Chelsea Gaither's Blog, page 37

The Wolf Gift--25

Goddamn it this book is never. going. to end. What brought this on?

Oh, just random violence seasoned by grammatical what the fuck:

MOUNTAIN VIEW CEMETERY, Oakland: giant trees, scattered graves great and small, under the slow relentless rain. In the distance, the ghostly glitter of downtown.

A boy screaming in agony as two others tormented him with knives. Ringleader: just out of prison, wiry, naked arms covered in tattoos, T-shirt wet, transparent, body shivering, drugged up, choked with anger, savoring revenge now on the one who betrayed him, delivering up now to the gods of violence his enemy’s only son.

Guys, I like sentence fragments. Fragments are my friend. Fragments give you that nice, compact descriptive swing. When "The knife flashed in the sunlight as he brought it down" ruins the flow of the paragraph (GOD IT HAPPENS) you do something like "The flash of light off steel. The knife came down" or something like it.

BUT THAT IS TWO MOTHERFUCKING PARAGRAPHS OF TEXT WITHOUT A SUBJECT VERBING TO BE FOUND. THE GHOSTLY GLITTER OF DOWNTOWN WHAT? WHAT DID DOWNTOWN DO? Second sentence COULD have had a subject-verb agreement if it weren't for that little "as" in there. And HOLY RUN-ON BATMAN, how do you have a string of words that fucking long and forget to stick a verb or two in there?

Sentence structure is very simple: He did. I do. Or to use the most awesome sentence in Stephen King's back catalogue, "Plums deify!" You may abuse this at your lesure, but if you abuse it too much you wind up with two paragraphs where LITERALLY no one is doing anything.

Not one goddamn sentence in those two paragraphs have one fucking thing to do with each other and please for the love of God take colons away from Anne Rice forever.

And OF COURSE it is a setup so that Ruben has justifiable victims to eat. This is literally like the slasher movies casting that hot promiscuious blond as the first to die so that you don't feel icky about it. RUBEN IS LITERALLY HUNTING AND KILLING PEOPLE IN HORRIBLE WAYS AND THIS BOOK EXPECTS YOU NOT TO CARE.

Next up: he discovers a woman who attempted suicide, drags her off to the nearest nightclub so that she can be rescued, and runs off.

And then he goes back to Laura and the bloodlust goes away, and the writing here actually gets pretty good. There are freeways that vibrate like bowstrings and sunlight and he starts sexing up Laura and OH GOOD HOLY FUCKING GOD ANNE RICE WHY? WHHHHHHYYYYYYY?

In the icy light, he slowly peeled off her tight jeans, secret hair, hair like the hair that covers me, and folded back the flimsy blue fabric of her blouse.

HE JUST COMPARED HIS WOLFY FUR COAT TO HUMAN PUBIC HAIR.

RUBEN'S FUR=PUBIC HAIR.

ANNE RICE JUST TOLD US HER VERY SPECIAL WEREWOLF HAS A PELT OF HUMAN PUBIC HAIR. 


He strips her naked and starts licking her all over. I am not even remotely kidding. Note: SHE DOES NOT WAKE UP. Laura is literally an object in this scene. The chapter ends a few sentences later:

Voice of the beast rattling deep in his chest. To have and to have not. Mothers’ milk.

I once read excerpts from a letter written by a crazy woman. She believed that aliens existed (this does not make you crazy) that her boyfriend was a 10,000 year old Atlantian (this does, but he had manipulated her into the idea) that her boyfriend's ex-wife was a shapeshifting reptilian alien queen, that she herself was another one, and that she and the ex-wife had to fight to the death for the fate of humanity. She was in jail for killing the poor woman. Those chunks of her letters? Yeah, they made more sense than this chapter.

And yeah, I'm not going to pretend that this chapter didn't actually end when Ruben compared his fur to pubic hair.

I am sorry, my dears. I'm sorry. I'm so very, very sorry.

PUBIC HAIR. WHY??????

Why I Did It--Part the fourth

So now we're to the part that is hard for me to write about. I do not like remembering any of this. I do not like trying to remember it well enough to drop it into chronological order. I don't like the obvious insanity, or the not obvious insanity. I DO NOT LIKE THIS PART OF MY LIFE. 

And yet if I were given a "redo" button, I'd do it again. Because this was absolutely something that needed to happen. Because life.

Also: DREAM AGENT was and is forever awesome. This is not a slam against agents in general or them in particular. 

Anyway.

The first problem with the April Incident, ironically enough, was getting the money.

I had a week to get it together, and I was absolutely positive that I'd have my income tax check well before then.

Yeah, let's just say a quick google ended that right quick.

So now I turned to my Dad and asked if he could make good on his promise of getting the money through.

He hesitated.

This was not a good sign. There was a long, long history of "OH SURE SWEETHEARTS" that all eventually ended in pain and tears and little else. And this was the most important "oh sure sweetheart" I'd ever had.

Panic set in.

I will spare you the melodrama (too late!) but to sum it up, if anything could go wrong when I wanted something, it would. I was (and still am) not used to good things happening and working. Something, I was sure, was going to go wrong. And it would be all my fault when it did.

This was it, you see. This was my miracle. My whole life I'd seen it happen for other people. That promotion, or the missed flight that crashed, or the random check when you Really Really Need It. And this was mine. I had failed the year before, there was utterly no reason for me to have been successful this year, so now something would go wrong. Something had to go wrong. For some reason, I had to fail at this. Because that's just who I was. Good things just don't happen to me. 

But I reminded myself that only that Sunday I'd been told that this wasn't a test of me anymore. This was a test of God. And that meant it would work out. I would get that money. And finally, finally, finally, not just any agent but THE agent, MY DREAM AGENT, was going to read my book from cover to cover. And then everything I wanted would come true. Because God wouldn't let it get that far without going all the way. He wouldn't. He didn't do things like that.

And so I prayed. And prayed. And prayed. And while I was praying I called my dad. I priced how much my tablet would pawn for ("shit" was the general consensus). I talked to an aunt about loaning me money. I talked to my mom and we pooled resources. I called my dad again. I began researching short term loans. I thought about asking my boss for a loan. Mom and I realized that we could do it--barely--if my aunt could come through with part of it. I began to believe that maybe, just maybe, this all might work.

And then my dad showed up with all the money.

 All of it.

I don't know what he did, and I will never ask. This was the time for him to come through, and that was something that usually ended in failure, and THIS time it worked. This felt like rolling all sevens. After promising to pay him back once the income tax check came in (Which I did) I sent the money to the charity auction, and then sent my information and my manuscript to the person who would then send it to Dream Agent.

I was not profoundly happy. I was in a state beyond happy. I was in a state of full glow. None of that should have happened. I should not have won the auction. I should not have gotten the money. Things like that just did not happen to me. If just one thing had gone wrong, the way things usually go, everything would have fallen apart. But it hadn't. For the first time in my life everything had come through beautifully. I was thrilled. It was my very first miracle. Oh, it wasn't done yet but when it was, everything would come true.

The agent, I was told, would probably get back to me sometime in May. I thanked the contact and prepped for my first real vacation in a year. The restaurant where I worked would be closed until Memorial day weekend, so my boss could go to South America and relax. My mother and I would be traveling to Waco to visit my grandparents. We went. It was the first time in two years I felt really happy and really relaxed. I tried to remind myself that things could go wrong, but that little voice inside of me said "Would He have brought you this far if it were going to fall apart later?" and I couldn't shake it. My hopes were up. They were up so far I didn't think I could ever get them back down...and I didn't care. Because this was my miracle, and miracles never end badly.

I probably should have read my own fucking book.

