Shawna Reppert's Blog, page 8

Fabulous review!

Samhain-kitty here. Writer-person is off muttering something about Kickstarter. Not sure what that’s all about. . .I’m hoping she isn’t thinking about spending my kitty-crunchie money on a motorcycle!

Anyway, in lieu of a blog, I thought I’d post a link to an excellent review of The Stolen Luck. The reviewer called it “. . .one of the most thoughtful, well-characterized novels I’ve read in a long time.” Writer-person really liked this review because she felt the reviewer really ‘got’ the book. Not to mention that she glossed over the book’s major flaw, that is to say, the miniscule amount of wordage devoted to cats. Anyway, check out the full review here: http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/bl...

Gearcon

Samhain-kitty here. Just wanted to say that the writer-person abandoned me ^all weekend^ to go to some silly steampunk con. Sure, she came home every night to check my food and water, but, what if there was an emergency? Like I needed a lap to sit on, or someone to throw a toy for me–

SAMHAIN, GET OFF THE COMPUTER!!

Oops, gotta go!

Ahem. Sorry about that. Writer-person, er, Shawna here. And yes, I did go to Gearcon this weekend.

As I am an introvert, cons are a bit of a mixed bag for me. Even if I have fun, even if the people are lovely and friendly and fun, by the end of each day I feel like I could sleep a week to recharge my battery. But usually it’s worth it, and Gearcon was no exception.

I was dealing with the added adrenaline of this being my very first con as a panelist. Right before my first panel, I was so nervous that I was ready to throw up, but, the funny thing is, as soon as I got up there with my fellow authors and started talking historical research, I felt totally at home. It was one of those great panels where we were all taking notes while the others were talking. (Fellow panelists, I am sure, will be looking up Lee Jackson’s Daily Life in London: An Extraordinary Anthology. I know I will be looking for Bill Bryson’s At Home, which I’m told is an historical look at home life down the centuries.)

Due to concom deciding to leave panel descriptions out of the program (yes, it was deliberate; a cost-saving measure, I am told) I almost missed the panel on crowdsource funding, as it was titled, somewhat oddly, ‘Westward. Ho!’. Glad I found it. . .I learned all the things I didn’t know enough to ask regarding Kickstarter. Will definitely be checking out Jonathon Burgess’s blog for more details.

Saturday’s reading was lightly attended, possibly because I was scheduled opposite the panel on Victorian Working Girls. Honestly, if I wasn’t *giving* the reading, I would have gone to that panel! Still, the audience was appreciative, which warmed my writer heart.

Saturday afternoon I acquired some useful information at the Victorian Good Cop/Bad Cop program. Saturday night was playtime– my very first swing dance lesson. Or lessons, I should say. They scheduled beginner, intermediate and advanced back-to-back. Two and a half hours is an awful lot of lesson. Still, it was fun. Music wasn’t as good as ceili, (Irish social dance) but the style is much more knee-and-tendon friendly. I was surprised to see how much skills learned in ceili dancing translated.

Sunday morning I was scheduled for the Mega Writer’s Panel. I said ‘was scheduled’ because I certainly didn’t volunteer and wasn’t sure how good an idea it was to put all the writers together in one big panel to Talk About Steampunk. It turned out to be brilliant, mostly because of my wonderful fellow authors, who were very respectful of one another and who all seemed to have compatible views but slightly different takes on steampunk, where it’s going, and on writing and literature in general. Highlights include Canadian writer James Stafford, in response to the question on the American role in steampunk, describing the USA as being willing to go for any batshit crazy idea and give it a try. (:Lest anyone get offended, he said it was one of the things he liked about us.) An encouraging note from this panel was the number of panelists that seemed to think that crossover genres had a big place in the steampunk world. (Encouraging for me, anyway, as I seem congenitally incapable of picking a genre and sticking with it.)

Wandered through the dealer’s room a bit. Bought a pendant watch as a souvenir of my first con as panelist (also because I had no pockets and was sick of digging my cell phone out of the bottom of my purse–why are there no clocks in conference rooms?)

Found a gorgeous feathered monstrosity of a hat that I want to have made in colors to match my someday dress– when I get my first big advance. (yes, it was that expensive, at least by my budget standards.) Was told by the milliner that I have the ‘substance to carry it off’, which is by far the nicest thing anyone has said ever said about my generously proportioned figure.

Was treated to an impromptu magic show from one of the vendors–thought I knew how and where he had palmed the extra lengths of rope, only to realize I was wrong and I really had no idea.

