Chelsea Gaither's Blog, page 49
March 13, 2013
Caress of Twilight chapter 38-
And the plot finally drops in the form of Detective Tate in Merry's living room.
She cusses Merry out for making her wait while she had sex with Doyle and Frost, which is what Galen told her was happening. She relents a little bit when she sees how shaken Merry is re:Taranis, but only a little bit, because there was another mass killing the night before.
Folks, our government is pretty fucked up. It's better than a lot of 'em, it's worse than a few others. But even our government would hit the fucking ceiling if a hundred people died of suffocation with no visible source in the middle of a large city. First thought would be terrorism, second thought would be large scale public service failure (leaking gas anyone?) and then there would be mass murderer, and all three would likely result in an evacuation of several blocks while people in haz mat suits walked around with air quality detectors for about a month. THEY ARE NOT TAKING THIS SERIOUS ENOUGH TO BE REALISTIC.
And that's if there was ONE outbreak. Two? They're evacuating city centers, closing schools, and people are making a mass run on gas masks, canned food and guns. Fuck, guys, am I the only person who remembers the Anthrax scare after 9-11? Disgruntled worker sends his boss germs in a leaky envelope (or three, I don't remember ALL the details) and people on the opposite side of the country are taping plastic over their windows. We're focusing on Merry's sex-life and "It's the end of the world as we know it" is blaring in the background.
And what do they discuss? How Peterson (I am STILL reading that as Pearson. What is WRONG with my eyes folks?) is blocking Merry from working on the case. On the one hand, he's blocking Merry from advising on a double-mass-murder. On the other hand, she dosed him with rape drugs. Admittedly drugs that made him attempt to rape her, but it was not something he would have done normally and it's probably a miracle he didn't try to eat his gun when he sobered up. Of course he's going to jump through hoops to keep from having to work with her.
They're both terrible people, but Peterson is less of one.
Meanwhile, Lucy Tate is portrayed as being a martyr for putting her career on the line for talking to Merry.
This bothers me.
Female roles in this series are disturbing. I will be the first to admit, I am not one to talk, but I do think LKH has a serious virgin/whore complex going in this series. Only instead of it being "a woman is either a virgin or a whore" it's "A good woman is either a virgin or a whore."
And in this universe, "virgin" is synonimous with "victim".
Think about it. You had Catherine, Anita's buddy from Guilty Pleasures, who was victimized by vamps on her wedding day. You've got Lucy Tate, who submits to Merry's lead and is willing to sacrifice herself for the good of others, kind of like the precious virgin Princess throwing herself on the dragon, rather than stealing her brother's sword. Feminine people are villianized in this series when they attempt to fill a male and/or aggressor role without surrendering their female qualities too. It's like LKH is saying "You can either be a good woman and be a victim, or you can become a hero and discard things like ethical morality and lace doilies, but if you try to be a self-posessed woman who also likes skirts and heels? Yeah, you're a horrible person."
Anyhoo, Lucy Tate is sacrificing herself to bring Merry onto the case. Bravo.
The cops have told the public that scene A was a gas leak and scene B was a bad batch of X. Meanwhile the government has done nothing to keep people safe. Again: BULLSHIT. There should be FBI, ATF and Homeland Security crawling over every inch of the city by now.
And then LKH shows us all how little she actually knows about police procedures. Let's take this apart one little bit at a time, shall we?
She nodded. “The very first scene probably wouldn’t even have come up on anybody’s radar if it hadn’t been in a ritzy area of town. Just six adults that time, a small dinner party gone very bad. It’d still be floating around on someone’s weird shit pile as unsolved.
Yeah. No. Six dead people at a party would gain notice. Especially if they all died of suffocation. Google "Scott Burnside" to see how the cops react to more than one dead person at a single scene, and how long they'll stick with it until things are solved.
RIGHT. Cops ONLY try to solve murders when the people involved are high profile important people.
Did you know most of the Green River Killer's victims were prostitutes, runaways or both? And that the cops never stopped looking? Ever? As in the cop who'd been there from day one didn't even have to look at the DNA test to know it was Gary Ridgeway, and he insisted on being in on the arrest so that he could call the family of one of the confirmed prostitutes and be the one to tell them they'd finally gotten the bastard who'd killed their daughter? Because he'd kept in touch with them from the day they found her body?
Cops are plenty desensitized to awfulness, but what we mistake for inaction is actually a lack of evidence. If I were a cop? I'd want to set this book on fire for this conversation.
Anyhoo, Lucy finally mentions that the first scene happened basically on Maeve Reed's doorstep, and that there's a survivor who is Fae. They are asked to interview him, and even torture him if that's what it takes to get info out of him. The chapter ends with Merry calling Maeve to tell her that she's really on somebody's shit list.
(It's Taranis's shit list.)
So they go see the sick Fae and he is, apparently, a very old Sidhe deity shrunk down to about two feet square. There is a lot of going on about how horrible it is that he's scrunched down so small, but because I have no idea who this is (his name is Bucca) I really don't give a shit. Apparently he refused to give up his god-power and in the absense of worshippers or something he wasted away until he was two feet tall.
And then he tells Merry that he's fading and he's afraid of dying, and so he's the one who raised the god-ghosts at Taranis's command.
Yep. We just confirmed something we've known for about six chapters already. and two chapters of this is all I can take tonight.
She cusses Merry out for making her wait while she had sex with Doyle and Frost, which is what Galen told her was happening. She relents a little bit when she sees how shaken Merry is re:Taranis, but only a little bit, because there was another mass killing the night before.
Folks, our government is pretty fucked up. It's better than a lot of 'em, it's worse than a few others. But even our government would hit the fucking ceiling if a hundred people died of suffocation with no visible source in the middle of a large city. First thought would be terrorism, second thought would be large scale public service failure (leaking gas anyone?) and then there would be mass murderer, and all three would likely result in an evacuation of several blocks while people in haz mat suits walked around with air quality detectors for about a month. THEY ARE NOT TAKING THIS SERIOUS ENOUGH TO BE REALISTIC.
And that's if there was ONE outbreak. Two? They're evacuating city centers, closing schools, and people are making a mass run on gas masks, canned food and guns. Fuck, guys, am I the only person who remembers the Anthrax scare after 9-11? Disgruntled worker sends his boss germs in a leaky envelope (or three, I don't remember ALL the details) and people on the opposite side of the country are taping plastic over their windows. We're focusing on Merry's sex-life and "It's the end of the world as we know it" is blaring in the background.
And what do they discuss? How Peterson (I am STILL reading that as Pearson. What is WRONG with my eyes folks?) is blocking Merry from working on the case. On the one hand, he's blocking Merry from advising on a double-mass-murder. On the other hand, she dosed him with rape drugs. Admittedly drugs that made him attempt to rape her, but it was not something he would have done normally and it's probably a miracle he didn't try to eat his gun when he sobered up. Of course he's going to jump through hoops to keep from having to work with her.
They're both terrible people, but Peterson is less of one.
Meanwhile, Lucy Tate is portrayed as being a martyr for putting her career on the line for talking to Merry.
This bothers me.
Female roles in this series are disturbing. I will be the first to admit, I am not one to talk, but I do think LKH has a serious virgin/whore complex going in this series. Only instead of it being "a woman is either a virgin or a whore" it's "A good woman is either a virgin or a whore."
And in this universe, "virgin" is synonimous with "victim".
Think about it. You had Catherine, Anita's buddy from Guilty Pleasures, who was victimized by vamps on her wedding day. You've got Lucy Tate, who submits to Merry's lead and is willing to sacrifice herself for the good of others, kind of like the precious virgin Princess throwing herself on the dragon, rather than stealing her brother's sword. Feminine people are villianized in this series when they attempt to fill a male and/or aggressor role without surrendering their female qualities too. It's like LKH is saying "You can either be a good woman and be a victim, or you can become a hero and discard things like ethical morality and lace doilies, but if you try to be a self-posessed woman who also likes skirts and heels? Yeah, you're a horrible person."
Anyhoo, Lucy Tate is sacrificing herself to bring Merry onto the case. Bravo.
The cops have told the public that scene A was a gas leak and scene B was a bad batch of X. Meanwhile the government has done nothing to keep people safe. Again: BULLSHIT. There should be FBI, ATF and Homeland Security crawling over every inch of the city by now.
And then LKH shows us all how little she actually knows about police procedures. Let's take this apart one little bit at a time, shall we?
She nodded. “The very first scene probably wouldn’t even have come up on anybody’s radar if it hadn’t been in a ritzy area of town. Just six adults that time, a small dinner party gone very bad. It’d still be floating around on someone’s weird shit pile as unsolved.
Yeah. No. Six dead people at a party would gain notice. Especially if they all died of suffocation. Google "Scott Burnside" to see how the cops react to more than one dead person at a single scene, and how long they'll stick with it until things are solved.
but we never would have gotten it this quickly if one of the first vics hadn’t been friends with several mayors
RIGHT. Cops ONLY try to solve murders when the people involved are high profile important people.
Did you know most of the Green River Killer's victims were prostitutes, runaways or both? And that the cops never stopped looking? Ever? As in the cop who'd been there from day one didn't even have to look at the DNA test to know it was Gary Ridgeway, and he insisted on being in on the arrest so that he could call the family of one of the confirmed prostitutes and be the one to tell them they'd finally gotten the bastard who'd killed their daughter? Because he'd kept in touch with them from the day they found her body?
Cops are plenty desensitized to awfulness, but what we mistake for inaction is actually a lack of evidence. If I were a cop? I'd want to set this book on fire for this conversation.
Anyhoo, Lucy finally mentions that the first scene happened basically on Maeve Reed's doorstep, and that there's a survivor who is Fae. They are asked to interview him, and even torture him if that's what it takes to get info out of him. The chapter ends with Merry calling Maeve to tell her that she's really on somebody's shit list.
(It's Taranis's shit list.)
So they go see the sick Fae and he is, apparently, a very old Sidhe deity shrunk down to about two feet square. There is a lot of going on about how horrible it is that he's scrunched down so small, but because I have no idea who this is (his name is Bucca) I really don't give a shit. Apparently he refused to give up his god-power and in the absense of worshippers or something he wasted away until he was two feet tall.
And then he tells Merry that he's fading and he's afraid of dying, and so he's the one who raised the god-ghosts at Taranis's command.
Yep. We just confirmed something we've known for about six chapters already. and two chapters of this is all I can take tonight.
And in other news...uh, Penguin has a heart?
Or else a real interest in its bottom line. Seriously, guys, if you have not been on Absolute Write and Writer Beware and John Scalazi's blog--in other words, you don't watch publishing--you have no idea the shitstorm the author community leveled at Hydra the last week or so. The level of wank and screaming has been positively beautiful. So what has the Random Penguin done in the face of all this screaming?
They've changed their tune.
Note: THEY SHOULD NOT HAVE DONE THIS IN THE FIRST PLACE. If there is ONE GROUP that should understand what authors will and will not put up with in contracts it is the big publishing houses who have to negotiate said contracts.
It's still a contract that will have you by the unmentionables if you don't negotiate, in part because negotiation is expected and Hydra is starting with "We get all the marbles" because they know you/your agent will bargan them down to a few dozen marbles and that really cool cat's eye shooter they wanted in the first place. But now they've shown that not only are they willing to negotiate, they're willing to throw out the bad shit they shouldn't have done in the first place.
The important thing is, if you submit you don't lose your book forever and always (REVERSION CLAUSE YAY!) and you won't be paying their expenses on the e-books.
I DO, however, want to point out that yes, you damn well are. Hydra is and always has been aimed at the more successful of the self publishing crowd. A 50/50 split is generous for professionally published books, but it is tiny compared to the 70/65/80 offered by KDP, Pubit and DA, respectively. You're getting a smaller cut of the pie because you're doing less. You're not editing, doing artwork or formatting on your own, so by taking that smaller cut you are, in effect, paying Random House to do it for you. Which I am fine with doing, if you manage to get into Penguin Random House's clutches. You'll be selling more books and making more money, so hooray for Trade publishing and not being a dick.
I still don't like them. I still think that any publisher willing to own Author Solutions and not clean it up has the integrety of a wet sponge, but they are officially no longer Darth Vader Death Star evil.
Will post if and when SWFA revises its decision RE: Hydra as a qualifying market. Stay tuned.
They've changed their tune.
Note: THEY SHOULD NOT HAVE DONE THIS IN THE FIRST PLACE. If there is ONE GROUP that should understand what authors will and will not put up with in contracts it is the big publishing houses who have to negotiate said contracts.
It's still a contract that will have you by the unmentionables if you don't negotiate, in part because negotiation is expected and Hydra is starting with "We get all the marbles" because they know you/your agent will bargan them down to a few dozen marbles and that really cool cat's eye shooter they wanted in the first place. But now they've shown that not only are they willing to negotiate, they're willing to throw out the bad shit they shouldn't have done in the first place.
The important thing is, if you submit you don't lose your book forever and always (REVERSION CLAUSE YAY!) and you won't be paying their expenses on the e-books.
I DO, however, want to point out that yes, you damn well are. Hydra is and always has been aimed at the more successful of the self publishing crowd. A 50/50 split is generous for professionally published books, but it is tiny compared to the 70/65/80 offered by KDP, Pubit and DA, respectively. You're getting a smaller cut of the pie because you're doing less. You're not editing, doing artwork or formatting on your own, so by taking that smaller cut you are, in effect, paying Random House to do it for you. Which I am fine with doing, if you manage to get into Penguin Random House's clutches. You'll be selling more books and making more money, so hooray for Trade publishing and not being a dick.
I still don't like them. I still think that any publisher willing to own Author Solutions and not clean it up has the integrety of a wet sponge, but they are officially no longer Darth Vader Death Star evil.
Will post if and when SWFA revises its decision RE: Hydra as a qualifying market. Stay tuned.
Caress of Twilight--Chapter 37
Ah, the joys of summer/spring break/tourist season. Too many people in town, inexplicable rushes for obscure kinds of food, uninhabitable beaches and an internet signal that crashes predictably at about ten PM every night.
We have signs around town that say "If it says 'tourist season' why can't we shoot them" and they are only half kidding.
Folks, if you have the right to plan your own vacation and you want to go to the beach? September-December or April-May. Trust me. Don't come in the summer. It stops being fun.
So. We are now in that "Pull the plot out of your ass" stage of the book.
This is sad to me.
My favorite part of writing isn't actually the writing part. It's the editing. It's looking at the words and deciding what needs to stay there (I spent twenty minutes debating "capture" vs. "captivated" yesterday because I wasn't sure what connotations I wanted the opening paragraphs to have.) and, most importantly, retuning the plot so that it, you know, exists. I think my top three favorite moments while writing so far have been fixing This Found Thing (for those of you who have read it, that part with the tree? Yeah, that was in the middle. Realizing I'd put the fucking climax in the middle of the book was one of those "how stupid can I be?" moments) fixing the end of The Book, and probably the whole Starbleached thing because I have no idea why you guys like that book so much.