Two days into vacation I got the e-mail from Dream Agent. I couldn't open it. I made my mom get into our rental car and drive me around half of Waco until I felt steady enough to read the e-mail. I reminded myself of all the things that had worked along the way. I reminded myself of all the things that usually went wrong once I got involved.

I opened the e-mail.

The Dream Agent hated my manuscript.

They saw no value in my writing.

They recommended that the novel be trunked. All of it, of course, was coached in that wonderful positive double-speak people use when they are trying oh-so-very hard not to hurt your feelings.

And in reality, it wouldn't have mattered what the Dream Agent had said. It was negative. It meant that the miracle, my miracle, the thing I had thought was impossible, that I had thought I had finally gotten, had turned out to be nothing at all.

The Wolf Gift--chapter24

WARNING: CW IS DRUNK WELL BEYOND NORMAL CW DRUNKNESS. CW WAS GIVEN SEVERAL BOTTLES OF WINE IN ADDITION TO OWNING  A BOTTLE OF VERMOOTH THAT WENT BAD SEVERAL DAYS AGO. SHE DISPOSED OF IT IN THE BEST WAY POSSIBLE. PLEASE KEEP YOUR VERMOOTH IN YOUR FRIDGE, OTHERWISE YOUR BARTENDER/FEMALE FRIEND WILL DISPOSE OF VERMOOTH IN THE MOST HUMAN FRIENDLY WAY POSSIBLE.

WHICH MEANS THEY DRINK IT.

 BECAUSE VERMOOTH ONLY STORES FOR A MONTH WITHOUT REFRIDGERATION. BECAUSE IT IS WINE.

ALCOHOLICS: THE FRIDGE IS YOUR FRIEND. PUT BOOZE IN IT. THANK YOU.

So. How is Ruben today?

  
Right. He put lamb shanks in the crock pot. This is our first paragraph. We needed to know this.

Lamb as of right now is seven bucks a pound.

THAT IS INSANE.

After Laura made a particularly luscious salad, of lettuce, tomato, and avocado tossed in the most delicate olive oil with herbs, they sat down to dinner in the breakfast room and Reuben, as usual, devoured everything in sight while Jim touched a little of this and a little of that.

Dear readers: Stuff blender with parsley. Add canola oil to one half inch below level of parsley. Add Five-twelve garlic cloves. Two tablespoons of lime juice. One-two tablespoon of salt. Place in blender. Blend on "Liquify" until blender feels more than vaguely warm (PRO TIP: LISTEN TO "FAIRY QUEEN" BY HEATHER ALEXANDER UNTIL END). Pour into glass container because you are not a restaurant and you want to keep this dressing as long as possible. Slice red onions as thin as possible (PRO TIP: USE THIS THING) . Marinate onions in sherry vinegar and one shitload of salt until rubbery and a vibrant pink color. Twenty four hours is optimal. Shred romano cheese. Procure spring mix from nearest grocery. Dress in parsely-oil-garlic mixture. Annoint with ramano and marinated onions. Serve with blu cheese crumbles and large water cracker.

Fuck Laura. You now have the best salad in universe.

ALSO: Laura dresses in Gingham. This was the fabric that made up most my Easter Dress Age Ten Costume. I remember having an apron with paisley print flowers and a shitload of lace.

If Anne Rice wants to out-preform Babtist fundamintalists she needs to look WELL BEYOND McCall brand patterns.

There is discussion of a St. Fransis Thanksgiving.

St Francis is known for charity. As in serving people in utter fucking poverty. As in whatever you imagined right now, donate twice that and then google the Poor Clares, and then donate whatever the guilt trip says you need to.

If I were Catholic, I'd be praying to St. Francis.

St. Francis has no place in this fucking "I'm so rich" werewolf novel.

Then we get a LONG fucking tristice on what Thanksgiving is:

\Thanksgiving had always been a sparkling, convivial event in the house on Russian Hill. Frequently Celeste’s mother joined the family, and Grace thought nothing of asking any intern or resident working with her, especially if he or she was far from home. Phil wrote a new poem each year for the occasion, and one of his old students, an eccentric genius who lived in a Haight-Ashbury flophouse, frequently wandered in and stayed until someone inevitably challenged him on his intense conspiratorial views of society being destroyed by a clandestine organization of the rich and powerful, after which he would storm out.

My family traditionaly went to Loaves and Fishes on Thanksgiving. Loaves and Fishes is Corpus Christi, TX's charity house. If you have nowhere else to go on Thanksgiving or Christmas you eat there. I remember singing "Away in a Manger" for Thanksgiving dinner at the age of ten, aware in only the vaguest way possible of what caroling at such a poverty-stricken venue actually meant. I now wish my memory was better.

Everybody reading this neads to locate the nearest charity venue, and plan for BOTH serving food and  caroling during the Christmas season. If you are an atheist, please realize that a large porion of the empoverised are believers in desperate need of encouragement and do memorize the words to "Away in a Manger". Sing it acapellla on Christmas day. You will have done more for encouraging the survival of individual humans than you can imagine. Keeping people alive is more important than confirming your religious biases. (Seriously. If you don't believe, take whatever steps it needs to keep people alive and happy during a hard winter. You can convert us during a less emotionally loaded time. Give us christmas presents now and we'll survive to conversion time next summer.)

Debating charity at a rich-person venue? Ruben, please go die now. Thank you.

 Leroy the Handiman shows up. He lets Father Jim know that the mountain lion that killed his dog is dead:

“Oh, they found her out there this afternoon. She’d been tagged by the university four years ago, tagged on her left ear. It was her, all right, and whatever got her gave her what for! There’s a bear out there in those woods, now you be careful, you and that pretty girl.”

That "pretty girl" Is Laura. Who, if this were an actively good book, would not need any extra protection.




Ruben asks about the mountain lion's cubs, because humanity loves kittens and Rice knows this:

“Oh, those cubs will scatter now and find new territory. Maybe one of them will hang around here, who knows? There are likely five thousand of those big cats in California. One come into town and took a walk in north Berkeley, right past the shops and restaurants, not so very long ago.”

Having just researched cougars to call shit on Anne Rice, I have to assume that a cougar shit on Rice's lawn.

Oh hey, what's it like being charity minded in this family?

“And you drive the Porsche, huh, son, and he drives the old family car.”

 “Well, it’s not as if we don’t try to get him a decent set of wheels,” said Reuben. “My mom bought him a Mercedes, and he lasted with that about two days. He just took so many wisecracks from the homeless in his parish, and then he brought it right back.”

Fuck you Ruben. Seriously. I hope you sit on a toilet plunger.

So then Ruben asks Leroy about shoes Felix Nideck and the general consensus from Leroy is "Perfect:.". Becaues donating to charity is for liberal saps. We also find out that Felix is sixty and he looks forty.

I want you all to know, I have a paranoid adoptee cat named Felix, and imagining Felix Nideck as that Felix is very amusing. That is all.


Then we get an info dump re: Marrock that would have worked better if Ruben hadn't beheaded him.

There is a lot of emphasis on how he isnt really bad. This would be worth more if Rubes hadn't killed him.

 Then Leroy invites Ruben down to Nideck:

“Son, you can’t miss it. Come on down to Nideck. Nideck’s got one main street. It’s right there.”

Rice, this is my fucking life. you are severly underestimating life in the american small town,


Ruben the shit head goes to Nideck, and finds out that he killed a world traveler, but not much else.

He takest this note back to the house to examine and discovers that Felix Nicdeck;s diary is gone.

I don't care.

Ruben and Laura then discuss both poetry and immortality.

I have yet to give a fuck.

This happens in reguard to poetry:

Make not your rosary of yew-berries,       Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be           Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
I'm too drunk to argue this. Hunt down a copy of Lewis's Till We have Faces and you'll have my arguement in a nutshell.

 Laura tells Ruben that Marrock tried to kill him out of envy, and not because Ruben murdered lots of people.

