Laura K. Curtis's Blog, page 14

HEA? An Interlude and Fiction as Explanation

A discussion over the last several days on Twitter, and a long and interesting post with a great discussion on Dear Author, on the topic of what kind of ending readers require in a romance–HEA (happily ever after) or HFN (happy for now), and indeed, what “happy for now” means to different readers–led me to examine my own feelings. But before I subject you to ruminations on fiction, I will give you this little piece of writing that sort of explains my feelings as fiction.

I almost miss him, eclipsed as he is by the stark white blouse and night-black pants of the hostess leading him across the room. He has turned gray, a mist that trails in her wake, a near void amidst the burgundy wine, white tablecloths, mahogany furnishings and bright, fresh food.

- That’s him? He’s not what I imagined.

I almost tell her I was wrong, that the slope-shouldered shell is not my former brown-haired, bright-eyed, laughing lover with the rough hands and soft kisses.

- He’s changed.

I have changed, too, and for a brief moment regret the twenty pounds I’ve put on, the fact that I’ve been gardening and my face is smudged with dirt.

- You’re glad, now, to have escaped, I bet. I can’t see you being happy with a man like him.

I look at her, the one he married, sitting across from him. As brown as he is gray, she wears tailored slacks, a cream shirt, a string of pearls. Not an extra ounce to soften her frame; all her unworn pounds weigh him down. They don’t speak to each other, menus held like shields between them.

- I wouldn’t have been with a man like him. He wouldn’t be that man if we’d stayed together.

I cried at our parting. Tear of loss, tears of self-pity. I resist the urge to cry again. Tears of sorrow, this time, tears of frustration at what might have been.

- He got what he deserved. He should have stuck with the one he loved, not left her for the one who made sense.

She is angry for me, and I appreciate it, but she does not understand. We are what we are and he made the only choice he could. I don’t hate him. I never have.

When we leave, I will kiss his stubbled cheek and clasp his softening body to my own and wonder if he ever mourns the long-gone pieces of his soul.

As you might guess, that’s loosely based on my own life. I was 39 years old when I got married. I’d been in love before. More than once. Those were HFNs, but they could have been HEAs. When we were together, I think we thought it was forever. If you’d read about us, you could have closed the book and imagined forever. But it didn’t work out that way, mostly because I was young and so were they. We weren’t ready. We weren’t able to make the kind of commitment to each other a true HEA requires.

For me, a romance novel needs, at the minimum, a HFN like that. A HFN where you can close the book and imagine a future for the couple. Not that they won’t have to work at it, but that they might, realistically, be able to have one. So it’s definitional…if the “FN” just means that the characters are gleefully enjoying a sexual affair, well, that’s not romance for me. I’m not saying it’s not a fine reading experience, it’s just not romance. For romance, I need the characters to feel love, even if they don’t say it.

My real life is hard. When I pick up a romance I want to know that at the end, regardless of the trials and tribulations the couple goes through, regardless of how many horrible things may happen to them, their friends, their families, even their pets, that in the end, they will have a future together. That their lives will be better because they have someone to share them with. In fact, the books that end up with low grades from me when I review them are very often those where, although the characters at the end profess their love for each other, I simply cannot believe that they will be happy, even if they do actually work at it.

I must admit, it’s the rare thriller I am happy with where the criminal gets away at the end, though, so I guess I am a traditionalist. I want books to be better than real life.

The post HEA? An Interlude and Fiction as Explanation appeared first on Laura K. Curtis.

HEA? An Interlude

A discussion over the last several days on Twitter, and a long and interesting post with a great discussion on Dear Author, on the topic of what kind of ending readers require in a romance–HEA (happily ever after) or HFN (happy for now), and indeed, what “happy for now” means to different readers–led me to examine my own feelings. But before I subject you to ruminations on fiction, I will give you this little piece of writing that sort of explains my feelings as fiction.

I almost miss him, eclipsed as he is by the stark white blouse and night-black pants of the hostess leading him across the room. He has turned gray, a mist that trails in her wake, a near void amidst the burgundy wine, white tablecloths, mahogany furnishings and bright, fresh food.

- That’s him? He’s not what I imagined.

I almost tell her I was wrong, that the slope-shouldered shell is not my former brown-haired, bright-eyed, laughing lover with the rough hands and soft kisses.

- He’s changed.

I have changed, too, and for a brief moment regret the twenty pounds I’ve put on, the fact that I’ve been gardening and my face is smudged with dirt.