I'm not a great intellectual. I literally don't care how spiffy or politically correct or socially acceptable my reading material is, as long as I have it there to read. I bring up the Gap series a lot because once you've read that, the causal misogyny of series X goes from being MURDER DEATH KILL to "Meh. At least it isn't the Gap series." And I still love it to pieces (With the exception of the unreadable first book). Accusing me of liking problematic things is a little bit like accusing the sun of being a little shiny in Texas. Because the one thing I do want in my books? Effort. I want all the little dots and lines to connect. I want that fucking turd to shine. And the thing that killed my enjoyment of LKH's writing is how obviously no effort whatsoever was put into crafting the books. If I want something that is basically "Fling shit at the wall and see what sticks" I'll get a pet monkey, thanks.
So Maeve's pregancy is basically handwaved away as being A Thing.
Thousands of women with fertility issues and men with sex-destroying health problems have all just facepalmed. Moving on.
Taranis calls.
Merry spends a lot of time getting dressed. I actually support having these "the chick gets dressed before the big social confrontation" because, much as we might not like it, clothing is a kind of armor for both sexes, and a way to say "fuck you" without having to even gesture. What we don't need is the "My dress compliments my bedspread" paragraph. GET THE TELEPHONE MIRROR OUT OF YOUR BEDROOM.
The Faerie in this book all take their name from their magic. Merry is (sigh) "Princess of Flesh" not because she's having copious amounts of sex but because she can turn you into a screaming immortal inside out basketball. Taranis is "King of Light and Illusion".
So the king she's so worried about is basically a special effects unit without a movie.
HOW TO SOLVE EVERY PROBLEM: Request a private audience with no witnesses. Shake king's hand. Salute new king while carrying new basketball under left arm. PROBLEM SOLVED.
He's wearing so much illusion it makes Merry feel seasick, so she talks him down to sanity. Like this:
At this point it's REALLY clear all he wants to do is talk about Maeve Reed, who is going to have a kid now. He is FREAKING OUT because his dirty little secret might be exposed and he is going to Do Something About This. Why we need more pages of show for this, IDK. It's boring.
He tries to glamour her into going to the party. She does deep breathing excercises and goes back to trying to flatter him out of more of his personal glamour.
And then LKH forgets about the book for a second and goes on a rant about how if all you ever hear is how good and wonderful you are that's what you believe and you'll fall for any little old thing and make big mistakes like forget to put plot in your books and stuff.
You know, our subconsiouses are wonderful things. What was I talking about again?
(and yeah, that's why I ask you guys to point out when I fuck up with things. I would rather be told I'm an idiot than spend my life surrounded by yes men. If for no other reason than that breeds crappy books)
And then Taranis starts trying to persuade her to come to the party by making his voice sound like candy.
I'm about ready to swear off food forever because of this book.
And then...
Okay. Okay. Taking deep breaths.
Merry realizes that it's the touch of bare skin keeping her from agreeing to whatever Taranis wants (which is probably feast with a double helping of Murder) and she calls one of the other guys in. Not to cuddle, though. Oh, no. She wants Kitto.
Because the fake child spends most of his time almost nude, and she wants all that bare skin touching her.
And then this paragraph happens.
There are so many layers of wrong here I don't even want to touch it. Sex fixes everything in this book. EVERYTHING.
Finally Merry tells him that he's being an asshole and she's not going to see him before Yule because anybody who wants it this fucking bad must have ulterior motives, and she finds those scary. Reasonable.
LKH breaks out the random Gaelic and has Taranis call himself "Ard Ri". This means High King. I know this because one of my favorite Gaelic songs provided an English translation (The Rock by Maire Brennan) and the official unofficial theme song for Exiles is King of the Faeries AKA An Ri na Sidhe in Gaelic. So it's not that bad...but Gaelic has appeared only ONE other time in this book. Nobody else is using it, nobody else is speaking it. WHY USE IT NOW?
They trade nasty and pointless barbs for a while, and then Frost blanks the mirror.
You know what I miss? I miss the politics in the Jack the Bodiless series. Also the character development. Also the time-travel mind fuck elements, but I am so glad nobody's given LKH a time machine yet. We don't know what she'd do with it.
FINALLY Frost points out that Yule was when they'd make sacrifices to the old gods and if Taranis were going to be killed for being infertile it'd be during the Yule celebrations. Merry finally realizes what everybody reading this book got several hundred pages ago.
They all agree they won't be going to yule, and the chapter ends.
We have signs around town that say "If it says 'tourist season' why can't we shoot them" and they are only half kidding.
Folks, if you have the right to plan your own vacation and you want to go to the beach? September-December or April-May. Trust me. Don't come in the summer. It stops being fun.
So. We are now in that "Pull the plot out of your ass" stage of the book.
This is sad to me.
My favorite part of writing isn't actually the writing part. It's the editing. It's looking at the words and deciding what needs to stay there (I spent twenty minutes debating "capture" vs. "captivated" yesterday because I wasn't sure what connotations I wanted the opening paragraphs to have.) and, most importantly, retuning the plot so that it, you know, exists. I think my top three favorite moments while writing so far have been fixing This Found Thing (for those of you who have read it, that part with the tree? Yeah, that was in the middle. Realizing I'd put the fucking climax in the middle of the book was one of those "how stupid can I be?" moments) fixing the end of The Book, and probably the whole Starbleached thing because I have no idea why you guys like that book so much.
I'm not a great intellectual. I literally don't care how spiffy or politically correct or socially acceptable my reading material is, as long as I have it there to read. I bring up the Gap series a lot because once you've read that, the causal misogyny of series X goes from being MURDER DEATH KILL to "Meh. At least it isn't the Gap series." And I still love it to pieces (With the exception of the unreadable first book). Accusing me of liking problematic things is a little bit like accusing the sun of being a little shiny in Texas. Because the one thing I do want in my books? Effort. I want all the little dots and lines to connect. I want that fucking turd to shine. And the thing that killed my enjoyment of LKH's writing is how obviously no effort whatsoever was put into crafting the books. If I want something that is basically "Fling shit at the wall and see what sticks" I'll get a pet monkey, thanks.
So Maeve's pregancy is basically handwaved away as being A Thing.
Thousands of women with fertility issues and men with sex-destroying health problems have all just facepalmed. Moving on.
Taranis calls.
Merry spends a lot of time getting dressed. I actually support having these "the chick gets dressed before the big social confrontation" because, much as we might not like it, clothing is a kind of armor for both sexes, and a way to say "fuck you" without having to even gesture. What we don't need is the "My dress compliments my bedspread" paragraph. GET THE TELEPHONE MIRROR OUT OF YOUR BEDROOM.
The Faerie in this book all take their name from their magic. Merry is (sigh) "Princess of Flesh" not because she's having copious amounts of sex but because she can turn you into a screaming immortal inside out basketball. Taranis is "King of Light and Illusion".
So the king she's so worried about is basically a special effects unit without a movie.
HOW TO SOLVE EVERY PROBLEM: Request a private audience with no witnesses. Shake king's hand. Salute new king while carrying new basketball under left arm. PROBLEM SOLVED.
He's wearing so much illusion it makes Merry feel seasick, so she talks him down to sanity. Like this:
Aloud I said, “King Taranis, my part-mortal eyes cannot behold your splendor without feeling quite overwhelmed. I would beg you lessen your glory so that I might look upon you without growing faint.”It goes on for pages. Then they start discussing his invitation to the feast.
At this point it's REALLY clear all he wants to do is talk about Maeve Reed, who is going to have a kid now. He is FREAKING OUT because his dirty little secret might be exposed and he is going to Do Something About This. Why we need more pages of show for this, IDK. It's boring.
He tries to glamour her into going to the party. She does deep breathing excercises and goes back to trying to flatter him out of more of his personal glamour.
And then LKH forgets about the book for a second and goes on a rant about how if all you ever hear is how good and wonderful you are that's what you believe and you'll fall for any little old thing and make big mistakes like forget to put plot in your books and stuff.
You know, our subconsiouses are wonderful things. What was I talking about again?
(and yeah, that's why I ask you guys to point out when I fuck up with things. I would rather be told I'm an idiot than spend my life surrounded by yes men. If for no other reason than that breeds crappy books)
And then Taranis starts trying to persuade her to come to the party by making his voice sound like candy.
I'm about ready to swear off food forever because of this book.
And then...
Okay. Okay. Taking deep breaths.Merry realizes that it's the touch of bare skin keeping her from agreeing to whatever Taranis wants (which is probably feast with a double helping of Murder) and she calls one of the other guys in. Not to cuddle, though. Oh, no. She wants Kitto.
Because the fake child spends most of his time almost nude, and she wants all that bare skin touching her.
And then this paragraph happens.
The king lashed at me with his power, fashioning it into a whip that hurt even as it felt good. It tore a gasp from my throat, and I would have flung myself at the mirror, even cried yes, if I could have spoken, if I could have moved. In that one desperate moment, three things happened: Doyle laid a gentle kiss on my neck, Kitto licked the back of my knee, and Frost sat down on the bed to raise my hand to his mouth.
There are so many layers of wrong here I don't even want to touch it. Sex fixes everything in this book. EVERYTHING.
Finally Merry tells him that he's being an asshole and she's not going to see him before Yule because anybody who wants it this fucking bad must have ulterior motives, and she finds those scary. Reasonable.
LKH breaks out the random Gaelic and has Taranis call himself "Ard Ri". This means High King. I know this because one of my favorite Gaelic songs provided an English translation (The Rock by Maire Brennan) and the official unofficial theme song for Exiles is King of the Faeries AKA An Ri na Sidhe in Gaelic. So it's not that bad...but Gaelic has appeared only ONE other time in this book. Nobody else is using it, nobody else is speaking it. WHY USE IT NOW?
They trade nasty and pointless barbs for a while, and then Frost blanks the mirror.
You know what I miss? I miss the politics in the Jack the Bodiless series. Also the character development. Also the time-travel mind fuck elements, but I am so glad nobody's given LKH a time machine yet. We don't know what she'd do with it.
FINALLY Frost points out that Yule was when they'd make sacrifices to the old gods and if Taranis were going to be killed for being infertile it'd be during the Yule celebrations. Merry finally realizes what everybody reading this book got several hundred pages ago.
They all agree they won't be going to yule, and the chapter ends.
March 12, 2013
So. I got your good news and I got your bad news.
The Good News:We are smart and resourceful.
The Bad News: We are less than smart about backing up our data.
The Good News: Nobody saw what we did last night.
The Bad News: Three year old netbooks are not liquid proof.
The Good News: We are working very very hard right now and have enough money to replace broken things.
The Bad News: That sound the laptop is making while it boots up? Yeah. That's not a good sign.
The Good News: We've got almost everything backed up on our USB drives anyway, because we do all our important formatting work on our desktop computer. Also lots of print outs. Lots and lots of print outs.
The Bad News: "Almost Everything" Doesn't include the two books I wrote in the last month.
The Good News: We bought an IDE/SATA internal drive to USB adaptor back when we bought a new computer because we thought it would be a good idea.
The Bad news: That was last summer. We never actually used it.
The Good news: When Mom asked if we actually wanted to keep that thing? We said yes.
The Bad News: That was last summer. Storage in my life is kind of chronological. In other words...WHERE THE FUCK IS THE ADAPTER.
The Good News: God helps you find things. Though it helps when your Mom has The Great Electronics Dump Box that also hold old cell phones, a nine year old Gameboy and a N64 memory cartridge from back in 1999.
The GREAT News: We got it working in thirty minutes. No Data has been lost. Crisis has been averted.Also: FREE STORAGE FOR ALL.
TL:DR I am an idiot, but I am an idiot with foresight. Anybody know the best way to store a salvaged harddrive?
The Bad News: We are less than smart about backing up our data.
The Good News: Nobody saw what we did last night.
The Bad News: Three year old netbooks are not liquid proof.
The Good News: We are working very very hard right now and have enough money to replace broken things.
The Bad News: That sound the laptop is making while it boots up? Yeah. That's not a good sign.
The Good News: We've got almost everything backed up on our USB drives anyway, because we do all our important formatting work on our desktop computer. Also lots of print outs. Lots and lots of print outs.
The Bad News: "Almost Everything" Doesn't include the two books I wrote in the last month.
The Good News: We bought an IDE/SATA internal drive to USB adaptor back when we bought a new computer because we thought it would be a good idea.
The Bad news: That was last summer. We never actually used it.
The Good news: When Mom asked if we actually wanted to keep that thing? We said yes.
The Bad News: That was last summer. Storage in my life is kind of chronological. In other words...WHERE THE FUCK IS THE ADAPTER.
The Good News: God helps you find things. Though it helps when your Mom has The Great Electronics Dump Box that also hold old cell phones, a nine year old Gameboy and a N64 memory cartridge from back in 1999.
The GREAT News: We got it working in thirty minutes. No Data has been lost. Crisis has been averted.Also: FREE STORAGE FOR ALL.
TL:DR I am an idiot, but I am an idiot with foresight. Anybody know the best way to store a salvaged harddrive?
March 11, 2013
Caress of Twilight--chapter 36
Today was a clusterfuck of epic proportions, of the sort that promises to taint every single day for the rest of this week. My job does really well for a really long time, and then it's like it just goes "FUCK YOU" and then goes 'splody. All over everything. And it always does this at high stress times like Spring Break and summer vacation's first few weeks, when we need everybody to bring the A game and they bring the C and D boards instead, with half the pieces missing.
So we are doing one chapter, and I will try to be entertaining and then I will go to bed because ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSE I have fucking jury duty in the morning.
SO. Merry has done fertility ritual and now she's going back to give the magic she got from sex to Maeve Reed.
I do not do fertility rites, mostly because I've got no reason to (I'm not having babies, I'm not breeding kittens and my attempts at growing things usually end with a lot of brown twigs and misery.) so I do not know how silly or not silly the ritual was. Somebody else pointed out that Fertility Rites Do Not Work This Way and I am going to take their word for it.
Anyhoo, Merry goes back inside to give Maeve Reed her magic kiss.
That's probably the best drink ever, and it probably involves heavy cream, creme de cacao and the biscotti liquor I traded half of my soul for last week. It is, however, a very lame description of a transfer of power, and it's a fucking flippant thing to say about somebody's last chance to have a kid with the love of their life.
Also, Merry does a long description about how awful and dead looking Gordon is next to de-glamoured Maeve, and all it does is make me want to shout "fuck you" at Merry until my voice gives out. You are the one who is calling attention to how different they are. Maeve is losing somebody she loves that she won't get back. You do not even have to pick which guy you love. Sit down and shut up.
And then LKH tries to write meaningful dialogue:
And Merry knows that she's given Maeve a child even though Maeve doesn't have her magic and she and Gordon haven't screwed yet (...I know. I know. I'm getting there) but Merry's magic is so powerful that "It could not be truly stopped, this cycle, because if it stopped, life itself would stop."
Pretensious punctuation, Batman! Also, every time LKH does something like that sentence up there, remember The Emperor's New Groove and read it in Kronk's voice. Somebody brought that up on Lashouts several months ago and I cannot make myself stop doing it. It makes everything okay.
So yes. Merry's magic is that big. Whoopdie-do. She gives it to Maeve, Maeve gives it to her dying husband, and they are left to fuck on what I really, really hope is not Merry's bed, because her sheets are probably septic and Gordon doesn't need to deal with that.