Right.

They debate the address of the house for a minute, and then check out google earth.

Those of you who have been with me long term know how I feel about Google Earth.

Somehow, Ruben discovers a random secret rooml an this means they have to go driving for a while.

I HAVE NO IDEA WHY DO NOT ASK ME.
'

The chapter ends with them driving and debating how valuable getting into Marrock's secret space is.

Why I did it, Part the Third

So when we last left our heroine, I'd just gotten my very second partial. And it felt MUCH more real than the full request the year before. Sure, I thought, it's just a partial, BUT THEY LIKED IT. I repeated this to myself as I carefully followed their instructions. I repeated this to myself as I moved from Corpus Christi to Small Little Hick Town (of AWESOME) and started a new job. I repeated it to myself through six long, long months of e-mail tag, in which I asked if I were still on their radar after two months, and they said "Yeah, we're busy" (BTW this is normal, and a little pushy on my part) and I went back to repeating BUT THEY LIKED IT to myself.

And then this happened:

BUT THEY LIKED IT?!?I did not cry this time. I hibernated. I stopped everything for three months and waited for the feels to return. Because the depression this time wasn't that "Oh, I feel sad" kind. It was the "I am numb, and I'd like to stay that way" kind.

So then I went back to normal Queries, and I went back to flat out rejections. It continued. And continued. And Continued. And eventually the problem became not the rejection letters themselves, but the conversations with my family. My father in particular felt I should have pursued the agency that asked for the partial. I should, he said, e-mail them back and ask if I could resubmit. I replied that you don't DO that. That's not how agencies work. (For the record: You don't DO that. That's not how agencies work.) After about three, four months, he stopped asking and started manipulating.

Around the same time that this is happening, I decided to try to get somebody with street cred to tell me what I was doing wrong with the novel (read as: Say "OMG I LOVE IT" and publish it), and I tried my damndest to win a full manuscript critique by DREAM AGENT at a charity auction. I even got my boss to let me keep my laptop on the property so I could bid on the auction, a request that she granted against all odds.

 I lost.

I bought a bottle of wine from my boss and got completely shitfaced that night.

This becomes very important later in the story.

The next day I discussed this with my dad, and he repeated the "Why don't you ask the agency that liked your work for a second chance?" refrain. I told him no. He kept pushing. I began crying. I told him no again. He asked me "What do you have to lose?" and I hung up on him.

And then I decided he was right, and I sent them another e-mail:


I expected a "not just no, but HELL no," which was what I'd been told to expect from agents when presented with this request. So I almost didn't even bother opening their reply. I can't repeat it here without either blurring out 90% of the text or providing enough info to identify the agency, but the gist of it was "Yes, if the rewrite is significant enough".

I sent them another sample of the manuscript. I sent, I think, three follow up emails between August of '11 and Feb of '12, and received one reply back. After that, it was radio silence until later. MUCH later.

I quit submitting entirely in February, if my records are right. I think that was the point where I was just fucking sick of it. I was tired, several major people had quit at my job and I had to cover for them, I had every word of the book memorized, and THAT Agency still hadn't responded to the partial or the follow-up emails. Which wasn't their fault. I was just stressed out and tired and tired of being stressed out and tired, and I was ready to explode.

February became March.

March '12 became April.

I began thinking about querying again. I also discovered that I had failed to file my taxes properly the year before, and that between getting that fixed and changing jobs, I was going to be getting quite a bit of money on my tax return this year. I spent ALL of April 13th, which was a Friday, getting that taken care of.

And then I went to church.

And this next part, I warn you, is fucking insane.

This was the first time I'd gotten to go to church in over a year. To say that I was tired is to understate. In reality, I needed to be on serious medication. I wasn't just suicidal. I had a plan. It was a very well researched, if highly melodramatic plan, and the only reason I hadn't put it into place was I didn't know what I'd do with my cat. I didn't want to make her live without me, and I didn't want to hurt her. I also didn't want to die because of The Book. If I died, the Book would never become a thing, and I felt like I owed it more than that. And so I went to church fresh off researching things NOBODY SHOULD EVER RESEARCH, and trying to think of solutions to the cat problem and the book problem.

(NOTE: Suicidal thoughts are not things. They are symptoms. Your brain is having the chemical equivalent of a seizure and you need medical help NOW. It's not something to be ashamed of. Please. If you're thinking like that, go get help.)

I remember that the message was on Daniel in the Lion's Den. NOTE TO MY NON-CHRISTIAN READERS: This is like going to school and getting a lecture on two plus two. It's not just information you've already covered, it's information you had memorized by second grade. Daniel and the Lion's Den is Baby's First Bible Reader level material. I pretty much tuned the first half of it out. Then the pastor said something along the lines of how the first part of the story is a test of Daniel, and the second part (the part with the lions in it) was a test of God.

And suddenly I became convinced that this was why I'd finally gotten a Sunday off for the first time in a year. Was so that I could sit there in  that chair, hear that, and understand what the last two years had been about. The whole submission-rejection cycle had been a test of me. To see if  I were emotionally durable enough handle it (...that'd be a big no) and if I could still believe in God after a whole year of not getting my own way. Now, God (or my own brain, whichever you want to go with) was telling me that it was His turn. He was the one who would be tested now, and I needed to sit tight.

 Monday came. Monday went. Tuesday came.

 And for some reason I cannot remember, I went back to that charity auction site, and discovered that they were holding another auction.

 DREAM AGENT was holding another auction for a full manuscript critique.

It had started that morning.

I realized that I had an insane (to me) amount of money coming, and that meant I could probably afford to bid up to an equally insane amount of money. But I had bid the previous year. There was no way I could do it.

I called my Dad and asked him if he could help to spot me the money. He said yes, he could. I spent that entire night at work jittery as a bug with this blend of religious mania and stage fright. Could this be it? Could this be what God had wanted me to wait for? No. It couldn't possibly be. It was just another of those stupid things, like that annoying surge of hope every time I opened what turned out to be a rejection letter. It wouldn't work.

I went to a local bar after work rather than going home. I sat down on my smart phone and I started bidding at the five-minutes-to-go mark.

Four minutes.

Three minutes.

Two.

One.

Zero.

And I stared at the screen in resigned disappointment as, once again, somebody had gotten the higher bid. My last bid was at 11:59 on the nose, and the next one was at midnight. Midnight was the end of the auction. I had been beaten again. Not because I didn't have the money, but because I wasn't fast enough hitting the fucking bid button. The familiar I'm-numb-so-I-won't-cry feeling returned. But that was what was expected. I don't get to win these sorts of things. I hit refresh on the auction page and ordered another fruity beer.

The page refreshed.

I was wrong. The auction ended at 11:59:59, not midnight. Which meant I had the highest bid.

In other words, for the very first time in my life, I had won. 

And once again, I was the happiest little girl in the world.

Of course, given how much I've whined about "Last April", you all know this isn't going to end well.

The Wolf Gift--chapter 23

So Ruben's brother Jim shows up. Then we take a step back and find out what Rubes and Laura have been doing today (looking for Marrock's things. Because, you know, stuff is more interesting than an actual person when that person is an icky brown color) Then we take another step back and find out that Jim got today off and that is rare. Unfortunately the author didn't take yet another step back and realize that she could have written this story about an immortal asian werewolf Knight of the Round Table, and decided that focusing on a rich white infant was much more interesting.

Ruben moans about how his seperation from his family is agonizing. Yeah. I'll bet. Self imposed wallowing in indolence and drugs werewolf and sex is always such a chore.

Immortal asian werewolf Knight of the Round Table.