- You’re glad, now, to have escaped, I bet. I can’t see you being happy with a man like him.

I look at her, the one he married, sitting across from him. As brown as he is gray, she wears tailored slacks, a cream shirt, a string of pearls. Not an extra ounce to soften her frame; all her unworn pounds weigh him down. They don’t speak to each other, menus held like shields between them.

- I wouldn’t have been with a man like him. He wouldn’t be that man if we’d stayed together.

I cried at our parting. Tear of loss, tears of self-pity. I resist the urge to cry again. Tears of sorrow, this time, tears of frustration at what might have been.

- He got what he deserved. He should have stuck with the one he loved, not left her for the one who made sense.

She is angry for me, and I appreciate it, but she does not understand. We are what we are and he made the only choice he could. I don’t hate him. I never have.

When we leave, I will kiss his stubbled cheek and clasp his softening body to my own and wonder if he ever mourns the long-gone pieces of his soul.

As you might guess, that’s loosely based on my own life. I was 39 years old when I got married. I’d been in love before. More than once. Those were HFNs, but they could have been HEAs. When we were together, I think we thought it was forever. If you’d read about us, you could have closed the book and imagined forever. But it didn’t work out that way, mostly because I was young and so were they. We weren’t ready. We weren’t able to make the kind of commitment to each other a true HEA requires.

For me, a romance novel needs, at the minimum, a HFN like that. A HFN where you can close the book and imagine a future for the couple. Not that they won’t have to work at it, but that they might, realistically, be able to have one. So it’s definitional…if the “FN” just means that the characters are gleefully enjoying a sexual affair, well, that’s not romance for me. I’m not saying it’s not a fine reading experience, it’s just not romance. For romance, I need the characters to feel love, even if they don’t say it.

My real life is hard. When I pick up a romance I want to know that at the end, regardless of the trials and tribulations the couple goes through, regardless of how many horrible things may happen to them, their friends, their families, even their pets, that in the end, they will have a future together. That their lives will be better because they have someone to share them with. In fact, the books that end up with low grades from me when I review them are very often those where, although the characters at the end profess their love for each other, I simply cannot believe that they will be happy, even if they do actually work at it.

I must admit, it’s the rare thriller I am happy with where the criminal gets away at the end, though, so I guess I am a traditionalist. I want books to be better than real life.

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Tweaky Publishing Stuff…and a New Store

Today I am over at Women of Mystery with a long post on numbers, self-publishing vs. traditional publishing, and some of the inherent difficulties with using sales data to make career decisions.

It was also pointed out to me after I Photoshopped myself a pair of crankypants for my last post that I should, perhaps, take advantage of the Cafe Press store to create some actual crankypants. So I did. And I’ve added a bunch of other things, too, just for your amusement (and mine). So head on over to Laura K. Curtis’s Crazy Author Shop to see what I’ve been doing with my insomnia!

 

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Crankypants

If only I could clone myself, the other me would, in her copious free time, create a clothing company called “Cranky Couture” so that we could all wear honest-to-goodness cranky pants when we feel like it.

If you’re part of the publishing world, I’ll just say that my current cranky mood is due to being slammed by a Howey’s report over and over everywhere I’ve looked. If you want to know what I think of that report, I will send you two places:

1) To Sunita’s excellent analysis on Dear Author, wherein she mentions all the things I knew, and several I didn’t, that made me distrust the report.

2) To my own post at Women of Mystery, wherein I talk about some of the things you should consider before making your own choice about how you want to publish your current project.

If you’re not in publishing, that won’t mean anything to you. Be happy. Or put on your cranky pants and let me know what makes you want to wear them!

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Customer Service, the Personal Touch

As many people know, a while back I developed an allergy to gluten. At first, it was ghastly. But time passed and I have found substitutes for almost everything. The two things I haven’t been really happy with are pizza dough and real bread. Sandwich bread is easy enough, and we’ve found that Jules GF pizza dough is delicious, but it takes a long time to make. (If you’re curious, I am working on a Pinterest board of GF pantry staples, things I’ve taste-tested and approved. If you have things I should add, I’d love to hear about that them!)

But real bread, despite all the things I tried, defeated me. Sure, I could get a pretty good one with eggs and milk and all kinds of things that, IMHO, don’t belong in bread. I could spend weeks or months (I kid you not, depending on what you see online) developing a starter from a minimum of five different types of flour. I love bread, but that wasn’t going to happen.