Wandered into a bartitsu demonstration. That’s right, bartitsu. For years I had thought/been told that Arthur Conan Doyle had made up baritsu, the style of martial arts used by Sherlock Holmes. Turned out he just misspelled it. It’s a fascinating discipline combining jujitsu, Victorian-era pugilism, cane fighting and a form of French kickboxing. Maybe more on that later. I’m about ready to crash, and I need to be up early tomorrow to write before work.

Looking over this blog, I realize that it’s a disorganized potpourri. But then so was my weekend, so that’s all right.

Writer’s Block Part 2

So, last time I covered several types of writer’s block. I saved the best (or at least the most complicated form, the Things Left Unsaid version. Many, if not most of us, were raised with all sorts of scripts. Don’t rock the boat. We don’t talk about such things. Nice girls (or boys) don’t say that. It is, I think, why I would rather do anything, including housework, than write a blog post. Not only is fiction more fun, but I get to hide behind my characters.

But even fiction takes courage. I had a really hard time completing The Stolen Luck once I realized that it had arguably wandered into the realm of male/male fantasy romance. I worried about all the questions I’d get about what a straight woman was doing writing about gay (well, bisexual, actually) males. (My answer has since become ‘why not’? I’m a person. I write about people.)

I especially worried about the slavery issue. Not that I had any qualms about my approach, since the idea was not to condone the institution but rather to explore what imbalance of power does to the soul of all parties involved I was afraid editors and readers would find the topic so unsettling that they wouldn’t see past the word ‘slave’ to look at how I was exploring the theme. It’s absolutely not your typical master-slave trope story, but rather the antidote. Unfortunately, when you try to turn a trope inside out, it’s hard to pitch it without everyone seeing the original trope.

I actually abandoned the novel several times because I was so uncomfortable with the idea of taking it through the pitch process once it was complete, but the novel kept riding me and demanding to be written.

But I finished it. And I found a publisher for it. And then my editor found the scene that I was still afraid to write, and made me (gently encouraged me) to write it. I did. It made the book better, and the world didn’t end.

I’m proud of the book. I’m glad I pushed outside my comfort zone to finish it. No one stopped speaking to me because of the book, and I managed to create a work that a Catholic Republican friend (yes, I do have one or two of those) enjoyed and found ‘very tasteful’ *and* an avid reader of male/male fantasy called ‘squee worthy.’ How many writers can boast that?

So, my point is, if you find yourself sweeping the walk and washing the curtains rather than sitting down to the keyboard, ask yourself: ‘What am I afraid to say?’ ‘Why am I afraid?’ And then say it and see what happens. You might be glad you did.

Samhain kitty says to remind you that you are following the last bit of advice, like all the advice in this blog, at your own risk. Please don’t sue the writer-person. She doesn’t have much money, and she needs it to buy kitty-crunchies.

Writer’s Block (part one)

I seldom get writer’s block anymore with regard to fiction. My problem there is just the opposite—too much writing to be done, too little time to do it.

Blog posts are another story. I am actually one of the few writers that works on her novel as a way to avoid blogging. (Novel-writing is a highly underrated tool in the procrastinator’s toolbox. Writing a novel allows you to put off unpleasant tasks for a long, long time. And if you start outlining your next project while revising the one you’re on, you can procrastinate indefinitely. Or until whatever you didn’t do suddenly precipitates a crisis, whichever comes first.)

Recently I made a commitment to myself to blog at least once a week. So here I am, about a week past this week’s self-imposed deadline, and naturally I’m thinking about writer’s block.

Writer’s block has many causes, each requiring a different treatment. Kind of like headaches; you would treat a tension headache the same way you would one caused by a brain tumor, nor apply the surgical techniques for removal of a tumor to a blunt-force trauma brain injury.

Many non-writers think of writer’s block as a lack of ideas. In my extremely unscientific research, which consisted of recalling some chats with my writing buddies, most writers have more ideas than they can use in a lifetime. It’s the nature of the beast. If, however, you are one of those writers suffering from idea deficiency, there are some simple remedies. Pick up a dictionary, flip open to a random page, and without looking put your finger on a word. Write it down. Repeat the procedure twice more. Look at your three words. There’s your writing prompt. Go write.

A more common, and more pernicious, cause of writer’s block is lack of confidence, either lack of confidence in your ability to write or lack of confidence in your ability to get published (sometimes, but not always related.) Hard to get excited about writing when you’re sure it all sucks and anyway no one’s ever going to read it. Watching a Doctor Who rerun seems like a better idea (especially if it’s a David Tennant episode.)