Also, and I have been sitting on this for the last month waiting to get to this part...HOW THE BLUE FUCK IS GORDON REED HEALTHY ENOUGH FOR SEX?!? The man is dying. And not, to quote Fight Club, in the zen buddest sense of the word, but in that "Hey, I'll be dead before we have to take the library books back" kind of way. His Plot Disease is never defined, I'll spot them that one, but earlier they said "six weeks". If it's Christmas and you don't have to worry about Valentine's Day anymore, enough of your systems have gone haywire enough to make sex actively dangerous for your health. This kid is probably shaving days off Gordon's remaining weeks. WHY ARE THEY NOT USING A PETRI DISH?
Okay. I'm better now.
And hey, if Maeve can get a gaurenteed child by Merry and Galen fucking in a stranger's lemon grove, why isn't she preggers yet? This is not my question. THE BOOK IS ASKING THAT TOO:
They decide that the answer is "more sex", which would be great if for no other reason than we wouldn't have to watch Merry play "Dodge the invitation" anymore...but I think the guys are offering to carry her and have sex while they are carrying her, and the chapter ends before I can figure out WTF they are talking about.
(BTW I would have said the Grand Prize for Shittiest Fanfic Ever would go to My Immortal, but it got beat out by Fallout: Equestria AKA the Fallout/My Little Pony Mashup that nobody ever needed or wanted, but that somehow not only exists, but is seven-hundred-thousand words long. You are allowed to google that, only because I am in pain, blog readers, pain, and I do not want to suffer alone.)
(Seriously. Nuclear wasteland and cartoon pink ponies. This exists.)
So we are doing one chapter, and I will try to be entertaining and then I will go to bed because ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSE I have fucking jury duty in the morning.
SO. Merry has done fertility ritual and now she's going back to give the magic she got from sex to Maeve Reed.
I do not do fertility rites, mostly because I've got no reason to (I'm not having babies, I'm not breeding kittens and my attempts at growing things usually end with a lot of brown twigs and misery.) so I do not know how silly or not silly the ritual was. Somebody else pointed out that Fertility Rites Do Not Work This Way and I am going to take their word for it.
Anyhoo, Merry goes back inside to give Maeve Reed her magic kiss.
That's probably the best drink ever, and it probably involves heavy cream, creme de cacao and the biscotti liquor I traded half of my soul for last week. It is, however, a very lame description of a transfer of power, and it's a fucking flippant thing to say about somebody's last chance to have a kid with the love of their life.
Also, Merry does a long description about how awful and dead looking Gordon is next to de-glamoured Maeve, and all it does is make me want to shout "fuck you" at Merry until my voice gives out. You are the one who is calling attention to how different they are. Maeve is losing somebody she loves that she won't get back. You do not even have to pick which guy you love. Sit down and shut up.
And then LKH tries to write meaningful dialogue:
“You smell of wilderness,” Conchenn said. “The heart of the earth beats through you, Meredith. I can see it like a green glow behind my eyelids.” She began to cry crystal tears, as if her tears should have been able to be held and set in silver and gold. “Your green man smells of sky and wind and sunlight. He glows yellow inside my head.”Crystal tears, yo. CRYSTAL. FUCKING. TEARS. I mean...look, I am sure everybody here is familiar with My Immortal. We've all been on the 'net a LONG TIME, I am sure several of us lurk in the same places, we should all know about the most famously shitty Harry Potter fan fic in the history of shitty fan-fics. I like a good purple turn of phrase as much as the next chick (Sunshine, Sunshine, Sunshine, oh my fucking God, Sunshine. If you like vampire fiction and were-whatever fiction and things that involve demons and food? And you have not read Sunshine? Stop reading my blog, go over to Amazon right now, and buy a copy. Your life is not complete.) (Also? It is the District 9 of books. There should be a sequel. It is screaming for a sequel. THERE WILL NEVER BE A SEQUEL. WE GET TWENTY TWO SHITTY ANITA BLAKE BOOKS AND THE UNIVERSE CANNOT PRODUCE TWO BOOKS WORTH OF SUNSHINE. LIFE. IT IS NOT FAIR.)but LKH just went deep into My Immortal territory and never looked back. Next up her characters will be putting their things into their you-know-what's and they'll be doing it for the first time.
And Merry knows that she's given Maeve a child even though Maeve doesn't have her magic and she and Gordon haven't screwed yet (...I know. I know. I'm getting there) but Merry's magic is so powerful that "It could not be truly stopped, this cycle, because if it stopped, life itself would stop."
Pretensious punctuation, Batman! Also, every time LKH does something like that sentence up there, remember The Emperor's New Groove and read it in Kronk's voice. Somebody brought that up on Lashouts several months ago and I cannot make myself stop doing it. It makes everything okay.
So yes. Merry's magic is that big. Whoopdie-do. She gives it to Maeve, Maeve gives it to her dying husband, and they are left to fuck on what I really, really hope is not Merry's bed, because her sheets are probably septic and Gordon doesn't need to deal with that.
Also, and I have been sitting on this for the last month waiting to get to this part...HOW THE BLUE FUCK IS GORDON REED HEALTHY ENOUGH FOR SEX?!? The man is dying. And not, to quote Fight Club, in the zen buddest sense of the word, but in that "Hey, I'll be dead before we have to take the library books back" kind of way. His Plot Disease is never defined, I'll spot them that one, but earlier they said "six weeks". If it's Christmas and you don't have to worry about Valentine's Day anymore, enough of your systems have gone haywire enough to make sex actively dangerous for your health. This kid is probably shaving days off Gordon's remaining weeks. WHY ARE THEY NOT USING A PETRI DISH?
Okay. I'm better now.
And hey, if Maeve can get a gaurenteed child by Merry and Galen fucking in a stranger's lemon grove, why isn't she preggers yet? This is not my question. THE BOOK IS ASKING THAT TOO:
“If I have such fertility power, then why aren’t I pregnant yet?”Maybe because if you did, there wouldn't be another book or nine to follow.
They decide that the answer is "more sex", which would be great if for no other reason than we wouldn't have to watch Merry play "Dodge the invitation" anymore...but I think the guys are offering to carry her and have sex while they are carrying her, and the chapter ends before I can figure out WTF they are talking about.
(BTW I would have said the Grand Prize for Shittiest Fanfic Ever would go to My Immortal, but it got beat out by Fallout: Equestria AKA the Fallout/My Little Pony Mashup that nobody ever needed or wanted, but that somehow not only exists, but is seven-hundred-thousand words long. You are allowed to google that, only because I am in pain, blog readers, pain, and I do not want to suffer alone.)
(Seriously. Nuclear wasteland and cartoon pink ponies. This exists.)
March 10, 2013
Caress of Twilight--chapter 33-35
I forgot two key things re: blogging this weekend.
Key point the first: It was OYSTERFEST this weekend. What? You don't know what OYSTERFEST is? Oysterfest is the big party one rich guy convinced the town to throw every year because the other party (Seafair) is too political. Which I can agree with, given that the people I wait on like to gossip and think that the waitress doesn't hear. So while Seafair consists of this band and that promotion and Who Gets To Do The Artwork This Year (do NOT get me started) Oysterfest consists of drinking beer, eating raw oysters, wandering around the swag tent and then going on a couple carnival rides. (hopefully in that order. I don't think any human being can eat a raw oyster sober, and going on the Zipper with THAT in your stomach would not be smart).
They have a two hour long parade. Which apparently MUST be watched from our parking lot whilst consuiming massive quantities of tomato juice and Vodka. At 10AM.
Key point the second: Spring. motherfucking. Break. HOW COULD I FORGET THIS?
We will make MONEY this week, my loyal lovely blog-readers. There will be MONEY. Meanwhile I'm editing Starbleached pt 3, no real title yet (Working title is "Dark and Pale" but I don't like it much. Am scouring text for better idea) and that looks to be right on track. ALSO: Artwork. Lots and lots of artwork.
...On to the book, then
Yep, Taranis's important secretary is calling on Merry yet. Again. We've had a murder, an escaped bodiless monster, a blood thirsty psychopathic queen with obvious-yet-unspecified complicating disorder, and a request for a fertility rite in a book that is supposed to be porn. What are we focusing on? DINNER INVITATIONS.
FUCKING. RIVETING.
Also, eight o'clock is hideously early and nobody should be making calls at that time.
Yeah. I understand that people have issues with money and working that they can't help...but if you're able-bodied enough to pull half the crap Merry is pulling and you're having financial issues and you are working a 9-5 the way Merry is implied to? Eight AM is not early. Yeah, you might still be in bed at eight, but the human bio-rhythem WILL have you be awake and alert. So somebody in this story, author included, isn't really used to being awake and active before noon.
(Yeah. If I have one ugly part to my personality it is that I have NO patience for able-bodied and able-minded people who complain about having no money and yet don't work. I'm not quite at that "McDonalds is hiring" stage, only because I know having a bad job makes finding a good one even harder, but working when you are not broken and you need money isn't optional--and even if you are broken, sometimes having a job will keep you moving and alive. Physical and mental disabilities are different, but Merry isn't disabled. Merry Gentry needs money, Merry Gentry is literally magic, Merry Gentry should be working hard enough for 8 am to not feel early)
Merry is in bed with Nicca and Rhys. Nicca has ankle length hair that he doesn't bind up somehow before he goes to bed. LKH describes the results of this as "slightly tangled."
Guys, I have long hair. Mid-back. when I don't bind it up--which I forget to do a lot--I wake up with tangles that make Bob Marley's dreds look like the hair in a shampoo ad. I call bullshit.
They arrange themselves to be impressive modestly covered--because all those icky human mores have invaded the Seelie court--and answer the secretary of the King of the Faerie wearing nothing but bedsheets.
TAKE THE MAGIC TELEPHONE MIRROR OUT OF YOUR FUCKING BEDROOM BEFORE YOU EMBARRASS YOURSELF.
Important!Secretary invites Merry to a feast in her honor before Yule, thus getting that icky "I have to go to only one ball" stuff out of the way, and making it really obvious that Taranis wants to talk to Merry. So Merry does the first smart thing she's done all book: She asks to speak with Taranis directly.
Important!Secretary implies that Merry might want to get dressed before she talks to the King.
Merry takes offense at this:
Rhys tells Merry about what a party boy Taranis was centuries ago, and then calls first dibs on the shower.
Like I said. RIVETING.
Merry and Nicca have sex...and then Maeve Reed and her husband Gordon show up on Merry's doorstep in chapter 34.
Gordon is still dying of Plot Disease.
I am going to assume that they have tried to heal him with magic and failed. I can't, however, assume they have tried IVF because, you know, it would work.
And she's wearing a fur coat, a scarf, shoes, a pair of sunglasses, and nothing else. Apparently we're doing the fertility ritual today.
They spend a few minutes bickering over Maeve's cigarettes. Given that the lady is chain smoking, I really have to know what she plans on doing if this ritual works out. Merry has to have the last word:
Merry decides on Galen to be the male half of her fertility ritual. The good news is, he is now "the green man" and not "the green knight" (...my brain just went "so maybe LKH was trying to do some kind of play with Galen's impotence and the implied virginity of Gawain and most of the other knights, which is only implied if you're just reading the sanitized, Disney versions of the Authurian legands" and I realized that I'm probably reading too much into a book the AUTHOR can't be bothered to edit)
Also? I might be reading this wrong, but it looks like Merry will be doing this fertility ritual in somebody else's backyard.
Religious freedom is one thing, but you know what? I don't think there are a lot of people who would support two strangers fucking in their back yard, religion or no religion.
Chapter 35, Merry is getting ready for the ritual. We find out what the ritual needs (land with no pesticides or herbacides, wards that nothing short of deities could cross) (Also sex) and then she starts describing the yard. Apparently it's also a lemon grove. There are eucalyptus trees there too. I am pretty positive this has some kind of significance, but fuck if I know what it is.
And then LKH shows some truely basic ignorance of textiles:
There are other reasons I'd exclude silk from a fertility ritual--namely, you have to kill the bugs to get the silk, often by boiling it--but excluding silk because it's not "of the earth" is like excluding dingos because they're not proper dogs. But Merry's excuse is that she couldn't feel the earth through the silk as she could through the cotton.
Right. Whatever. It's your ritual.
Galen shows up. LKH once again describes his genitals without actually using the word "Penis". You know, I get that penis is a funny word and it tends to break the romantic spell, but using "him" to describe said penis feels a bit to me like reducing the man down to his genitals. Like they're the only part of him that matters.
(Best description of a penis I have read so far: In Paladin of Souls, which you should all read now because it has a 40-something female protagonist and the best religious system in the history of written things--Lois McMaster Bujold describes a man from hair to feet, and when she gets to the lower parts, it reads thusly: "the hair...thickened at his crotch. The bird that nested there was fine and fair, and Ista smiled." THAT is how you describe a penis)
And then...I think LKH forgot what she was writing:
Uh...you agreed to have Galen as your partner before you left the apartment and went to some stranger's abandoned back yard. I don't see why you'd be so confuzzled by this.
The ritual doesn't commense, exactly, but they start playing with each others auras. Using an excercise I think I read in a Starhawk book (...don't ask, okay?) and thought "Gee, that'd be fun to do if I ever got bored, but I don't think things work that way". When they get tired of playing with auras, Galen starts playing with Merry's boobs. And apparently sex magic=warm feelings, because everything has "Warmth" attached to it. Warmth, warmth, warmth warmth warmth. Yep, it doesn't look like a word anymore.
The next runner up is "spilling". The wind is spilling over bodies, hair is spilling over shoulders, sensations are spilling into warmth, and I have to say whoever has to clean up all the spills is going to need industrial strength bleach.
Also...why do fantasy writers like "Dark light" when describing eyes and things? I mean, I'm pretty sure I've done it too, and it doesn't make any more sense in my own writing. Darkness is not a thing. It's an absense. No light=darkness. A "dark light" is something very very dim.
It's also really hilarious how the more intense the sex scene becomes the more punctuation LKH forgets to use. And apparently when they orgasm they have a literal out of body experiance and become trees and kites (I think?) and go flying around and then they become the earth, and then they become themselves again and there is magic. Somehow.
So Magic=orgasms.
If this were true, what happens if you own a vibrator? Brings a whole new meaning to "magic wand". Would you have debates about ebony vs. steel and crystal vs. simulated flesh with vibrating and rotational action? And would recharable lithium batteries enter into the conversation? I'll bet sex shops in this universe hate dealing with returns:
"I came and it turned my boyfriend into a goldfish!"
"All of him?"
"Oh, not my entire boyfriend. Just his important part. You know. His penis. It turned his scrotum into a kitten. The rest of him is fine."
"Yeah, that's the Victory model. That should clear right up after the goldfish spawns. I don't suppose you have a spare tank? Because my brother owns this great aquarium supply shop. Totally unrelated. Could I interest him in a female goldfish?"
Anyway, Merry and Galen go back inside and give Maeve her fertility magic so she and Gordon can go make a baby.
