that went like this:
Q: Are there any good paranormal romance books that have aliens?A: Uh, no. You'll have to look for futuristic romance.
Or
Q: I'm trying to find a paranormal romance with aliens.A: I think you mean science fiction. Bozo.
And on it went. (By the way, while I have no problem with the genre of science fiction, it is not my genre. And while I might kind of like Star Wars, and even possibly Star Trek, it's just not where I hang. That's my husband's domain (A computer programmer, of course. Not that that's geeky. It's actually very sexy. Even if he does watch Doctor Who incessantly.) But I digress, and I'm in double parenthesis, which is always a bad idea. But my point is science fiction is not my first choice in genre labels. And the futuristic thing? Well, ExtraNormal is contemporary, so that doesn't work.)
Plus, I really really like the term paranormal romance because it fits so well with the title. I mean, consider which of these you'd read:
"Science fiction romance ExtraNormal"
vs
"ExtraNormal, a paranormal romance".
No contest, right? I'd totally rather read the second one. Especially if you read it in a deep, dark sexy and mysterious voice. Try it again. Good, hah?
So what's a girl to do?
More research, of course.
Wikipedia puts paranormal activity into three camps: ghosts & other spiritual creatures; aliens or extraterrestrials; and what they call cryptics, which is basically anything else mysterious. So if aliens are one of three categories of paranormal, why aren't they more accepted in the genre of paranormal romance?
That is the big question. Can aliens fit into the genre of paranormal romance? Is the reason they don't have a strong showing just that the good books haven't been written yet? (Host is the one book that came up frequently in my searches, but interestingly it's not young adult.) Could there be a of a turn off of aliens combined with romance? (I can see how that could make you go eww. But more so than hooking up with cold pale vampires or Bigfoot?) Are aliens suffering from a deep underlying prejudice within our very own society? Can werewolves and monsters be accepted into mainstream but aliens are just too green and creepy?
I don't know. But as an author, my biggest worry is that a fan of paranormal romance will pick up my book and be disappointed with it, simply because the main character is an alien. Honestly, no author wants a reader to be disappointed.
So I'm calling out to all two of you who might stumble across this blog (It's new, the book's new, what can I say?) to answer the questions above.
If you answer please also tell me if it would make any difference to know that my alien, Mira, is not a traditional alien. She is technically from another planet, (a fairly messed up planet) but the folks on her world have the same DNA as the folks on our world. They do have some neat abilities, that one might call telepathy, except Mira doesn't like to call it that since telepathy is unexplained communication and her streaming is just a science-based form of communicating that the folks on our planet haven't figured out. Yet.
Oh, and it's cool. A cool book with a cool story. And a cool alien.
So there.
October 5, 2011
New-Age Web Construction
Time used to be, back in the olden-times of the internet, that anyone who wanted a presence set up a website, then sat around dusting the cobwebs off the corners. The website host would offer all kinds of ways to help folks find your site, but unless you were Nike or Coca Cola, odds were good nobody but your mom and Aunt Martha would show up.
But as all good things do, the options began to increase. You could have a blog! And a Facebook presence! And don't forget Twitter for the truly anal media user!
The lucky business owner or just plain person could add those things a little at a time, announcing any new opening to their current collection of fans or friends. Kind of a snowball effect. And rarely ever lonely. Facebook alone makes sure you're never lonely.
But here's how it is when you start from scratch: You have to build your house (ie. blog or website), and the wings of the house (Facebook, Twitter, Google and Goodreads if you happen to be an author). And all those things have to be connected and intertwined. Otherwise you might want to turn on a light in the bathrom but the lightswitch is in the kitchen! (Talk about problems.)
Which means you're running all over the internet blasting all this information, sending links from here to there and everywhere, but there's nobody there to see it. Cause for now it's just a structure. Or a bunch of structures. Where nobody lives or even visits. Which feels kinda lonely. Okay, very lonely.
So even though all the parts aren't completely in place, here's hoping that the first entry in this first blog introducing the FABULOUS Book One of the new young adult paranormal romance ExtraNormal gets the party started!
Cause nothing's as sad as a party where nobody comes. And this party is definitely worth finding! (Never mind the painters and carpet layers, they're just getting the finishing touches on!)
Take a look around, ask your questions, and be watching for a great read coming soon in 2012.
But as all good things do, the options began to increase. You could have a blog! And a Facebook presence! And don't forget Twitter for the truly anal media user!
The lucky business owner or just plain person could add those things a little at a time, announcing any new opening to their current collection of fans or friends. Kind of a snowball effect. And rarely ever lonely. Facebook alone makes sure you're never lonely.
But here's how it is when you start from scratch: You have to build your house (ie. blog or website), and the wings of the house (Facebook, Twitter, Google and Goodreads if you happen to be an author). And all those things have to be connected and intertwined. Otherwise you might want to turn on a light in the bathrom but the lightswitch is in the kitchen! (Talk about problems.)
Which means you're running all over the internet blasting all this information, sending links from here to there and everywhere, but there's nobody there to see it. Cause for now it's just a structure. Or a bunch of structures. Where nobody lives or even visits. Which feels kinda lonely. Okay, very lonely.
So even though all the parts aren't completely in place, here's hoping that the first entry in this first blog introducing the FABULOUS Book One of the new young adult paranormal romance ExtraNormal gets the party started!
Cause nothing's as sad as a party where nobody comes. And this party is definitely worth finding! (Never mind the painters and carpet layers, they're just getting the finishing touches on!)
Take a look around, ask your questions, and be watching for a great read coming soon in 2012.