Jim breaks out his confessional garb. Because using a religious sacriment to cover your OPEN DISCUSSION OF MURDER is a respectful way to treat your belief system. And he basically drops Marrok's murder in Jim's lap and says "Deal with it" and goes off on a tangent about how WONDERFUL the wolf-power is. Which is what EVERY ADDICT EVER says. Oh I can't give it up. I can't. I can't.

Yes you can. You just won't.

Oh, yeah, I went there. I have lots of sympathy for people suffering with addictions. I have no sympathy for the "Oh, I can't, it's just too hard". "Can't" implies that it is physically impossible to do so. But you know what? It's always possible to give up an addiction. It's not probable, though, because human beings like to avoid pain, and every stage in recovery involves pain. Real physical pain, real psychological pain, and real social pain. I don't condemn anyone who wants to avoid that pain, but I also don't condone using denial to avoid the obvious: YOU CAN ALWAYS CHOOSE TO LET GO. Always. It is NEVER too late to quit addiction as long as you have a pulse.

Anne Rice is glorifying the worst sort of addictive behavior. That early stage, recreational glow. Late stage addiction is ugly, but it's also a lot closer to rock bottom. You can't glorify it. There's nothing there to praise. All there is is guilt, shame, and numbing. Something every human being EVER has the right to walk away from. You don't have to carry guilt or shame. In fact, most addicts cling to their guilt and shame because it justifies that next drink or fix. Let go of the guilt, you might have a chance to get your life back. But that's the ugly part, the end-stage. This is all the shiny golden rave-y newness, and she's making that attitude a GOOD thing.

Jim reacts perfectly:

Jim’s eyes were moist, and his face sort of broken with sadness, with worry. But he only nodded, waiting patiently, every time Reuben paused, for him to go on.

Yeah. Everything Ruben said before this paragraph is so very much a cry for help, it's fucking textbook. And Jim is doing exactly the right thing by sitting there and not being judgemental. The problem is he doesn't back it up with enough hard-ass to make it effective. I love you, you are wonderful, is nice, but it has no power until you add but if you get high one more time I'm kicking your ass to the curb. 

And Ruben just keeps right on at it, talking about eating the mountain lion. And then Rice drops this gem:

How could he break through the tragic expression on Jim’s face with some flash of how dazzling and even sublime this was?

 This is what happens when an addict talks to a sober person. When you're high you might think you're describing something wonderful, but the sober person sees all the things that happy glow is hiding. And I do not get it because this is actually good. Werewolf as a drug allegory. This could be salvaged if Rice is willing to rake Ruben over the coals for the rest of the book.

Jim info dumps everything that's happened in the book so far, in case we weren't paying attention and...how can the dialogue in this book be getting progressively worse?

“I know what you’re going to say,” said Reuben. “I know what you’re going to tell me. But there is no one who can help us with this. No one. And don’t tell me to call this or that authority! Or to confide in this or that doctor. Because any such move would spell the complete end of my freedom and Laura’s freedom, and the complete end of our lives!”

That's the worst paragraph in the book, which is amazing because I found the worst paragraph in the book LAST chapter. And who says "Spell the end of my freedom and the complete end of our lives!"? Did we fall into bad fanfic when the publisher's back was turned?


They discuss Laura. Specifically Ruben's bringing Laura over, and good fucking GOD Rice SO wanted to write another damned vampire book it's unreal. Anyway, Laura won't get bit because it could kill her precious widdle female stem cells and that would be bad.

But you know what? Father Jim just became the best character in the novel: 

 “You killed them, Reuben. You killed them in their sins! You terminated their destiny on this earth. You snatched from them any chance for repentance, for redemption. You took that from them. You took it all, Reuben. You snuffed out forever the years of reparation they might have lived! You took life itself from them and you took it from their descendants, and yes, even from their victims, you took what their amends might have been.”

Of course it won't be allowed to stand, because Ruben is Anne Rice's mouthpiece, but OH FUCKING THANK YOU YES.

The point--that Justice is more than making bad things go away. That Justice is about making sure the bad people are equally protected and that their punishment is no greater than necessary--flies right fucking over Ruben's head, but he does admit that he murdered and he feels no remorse.

We really ought to stop right there, because that's the entire problem with Ruben right there. Sociopaths make shit viewpoint characters. It worked a little bit for Darkly Dreaming Dexter, but that wore off quick. Benedict Cumberbatch does a sociopath great, but even in Sherlock the VP char is Watson, not Holmes. (I would also argue that Sherlock Sherlock is not a sociopath because he frequently moves in ways that have a poor outcome on his personal life, but that's a debate for a less stupid post). Remorse in fiction functions as a release valve for that sense of wrongness readers tend to register every time the main character blows somebody's head off. Todd Snyder said "In America we like our bad guys dead!" and this is true. But we also like our heroes to drink until they pass out afterwards because we want them to feel guilty for it.

The info-dumping continues, and we finally start speculating that the werewolves are immortal.

Because of course they are.

Basically, the rest of the chapter is a rehash of everything we already know, including another mention of the Russian doctor from Paris that Ruben's mom contacted. Ruben fake prays and stares into the woods for a while. Jim really prays and then leaves. End of chapter.

Yeah. Jim is just that monotage episode long-running TV series have to do every once in a while to keep their viewers in tune with the show. EXCEPT THIS IS A BOOK AND YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE TO DO THAT.
 

Why I Did It--Part the Second

So before we go on with this, I want to make one thing very clear: I think that agents and trade publishing is awesome. If I had a chance to make it there, I would definately take it. But as I am about to SLOWLY slog through, I no longer believe that I have that chance, and that makes me rather sad.

But I've done well-ish as a self publisher, and that makes me happy.

So I sent out my very first batch of Query Letters over the course of a couple of days. I tried to keep my hopes down, not understanding that my hopes were unreasonably high already, and that getting them down to sanity would require multiple lead weights (and probably a massive does of reality). I carefully added each agency's e-mail address to my contacts under the words "Rejection (agency)" so that I'd be in the right mindset when I opened the email.

This didn't work, by the way.

I had my little excel sheet with the agencies contacted, and the very first item after "date sent" was of course "rejection received".  I reminded myself each time I hit "send" that this would be YET. ANOTHER. REJECTION. and that I shouldn't get too depressed.

Again. This did not work.

Of course, it wasn't all suck. One of the good contacts I got from the Dennix Hall Incident was a WONDERFUL local fantasy writer who deserves all the praise in the world. She invited me to be her helper at a con in Houston, and when the con-runners found out I was a fantasy artist, they upgraded my status from "pig iron lugger" to "Guest" and let me run a couple panels, even.

I met Steve Brust there. He was very cool. I fangirled.

Another interesting thing that happened between '10 and '11 was my decision to leave my job as an overnight dougnut fryer and become a waitress. At the time I thought it was just a lateral move, but in reality it was the best thing I could have done at the time. The money was much better, the people I've met through that job are awesome, and it gave me much more free time with which to work. It also interrupted what had become a long, steady stream of rejection.

The first one to crush my soul was the rejection of my first (and only) full manuscript request. Of course, I didn't count it as a comment on the quality of my work. For one thing, I was twenty-three and I was still firmly convinced that I was an underappreciated star destined for greatness. For another, the agent-assistant who had requested the full left the agency, and the one who replaced her was the one who did the rejecting. At the time I assumed it meant that one assistant liked it and the other one didn't. Now I assume that meant the first assistant was accepting fucking everything and that it got on the agent's nerves.

I also began to notice a very steep decline in my mood. I have never been the most stable person. Winter of '10, though, was my first year On My Own. I was receiving an average of one rejection a week, moving into two or three if I'd been especially industrious. It was also the year I was assaulted, so dealing with that really didn't help. By January '11 I asked my dad to help me find a counselor, and instead he got me on anti-depressants. They helped. A lot.