Key point the first: It was OYSTERFEST this weekend. What? You don't know what OYSTERFEST is? Oysterfest is the big party one rich guy convinced the town to throw every year because the other party (Seafair) is too political. Which I can agree with, given that the people I wait on like to gossip and think that the waitress doesn't hear. So while Seafair consists of this band and that promotion and Who Gets To Do The Artwork This Year (do NOT get me started) Oysterfest consists of drinking beer, eating raw oysters, wandering around the swag tent and then going on a couple carnival rides. (hopefully in that order. I don't think any human being can eat a raw oyster sober, and going on the Zipper with THAT in your stomach would not be smart).
They have a two hour long parade. Which apparently MUST be watched from our parking lot whilst consuiming massive quantities of tomato juice and Vodka. At 10AM.
Key point the second: Spring. motherfucking. Break. HOW COULD I FORGET THIS?
We will make MONEY this week, my loyal lovely blog-readers. There will be MONEY. Meanwhile I'm editing Starbleached pt 3, no real title yet (Working title is "Dark and Pale" but I don't like it much. Am scouring text for better idea) and that looks to be right on track. ALSO: Artwork. Lots and lots of artwork.
...On to the book, then
Yep, Taranis's important secretary is calling on Merry yet. Again. We've had a murder, an escaped bodiless monster, a blood thirsty psychopathic queen with obvious-yet-unspecified complicating disorder, and a request for a fertility rite in a book that is supposed to be porn. What are we focusing on? DINNER INVITATIONS.
FUCKING. RIVETING.
Also, eight o'clock is hideously early and nobody should be making calls at that time.
Yeah. I understand that people have issues with money and working that they can't help...but if you're able-bodied enough to pull half the crap Merry is pulling and you're having financial issues and you are working a 9-5 the way Merry is implied to? Eight AM is not early. Yeah, you might still be in bed at eight, but the human bio-rhythem WILL have you be awake and alert. So somebody in this story, author included, isn't really used to being awake and active before noon.
(Yeah. If I have one ugly part to my personality it is that I have NO patience for able-bodied and able-minded people who complain about having no money and yet don't work. I'm not quite at that "McDonalds is hiring" stage, only because I know having a bad job makes finding a good one even harder, but working when you are not broken and you need money isn't optional--and even if you are broken, sometimes having a job will keep you moving and alive. Physical and mental disabilities are different, but Merry isn't disabled. Merry Gentry needs money, Merry Gentry is literally magic, Merry Gentry should be working hard enough for 8 am to not feel early)
Merry is in bed with Nicca and Rhys. Nicca has ankle length hair that he doesn't bind up somehow before he goes to bed. LKH describes the results of this as "slightly tangled."
Guys, I have long hair. Mid-back. when I don't bind it up--which I forget to do a lot--I wake up with tangles that make Bob Marley's dreds look like the hair in a shampoo ad. I call bullshit.
They arrange themselves to be impressive modestly covered--because all those icky human mores have invaded the Seelie court--and answer the secretary of the King of the Faerie wearing nothing but bedsheets.
TAKE THE MAGIC TELEPHONE MIRROR OUT OF YOUR FUCKING BEDROOM BEFORE YOU EMBARRASS YOURSELF.
Important!Secretary invites Merry to a feast in her honor before Yule, thus getting that icky "I have to go to only one ball" stuff out of the way, and making it really obvious that Taranis wants to talk to Merry. So Merry does the first smart thing she's done all book: She asks to speak with Taranis directly.
Important!Secretary implies that Merry might want to get dressed before she talks to the King.
Merry takes offense at this:
“I think that I will present myself to the king as I see fit, Rosmerta.” I’d left off the Dame deliberately. She was a minor noblewoman, and I outranked her. That I gave her the courtesy of her title was just that, a courtesy. I didn’t have to do it.Yes. Isn't she the nicest person in the universe?
Rhys tells Merry about what a party boy Taranis was centuries ago, and then calls first dibs on the shower.
Like I said. RIVETING.
Merry and Nicca have sex...and then Maeve Reed and her husband Gordon show up on Merry's doorstep in chapter 34.
Gordon is still dying of Plot Disease.
I am going to assume that they have tried to heal him with magic and failed. I can't, however, assume they have tried IVF because, you know, it would work.
And she's wearing a fur coat, a scarf, shoes, a pair of sunglasses, and nothing else. Apparently we're doing the fertility ritual today.
They spend a few minutes bickering over Maeve's cigarettes. Given that the lady is chain smoking, I really have to know what she plans on doing if this ritual works out. Merry has to have the last word:
She actually pouted at me. I’d had enough. “When I come back inside heavy with magic, I want to find Conchenn, goddess of beauty and spring, not some spoiled star. No glamour either. I want to see those lightning-kissed eyes.”Yep. Let's dictate to the woman whose husband is dying. HER HUSBAND IS DYING, this ritual is her last chance to get something of him to keep forever, AND YOU ARE CALLING HER SPOILED BECAUSE SHE'S BEING NERVIOUS IN YOUR LIVING ROOM. Did it ever occur to you that maybe she's chain smoking and twitching because the alternative is to think about how her husband is dying right before her eyes?
Merry decides on Galen to be the male half of her fertility ritual. The good news is, he is now "the green man" and not "the green knight" (...my brain just went "so maybe LKH was trying to do some kind of play with Galen's impotence and the implied virginity of Gawain and most of the other knights, which is only implied if you're just reading the sanitized, Disney versions of the Authurian legands" and I realized that I'm probably reading too much into a book the AUTHOR can't be bothered to edit)
Also? I might be reading this wrong, but it looks like Merry will be doing this fertility ritual in somebody else's backyard.
Religious freedom is one thing, but you know what? I don't think there are a lot of people who would support two strangers fucking in their back yard, religion or no religion.
Chapter 35, Merry is getting ready for the ritual. We find out what the ritual needs (land with no pesticides or herbacides, wards that nothing short of deities could cross) (Also sex) and then she starts describing the yard. Apparently it's also a lemon grove. There are eucalyptus trees there too. I am pretty positive this has some kind of significance, but fuck if I know what it is.
And then LKH shows some truely basic ignorance of textiles:
A large cotton blanket lay on the ground, waiting. Maeve had offered to bring silk sheets, but all we needed was something of the earth, animal or vegetable.Silk is caterpillar spit. That's all it is. One long thread of caterpillar spit wound 'round and 'round and 'round. It's a natural fiber, and Maeve probably has the chops to get it with as little processing as possible (BTW raw silk has the most interesting smell in the world. Some people don't like it, as it's very musky and fishy, but I LOVE the smell of raw silk)
There are other reasons I'd exclude silk from a fertility ritual--namely, you have to kill the bugs to get the silk, often by boiling it--but excluding silk because it's not "of the earth" is like excluding dingos because they're not proper dogs. But Merry's excuse is that she couldn't feel the earth through the silk as she could through the cotton.
Right. Whatever. It's your ritual.
Galen shows up. LKH once again describes his genitals without actually using the word "Penis". You know, I get that penis is a funny word and it tends to break the romantic spell, but using "him" to describe said penis feels a bit to me like reducing the man down to his genitals. Like they're the only part of him that matters.
(Best description of a penis I have read so far: In Paladin of Souls, which you should all read now because it has a 40-something female protagonist and the best religious system in the history of written things--Lois McMaster Bujold describes a man from hair to feet, and when she gets to the lower parts, it reads thusly: "the hair...thickened at his crotch. The bird that nested there was fine and fair, and Ista smiled." THAT is how you describe a penis)
And then...I think LKH forgot what she was writing:
I think I stopped breathing for a second or two. I hadn’t really believed that he would come. I had grown tired of hoping. Now, here he was.
Uh...you agreed to have Galen as your partner before you left the apartment and went to some stranger's abandoned back yard. I don't see why you'd be so confuzzled by this.
The ritual doesn't commense, exactly, but they start playing with each others auras. Using an excercise I think I read in a Starhawk book (...don't ask, okay?) and thought "Gee, that'd be fun to do if I ever got bored, but I don't think things work that way". When they get tired of playing with auras, Galen starts playing with Merry's boobs. And apparently sex magic=warm feelings, because everything has "Warmth" attached to it. Warmth, warmth, warmth warmth warmth. Yep, it doesn't look like a word anymore.
The next runner up is "spilling". The wind is spilling over bodies, hair is spilling over shoulders, sensations are spilling into warmth, and I have to say whoever has to clean up all the spills is going to need industrial strength bleach.
Also...why do fantasy writers like "Dark light" when describing eyes and things? I mean, I'm pretty sure I've done it too, and it doesn't make any more sense in my own writing. Darkness is not a thing. It's an absense. No light=darkness. A "dark light" is something very very dim.
It's also really hilarious how the more intense the sex scene becomes the more punctuation LKH forgets to use. And apparently when they orgasm they have a literal out of body experiance and become trees and kites (I think?) and go flying around and then they become the earth, and then they become themselves again and there is magic. Somehow.
So Magic=orgasms.
If this were true, what happens if you own a vibrator? Brings a whole new meaning to "magic wand". Would you have debates about ebony vs. steel and crystal vs. simulated flesh with vibrating and rotational action? And would recharable lithium batteries enter into the conversation? I'll bet sex shops in this universe hate dealing with returns:
"I came and it turned my boyfriend into a goldfish!"
"All of him?"
"Oh, not my entire boyfriend. Just his important part. You know. His penis. It turned his scrotum into a kitten. The rest of him is fine."
"Yeah, that's the Victory model. That should clear right up after the goldfish spawns. I don't suppose you have a spare tank? Because my brother owns this great aquarium supply shop. Totally unrelated. Could I interest him in a female goldfish?"
Anyway, Merry and Galen go back inside and give Maeve her fertility magic so she and Gordon can go make a baby.
March 8, 2013
Penguin news and e-book views
To explain why what I'm about to post is a big deal, let me explain what the SFWA are.
The Science Fiction Writers of America is kind of like a guild. You have to have professional sales to qualify for membership (so self pubbers are out) but once you do, there are a LOT of benefits.
However, a service they offer to EVERY writer is they keep track of shady publishers, nasty agents, and general publishing nonsense that writers need to know about and stay away from. Victoria Strauss and Writer Beware (which you have bookmarked now, RIGHT?) are affiliates, and I believe Ms. Strauss herself is a member. If you are a writer of speculative fiction and you get a qualifying sale of a book or short story? JOIN SFWA. IT IS WORTH IT.
Okay? Got it?
Good.
SFWA HAVE RULED THAT RANDOM HOUSE'S HYDRA AND ALIBI IMPRINTS ARE NOT QUALIFYING MARKETS.
This is a big deal.
In effect, they've just said that Hydra is dishonest, is exploiting their authors. Furthermore, the discussion thread over on Absolute Write is focusing not on the Life-of-copyright rights grab that got me so riled up, but on how Hydra's terms make you pay for their operating expenses by docking your royalties until they decide those expenses are paid.
Folks, that doesn't just mean they can charge you for editing, artwork, and paper and ink costs should you qualify for that. That means they can charge you for their electricity bill. They can charge you for their paperclips. The computers they do the editing on. The carpet they happen to be walking on. This is called "Hollywood accounting" and it is how the writer of Forrest Gump never saw a penny of the movie money. If they are paying royalties on net after their expenses they can raise up those expenses and drop down the net until you don't see a dime.
Now, a reasonable person could say that Random House and Hydra won't do that. That they are an outstanding and honest company with a long history of treating authors relatively fair (I suspect anybody with half decent google-fu can refute that in two seconds, so I won't bother) and that they SURELY wouldn't dock authors for every single little penny they can.
Random House is owned by Penguin.
Penguin also owns Author Solutions.
Author Solutions have a long history of being scumbags.
I would recommend having NO FAITH AT ALL in a company that has contracts this shitty that also owns a company that can't even do business under its own fucking name.
Don't submit to Hydra.
Don't submit to Alibi
And in the interests of CYA? Don't submit to Flirt or any other e-book only imprint attached to the Random Penguin. If they stop being dicks and/or show a willingness to negotiate on the nasty contract terms I may revise. But to play it safe? Avoid until SFWA revise their statements.
OTHER THINGS:
NEW SALES PLATFORM! That OMG I think I like the best out of all of them so far.
Deviantart.com has begun allowing artists to sell "premium content" via their DA pages. And the method lets me do these awesome little packages that are actually something I've wanted to do for a while.
Sadly, sales on DA won't help me with sales ranking and street cred (because nobody's watching DA for things) BUT it allows me to reach an audience that I normally wouldn't have, and I think that is very cool.
For now, all I've got is Blue Ghosts (because everything else I'd start with is tied up by F***ing KDP Select. I hate amazon right now) but I'll probably put Silver Bullet and Starbleached up there as well.
ALSO: PRINT BOOKS!
Thanks to a WONDERFUL Anon on this post, I now have ideas about binding all the smaller books at home. It's not financially viable to do the omnibus that way (Not to mention I DO NOT WANT TO FUCK WITH IT) but the smaller ones, it'd work. Also, it'd give me practice for putting the omnibus and any future books together. Selling self-printed and self distributed books wouldn't help in terms of online book sales (or verifying to anybody with real money that I know what I'm doing) but I could definitely do homemade copies, of, say, Starbleached and Silver Bullet and Blue Ghosts et al. And sell them to ya'll, of course, and also at cons and things as long as I can keep the prices sane.
WHICH WOULD BE AWESOME.
So if any of you wonderful folks with good google-fu wish to help me further persue this (and I am googling the crap out of the 'net right now, I assure you) the ONLY part of this I cannot logic my way into is how to bind the damn things. The video Wonder-Anon showed me had a guy using a glue gun (this is good) and a thermal binding system (THE CHEAPEST MODEL IS A HUNDRED BUCKS. Sorry. It's just...it's a heater. It's a goddamned heater with braces on it. WHY SHOULD THE STICKER SHOCK BE SO HIGH?).
And the internet has failed me because nobody has DIYed the heater part. The thermal strips? Yeah, they've done that (gauze and a hot glue gun) but not the rest of it. So here is my question, my wonderful, wonderful blog readers:
-a way to melt hot glue that is between two pieces of paper without damaging said paper?
OR
-Air drying uber-glue that can hold paper together forever?
This is a brainstorming session, folks. And your reward would be books.
The Science Fiction Writers of America is kind of like a guild. You have to have professional sales to qualify for membership (so self pubbers are out) but once you do, there are a LOT of benefits.
However, a service they offer to EVERY writer is they keep track of shady publishers, nasty agents, and general publishing nonsense that writers need to know about and stay away from. Victoria Strauss and Writer Beware (which you have bookmarked now, RIGHT?) are affiliates, and I believe Ms. Strauss herself is a member. If you are a writer of speculative fiction and you get a qualifying sale of a book or short story? JOIN SFWA. IT IS WORTH IT.
Okay? Got it?
Good.
SFWA HAVE RULED THAT RANDOM HOUSE'S HYDRA AND ALIBI IMPRINTS ARE NOT QUALIFYING MARKETS.
This is a big deal.
In effect, they've just said that Hydra is dishonest, is exploiting their authors. Furthermore, the discussion thread over on Absolute Write is focusing not on the Life-of-copyright rights grab that got me so riled up, but on how Hydra's terms make you pay for their operating expenses by docking your royalties until they decide those expenses are paid.