If the problem is a lack of confidence in your craft, the first step is to take a hard look at your writing. It might be worth it to pay for a professional critique. These are often offered at writer’s conferences, and some professional writers also do critiques on the side. (Caution: make sure the person is worth your time and money. Check credentials closely, especially if it’s someone you never heard of. But that’s a blog post of its own.)

Maybe your skills need some work. No problem. The best writers are the ones that never stop working on craft. There’s truth behind the old saying ‘if you stop getting better, you stop being good.’ There are resources out there. Join a critique group. Take some classes and workshops. Read books on craft (I suggested some titles in an earlier blog). Not only will you improve your writing, you may find a fresh breath of inspiration.

The never-gonna-get-published blues as a source of writer’s block is harder to address. Any glance at bookshelves at the nearest bookstore (they do still have bookstores somewhere, right?)will confirm that it’s not exactly a direct correlation between the quality of your writing and your ability to get a publisher to fork over an advance. Yes, there’s some great stuff being published right now. There’s also a lot of schlock, and a lot of great stuff I’ve seen from fellow writers that never finds a home with mainstream publishers.

I can only say, hang in there. The first short story you sell to a ‘zine will give you enough energy to make it to the point where you have a handful of sales. Those handful of sales will carry you through to your first anthology sale, which will keep you going until you finally sell a novel. Haven’t made your first sale yet? Hold on to the fact that it took J K Rawling something like ten years to sell the first Harry Potter book.

There is another, more complicated type of writer’s block, but this blog post(ironically, given its subject matter) is running a bit long. So in the interest of not missing another blogging deadline I’m going to save that for Writer’s Block 2: What Are You Not Saying?

BTW, my collection of three short-short stories, The Three Tunes, is free on Amazon through 6/25/13

Adventures in PR Photos

The camera does not love me, and the antipathy is mutual.  I balked at the idea that I needed a PR photo.  Shouldn’t my words stand for themselves?  (I suspect if I looked more like Keira Knightly, I might feel differently.)   Anyway, I put the questions to friends on an online forum, expecting their support and sympathy.  I got a chorus of support, all right.  For the opposing position.

Resigned, I set out to figure out how and where to get the photo done.  Now, let me say at the outset that if you are in this situation yourself, you probably want to follow the common wisdom and hand over some money for a professional photographer.   I’ve tried that a time or two and got pictures that I didn’t completely hate.  (See above re. my relationship with the camera.)

I do,  however, have an amazing friend, Julia Jean Murton,  who is not a professional photographer but easily could be.  Julia had previously taken one of the few pictures of myself that I actually kind of like.  I contemplated using that photo, but it was intended to impress a gentleman I was romantically interested in at the time, and the look says ‘come hither’, not ‘come buy my book.’

Julia also sells Mary Kay, and though she cannot apply makeup to someone under Oregon licensing laws, she is very good at telling me what to do and over the years has even managed to train me to follow directions.  (Another aside, if you are in this situation and are not fortunate enough to have a fabulous friend who is also a makeup wizard, it pays to get your makeup professionally done.  And let the makeup  artist know that the occasion is a professional photo shoot.  What works in regular daylight simply doesn’t stand up to the bright lights of a photography studio.  If you check out my photo in the ‘about’ section, it looks like I’m barely wearing makeup.  When I went straight from the shoot to the barn to clean stalls, the barn owner’s kid couldn’t stop laughing.  In the plain light of day, I looked ready to front for a heavy metal band.)

So, we got my face painted on, we reviewed an assortment of clothes and figured out what would work (flattering but not distracting, not too formal nor too casual).   Time to accessorize.  Julia surveyed the selection of jewelry I had brought with me and decided that none of it was quite right (Again, what looks good and what looks good on camera can be two different things.  If you are not blessed with an outstanding eye, find someone who is.), so we started digging through her boxes of bling.  We ended up trying about half a dozen options. The wine-red necklace that I thought would perfectly compliment the green of my shrug was all wrong; the purple necklace she picked out that I loved but thought would clash turned out to be perfect.

So, now to find a place to take the picture.  After surveying options, we decided that the one perfect place that had proper lighting was. . .the bathroom.  Yep.

A black tablecloth slung over the shower curtain rod covered up the distracting bright-patterned shower curtain, and in the photo looks like the standard backdrop a professional might use.  We carefully angled the chair I sat on so neither the toilet, the sink nor the towel bar were visible in the shot.   We both kept on breaking into giggles at he absurdity of the situation. . .and this was even before Julia broke out the wine.