The whole time I kept revising the book. And revising the book. AND REVISING. THE BOOK. I changed the title three times. I redid the query letter more times than I can count. And of course, I prayed. Because I'm a good little Christian girl, and I knew--and this is still true--that writing was MY GIFT FROM GOD (I'd put /crazy but this is the crazy part and it hasn't even really started yet. You may either assume that there's real spiritual stuff behind this or that I had a mental breakdown halfway through this story. I don't care either way, but the religious stuff is just part of the story). I knew it because I couldn't stop writing, my attempts to get God to take away my gift of writing never worked, and because it was the one thing I thought I could do.

Ironically, the one thing all my research into publishing did was convince me that Self Publishing was the one big no. You'd be better off flushing manuscript pages down a toilet than self publish. You threw away all your rights, and nobody would ever want your story...and most of the self publishing services were cheats, anyway. You were better off just waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

And writing more query letters. And waiting some more.  And keeping the rejection letters because...Stephen King did it, I guess.

Rejections flowed like a river.

In March of '11 the new job and the move put a stop to everything for a while. I stopped sending out query letters and started packing. I know now that this move--a suggestion from my mother that I move closer to her--was more for my parent's sanity than for mine. I was in BAD shape at this point, not so much from rejection letters as I was rejection letters, night shifts, a shit job, a bad manger, an unaddressed sexual assault, a lack of good nutrition, and probably kicked puppies. I saw human beings I did not work with MAYBE every other week, on the rainy days when I needed a ride. The move was a good thing.

Of course, my computer was the very last thing that I was going to pack up. I did one last check of my e-mail and I saw I had a letter from an agency. I had chosen it mostly because they represented Fantasy Author I Worship, and it was one of the rejections I'd been dreading. I did my usual grit-my-teeth-and-repeat-"rejection" -a-lot preparation and then I read the letter:

 You could hear the squeeing from outerspace, I swear to God. 

The Wolf Gift--Chapter 22

Deciding to write down everything about my self-publishing stuff has been very cathartic. What I didn't realize is how INCREDIBLY nervy I am about posting it online. Esp because I'd say a lot of it is religious-mania crazy...and yet it is part of the story.

Ah, well. If you like it I'm glad. If you don't like it, post about it on twitter or something. It's not like I'd ever have an actual good reputation.

Anyway, where's Ruben?

...he and Laura are having a freak out in the middle of the rug. Okay. Good to know.

So I’m not a Morphenkind. So I’m odious, loathsome, an offense. Well, this offense to the species has just killed this Morphenkind with a little help, of course, from his beloved and her ax.

Ruben. You've known her maybe a week, and most of that was wolfy booty call. WHICH I HAVE NOT FORGIVEN YOU FOR. It's probably a little early to be all "I WUB YOU" with this one.

 Oh, and there is a body after all. It was just the wolfyness fading away. So now Ruben has to go bury him.

And you know, I didn't think this book could take any deeper a turn towards the stupid, but oh my fucking GOD:

 “Bury him! Reuben, you can’t.” Laura looked up at him as if awakened from a nightmare. She wiped at her nose with the back of her hand. “Reuben, you can’t simply bury him. Surely you realize how valuable, how utterly priceless, this body is— to you!”

What.

“In this body are all the cellular secrets of this power,” Laura said. “If ever you are to find out, if ever you are to know. Why, you can’t discard this thing. That’s unthinkable.”

WHAT.

“But Reuben, you can’t simply take this thing, this mysterious thing, and consign it to the dirt, you can’t just bury it. My God, this is an unimaginable organism, of which the world knows nothing. It points the way to understanding—.”

I'm not even going to touch the pricklier aspects of mining the only (confirmed) non-white body in the entire book for DNA to save/educate a white man. But just...just...HOW. HOW DO YOU GO FROM WAILING ON THE FLOOR TO "OH NO MY BELOVED THIS BODY IS THE ANSWER TO ALL OUR PROBLEMS WE CANNOT BURY IT IN THE COLD COLD GROUND"

Also (please don't shoot me guys for pointing it out) Rad had no value when he was alive. Now he's dead, he's fucking priceless. He could save Ruben's life. He's not so valuable that he gets a real name, now. No. That's asking too much. But he's fucking priceless.

Yeah. Is anybody else seeing parallels to Henrietta Lacks here?

Then Laura hits on the second most racist/creepy-as-fuck/sociopathic idea in the last twenty-two chapters:

“What if (Rad's body) were found, and analyzed and blamed for all the crimes that have occurred?”

Laura wants to take Rad's human body and dump it at the side of the road so that its blend of wolf and human DNA and the Christ Chrism inside it can be detected, and Rad can be blamed for RUBEN'S crimes. Because it's perfectly moral and just and right to blame your crimes on a dead man.

Especially if he's a different race then you.

I'm sorry. It's just that even fucking Rosy's race was left ambiguous and the very first confirmed bad wolf is also the very first confirmed not-a-white-person.

...AND WHY ARE WE NOT READING THE STORY OF A( POSSIBLY IMMORTAL) KICK ASS EVIL SLAYING ASIAN WEREWOLF? THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN FUCKING AWESOME. If for no other reason than Rad obviously had morals and shit, where as Ruben just has shit.

THANK GOD Ruben shoots that idea down too... because the mitocondrial DNA would prove that Rad ain't the murderer.

Let's do this fail by the numbers, mkay?

1. Rad is the werewolf that made Ruben. Ergo Rad is the werewolf whose saliva/DNA, if this exists, would be on file re: Marchant. So there actually is a chance that the authorties would identify Rad as the BadWolf instead of Ruben and let Ruben go scott free.

2. ...except that it wouldn't. Because clearly no DNA from the wolf survives long enough to be tested. Unless Anne Rice knows enough about police procedures to have it take for. fucking. ever. for DNA to come back on a case, especially if you've got nothing to match it to and you just have to plug it into a database and pray, DNA testing in this universe probably takes just a couple of days, because that's what would work for this plot and most people assume that DNA=magic. CSI logic. Anyway, anybody remember what happened really early on in the book?

He screwed Marchant. Who then died in a horrible and pointless way so that she could be a symbol of things rather than an active castmate, because eww, girl. And the police ran a rape kit on her body. And Ruben said "Yeah, that's my sperm" and surrendered a DNA sample that would be kept to test against other DNA sources at the crime scene, and then kept on file in the nearest database because cops do that.

 RUBEN'S DNA IS CURRENTLY ON FILE WITH THE POLICE.

So the fact that his ass hasn't been hauled in for mauling people means one of two things. Either (a. Anne Rice is going for real accuracy and DNA takes one to two to SIX months to process, OR (b. WEREWOLVES DO NOT DROP HUMAN DNA AND THERE IS NOTHING TO TEST.

Given that B would keep Ruben's holier-than-thou ass out of hot water, I'm gonna bet that Rice isn't going for procedural accuracy on this one.

Now. If Ruben is arrested/chased/ousted as the Man Wolf PUBLICLY AND BY THE POLICE before this novel is over, I will print this blog post out on edible paper and eat it. But I don't think this will come up because HELLO, if Ruben had ANY BRAINS AT ALL he would remember that his DNA is currently on file and/or being processed by the cops, that it WILL hit a national database very soon, and that THIS is what he should be worrying about. Not Rad, or Laura, or maybe sort of kind of being caught. Nope. He should be packing and moving to Anywhere Not Here. Not calling or trying to find out if his samples have been processed yet, because the cops don't just remember these kinds of phone calls, they fucking wait for them. If Ruben had two of the brain cells Rice insists he does have, he would have sold the house and left for a very small island that doesn't have extradition. And then felt very stupid when it turns out werewolves don't secrete DNA.

The body then shrinks. As reported through the worst dialogue in the entire book so far:

“Look at it,” she said. “The bones inside are disintegrating. It’s flattening out. I want to touch it, but I can’t.”