Folks, that doesn't just mean they can charge you for editing, artwork, and paper and ink costs should you qualify for that. That means they can charge you for their electricity bill. They can charge you for their paperclips. The computers they do the editing on. The carpet they happen to be walking on. This is called "Hollywood accounting" and it is how the writer of Forrest Gump never saw a penny of the movie money. If they are paying royalties on net after their expenses they can raise up those expenses and drop down the net until you don't see a dime.
Now, a reasonable person could say that Random House and Hydra won't do that. That they are an outstanding and honest company with a long history of treating authors relatively fair (I suspect anybody with half decent google-fu can refute that in two seconds, so I won't bother) and that they SURELY wouldn't dock authors for every single little penny they can.
Random House is owned by Penguin.
Penguin also owns Author Solutions.
Author Solutions have a long history of being scumbags.
I would recommend having NO FAITH AT ALL in a company that has contracts this shitty that also owns a company that can't even do business under its own fucking name.
Don't submit to Hydra.
Don't submit to Alibi
And in the interests of CYA? Don't submit to Flirt or any other e-book only imprint attached to the Random Penguin. If they stop being dicks and/or show a willingness to negotiate on the nasty contract terms I may revise. But to play it safe? Avoid until SFWA revise their statements.
OTHER THINGS:
NEW SALES PLATFORM! That OMG I think I like the best out of all of them so far.
Deviantart.com has begun allowing artists to sell "premium content" via their DA pages. And the method lets me do these awesome little packages that are actually something I've wanted to do for a while.
Sadly, sales on DA won't help me with sales ranking and street cred (because nobody's watching DA for things) BUT it allows me to reach an audience that I normally wouldn't have, and I think that is very cool.
For now, all I've got is Blue Ghosts (because everything else I'd start with is tied up by F***ing KDP Select. I hate amazon right now) but I'll probably put Silver Bullet and Starbleached up there as well.
ALSO: PRINT BOOKS!
Thanks to a WONDERFUL Anon on this post, I now have ideas about binding all the smaller books at home. It's not financially viable to do the omnibus that way (Not to mention I DO NOT WANT TO FUCK WITH IT) but the smaller ones, it'd work. Also, it'd give me practice for putting the omnibus and any future books together. Selling self-printed and self distributed books wouldn't help in terms of online book sales (or verifying to anybody with real money that I know what I'm doing) but I could definitely do homemade copies, of, say, Starbleached and Silver Bullet and Blue Ghosts et al. And sell them to ya'll, of course, and also at cons and things as long as I can keep the prices sane.
WHICH WOULD BE AWESOME.
So if any of you wonderful folks with good google-fu wish to help me further persue this (and I am googling the crap out of the 'net right now, I assure you) the ONLY part of this I cannot logic my way into is how to bind the damn things. The video Wonder-Anon showed me had a guy using a glue gun (this is good) and a thermal binding system (THE CHEAPEST MODEL IS A HUNDRED BUCKS. Sorry. It's just...it's a heater. It's a goddamned heater with braces on it. WHY SHOULD THE STICKER SHOCK BE SO HIGH?).
And the internet has failed me because nobody has DIYed the heater part. The thermal strips? Yeah, they've done that (gauze and a hot glue gun) but not the rest of it. So here is my question, my wonderful, wonderful blog readers:
-a way to melt hot glue that is between two pieces of paper without damaging said paper?
OR
-Air drying uber-glue that can hold paper together forever?
This is a brainstorming session, folks. And your reward would be books.
March 7, 2013
Caress of Twilight--chapter 32
So. The next release is Starbleached pt 3, and as you can see by the countdown of dramatic awesome...I have confidence. Just started the first re-read and preliminary edit, and I can tell you this...FUCK is this one gonna be fun. If you like Starbleached, that is. :D As I've mentioned earlier, this is going to be Bryan's book, and I kind of heart Bryan more than I do any other character in the series because he is so much fun to work with. He's kind of like Eeyore crossed with a gatling gun.
Also...Smashwords is having a sale. Blue Ghosts is free, Gray Fox and Planet Bob are both half off. If you are interested in any of those books, I suggest you go buy them now. Sale ends on the 9th.
I've spent the last several days researching Lightning Source as a printer. They are indeed the best option, but holy fuck are they going to be expensive. Not, boys and girls, because they charge money for services, but because they're not fucking around. I'm going to have to create my own company (...should be easy to make my make-believe "Christwriter Studios" thing into a reality-on-paper) so that I am technically a "real" publisher and not a self-publisher, purchase my own ISBN numbers (125 DOLLARS A POP. Unless I buy ten at a time, in which case the price goes down to 250 for the lot) make absolutely fucking sure the book is perfect, which will probably involve hiring a real proofreader and typesetter (...and editor, probably) and then pay their set-up fees, which are about eighty bucks when you figure storage fees into the equation.
And the reason why I need to make sure I have everything perfect? Reloading the file is a forty dollar service charge.
This is why vetting and doing your research BEFORE you sign any paper is important. It's worth the investment, but it's going to take a lot of work to get there. Six months, minimum, depending on how much of this I am willing to outsource.
And also? This is why, if you want a print book? Going the trade route is always going to be your best option. Let somebody else handle this shit.
...I have to read the book now, don't I?
Fuck.
So after melodramtically promising to protect a traumatized man from his abuser--without acknowledging that she is almost as bad as Andais--Merry Gentry gets another call on her mirror-phone.
I hate phones. I hate being interrupted. I hate having people call me, I think texting was invented by a junior demon attempting to impress his superiors. I spent most of my teenage years playing secretary for my father's business, and the stand-out moment was when one of his employees wives attempted suicide.
I was seventeen.
That's why I hate phones.
So I kind of can commisurate with Merry here, given that a constantly ringing phone is roughly up there with menstral cramps in my book, but for fuck's sake, can't you find a way to disconnect the damn thing?
And it's Merry's mom.
It's kind of new. Merry's dad is damn near worshiped in this book. Merry's mom, on the other hand...hasn't really been mentioned. And hey, didn't Anita's mom get short shift over on the other series too? This might be the first time we've had an on-screen biological mom in LKH's career. Should be fun.
Merry decides she needs company for dealing with her mom.
I understand this completely. There are certain family members where the rule is, never be in the room with them alone. One of them is responsible for 75% of my cutting episodes. Yes. It's my choice to cut. It was their choice to be a
Yeah. Anyhoo, Merry decides to talk to her mom with Galen and Doyle for company. They all arrange themselves on her bed.
*sigh*
If your mirror gets this much traffic, Merry? Do yourself a favor and get the fucking thing out of your bedroom. Seriously. You should not be having very important conversations on sheets that have seen more traffic than Grand Central Station.
And for once the evil chick of the hour is not a blond. In fact, I am about to give LKH praise, folks.
I know. Your hearts will begin beating again soon.
See, Merry's mom is part brownie. And so her oh-so-special Sidhe hair is a perfectly mundane shade of brown, her eyes are also a perfectly mundane shade of brown, and while she's really pretty, her skin isn't the sparkly magic specialness of the Sidhe. She's still sidhe, but she looks really, really human by their reckoning, and she hates every minute of it. She's covered herself in sidhe things to compensate for having normal-looking hair, eyes and skin.
This is how you introduce a character. I know exactly how Merry's mom feels about herself, about Merry, about the courts, and about life in general. I know she's going to be awful, I know she's going to be self-absorbed, and I am actively looking forward to watching Merry and her mom interact because I already have a pretty firm grasp on Mom's personality.
Unfortunately the physical description continues on for about two pages more than it needs to, and my enthusiasm for this confrontation dies with every extra paragraph. Yes, folks. Apparently one paragraph of "Show don't tell" per novel is all we're going to get from Ms. Hamilton.
Which is a shame. She's goddamned good at it when she can be arsed to try.
This is how you torpedo a main character's ..well, character. Merry is ass deep in intrigue right now. She should not have the brains to one up her mother, let alone the vanity. When you are occupied by sixteen life threatening plots, you are not checking to see how big your mom's ass is, is all I'm saying.
Barbed words are exchanged, finally, and LKH is very careful to walk us through every nuance, because apparently she assumes her audience is twelve, and thus not capable of understanding the subtlties of dialogue. I would say that if her audience really was twelve they've got no business reading her books, but Kitto, and I think I was actually ten the first time I read one of her (early) books...and if you've read the Gap series at thirteen, which I did, you can't really police what anybody else is reading, either.
(...Jesus fucking Christ. The Gap series.)
And then Mommie Dearest brings up the Seelie Court Yuletide ball. Because Taranis does not want to be denied.
I think the honestly depressing thing about LKH's novels is how much bleeding potential there is. I know Taranis. I think I've worked for him a couple times. He's the kind of person who doesn't give a flying fuck about you until you tell him to get screwed, and then suddenly he has to have you. It's not because he actually needs you. It's because you told him no. It would be so easy to make any story arc involving him awesome, because he is legitimately dangerous. But LKH just never does anything with it. We've spent most of this book in this apartment talking about having sex.
Also. Dialogue:
And yet I love every book he's written. Because I know the characters. Even his newer books are like slipping on the worlds most comfortable pair of shoes. And the best part is how much of his dialogue he leaves to your imagination. There are scenes where he builds up to arguments between people (usually man and Love Interests, though I do like it when Pol and Belgarath fight the best) reaches the point where things spill over into screaming, and instead of writing fifteen pages of dialogue he writes "And things went rapidly downhill from there."
Is it lazy? Yep. Am I going to imagine a conversation fifteen times better than what he could come up with? Yep. (note to writers: this is when lazy contradicts itself.)
IS IT BETTER THAN MERRY'S CONVERSATION WITH HER MOTHER? HELL. FUCK. YES.
I would rather read sixteen books of Garion/Sparhawk clones (...and I have) than I would endure Merry talking to her mother. If I want conversation this stiff I ask my dad and stepmom political questions (Yeah. My card-carrying member of the John Birch Society Dad married a woman so liberal she donates to PETA and the Hillary Clinton election fund. She takes her nephew's toy guns away and he accuses her of infringing on the kid's second amendment rights. I bring popcorn and watch. It's kind of great)
I also don't get why LKH has to rehash every political nuance every time her characters start talking. I love politics in books. If I were to build my own pantheon, the high gods would be Julian May, David Weber and C.S. Lewis. (Stephen R. Donaldson would rule the underworld. Because he wrote the Gap series) It takes effort to make me hate politics in books. I hate the politics in the Merry Gentry books. You're the heir. I get it. You're Unseelie. I get it. You have to get pregnant and everybody hates you. I GET IT. DO something about it.
Second: If you are going to spend pages convincing us that the pagan way is SO MUCH BETTER and that Christians and Mundanes are idiots, you do not get to quote Christian literature whenever you feel like it.
And then we come to my biggest issue with the Merry Gentry books:
THIS GETS OLD.And it's not like she rephrases them. THEY ARE THE SAME FROM BOOK TO BOOK TO BOOK.
Merry then accuses her mother of being willing to let Taranis beat her to death, and then asks why it's so important she go to the ball. Because the king is asking for it. Merry basically says "fuck no" and hangs up, and the chapter ends with the mirror literally ringing off the hook while Merry walks out of the room.
Now. If you will excuse me, I have just discovered that all the Julian May books I've lost over the years are now e-books, and I'm going to go take advantage of this. Have a good night, folks. :D
Also...Smashwords is having a sale. Blue Ghosts is free, Gray Fox and Planet Bob are both half off. If you are interested in any of those books, I suggest you go buy them now. Sale ends on the 9th.
I've spent the last several days researching Lightning Source as a printer. They are indeed the best option, but holy fuck are they going to be expensive. Not, boys and girls, because they charge money for services, but because they're not fucking around. I'm going to have to create my own company (...should be easy to make my make-believe "Christwriter Studios" thing into a reality-on-paper) so that I am technically a "real" publisher and not a self-publisher, purchase my own ISBN numbers (125 DOLLARS A POP. Unless I buy ten at a time, in which case the price goes down to 250 for the lot) make absolutely fucking sure the book is perfect, which will probably involve hiring a real proofreader and typesetter (...and editor, probably) and then pay their set-up fees, which are about eighty bucks when you figure storage fees into the equation.
And the reason why I need to make sure I have everything perfect? Reloading the file is a forty dollar service charge.
This is why vetting and doing your research BEFORE you sign any paper is important. It's worth the investment, but it's going to take a lot of work to get there. Six months, minimum, depending on how much of this I am willing to outsource.
And also? This is why, if you want a print book? Going the trade route is always going to be your best option. Let somebody else handle this shit.
...I have to read the book now, don't I?
Fuck.
So after melodramtically promising to protect a traumatized man from his abuser--without acknowledging that she is almost as bad as Andais--Merry Gentry gets another call on her mirror-phone.
I hate phones. I hate being interrupted. I hate having people call me, I think texting was invented by a junior demon attempting to impress his superiors. I spent most of my teenage years playing secretary for my father's business, and the stand-out moment was when one of his employees wives attempted suicide.
I was seventeen.
That's why I hate phones.
So I kind of can commisurate with Merry here, given that a constantly ringing phone is roughly up there with menstral cramps in my book, but for fuck's sake, can't you find a way to disconnect the damn thing?
And it's Merry's mom.
It's kind of new. Merry's dad is damn near worshiped in this book. Merry's mom, on the other hand...hasn't really been mentioned. And hey, didn't Anita's mom get short shift over on the other series too? This might be the first time we've had an on-screen biological mom in LKH's career. Should be fun.
Merry decides she needs company for dealing with her mom.
I understand this completely. There are certain family members where the rule is, never be in the room with them alone. One of them is responsible for 75% of my cutting episodes. Yes. It's my choice to cut. It was their choice to be a
Yeah. Anyhoo, Merry decides to talk to her mom with Galen and Doyle for company. They all arrange themselves on her bed.*sigh*
If your mirror gets this much traffic, Merry? Do yourself a favor and get the fucking thing out of your bedroom. Seriously. You should not be having very important conversations on sheets that have seen more traffic than Grand Central Station.
And for once the evil chick of the hour is not a blond. In fact, I am about to give LKH praise, folks.
I know. Your hearts will begin beating again soon.
See, Merry's mom is part brownie. And so her oh-so-special Sidhe hair is a perfectly mundane shade of brown, her eyes are also a perfectly mundane shade of brown, and while she's really pretty, her skin isn't the sparkly magic specialness of the Sidhe. She's still sidhe, but she looks really, really human by their reckoning, and she hates every minute of it. She's covered herself in sidhe things to compensate for having normal-looking hair, eyes and skin.
This is how you introduce a character. I know exactly how Merry's mom feels about herself, about Merry, about the courts, and about life in general. I know she's going to be awful, I know she's going to be self-absorbed, and I am actively looking forward to watching Merry and her mom interact because I already have a pretty firm grasp on Mom's personality.
Unfortunately the physical description continues on for about two pages more than it needs to, and my enthusiasm for this confrontation dies with every extra paragraph. Yes, folks. Apparently one paragraph of "Show don't tell" per novel is all we're going to get from Ms. Hamilton.
Which is a shame. She's goddamned good at it when she can be arsed to try.
I’d never realized until this moment— as she sat there in her Seelie finery, and I stood in casual street clothes— that I was prettier than my mother.