Then I bought Gluten-Free on a Shoestring Bakes Bread: (Biscuits, Bagels, Buns, and More). Now, I haven’t made anything from it yet–I’ll let you know how that goes as I try it. It all looks DELICIOUS. But the recipes call for an ingredient I’ve read about before but never been able to find: Expandex Modified Tapioca Starch. I’ve skipped plenty of recipes in my search for gluten free food because I couldn’t find Expandex. The places that had it online wanted WAY too much in shipping and no one had it locally.

However, in the resource section to the book and on her blog, Nicole recommends Montana’s Gifts of Nature. Their website is fairly tragic, to be brutally honest, and to contact them you have to call them. It was about 5:15 on Sunday night my time when I got to the resource section of the book, but Nicole said that one could call and leave a message and they’d call you back. So I called. And Larry answered.

And let me tell you something…that was a super conversation. It wasn’t anything particular that I can put my finger on. But he discussed everything with me from shelf life to shipping costs so I could make the best decision about how much I wanted. When I hung up, despite having had to call, I was really happy with the decision to choose them rather than one of the other two places I saw online that had the product in stock.

It occurs to me that there are very few companies I can say that about. If I had the time, I’d build them a proper website so their products could get the attention they deserve. For now, I’ll just say that if you’re looking for Expandex, it’s definitely worth making the call. And if you’re selling something, take a lesson from Larry and be as friendly as can be!

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Slip Sliding Away

This is my treacherous dog, Philomena. See all that ice and snow? See that nice path we shoveled and blew for her? Well, she doesn’t care. She wants to jump up on top and run around. Which would be fine, except that at 30 pounds or so, she can go about ten or fifteen feet and then she falls through the ice layer and the snow’s so deep she can’t get out.

So today, while trying to keep her on the path we’d dug for her, I managed to fall on my butt, which sent a lovely shock right up my spine to the already herniated disc in my neck. These are things that heroines NEVER have to contend with. Why, oh why, can I not be a romance novel heroine?

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TARDIS, Anyone?

I love notebooks. Love pens. Love everything related to writing. And when my brain shuts down and I can’t write anymore, I like to crochet. Recently, the fabulous Deb Lacy from Mystery Playground asked me to come up with something crafty that was mystery- and book-related. So, since I’ve been on a Doctor Who glom lately, I decided to create a pattern for a pocket-style case for a notebook.

Deb has the pattern over on Mystery Playground so you can crochet your own if you’re so inclined, but you could also win this one! Just head on over and enter (be sure to click the Rafflecopter to enter, don’t just comment)!

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Wheee! It’s a New Cover! Scruffy FTW!

Just got the cover for my upcoming book, LOST, which comes out May 20!

What do you think?

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RWA National Conference – for Fun and Profit!

I’ve just made my reservation for this year’s RWA conference. (Thieves, don’t worry, my husband will still be at my house and my dogs will be with him!) I love RWA. Not the organization, which has all the flaws and weaknesses inherent in any large group, but the conference. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you have limited funds for promotion/marketing, you should go to a conference. It will be more expensive than any other form of marketing, but it will put you in touch with all the people you need to know.

RWA is my vacation as well as my professional networking conference. It’s when I get to see the people I can only chat with online the rest of the year. It’s the one place everyone understands my obsessions and fears.

If you’re thinking about going and you’re not sure whether you’d fit in at a conference, here’s my post on how to deal with conferences: The Art of the Con. The fact is, most conference attendees are very friendly. It won’t take you long to find a group to hang with. If you’re really nervous, find someone to go with you. Make it a vacation as well as a career item.

Are you going to any conferences this year? I’ll be doing RT, Bouchercon, and, of course, RWA. Will I see you?

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Shells and Lattice: Crochet for Beginners

Click to enlarge so you can see the pattern better.

So I know I said I was going to learn to knit this year, and I am. In fact, I have already knitted one project (despite much cursing and pulling out of stitches). I doubt it will ever be natural for me the way crochet is, so I probably won’t ever make any of the really lovely (but complicated) sweaters and things I see patterns for.

And beginner projects are always so very basic that they’re hardly appealing at all.

But often I think the same about crochet. Still, some beginner crochet can look quite accomplished. So here’s a very, very basic pattern that still looks lovely when made up. The only stitches you need are double crochet (DC) and chain (CH) and adding yarn (which I do with a slip stitch for this one).