HOW DO YOU KNOW THE BONES ARE DISINTEGRATING WHEN THE SKIN IS STILL THERE. WHAT IS PREVENTING YOU FROM TOUCHING IT? WHY ARE YOU TALKING LIKE THIS I DON'T UNDERSTAND.

 And then because Rad is now ash (...I'm not commentinging. I'm not. I promise) Ruben realizes that there is no DNA and he is perfectly safe.

Fuck you Anne Rice, that is the shittiest cop-out you've taken so far.

And then they start trying to use science to explain Werewolves because getting magic all over everything would be bad. And Anne Rice totally found a new word when she was researching this. Laura repeats "Pluripotent proginator cells" three times in the next paragraph.

 The Chrism is also apparently "wolf fluid".



Well, now we have concrete proof that Anne Rice has never met a furry. Otherwise she would have known better.

So werewolves happen when a bite injects the Chrism and the Chrism goes into the stem cells and makes them turn into wolf cells, but only under conditions that are never properly defined or explained. And when these cells are cut off from life they dissolve into little bits of ashy nothing, and this makes you capable of sniffing out the evil in someone's butt because that's totally scientific too.

We didn't need werewolves explained in science. We didn't need it when Carlisle explained extra chromosomes to Jacob, and we don't need it with Ruben and Laura. We're all fans of urban fantasy. We all know what werewolves are. Bitey. Shifty. Moony. We don't need any extra info. Especially not when it's rolled in stupid. 

So then Ruben decides that his mother realized what was going on somehow--uh, because Plot?--and decided to protect him--because Ruben is a fucking moron, and Plot--and he feels guilty but he can't bring her into this story because Guilt and Laura and Jim and PLOT PLOT PLOT damn it, it doesn't have to make sense.

Ruben goes though Rad's clothing. He has no identification. His clothing, however, is expensive. Florentine labels. Because god forbid we have a middle class major castmate or *gasp* somebody even poorer.

And then he finds Rad's wristwatch, which is engraved with the word "Marrok".

...Seriously?

Yeah, so Sir Marrok was a werewolf figure in King Arthur's court in some of the not so common Arthurian lore. But you know what else comes up in a google search for Marrok? What is, in fact, the very first item in the same search?

Anne Rice's main wolfy competition.Yes, again. It's public domain and it might be a coincidence, but it's not that common a myth. And the Marrok in the Mercyverse is Bran, who is the dude who sang "Simple Gifts" at his buddy's funeral in Cry Wolf, which is the song that Ruben was singing when he found Laura. 

And that's not the last co-relation either. Werewolf mythos is very specific about who gets infected when bitten: EVERYBODY. Scratch? You're wolfy. Bite? Wolf. Hair in eye? Hope you like howling. In both Anita Blake and Sunshine, were-whatever-ism is also spread through blood transfusions, which is simultaneously awesome worldbuilding and fucking terrifying.. I've only read two books/series where the wolfyness is hard to contract, to the point of being potentially lethal: Wolf Gift and the Mercy Thompson novels. I'd say the difference is in the Mercyverse you have to be fatally wounded for werewolf-ism to even have a chance of working on you, but Ruben was fatally wounded during Marchant's murder, and Rad was a little more worried about killing Ruben than he was info dumping.

I have tried VERY HARD not to compare this book to the Mercyverse because I know it's not a fan fave, but this shit is NOT making it easy. Let's just say if the wolves turn out to be immortal--and at this point that is a HUGE possibility--I will be side-eyeing this book so very fucking hard.

Also, Mercy? Either we've invented an invisible anti-gravity bra or that is a really bad boob job.

So Ruben and Laura fix the door and Ruben goes to bed to sleep, and instead of sleeping he thinks about Felix Nidek, and realizes that Felix is the one who came and took the tablets. Because of course the audience didn't figure this out the ELEVEN-THOUSANDTH TIME that Felix was mentioned.

And then Ruben decides that: no werewolf has evil intent when they try to kill him (GEE I WONDER WHY) and that means he won't be able to smell them when they come here. Ruben makes death defying leaps in logic, doesn't he?

Ruben then...is confused. He thinks about Felix, and about finding how Marrok got into the house, and about Felix, and about getting Laura safe, and then FINALLY, AFTER ALL POSSIBLE TENSION HAS BEEN RESOLVED BY DISSOLVING WEREWOLF BODY, Ruben remembers that he left his sperm in Marchant and that the cops can test that. Oh, well, gee, he would have worried about that if the wolf hadn't dissolved right in front of him.

Hate this book. HATE THIS BOOK.

Some philosophical ramblings are said RE: Felix, and Laura and Ruben "fall into each other's arms" and go to bed.

Why I did it--Part one

So we're moving in on my one-year anniversary of Self Publishing, and holy shit a lot changes in a year.

I figure it's time for me to write down as much of the full story as I can stand. I've put off doing this (This is like the third edition of this post that I've started) because a lot of it sounds crazy. In fact, a lot of it probably is crazy. But it's my story, and craziness is a part of it.

So what on earth made me decide to self publish my books?  Well, let's rewind. A lot. A whole lot.

I finished my first novel in 2008, a few days after starting my very first job. It was (and is) the story Exiles is eventually going to turn into. And I loved it. I still love it. I thought that it (and the two books that follow it, both of which are written) was the Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread, and that I would get published and I would make lots and lots of money. And there would be a movie. I even had the soundtrack all picked out.

(this is the theme song, for the record:

And yes. I absolutely did have my head jammed that far up my own ass.)

I was twenty two years old. I had no fucking idea what I was doing, I had no idea how much I didn't know. I let it sit for almost a year while I moved to Corpus Christi, a town just big enough for me confess I lived there on the internet. Corpus meant I had access to a bookstore and could buy books on editing.

I did. Several dozen. The only one I can recommend is Elements of Style, which you ought to already own, loyal writer-readers, and Chicago Manuel of Style, ditto. Everything else was very much YMMV. I was lost. I had no idea how to do any of the things these books were talking about, and I had no idea how to ask for help. I know about the Absolute Write Water Cooler (have you bookmarked that yet, Writer-Readers?) from my research on agents, because of course you do that before you have a fully edited book (Protip: No. You don't.) but I didn't have the guts to ask anybody there for help.

So I did what I always (and still) do: I prayed.

And if He did anything, God threw the Absolute Write Water Cooler at me a couple more times, and then got real quiet.

In the meantime, my mother was working over in a little town as a graphic artist for a print shop. A gentleman by name of Dennix Hall came in and ordered business cards. I am mentioning him by name in case anybody googles him, so they can find out exactly how good an editor he is according to this self-published writer. He claimed--and I cannot emphasize that word "claimed" enough--to be a freelance editor, AKA a book doctor, and he wanted business cards to give to all the little old writer ladies in this small town.

My mother passed his card on to me.

I had no idea what I was doing, so a little help sounded just effing stellar. 

It was not.

To put this very politely, Dennix Hall had no idea what he was doing as an editor. He talked a good game about publishing, and given that he knew slightly more than I did it sounded real good. Anybody with enough knowledge to, say, avoid Author Solutions-owned fronts like the plague or figure out how KDP works would be able to pop his facade real quick. Neophytes like me, though, were easy pickings. He had become the freelance editor for a publishing company somewhere up north, in an M state (Missouri, Mississippi. Not Maine, I know that much) and another local fantasy author was using him to edit her books. He also had a collection of short stories and was willing to trade artwork for editing. I'd do his book cover, he'd help me beat my book into something like shape.

I thought "Great deal!" and agreed. Without doing any background checking at all, because that's, like, wrong. You trust people, right?

Ha ha. Ha.