This is how you torpedo a main character's ..well, character. Merry is ass deep in intrigue right now. She should not have the brains to one up her mother, let alone the vanity. When you are occupied by sixteen life threatening plots, you are not checking to see how big your mom's ass is, is all I'm saying.
Barbed words are exchanged, finally, and LKH is very careful to walk us through every nuance, because apparently she assumes her audience is twelve, and thus not capable of understanding the subtlties of dialogue. I would say that if her audience really was twelve they've got no business reading her books, but Kitto, and I think I was actually ten the first time I read one of her (early) books...and if you've read the Gap series at thirteen, which I did, you can't really police what anybody else is reading, either.
(...Jesus fucking Christ. The Gap series.)
And then Mommie Dearest brings up the Seelie Court Yuletide ball. Because Taranis does not want to be denied.
I think the honestly depressing thing about LKH's novels is how much bleeding potential there is. I know Taranis. I think I've worked for him a couple times. He's the kind of person who doesn't give a flying fuck about you until you tell him to get screwed, and then suddenly he has to have you. It's not because he actually needs you. It's because you told him no. It would be so easy to make any story arc involving him awesome, because he is legitimately dangerous. But LKH just never does anything with it. We've spent most of this book in this apartment talking about having sex.
Also. Dialogue:
She shifted in the small chair, as if I’d surprised her again. “Well, daughter, we should not let it be so long between talks.”David Eddings is one of my favorite writers. I do not admit this with pride. David Eddings has told one story exceptionally well...about nine times now. Seriously. The Belgariad is the Mallorean is the Eleniad is the Tamuli is Belgarath the Sorcerer is Polgara the Sorceress is The Redemption of Althalus is the Elder Gods series and if he decides to do yet another fantasy story?. IT WILL BE THE SAME FUCKING STORY. He uses the same formula, he uses the same timing, and Polgara is Serephrena is Aphrael (there's a twofer in that series) is Emmy is that Goddess chick from the Elder Gods whose name I can never remember because she had, like, ten.
“Of course not,” I said, and kept my face pleasant and unreadable.
“I have heard that you are invited to this year’s Yule ball.”
“Yes.”
“I look forward to seeing you there, and renewing our acquaintance.”
“I am surprised that you have not also heard that I had to decline the invitation.”
“I had heard and find it hard to credit.”
And yet I love every book he's written. Because I know the characters. Even his newer books are like slipping on the worlds most comfortable pair of shoes. And the best part is how much of his dialogue he leaves to your imagination. There are scenes where he builds up to arguments between people (usually man and Love Interests, though I do like it when Pol and Belgarath fight the best) reaches the point where things spill over into screaming, and instead of writing fifteen pages of dialogue he writes "And things went rapidly downhill from there."
Is it lazy? Yep. Am I going to imagine a conversation fifteen times better than what he could come up with? Yep. (note to writers: this is when lazy contradicts itself.)
IS IT BETTER THAN MERRY'S CONVERSATION WITH HER MOTHER? HELL. FUCK. YES.
I would rather read sixteen books of Garion/Sparhawk clones (...and I have) than I would endure Merry talking to her mother. If I want conversation this stiff I ask my dad and stepmom political questions (Yeah. My card-carrying member of the John Birch Society Dad married a woman so liberal she donates to PETA and the Hillary Clinton election fund. She takes her nephew's toy guns away and he accuses her of infringing on the kid's second amendment rights. I bring popcorn and watch. It's kind of great)
I also don't get why LKH has to rehash every political nuance every time her characters start talking. I love politics in books. If I were to build my own pantheon, the high gods would be Julian May, David Weber and C.S. Lewis. (Stephen R. Donaldson would rule the underworld. Because he wrote the Gap series) It takes effort to make me hate politics in books. I hate the politics in the Merry Gentry books. You're the heir. I get it. You're Unseelie. I get it. You have to get pregnant and everybody hates you. I GET IT. DO something about it.
I looked at her, so carefully beautiful, so stubbornly biased. “Are you saying it would be better to be the least of all the royals at the Seelie Court, instead of ruler of the Unseelie Court?”
“Are you implying that it is better to rule in hell than be in heaven?”....first off, the word is SERVE. Not "be". SERVE. I'd spot you the paraphrase if you hadn't used up all my goodwill having your main character fuck a not-twelve-year-old.
Second: If you are going to spend pages convincing us that the pagan way is SO MUCH BETTER and that Christians and Mundanes are idiots, you do not get to quote Christian literature whenever you feel like it.
And then we come to my biggest issue with the Merry Gentry books:
“I have spent my time in the shining court, and I know that my blood is just as red on shining gold-laced marble as it is on black.”IDK how bad this is in the Anita Blake books, but with Merry Gentry, LKH came up with these special little phrases. This is one of them. That thing about "Where is my Darkness, bring me my Darkness" is another, there's two or three other ones I can't fucking remember right now. THESE PHRASES ARE IN EVERY. SINGLE. BOOK. It's like LKH has a spreadsheet of Merry Gentry words and she C and Ps the phrases in wherever she feels like it.
THIS GETS OLD.And it's not like she rephrases them. THEY ARE THE SAME FROM BOOK TO BOOK TO BOOK.
Merry then accuses her mother of being willing to let Taranis beat her to death, and then asks why it's so important she go to the ball. Because the king is asking for it. Merry basically says "fuck no" and hangs up, and the chapter ends with the mirror literally ringing off the hook while Merry walks out of the room.
Now. If you will excuse me, I have just discovered that all the Julian May books I've lost over the years are now e-books, and I'm going to go take advantage of this. Have a good night, folks. :D
Self Publishing post 2-Revisions and Editing
I'm going to start this with emphasis on editing. I don't want anybody putting the cart before the horse and starting on the submission process before they have a fully edited book ready to go.
The first rule of Trade Publishing is the same as the first rule of Self-Publishing: NEVER SEND OUT ANYTHING THAT ISN'T FINISHED.
This means before you do ANYTHING with your book, it is fully written, revised, as polished as you can get it, and as near to flawless as it is possible for one person to make your book. Trust me. You don't want rejections because "the premise has promise but it would take too much work to publish it". Which I've gotten. (I'm mostly sure these are form rejections, but that doubt is always there)
But where on earth do you start with editing? What does editing mean? What's the most important thing to focus on?
Of course, there's another side to learning how to edit on your own: You don't get screwed by asking the wrong person for help.
I had no idea what I was doing when the time came to revise my first manuscript. I would say learning how to edit is a little bit like learning how to walk. You don't even have a concept of what you need to do, or what makes a good book good. You're just sitting there wondering what books you can use for reference and knowing somewhere on the bottom of your mind that no book can really help you, it's all on you.
And so I made the biggest mistake an author can make: I let somebody else help me edit the book. There are a few major experiences I've had on this publishing road that make me feel vaguely dirty, and the Editor was one of them. One of the big watchdog sites is Predators and Editors for a damn good reason. I had no clue what I was doing, I had no idea how to vet, or that vetting was needed, or that I should be checking a track record, or that maybe, just maybe, I shouldn't be trusting an "editor" who was living on his fucking boat and bumming his internet off the local boat club. The good news is, this time I wasn't out any money.
The bad news? We'd done awful things to my manuscript without addressing any of its issues. And I got way too many ass-pats in the process. And the worst news is, if we hadn't agreed on an art-for-editing trade I would have been out a lot of money. A. LOT. OF. MONEY. Editors often charge by the page, and The Book at the time was 600 pages long. (190,000 words, I shit you not)
And so after six months of fucking around, I was back to square one: a red pen, a pile of books on editing, and a manuscript that wouldn't fit on one ream of paper.
So this, then, is the advice I wish I'd gotten four years ago.
1. Everything is connected.
There's a question that floats around writing forums about once a month. That is "What is the most important part of a story". This implies that the different bits of a story--character development, plot, rythem, flow, the actual words on the acutual pages--are independent things that can be separated from the story and/or altered without affecting the main story itself. But that's like asking what the most important part of the human body is. The answer is: All of it.
How do you apply this? Are you familiar with the term "Mary Sue?" You probably are, if you hang out in writer's forums the way I do. But just in case you don't, a Mary Sue is an extraordinary character lacking equally extraordinary circumstances to justify her existence. A Mary Sue is an indicator of issues with not just character development, but of issues with every other thing in the book. Things like a lackluster plot, an insufficiently developed supporting cast, and your own insecurities.
Yeah. I went there. And I'll go into that more as things continue.
When you're editing, your first job is to identify problems with the narrative. Frequently these problems ARE NOT THE THING ITSELF. The thing (IE Mary Sue) is usually a symptom of an underlying issue you haven't addressed yet. Your job is to begin educating yourself in what the problematic things are, and how to fix them. When you fix them, the revisions you make in the manuscript and narrative often fix the most blatant surface problems.
Watch good movies, watch bad movies. Read good books, read really, really awful books. Try to figure out what makes a good book good, and a bad one "Kill with fire". Try to see how everything connects.
2. When in doubt, throw it out.
You have to kill your darlings. Usually, this means characters.
I like writing about people. My favorite scene in Blue Ghosts was when I sat Casey, Marco, and the rest of the gang on the floor of Marco's mod shop and just let them talk. I did not know, for example, that Tim and Abbey would have that love/hate relationship, or that Ero was going to be a fucking psychopath, until after I let them bounce off each other for a couple pages. But that's kind of why I write and it's definiately why I read.
And that's why I usually solve most of my editing issues by killing and/or removing most of the cast. Becasue my cast? It gets big. And I'll find that I've got two or three characters filling in the same "role" in the story, and that they could easily all be one person, and I would stop having to introduce character after character after character rather than getting on with the story.
The same goes with everything else. When you have an issue with something in your story, your first question should not be "How do I fix this?" Your first question should be, "Can the story I want to tell survive without this element?" If the answer is no, start looking at ways to fix things. IF THE ANSWER IS YES THROW THE DAMNED THING OUT.
The best thing you can do as a writer is make a list of your cast, either in your head or on paper (preferably on paper) and make a note about what "role" they fill in the story. If you have two or more characters filling the same "role", you need to pare that down to one. If you have several similar scenes in the same book (IE Narcissus in Chain's revolving door of rescues) dump all but one of the similar scenes and revise. If you have to introduce more than new character per scene? Toss all but that one new character.
Ask yourself what that scene is doing for the novel. Ask yourself why X is here and not Y. Spend your first edit trying to find things you can throw out. Be ruthless. Your readers will appreciate it, and you'll probably get another novel out of what you've tossed on the cutting room floor.
3. Words are important. Don't use them more than you have to.
You are not Ray Bradbury, or Robin McKinley. You are not Stephen King and (thank God in Heaven for this mercy) you are not Anne Rice.
Do not try to be them. And more importantly, don't try to use their words. Use your own.
My first draft of The Book was my attempt to be Ray Bradbury. I loved his halcyon green glaze, I read his poetry and my brain had tiny orgasms (Not catch and grab/but find and keep/ go panther-pawed where all the mined truths sleep. That is my favorite poem in the universe) and I wanted to write Just. Like. That. And so I wrote things that were fifty words longer than they should have been, wagging tails of adjectives that would have put a dog-show poodle to shame. And I had to go back through during the editing process and rip all of that back out. But then I was trying to be somebody else, and I'd have to go back in and rip all that out, too.
The Elements of Style is a book you should own multiple copies of RIGHT NOW. They say that if you can say it in three words DON'T USE SIX. Figure out what you want to say, say it in as few words as you can, and then go back and take two or three more words out.
Your readers will thank you.
4. Listen to your instincts. They don't lie.
I think my favorite part of editing The Book came early on, not too long after I met The Editor. It was, I think, the first time I excerted my control over The Book, because he got very mad at me for doing this and I didn't care.
There was an unresolved plot thread that I wound up having to tie up after the main character's story arc climaxed. Both the MC's climax and the book's climax were good and pulse pounding IMHO, but after the MC's climax had happened the book was emphatically done. Trying to get the energy and pacing back up to where they needed to be for the next scene was like dragging the bottom of a car across a ditch. I could hear the scraping every time I hit that scene. And I couldn't figure out what to do about it. I needed to tie up that lose thread, but I needed to tie up the main character's plot thread there as well.
And then I got the idea that fixed everything. Which was going to require an awful lot of work, but it did work. It solved the problem and it cut 2,000 words off the end of the manuscript.
This is a heart process, not a head process. When editing your brain will tell you that everything you've got is just spiffy, but your gut will be screaming NO IT IS NOT YOU IDIOT as loud as it possibly can. You'll get a headache, or eye strain, or become aware that your feet are cramping...or you'll groan and mutter "NOT THIS SCENE AGAIN" which is a big red flag that the chapter you are reading NEEDS TO GO AWAY NOW and you're just not willing to admit it. So a big part of editing is training yourself to listen to these red flags. Which is a lot harder than it sounds.
But if you're trucking along at a good pace and suddenly you feel vaguely nausious and have an overwhelming urge to go reorganize your sock drawer? You've just hit a big problem spot and you need to break out the red pen refils.
5. Your job is to fuck with the reader.
Oh, there are many nicer ways to say that, but none of them are quite so true. And let's be honest with ourselves, okay? If you don't have it that concrete going in? The product won't be as good coming out.
This isn't about you. This isn't about how you feel. This isn't about how much you like writing. This is about taking the reader's mind, tying it into little tiny pretzles, and then letting them close the book with a feeling of satisfaction and/or the violent urge to buy the next book NOW.
Good storytelling is a subconsious art form. You distract the reader with the plot and you shove major elements of the plot and climax into thier subconsious like you're shoving notes under a locked door. You flat out lie to the reader. You learn how to use visual and spoken cues to develop a character AND YOU USE THEM. You show. You don't tell. Your first thought when considering a scene should not be "how good is this scene?" It should be "How is this scene going to affect the reader's perception of X, and is that a good thing when you factor Y into the account? And can I make them cry?" Your first thought, second thought, third thought, last thought, should be how the reader is going to see your book. Because from the first word to the last sentence your book will be manipulating their mind. And if you do not address every. single. little. thing purposefully? They're going to find other things that you didn't mean to put in there.
Stephenie Meyer didn't intend for Bella Swan to be a whiny spoiled brat, but she also didn't watch her character introductions and interactions as much as she could have. She wasn't trying to get HER image of Bella into the reader's head fast enough, and so a spoiled rotten brat is what we got.
The first thing you do with the first word is develop something you want the reader to feel. Introduce characters by packing their positive qualities into the first few moments. Have their first sentence be something that defines their character. The first moments a character spend in a new location should be charged with atmosphere and detail. Because if you don't do this? The reader is going to do it on its own. I say character development should begin with the first word, not because it is an ideal, but because that's when it does start. The reader is taking every word and storing it up to form the picture of your character, and if it's not something you intended as a positive it's probably going to be something negative.
Your goal should be to write so well that when your book ends on a cliffhanger, the reader throws the book across the room screaming "Fuck you author" at the top of their lungs, and then immediately runs out to get the next book, because they have to know what happens next. And the only way to do that is to polish until it is perfect and make sure that you've done every little manipulative thing you can to make your book a good one.
When you've trained your mind to consider every word, including words like "a, and, it, is, said, the" and "then", for its impact on the reader? You've finally started to learn how to edit.