And the best thing about this scarf is that it is extremely tolerant of mistakes. Most common error: putting six DCs in the shell instead of 5 or forgetting to put the CH where it belongs. You’ll go along to the next row and go “blast, if I count, I have too many DCs below!” but it doesn’t matter. Don’t rip it out. Just skip 3 DCs instead of 2 and make sure your next DC goes in the right place. Forgot to put a chain in? You won’t have *enough* spaces in the row below, but ignore that and just put the chain in on the row you’re working on and then go ahead and DC where you’re supposed to. I promise, it will work out.

That said, those fixes ONLY work if you don’t use a self-striping yarn. I wouldn’t recommend variegated yarn for this project for beginners because that will show mistakes.

This scarf came from several sources–it’s a combination of  a scarf pattern I could never make work (I think the author had the numbers wrong, but she didn’t reply to email), along with some shell-stitch wrist warmers that I love the look of and wanted a scarf to go with. But the problem with shell stitch for a scarf is that you have flat on one end. So you make this scarf in two pieces (don’t worry, you don’t have to sew them together or anything complicated). That way you get pretty waves on both ends.

The centerline of the scarf, where two pieces attach

For ease, I’d make this using two skeins/balls of wool. That way you know both your ends will be the same length. Essentially, you’re going to make one side the length you want, then go back and start from the chain end and make the other side. This leaves a center line that’s visible but pretty.

I used Berrocco Flicker for this scarf, which is a worsted weight (#4) yarn. But to make it long enough at this width, I had to use 2.5 skeins. You could probably do just fine with two skeins if you went down to a 46 beginning chain rather than the 54 I have listed. (You can see a chart for this at the bottom of this post.)

Shells and Lattice Scarf:

Chain 54 (basically, the number of chains is dependent on the width of scarf you want. If you only wanted one shell, you would need to begin with 14 chain stitches. Each repeat is 8 stitches, so it goes up by 8 depending on width: 14, 22, 30, 38, 46, 54, 62, 70….all the way up to blanket size!)

Row 1: 1 DC into 6th CH from hook, skip 2 CH, 5 DC into next CH, skip 2 CH, 1 DC into next CH, CH 1, skip 1 CH, 1 DC into next CH, **skip 2 CH, 5 DC into next CH, skip 2 CH, 1 DC into next CH, ch 1. Repeat from ** until end, then turn.

Row 2: Ch 4 (look at the graph; these make up the first DC and the first CH), skip CH, 1 DC into DC, **skip 2 DC, 5 DC into next DC (this will be the 3rd, topmost, DC of the shell, and you’re making the next shell on top of it), skip 2 DC, 1 DC into DC, CH 1, skip CH (so you now have a chain above a chain above a chain–nicely lining up), 1 DC into DC. Repeat from ** until end. Beginner note: At the end, if you’re not used to double crochet, you’ll find you have a sort of loose loopy thing (see graph). For this second row, there will be five. Those five make up the bottom chain stitch of the first row’s pattern, the three that make up the height of the DC, and the chain stitch of the row you are working on. So place your stitch into not the TOP one, but second from the top. In this case, it is the fourth CH out of five, in future rows it will be the third of four.

Row 3:  Ch 4 (again, these chains make up the first DC and the first CH), skip CH, 1 DC into DC, skip 2 DC, 5 DC into next DC, skip 2 DC, 1 DC into DC, CH 1, skip CH, 1 DC into DC, ch 1. Repeat from ** until end. When you get to the loopy bit at the end, don’t forget to skip the first chain and crochet into the second.

Future rows are all the same as row 3–just make it until it’s the right length or until you run out of half your yarn!

Now for the second half.

There are several ways to do this, but after a couple of experiments, I found looking for shells was easiest. I want my shells to match up and I know that each shell is made up of 5 DCs and that on each side of a shell I have a pattern of DC, ch, DC. So I attach my new yarn (I like to use a simple slip stitch and weave in ends later, but you can attach however you like.  I make 4 chains, because I know that’s what I need to get the height and single chain. Then I don’t bother to try to count the chains. Especially with fuzzy yarn, it’s really hard. I just look for the first DC and DC into that. Now, I know that I have done DC, CH, DC, so it’s time for my shell. Look for the shell and put 5 DCs into the space created by your first shell. Keep going all the way to the end, then just repeat Row 3 to the end of the scarf!

Block if desired or necessary.

The lovely wavy ends of the scarf created by the shells.

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