I'd love to say that my first clue was that he lived on his boat, but a lot of people live on their boats down here. I'd love to say my first clue was that he owned no computer and had to make do with the boat house's for everything from internet to basic word-processing (Seriously. What writer would go three days without Word, much as it sucks?) but that sailed right over my head. And what really should have been the biggest red flag was that he had NO INTERNET PRESENCE WHATSOEVER. But at the time I didn't know how to properly background check a flea, let alone an editor, and I was working nightshifts, so I was under-rested, underpaid, and half starved for about two years. Meeting him in the daytime meant going without sleep for over twenty-four hours. I was ripe for this.

He introduced me to Very Nice Local Writer, who needed art done, and Very Nice Fantasy Writer, who needed art done, and I've maintained contact with them. They were very nice people. Dennix was also very nice. Flatteringly nice. Kiss-your-ass level nice, especially about my writing. He loved my writing. He loved every bit of it. The weird-ass punctuation. The bizarre word choices. The fact that it was a very bloated 190 THOUSAND words long. His biggest contribution to my editing process was to advise me to remove the word "was" wherever it appeared. And I don't mean in the deadly pairing "Was doing". I mean EVERYWHERE. This resulted in descriptions like "Her hair. Red." and a manuscript that basically read like it was acted by William Shatner.

Fortunately I had contracted for artwork, not money. Even better, while we were (snort) "working" on the manuscript--our weekly sessions were basically "Let's kiss CW's ass for an hour", something I got sick of FAST, but not nearly as fast as having to pay for his lunch--I was researching editing so that I could keep up with the changes he wanted me to make. I found Anne Mini's  Author! Author! blog, which taught me a lot, and I kept researching agents and publishers (and in the process, publishing) on the AW Water Cooler. And then noticeable red flags began appearing.

Like the time I excised twenty thousand words in one week and he asked me "What happened?". I had to inform him that I'd made it better. I hadn't changed the plot or the dialogue one iota.

Like the time Very Nice Fantasy Author offered me better advice than he'd ever given--I credit her with the piece of POV advice that saved the novel--and he pouted for an hour.

Or the business with Very Nice Local Writer and her cover, which went very well for me, but she was publishing via iUniverse, which even I had figured out wasn't a "real" publisher. I got the feeling that both Dennix and Author Solutions had sold it to her as one. They were going to charge her a THOUSAND DOLLARS for a custom cover, and that's why she hired me for much less. That is, by the way, the last time I will contract with a first-time self published author for cover art. I felt, and still feel, like I robbed the lady blind. There's no way she ever made her investment back.

There was the fact that we were always invited out to lunch by Dennix and he never paid. EVER.

There was the nonsense he pulled with Very Nice Fantasy Author's small-press publisher, which I heard about second-hand through VNFA. Suffice to say that short story book I was doing the cover for? It never happened.

But the biggest red flag was when we stopped working together, I had to redo everything we'd done. All of it. Every choice he had suggested was wrong. Every bit of pacing. But I was confused. He had sold himself as this experianced editor with a couple bestsellers under his belt. There were no bad reports on him on the internet (By now, I was smart enough to check) not that there were any in the first place, and he'd done so much for the Very Nice Local Authors I knew. How could I be closer to right than he was?

Finally I did the first smart thing in the whole debacle and I asked Anne Mini a question about Dennix on the blog. Without mentioning names, I said that my editor was giving me advice that felt wrong, especially that whole "was" buisness, could she give me some advice? She gave me something better: a free review of ten pages. I sent her the pages Dennix had carefully reworked, then sat back and waited patiently for the result. It was educational, brutal and everything Dennix had done had been outlined in three different colors of ink as being wrong.

Which was how I learned the first rule of being a writer: ALWAYS check the track record and ALWAYS run if there isn't one. And never, ever, ever go with an editor who has no computer and who works out of their boat.

To end the Dennix Hall chapter of this story, about six months after our last "Kiss CW's Ass" session, he called me. My mother had told him I'd heard good things back from agents. I had not, but she did not understand this. He called me looking for money because he was about to blow town.

All I remember was that I was half asleep, and that I got really whiny at being dragged out of bed at three PM when I'd only gotten to bed at ten AM after a long, long overnight shift frying doughnuts. And that's the end of the Uninteresting Dennix Hall Saga.

Of course, NOW I assumed that I had all the knowledge I needed to rewrite and sell my Very First Novel and make it big. I didn't even need to invest much time in my day job because it would very soon be my former job. I'd get a big six figure advance, and then that dream movie deal, and then everything would be fantastic!

I worked on my Query Letter, following every rule (or so I thought) that Janet Reid outlined on Query Shark (Again, you've got that bookmarked, right?) and carefully researched and selected my first round of agents. They were all the best of the best. I picked the ones that represented fantasy, that repped the books I had read (or at least, recognised from my trips to Barnes and Noble). I avoided the ones with fees, the ones with bad sales records, the one with no sales records. In my mind, all these agent blogs and submission guidelines and posts on Absolute Write had outlined a Plan, a step-by-step guide to getting published and as long as I followed those rules obsessively, I would become more famous than Elvis.

With brave heart and a WHOPPING dose of over-confidence, I sent my first query letter on July 17th, 2013.

I got my first rejection less than twelve hours later.

Yes. I've saved every rejection letter I've ever gotten.

I cried. Of course I cried. You get rejected, that's what you do. And then I reminded myself it was probably just those damned first couple pages and my inability to write a Query Letter. This was like a video game puzzle. I just had to find the right combination of phrases and I'd win the level.

I was an utter fucking idiot.

I was twenty three years old.

(To be continued)

The Wolf Gift--chapter 21

Guys, I want you to know I am floored by how wonderful this weekend has gone re: books. Work has kicked my ass as usual but you guys have built it back up again.

You are awesome, every single one of you, and don't let anybody tell you different ever.


So Ruben RUNS BACK TO THE HOUSE, only he is confused. Someone is threatening Laura and he doesn't smell evil. How can someone be threatening and not be evil?

Here are a bunch of reasons that will never be considered by this book:
-Ruben's magical nose is not infalliable
-Attacker A just took a bath
-The orchid trees are in the way
-Attacker A is downwind
-Evil doesn't actually have a scent. It's actually Axe body spray.

Here is the reason the book will go with:
-this is a major character ass-pulled at the eleventh hour to info dump a lot of information that could otherwise have been gathered in an interesting and entertaining way, preferably with gun fights and darkity darkness a'la Guilty Pleasures era Anita Blake, but will instead be dumped into our laps by this dude so that we can have another entertaining chapter dedicated to Ruben eating a Savannah cat.

I want to give Rubes baby a date with a Fila Brazileiro. Talk about a canine that will eat you...

Ruben does some minor property damage and gets into his own house, because opening a door takes too long? He goes upstairs to Laura, who is all "He's here to kill you, run!" and...we get our first confirmed brown character in this book:

Across from her, to the right, stood a small slender and composed figure, a dark-skinned man. His features had a slightly Asian cast. He appeared to be perhaps fifty years old and he had short insignificant black hair and small black eyes.

I'd like to know how short hair can be insignificant.

And of course the dude has to kill them, but he doesn't smell of evil intent. Of course he doesn't. Ruben's got more murders at this point than the Texas Seven combined. Anybody would be justified taking him out.

So the info dumping starts and it turns out that this dude--who has no name, goddamn it--was the guardian of the house. Only it went on for a long time and he wasn't good at it, and he shouldn't have made Ruben and now he has to fix his own mistake.

Random Asian-ish Dude, you are now my favorite character. Here. Have a Howlitzer.

And of course when Random Asian-ish Dude (Who will now be called Rad because NAMES GODDAMN IT) transforms, he isn't nearly as big as Ruben and is somehow "sinister". And yet not giving off the aura of evil, so we know this is a good guy and Ruben is misinterpreting things. We know it because Anne Rice has just smashed us over the head with it.