It's down and dirty, but when it's done right the experience can be oh, so very pretty.
The first rule of Trade Publishing is the same as the first rule of Self-Publishing: NEVER SEND OUT ANYTHING THAT ISN'T FINISHED.
This means before you do ANYTHING with your book, it is fully written, revised, as polished as you can get it, and as near to flawless as it is possible for one person to make your book. Trust me. You don't want rejections because "the premise has promise but it would take too much work to publish it". Which I've gotten. (I'm mostly sure these are form rejections, but that doubt is always there)
But where on earth do you start with editing? What does editing mean? What's the most important thing to focus on?
Of course, there's another side to learning how to edit on your own: You don't get screwed by asking the wrong person for help.
I had no idea what I was doing when the time came to revise my first manuscript. I would say learning how to edit is a little bit like learning how to walk. You don't even have a concept of what you need to do, or what makes a good book good. You're just sitting there wondering what books you can use for reference and knowing somewhere on the bottom of your mind that no book can really help you, it's all on you.
And so I made the biggest mistake an author can make: I let somebody else help me edit the book. There are a few major experiences I've had on this publishing road that make me feel vaguely dirty, and the Editor was one of them. One of the big watchdog sites is Predators and Editors for a damn good reason. I had no clue what I was doing, I had no idea how to vet, or that vetting was needed, or that I should be checking a track record, or that maybe, just maybe, I shouldn't be trusting an "editor" who was living on his fucking boat and bumming his internet off the local boat club. The good news is, this time I wasn't out any money.
The bad news? We'd done awful things to my manuscript without addressing any of its issues. And I got way too many ass-pats in the process. And the worst news is, if we hadn't agreed on an art-for-editing trade I would have been out a lot of money. A. LOT. OF. MONEY. Editors often charge by the page, and The Book at the time was 600 pages long. (190,000 words, I shit you not)
And so after six months of fucking around, I was back to square one: a red pen, a pile of books on editing, and a manuscript that wouldn't fit on one ream of paper.
So this, then, is the advice I wish I'd gotten four years ago.
1. Everything is connected.
There's a question that floats around writing forums about once a month. That is "What is the most important part of a story". This implies that the different bits of a story--character development, plot, rythem, flow, the actual words on the acutual pages--are independent things that can be separated from the story and/or altered without affecting the main story itself. But that's like asking what the most important part of the human body is. The answer is: All of it.
How do you apply this? Are you familiar with the term "Mary Sue?" You probably are, if you hang out in writer's forums the way I do. But just in case you don't, a Mary Sue is an extraordinary character lacking equally extraordinary circumstances to justify her existence. A Mary Sue is an indicator of issues with not just character development, but of issues with every other thing in the book. Things like a lackluster plot, an insufficiently developed supporting cast, and your own insecurities.
Yeah. I went there. And I'll go into that more as things continue.
When you're editing, your first job is to identify problems with the narrative. Frequently these problems ARE NOT THE THING ITSELF. The thing (IE Mary Sue) is usually a symptom of an underlying issue you haven't addressed yet. Your job is to begin educating yourself in what the problematic things are, and how to fix them. When you fix them, the revisions you make in the manuscript and narrative often fix the most blatant surface problems.
Watch good movies, watch bad movies. Read good books, read really, really awful books. Try to figure out what makes a good book good, and a bad one "Kill with fire". Try to see how everything connects.
2. When in doubt, throw it out.
You have to kill your darlings. Usually, this means characters.
I like writing about people. My favorite scene in Blue Ghosts was when I sat Casey, Marco, and the rest of the gang on the floor of Marco's mod shop and just let them talk. I did not know, for example, that Tim and Abbey would have that love/hate relationship, or that Ero was going to be a fucking psychopath, until after I let them bounce off each other for a couple pages. But that's kind of why I write and it's definiately why I read.
And that's why I usually solve most of my editing issues by killing and/or removing most of the cast. Becasue my cast? It gets big. And I'll find that I've got two or three characters filling in the same "role" in the story, and that they could easily all be one person, and I would stop having to introduce character after character after character rather than getting on with the story.
The same goes with everything else. When you have an issue with something in your story, your first question should not be "How do I fix this?" Your first question should be, "Can the story I want to tell survive without this element?" If the answer is no, start looking at ways to fix things. IF THE ANSWER IS YES THROW THE DAMNED THING OUT.
The best thing you can do as a writer is make a list of your cast, either in your head or on paper (preferably on paper) and make a note about what "role" they fill in the story. If you have two or more characters filling the same "role", you need to pare that down to one. If you have several similar scenes in the same book (IE Narcissus in Chain's revolving door of rescues) dump all but one of the similar scenes and revise. If you have to introduce more than new character per scene? Toss all but that one new character.
Ask yourself what that scene is doing for the novel. Ask yourself why X is here and not Y. Spend your first edit trying to find things you can throw out. Be ruthless. Your readers will appreciate it, and you'll probably get another novel out of what you've tossed on the cutting room floor.
3. Words are important. Don't use them more than you have to.
You are not Ray Bradbury, or Robin McKinley. You are not Stephen King and (thank God in Heaven for this mercy) you are not Anne Rice.
Do not try to be them. And more importantly, don't try to use their words. Use your own.
My first draft of The Book was my attempt to be Ray Bradbury. I loved his halcyon green glaze, I read his poetry and my brain had tiny orgasms (Not catch and grab/but find and keep/ go panther-pawed where all the mined truths sleep. That is my favorite poem in the universe) and I wanted to write Just. Like. That. And so I wrote things that were fifty words longer than they should have been, wagging tails of adjectives that would have put a dog-show poodle to shame. And I had to go back through during the editing process and rip all of that back out. But then I was trying to be somebody else, and I'd have to go back in and rip all that out, too.
The Elements of Style is a book you should own multiple copies of RIGHT NOW. They say that if you can say it in three words DON'T USE SIX. Figure out what you want to say, say it in as few words as you can, and then go back and take two or three more words out.
Your readers will thank you.
4. Listen to your instincts. They don't lie.
I think my favorite part of editing The Book came early on, not too long after I met The Editor. It was, I think, the first time I excerted my control over The Book, because he got very mad at me for doing this and I didn't care.
There was an unresolved plot thread that I wound up having to tie up after the main character's story arc climaxed. Both the MC's climax and the book's climax were good and pulse pounding IMHO, but after the MC's climax had happened the book was emphatically done. Trying to get the energy and pacing back up to where they needed to be for the next scene was like dragging the bottom of a car across a ditch. I could hear the scraping every time I hit that scene. And I couldn't figure out what to do about it. I needed to tie up that lose thread, but I needed to tie up the main character's plot thread there as well.
And then I got the idea that fixed everything. Which was going to require an awful lot of work, but it did work. It solved the problem and it cut 2,000 words off the end of the manuscript.
This is a heart process, not a head process. When editing your brain will tell you that everything you've got is just spiffy, but your gut will be screaming NO IT IS NOT YOU IDIOT as loud as it possibly can. You'll get a headache, or eye strain, or become aware that your feet are cramping...or you'll groan and mutter "NOT THIS SCENE AGAIN" which is a big red flag that the chapter you are reading NEEDS TO GO AWAY NOW and you're just not willing to admit it. So a big part of editing is training yourself to listen to these red flags. Which is a lot harder than it sounds.
But if you're trucking along at a good pace and suddenly you feel vaguely nausious and have an overwhelming urge to go reorganize your sock drawer? You've just hit a big problem spot and you need to break out the red pen refils.
5. Your job is to fuck with the reader.
Oh, there are many nicer ways to say that, but none of them are quite so true. And let's be honest with ourselves, okay? If you don't have it that concrete going in? The product won't be as good coming out.
This isn't about you. This isn't about how you feel. This isn't about how much you like writing. This is about taking the reader's mind, tying it into little tiny pretzles, and then letting them close the book with a feeling of satisfaction and/or the violent urge to buy the next book NOW.
Good storytelling is a subconsious art form. You distract the reader with the plot and you shove major elements of the plot and climax into thier subconsious like you're shoving notes under a locked door. You flat out lie to the reader. You learn how to use visual and spoken cues to develop a character AND YOU USE THEM. You show. You don't tell. Your first thought when considering a scene should not be "how good is this scene?" It should be "How is this scene going to affect the reader's perception of X, and is that a good thing when you factor Y into the account? And can I make them cry?" Your first thought, second thought, third thought, last thought, should be how the reader is going to see your book. Because from the first word to the last sentence your book will be manipulating their mind. And if you do not address every. single. little. thing purposefully? They're going to find other things that you didn't mean to put in there.
Stephenie Meyer didn't intend for Bella Swan to be a whiny spoiled brat, but she also didn't watch her character introductions and interactions as much as she could have. She wasn't trying to get HER image of Bella into the reader's head fast enough, and so a spoiled rotten brat is what we got.
The first thing you do with the first word is develop something you want the reader to feel. Introduce characters by packing their positive qualities into the first few moments. Have their first sentence be something that defines their character. The first moments a character spend in a new location should be charged with atmosphere and detail. Because if you don't do this? The reader is going to do it on its own. I say character development should begin with the first word, not because it is an ideal, but because that's when it does start. The reader is taking every word and storing it up to form the picture of your character, and if it's not something you intended as a positive it's probably going to be something negative.
Your goal should be to write so well that when your book ends on a cliffhanger, the reader throws the book across the room screaming "Fuck you author" at the top of their lungs, and then immediately runs out to get the next book, because they have to know what happens next. And the only way to do that is to polish until it is perfect and make sure that you've done every little manipulative thing you can to make your book a good one.
When you've trained your mind to consider every word, including words like "a, and, it, is, said, the" and "then", for its impact on the reader? You've finally started to learn how to edit.
It's down and dirty, but when it's done right the experience can be oh, so very pretty.
March 6, 2013
Caress of Twilight--chapter 31
IT IS DONE. IT IS DONE. THE FOURTH PART OF EXILES IS FREAKING DONE and I am so happy with both myself and it. Nothing went the way I expected. Not one character did anything I'd planned for them to do six months ago, it turned out to be so much darker than I expected, and you know what? I love it. I fucking love every single thing about it.
The next several months, guys? IT IS GOING TO BE A BLAST. If you like my books and my silly stories and my characters you are going to love what we are doing next. this is all I will say on the subject.
So now we're going to have a little shred of CW's publishing history, and then we're going on to the shitty review.
You are allowed to decide that I am batshit insane after you read this part. I just want to have this part here so that I can look back and read it again in six months. Part of the reason I'm so very hesitant to tell this story is part of it is religious in nature and therefor not exactly what I'd normally call logical or sane. So...yeah, consume with buckets of salt.
I decided to post a sample of Silver Bullet on July 4th, 2012. I decided to do this mostly because it was a concrete date that I could provide that people would recognise, that wouldn't conflict with my July 15th release date (Which I was late for).
My life at the time was pretty shitty. You *might* not have figured this out yet, but I am very religious. And while I try to keep a lid on it it most of the time, because I know it bothers people, my writing and my faith are pretty closely intertwined. I went through a long spiritual desert, so to speak, where I believed that I couldn't be a Christian, love God and write the kind of fantasy stories I wanted to write.
God fixed this. God can be very loud and very defininte when he wants to be.
So then we went through the Rejection Cycle. Looking back, I think it lasted from June of 2010 until April of last year. I am not *quite* ready to talk about that. Suffice to say that I was convinced for many, many many many reasons that not only did I have a good book, and the skill and talent it took to make it a good book, but that God was on my side with this, that he was behind me, and without going into the details, the ups and downs, and the numbers of clue-by-fours I was hit with (both by God and the publishing industry), I will just say that it was really obvious that it wasn't going anywhere.
I was angry with God.
I was angry that my dreams were not happening. I was angry that everybody else was getting what they wanted and I wasn't. I was angry that I had to work at the job I had (and still have) and most of all I was angry over what happened in April. I had my miracle. I had the thing I'd been praying for. I had it happen. And it fell apart. And I didn't understand why God would let it all work, would keep it all going, would overcome the many, many obstacles there were in putting it all together...and then have it just die the way it did. I quit trying to get published because, more than anything else that happened in April, it became clear to me that no matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, no matter how hard I prayed or how strongly I believed, God was not going to ever let me break into trade publishing, and that it was time for me to accept it. There are a lot of details as to why I came to that conclusion, and I'll tell that story someday, I promise, with all the religious magical thinking stuff intact. But the big thing for me was...if God isn't behind this, if he's going to set things like the April Incident up only to have them fail once it leaves my hands and my control...it's not going to happen.
I don't remember last may. Or most of June. But I do remember deciding that if things were going to fall apart when it was up to other people, and God was not going to take my desires and ambitions away from me (...long story. The TL:DR version is, he won't. Emphatically stated.) then that meant the only way I could do this was to do it on my own. With no expectations of success, with no promises it would go anywhere other than the failure bin of the universe. That's where I had to go and that's what I had to do.
I didn't expect to see the fireworks on July 4th. I figured my boss was going to keep us all until late, that I would miss them, that I would have barely enough time to hear things go "boom" as I cleaned off the last table.
She closed the restaurant down for the evening. On a holiday. This isn't just a sign from God, folks, this is a sign of the oncoming apocalypse. She said "The restaurant is closed" And War, Famine and Death all woke up and started dusting their crowns off. So that meant I get to go watch the fireworks.
Which was great, because I really wanted to see them. But it was not so great because I wanted to work, to have the distraction. Self publishing was not something I'd wanted to do. It was, in my mind, a defeat. A failure. A waiving of the white flag that I just couldn't hack it and never could, never would. I was jumpy, I was nervy, I was very tired of reading and re-reading AND RE READING those five stories, especially the one that was a big-ass chunk of The Book, that I had already read sixteen thousand times. I was not in a good shape when we went down to watch the fireworks. We got down there, had the perfect spot (in a city where people started camping out at five AM that morning) and began trying to get comfortable. There was the usual jostling for position, rearranging of the truck and so forth, and while they did that, I dropped my head for a second and prayed. Because I was fucked up, I'd been doing a real good job of hiding that I was fucked up, and I knew I couldn't go to anybody in my family for help in not being fucked up because I would either get coos and reassurance, or a long, blank stare, like "Why do you even give a fuck? Do something else for a hobby."
and then I plugged headphones into my phone, turned up music, and watched the fireworks.
Maybe it was the break from thinking about self publishing and what it meant, maybe it was the fireworks, maybe it was something spiritual and real. I felt better. Actually, I felt like a sobbing mess because I kept breaking down and crying during the fireworks, but I felt like I was making the right move.
And then I went home, posted the Silver Bullet cover and sample, got into bed and cried for about an hour solid, because I pretty much hated the whole entire universe and I desperately, desperately wanted to sleep.
The reason I'm writing about this is, this is the song that got to me when I was watching the fireworks, and that's the same song that was playing on my MP3 player when I finished the book a couple minutes ago. Music with my writing is pretty important. There are songs that are specifically Exiles/Ambercross songs, that for a little while I couldn't listen to because I felt that fucked up. And I've spent the last couple of days trying to defend my choices to my stepfather, who is a wonderful man but who has the empathy and flexibility of thought of a block of peachy granite. So yeah, it might be silly and superstitious or whatever, but having that specific song come up felt a little bit like...hey, you're still there. You're still on the right track. I'm still with you.