So the two wolves square off while the book abandons past tense for a couple sentences, and Ruben demands to know what will happen next. Rad says he's here to kill Ruben and Laura. We got that part. We then find out that the werewolf curse is called the Christ Chrism.

The dialogue here is not what I'd call steller:

“Yes, the Chrism— that’s what we’ve called it for ages. The gift, the power— there are a hundred ancient words for it— what does it matter?”

And there's a lot of "I could tell you but I'm not" kind of monologuing. And then this happens:

It was grotesque, the cultured, polished voice coming from such a bestial face. And so this is how I look to them, Reuben thought— just this hideous and monstrous.

I'd be a lot less skeeved out by this if: 1. we had not gotten upteen chapters about how AWESOME werewolfyness was, 2. we had ANY OTHER NON-WHITE CHARACTERS OTHER THAN THIS DUDE and 3. if Ruben were looking in a mirror, and not at another person. Seriously. He couldn't see his own animalistic qualities in any of those six zillion selfies he took? He had to see another wolf to see it?

And oh god, Rice is laying it on thick with this dude. Everything Rad does is "Sinister" or "Malevolent" and ALL of his physical atributes are "dark" and it is repeated multiple times. MULTIPLE. TIMES. It's like "HEY THIS GUY IS MALEVOLANT AND SINISTER AND HIS EYES ARE DARK AND HIS FUR IS DARK AND DARKITY DARK AND SINISTER AND HAVE YOU GOTTEN MY POINT YET? HE'S DARK." And yeah, he's the first person to call Ruben on his shit, though it's less the "Murdering people horribly" part and more the "Doing it in public" part.

Please fix this Rice. It's not too late to fix it. Have Rad do something...well, Rad, like eat Ruben, and we'll call it even.

And then we get the best line in the whole book:

No one can conceivably know what will happen when the Chrism hits the pluripotent progenitor cells.”

That is not a typo. That is exactly as written in the book. And it turns out it is a word that has something to do with stem cells. I *think* it has something to do with a cell's ability to become multiple other things--ie, stem cells becoming heart, liver, skin, ect.

So basically in Anne Rice's world werewolves have something to do with stem cells.

It makes perfect sense.

By the way, I want to start a petition allowing us to restrict Wikipedia searching rights after heinous gross literary abuses of the privilege. Who's with me?

And then we get a name for the werewolves. Because "Werewolf" is too passe and "Wolf Man" is trademarked by Marvel: Morphenkinder, and Morphenkind.

You use the German pronounciation. Morphenkint.

I am not going to say that these are Aryan werewolves. I'm just going to think it really, really hard.

We find out that Rad was left to guard Marchant, and that he left the house so that Ruben and Marchant could grind pelvises, and he came back when she died, so he has a major, major case of greif and is also the worst body guard ever. YOU DON'T LEAVE THEM ALONE, RAD. YOU JUST TUNE THE MUFFLED SIGHS OUT UNTIL THE THUMPING NOISE GOES AWAY.

The name "Felix Nideck" is dropped. Again. 

They clash and fight for a while. Much furniture is broken. Leroy will earn his keep again (I will forgive every literary sin this book has committed if one character asks Leroy for their shoes. Just one.) and this continues until Laura hits Rad in the head with the axe.

Ruben allows Rad to flail around for a good while, and then he beheads Rad and throws the head in the fire.

WRONG CHARACTER, RICE. RIGHT THOUGHT. WRONG FUCKING CHARACTER.

Ladies and Gentlemen I would like to hold a moment of silence for Rad, a character who was given no name prior to his death at the hands of the biggest shit-head werewolf in the history of wolves, and yet who fought the good fight against murdering assholes the world over.

Sleep well, Random Asian-ish Werewolf Dude. You will be greatly missed.

 And then the body...evaporates? While this happens:

Come poetry, come fantasy, come wild imagination, come dreams. The gleaming black hair began to fall away from the head and the body which lay only a few feet away.

We're reading about a decomposing werewolf body. What the fuck does the bolded part have to do with anything?

The chapter ends on that note.

So basically, there's no body, so there will be no reprocussions from this, and Ruben has a lot of knowledge that he didn't have before.

And the only confirmed brown character in the novel so far got to swoop around the set in everything but the Fu Manchu mustache being all sinister before dying THE most horrible death in the novel so far. AND THAT IS SAYING A LOT.

I will let someone far wiser than me comment on that part.

Wolf Gift--chapter 20

Today's post is massively late because we had severe storms yesterday.

This is unique. South Texas gets rain when the weather changes, or when we get hit by a hurricane. And the drought so far this year has been bad enough for us to start side-eyeing anything smaller than a Cat 3 like a co-dependant bar fly. We know it'd be bad for us, but all that rain...but we've gotten two rather nice storms in two weeks.

The bad news is, we've already stressed this small town's power grid, so a storm means the power goes bye bye for hours. Hence, no blog post.

So where were we?

Chapter twenty. Ruben is going to go hunt himself a mountain lion. I guess he got sick of bob cat.

I'm also halfway through the book, and it has no plot. "Ruben finds a fuck buddy" and "Ruben eats wild animals instead of humans" are not plots. We technically did have a plot for the first third of the book: Ruben turns into werewolf, becomes superhero by killing people horribly, and then investigates and destroys kidnappers, rescuing children and (INSERT MAJOR CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT HERE)" And it was technically a well-built plot, because mentions of the kids started cropping up immediately after Ruben came down with his case of werewolf.

Now? Fuck plot, it's much more interesting to watch Ruben eat protected species.

Oh, and the mountain lion is a mommy.

Ruben is still supposed to be the good guy. Now, in his defense (gag) he does have a reason for it: The lion ate Leroy's dog. So now he eats the lion and everything is okay? Maybe?

He kills the lion. And eats it. And...this happens.

Now, one of the fun parts of Kindle books is discovering what everybody else highlights. So far this book has been devoid of "EVERYBODY LOVES THIS PASSAGE" underlines. This is no longer true.

A flame burned in him, a faith that a comprehending Power existed, animating all this that it had created, and sustaining it with a love beyond anything that he, Reuben, could imagine.

*Sigh* yeah. When I started doing this book several people told me "Oh, wasn't she a catholic for a little while? And she became un-catholic again?"

Re-read that passage. She's still a believer.

He prayed for this to be so. He wondered if, somehow, the whole forest was not praying for this, and it seemed to him then that all the biological world was alive with prayer, with reaching, with hope.

Statements of faith are less powerful when you throw random sciency words in there. But there is one part I do like:

What if the drive to survive was a form of faith, a form of prayer?

In another book, with another author, and a character that wasn't a total ass, that'd be a good sentence. Ruben doesn't have a drive to survive, though. He's a very rich, very white, inexplicably popular and well respected asshole mascarading as a young man smashing his way through people, both of the bad type and of the female type, because he believes the fact that he has money and has this power justifies him doing whatever the fuck he wants.


Peter Parker lived in a shit apartment working shit jobs for shit pay because he believed doing the right thing was more important than his personal profit.

Peter Parker would beat Ruben's ass into the ground.

Anne Rice waxes poetic about the language of thought while Ruben watches the now orphaned mountain lion kittens look for their mommy. Who he just ate. He's kind though. He tells the mountain lion that she fought well and then dumps the body in front of the kittens.

Well, he's not boiling them in mommy's milk, so technically he hasn't violated anything Biblical. Except "Thou Shalt Not Commit Murder" "Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery."

You know. The basics.

And then he hears Laura screaming and brandishing the axe that he brought into the house several chapters ago, and he runs to her rescue, and the chapter ends.

Yep, we're ass-pulling the next villian now, aren't we?