I think I just...I go through these times where things start happening. And I feel like I'm about to go through another one. And that's kind of scary, because the last time I started feeling things slide together like this was last April. I call it God things, you can call it whatever you want. I guess...I just wanted this part of the story to be HERE, out in public, with a date and a time stamp so that I could look back on it and go either "DAMN was I crazy" or else "So THAT'S what that was about."
That's part of my story. Do with it what you will. And like I said, deciding that I am batshit insane is one of your options.
...okay, on to the fun stuff.
Andais decides to use the Mirrorphone while Merry and Frost are having sex.
Can I go back to rambling about my spirituality again? Please? No?
...fuck.
At this point, Merry, the best thing you could do is put the magical mirror phone somewhere that isn't your bedroom. Or else start having sex on your couch. Your call.
Andais is in her torture chamber, nude and covered in blood. As in it takes Merry a minute to realize that Andais actually is nude.
THIS is how she should have been introduced the first time. If she appeared in the pretty flounces now? I'd be creeped the fuck out. Because ruffles are only scary when you know the thing inside them would gladly rip your heart out and use it as a lollypop.
She's pissed because Merry blocked her on the Mirror Phone. Merry says that she blocked the Mirror phone in general because she's had "so many callers" lately, and she's a little tired of having them catch her in-flagrante with her men.
Andais asks who. Merry explains that Taranis wants her to go to the ball, and she'd really rather not, and he won't take no for an answer, so...
Andais says she's been torturing anybody who could have summoned the nameless, and since she's wearing most of their blood and a little of their guts and nobody's spilled yet, she's confident it isn't her court that did it. That leaves Taranis.
You know, the sterile king that Merry could kill just by saying "I think he's shooting blanks" in public? And the nameless was released right after she discovered this? Yeah. That Taranis.
And then Andais demands that all three of them have sex in front of the mirror, because she's had a bad night and she'd like to see something pretty.
HAVE I MENTIONED HOW MUCH I HATE THIS BOOK YET?
Andais won't be talked out of watching sex, so Merry compromises by bringing in one of the other men, because Frost and Doyle are too dominant to share.
Julain May has intersteller intrigue involving clone breeding programs and disembodied brains that are less complicated than Merry Gentry having consensual sex. They are doing something wrong.
Frost suggests Nicca, and Doyle suggests Kitto.
Merry says that Nicca's turn hasn't come up yet and Kitto has already had his, and the guys would probably be happier about Nicca being moved up than Kitto having two nights in a row and at this point Andais is all like
And Merry has to explain that they have a schedule that she decided would be run alphabetically.
Andais pretty much reacts like this:
but she finds it hilarious so no, they don't actually have to have sex in front of her.
Sorry, voyurs. Your fetish does not get fed tonight.
Doyle and Merry handle it well. Frost, on the other hand, reacts a little differently:
Yeah. Somebody needs anger management.
And then...things get interesting.
Frost is freaking out becasue if he doesn't get Merry preggers and someone else does, he's back to being Andais's toy. Frankly, I'd be booking a ticket to Tibet at that point, but Frost apparently has fewer options.
And that's when Doyle gently gathers Frost into his arms and starts petting his hair.
I don't mind the homoeroticism (though coming from LKH it's suspect as hell). What I mind is that we're fetishizing somebody's emotional breakdown. Frost isn't turing to Merry for comfort because even he knows Merry isn't safe. He's turning to Doyle because Doyle is the one that offers comfort.
Yeah. Merry had a revelation about how much she loves Frost, and when he breaks down emotionally because he's been fucking abused for thousands of years? She lets him cry all on his little lonesome.
Merry is just as bad has her aunt, uncle and cousin.
But they do spend all night just holding Frost. Yes. LKH points out that there's nothing sexual about it. If I'd just had a mental breakdown in front of my lover and my biggest rival, I sure as fucking hell hope that it isn't fucking sexual. Doyle eventually gets up and mutters "I promise" over Frost, which I interprete as "Nobody is ever going to hurt you again," which in a better book would be a prelude to a double assassination, followed by Merry's immediate coronataion due to her rivals catching a suddenly nasty case of dead.
That does not happen.
Instead, Merry dreams about her Aunt. When she wakes up, she realizes that Frost is having a nightmare, so she wakes him up, and he's just as shattered as he was before, so now it's Merry's turn to promise that Andais will never hurt him again. Mystical-ish stuff happens to show that Merry's promises mean something, and Frost gets out of bed. Doyle salutes her with his gun--nice double entendre--and the chapter closes with this:
Well, the good news is things are happening again, so we're about to get to the point where the plot gets stapled back into the book. Stay tuned.
The next several months, guys? IT IS GOING TO BE A BLAST. If you like my books and my silly stories and my characters you are going to love what we are doing next. this is all I will say on the subject.
So now we're going to have a little shred of CW's publishing history, and then we're going on to the shitty review.
You are allowed to decide that I am batshit insane after you read this part. I just want to have this part here so that I can look back and read it again in six months. Part of the reason I'm so very hesitant to tell this story is part of it is religious in nature and therefor not exactly what I'd normally call logical or sane. So...yeah, consume with buckets of salt.
I decided to post a sample of Silver Bullet on July 4th, 2012. I decided to do this mostly because it was a concrete date that I could provide that people would recognise, that wouldn't conflict with my July 15th release date (Which I was late for).
My life at the time was pretty shitty. You *might* not have figured this out yet, but I am very religious. And while I try to keep a lid on it it most of the time, because I know it bothers people, my writing and my faith are pretty closely intertwined. I went through a long spiritual desert, so to speak, where I believed that I couldn't be a Christian, love God and write the kind of fantasy stories I wanted to write.
God fixed this. God can be very loud and very defininte when he wants to be.
So then we went through the Rejection Cycle. Looking back, I think it lasted from June of 2010 until April of last year. I am not *quite* ready to talk about that. Suffice to say that I was convinced for many, many many many reasons that not only did I have a good book, and the skill and talent it took to make it a good book, but that God was on my side with this, that he was behind me, and without going into the details, the ups and downs, and the numbers of clue-by-fours I was hit with (both by God and the publishing industry), I will just say that it was really obvious that it wasn't going anywhere.
I was angry with God.
I was angry that my dreams were not happening. I was angry that everybody else was getting what they wanted and I wasn't. I was angry that I had to work at the job I had (and still have) and most of all I was angry over what happened in April. I had my miracle. I had the thing I'd been praying for. I had it happen. And it fell apart. And I didn't understand why God would let it all work, would keep it all going, would overcome the many, many obstacles there were in putting it all together...and then have it just die the way it did. I quit trying to get published because, more than anything else that happened in April, it became clear to me that no matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, no matter how hard I prayed or how strongly I believed, God was not going to ever let me break into trade publishing, and that it was time for me to accept it. There are a lot of details as to why I came to that conclusion, and I'll tell that story someday, I promise, with all the religious magical thinking stuff intact. But the big thing for me was...if God isn't behind this, if he's going to set things like the April Incident up only to have them fail once it leaves my hands and my control...it's not going to happen.
I don't remember last may. Or most of June. But I do remember deciding that if things were going to fall apart when it was up to other people, and God was not going to take my desires and ambitions away from me (...long story. The TL:DR version is, he won't. Emphatically stated.) then that meant the only way I could do this was to do it on my own. With no expectations of success, with no promises it would go anywhere other than the failure bin of the universe. That's where I had to go and that's what I had to do.
I didn't expect to see the fireworks on July 4th. I figured my boss was going to keep us all until late, that I would miss them, that I would have barely enough time to hear things go "boom" as I cleaned off the last table.
She closed the restaurant down for the evening. On a holiday. This isn't just a sign from God, folks, this is a sign of the oncoming apocalypse. She said "The restaurant is closed" And War, Famine and Death all woke up and started dusting their crowns off. So that meant I get to go watch the fireworks.
Which was great, because I really wanted to see them. But it was not so great because I wanted to work, to have the distraction. Self publishing was not something I'd wanted to do. It was, in my mind, a defeat. A failure. A waiving of the white flag that I just couldn't hack it and never could, never would. I was jumpy, I was nervy, I was very tired of reading and re-reading AND RE READING those five stories, especially the one that was a big-ass chunk of The Book, that I had already read sixteen thousand times. I was not in a good shape when we went down to watch the fireworks. We got down there, had the perfect spot (in a city where people started camping out at five AM that morning) and began trying to get comfortable. There was the usual jostling for position, rearranging of the truck and so forth, and while they did that, I dropped my head for a second and prayed. Because I was fucked up, I'd been doing a real good job of hiding that I was fucked up, and I knew I couldn't go to anybody in my family for help in not being fucked up because I would either get coos and reassurance, or a long, blank stare, like "Why do you even give a fuck? Do something else for a hobby."
and then I plugged headphones into my phone, turned up music, and watched the fireworks.
Maybe it was the break from thinking about self publishing and what it meant, maybe it was the fireworks, maybe it was something spiritual and real. I felt better. Actually, I felt like a sobbing mess because I kept breaking down and crying during the fireworks, but I felt like I was making the right move.
And then I went home, posted the Silver Bullet cover and sample, got into bed and cried for about an hour solid, because I pretty much hated the whole entire universe and I desperately, desperately wanted to sleep.
The reason I'm writing about this is, this is the song that got to me when I was watching the fireworks, and that's the same song that was playing on my MP3 player when I finished the book a couple minutes ago. Music with my writing is pretty important. There are songs that are specifically Exiles/Ambercross songs, that for a little while I couldn't listen to because I felt that fucked up. And I've spent the last couple of days trying to defend my choices to my stepfather, who is a wonderful man but who has the empathy and flexibility of thought of a block of peachy granite. So yeah, it might be silly and superstitious or whatever, but having that specific song come up felt a little bit like...hey, you're still there. You're still on the right track. I'm still with you.
I think I just...I go through these times where things start happening. And I feel like I'm about to go through another one. And that's kind of scary, because the last time I started feeling things slide together like this was last April. I call it God things, you can call it whatever you want. I guess...I just wanted this part of the story to be HERE, out in public, with a date and a time stamp so that I could look back on it and go either "DAMN was I crazy" or else "So THAT'S what that was about."
That's part of my story. Do with it what you will. And like I said, deciding that I am batshit insane is one of your options.
...okay, on to the fun stuff.
Andais decides to use the Mirrorphone while Merry and Frost are having sex.
Can I go back to rambling about my spirituality again? Please? No?
...fuck.
At this point, Merry, the best thing you could do is put the magical mirror phone somewhere that isn't your bedroom. Or else start having sex on your couch. Your call.
Andais is in her torture chamber, nude and covered in blood. As in it takes Merry a minute to realize that Andais actually is nude.
THIS is how she should have been introduced the first time. If she appeared in the pretty flounces now? I'd be creeped the fuck out. Because ruffles are only scary when you know the thing inside them would gladly rip your heart out and use it as a lollypop.
She's pissed because Merry blocked her on the Mirror Phone. Merry says that she blocked the Mirror phone in general because she's had "so many callers" lately, and she's a little tired of having them catch her in-flagrante with her men.
Andais asks who. Merry explains that Taranis wants her to go to the ball, and she'd really rather not, and he won't take no for an answer, so...
Andais says she's been torturing anybody who could have summoned the nameless, and since she's wearing most of their blood and a little of their guts and nobody's spilled yet, she's confident it isn't her court that did it. That leaves Taranis.
You know, the sterile king that Merry could kill just by saying "I think he's shooting blanks" in public? And the nameless was released right after she discovered this? Yeah. That Taranis.
And then Andais demands that all three of them have sex in front of the mirror, because she's had a bad night and she'd like to see something pretty.
HAVE I MENTIONED HOW MUCH I HATE THIS BOOK YET?
Andais won't be talked out of watching sex, so Merry compromises by bringing in one of the other men, because Frost and Doyle are too dominant to share.
Julain May has intersteller intrigue involving clone breeding programs and disembodied brains that are less complicated than Merry Gentry having consensual sex. They are doing something wrong.
Frost suggests Nicca, and Doyle suggests Kitto.
Merry says that Nicca's turn hasn't come up yet and Kitto has already had his, and the guys would probably be happier about Nicca being moved up than Kitto having two nights in a row and at this point Andais is all like
And Merry has to explain that they have a schedule that she decided would be run alphabetically. Andais pretty much reacts like this:
but she finds it hilarious so no, they don't actually have to have sex in front of her.Sorry, voyurs. Your fetish does not get fed tonight.
Doyle and Merry handle it well. Frost, on the other hand, reacts a little differently:
Yeah. Somebody needs anger management.And then...things get interesting.
Frost is freaking out becasue if he doesn't get Merry preggers and someone else does, he's back to being Andais's toy. Frankly, I'd be booking a ticket to Tibet at that point, but Frost apparently has fewer options.
And that's when Doyle gently gathers Frost into his arms and starts petting his hair.
He slowly fell to his knees, his hands sliding down Doyle’s arms, but never losing contact. He pressed the top of his head against the other man, his hands holding on. “I can’t do it, Doyle. I cannot do it. I’d rather die. I’ll let myself fade first.”
I don't mind the homoeroticism (though coming from LKH it's suspect as hell). What I mind is that we're fetishizing somebody's emotional breakdown. Frost isn't turing to Merry for comfort because even he knows Merry isn't safe. He's turning to Doyle because Doyle is the one that offers comfort.
Yeah. Merry had a revelation about how much she loves Frost, and when he breaks down emotionally because he's been fucking abused for thousands of years? She lets him cry all on his little lonesome.
Merry is just as bad has her aunt, uncle and cousin.
But they do spend all night just holding Frost. Yes. LKH points out that there's nothing sexual about it. If I'd just had a mental breakdown in front of my lover and my biggest rival, I sure as fucking hell hope that it isn't fucking sexual. Doyle eventually gets up and mutters "I promise" over Frost, which I interprete as "Nobody is ever going to hurt you again," which in a better book would be a prelude to a double assassination, followed by Merry's immediate coronataion due to her rivals catching a suddenly nasty case of dead.
That does not happen.
Instead, Merry dreams about her Aunt. When she wakes up, she realizes that Frost is having a nightmare, so she wakes him up, and he's just as shattered as he was before, so now it's Merry's turn to promise that Andais will never hurt him again. Mystical-ish stuff happens to show that Merry's promises mean something, and Frost gets out of bed. Doyle salutes her with his gun--nice double entendre--and the chapter closes with this:
Something had changed in the well-orchestrated run of the universe. It had changed because I vowed to protect the men. That one statement had changed things. I had made the fates blink, but I wouldn’t know if I’d bettered myself or worsened until it was far, far too late.I'd really like to live in a universe where making promises and oaths had mystical significance. Scarlett O'Hara would say "I'll never be hungry again" and then fried chicken would come falling out of the sky (...because it's the South, which to me is technically north. If it were down here it'd be either shrimp cocktail or tamales.)
Well, the good news is things are happening again, so we're about to get to the point where the plot gets stapled back into the book. Stay tuned.