I think the wine showed up the same time as the floor lamp from the next room (because she couldn’t get the lighting right with just the skylight, the flash, and the bathroom ceiling light.)  It was definitely before we lit the candles to try to warm the light.  I’m not even sure how much wine I drank, because Julia kept refilling my glass.  (She said she was trying to get me mellow enough that I stopped glaring at the camera.  I maintain that I was not glaring at the camera.  And if I was, it started it.)

It took us hours and about 70 shots (that’s photographic shots, not alcoholic shots, I hasten to add), but the final result is. . .not too bad.  Julia wants me to point out that the photo was neither photoshopped nor airbrushed, and she would probably add that I am, too, pretty.

It’s a nice photo, anyway.

Photos are easy

Samhain-kitty here.

http://https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10200862669784810&set=a.1106641182015.18703.1106344101&type=1&theater

Writer-person is working on a blog post about PR photos. Really, PR photos are easy. You just have to be born beautiful like me.

I Did Not!!!

Samhain the cat here. I absolutely did not eat her blog post, and she knows it. I only ever eat kitty crunchies, even that time she put slivers of her Thanksgiving turkey in my bowl so I had to pick them out with my teeth and drop them on the floor to get to my crunchies.

Other than the horrid slander (which I’m quite used to by now), I’m pretty pleased with my human this week. The Stolen Luck was listed by one of the reviewers over at Joyfully Jay as one of the Best Books of May.

http://joyfullyjay.com/2013/06/mays-f...

Not bad, though I still say the book needed more cats.

The Cat Ate My Blog Post

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Plus, there’s a lot of exciting stuff going on around planning for an indie launch of my urban fantasy, Ravensblood, and so that’s taking a bit of time. Meanwhile, I have an interview over here:

http://www.maggie-secara.com/2013/05/...

Maggie is a great interviewer so I had plenty of opportunity to go into depth about my thoughts on writing The Stolen Luck as well as a sneak peek into future projects.

And there will be a blog post soon, promise!

On Animal Communication

Well, Samhain-kitty isn’t speaking to me or anyone else right now. (And, yes, I *do* think one keyboard disaster is reason enough for a permanent lap ban whenever her human is on the computer.)  So I figured it would be a good time to talk a bit about animal communication.  As someone who has owned a variety of animals over the years, one thing that amuses, amazes and sometimes puzzles me is watching the species interact.

My cats had already established rule of the house when I brought home a wolf puppy.  They wasted no time letting him know his place in the world, and even when he grew to outweigh them nearly ten times over, the kitties retained their dominion.  Which meant I had to come to the rescue when Morgan-the-cat entertained himself on rainy days by hanging out in Seamus’s crate (his den, his sacred hidey-hole) and played with his toys. Not that dog toys held any particular interest for Morgan.  He just liked to torment the wolf.

Sometimes Seamus would try to appease this superior being with tribute, offering Morgan his very-best soup bone.  Since he was wary of the wrath of his feline god, he picked up the bone in his jaws and tossed it to Morgan from a distance.  This worked out for him about as well as you might imagine.

My stallion, by contrast, seemed to accept Seamus as more-or-less and equal. Which meant that Celeborn wanted to demonstrate fellowship by grooming Seamus with his teeth.  Seamus accepted his attentions politely, though he was clearly intimidated by this hege creature gently gnawing on the scruff of his neck.

After my divorce, my living situation changed and Seamus went to live full-time at the farm shere I kept my horse. The farm dog taught him the property boundaries and about sheep (need to be protected) and coyotes (need to be chased off).

I was riding in the indoor arena shortly after Seamus came to live at the farm when I heard Seamus and the farm dog barking in the vicinity of the mare pasture.  Celeborn instantly came alert.  He wasn’t afraid of the barking– but he wanted to know what they were barking about.  He had accepted them as partners in keeping ‘his’ mares safe.

Animal communication, and especially animal-human communication, fan be especially challenging in fiction.  My werewolves have wolf senses and, to a degree, wolf instincts, but keep their human mind.  Lacking a human mouth and throat, however, they cannot speak, and so I had to find ways for my werewolf to communicate with Inspector Jones while they are on the trail of a killer.  Of course, the possibility for miscommunication can lead to some fun situations– like when Jones isn’t quite sure of the identity of the wolf he’s talking to,  leading him to say “ . . . God, I hope you are who I think you are, not just some beggar looking for scraps, or this is the most foolish conversation I’ve ever had sober.”

The miscommunications can also prove dangerous, especially early in their association before trust is built when Jones misinterprets an absent-minded growl, intended as ‘leave me alone, can’t you see I’m tracking’ and draws his gun on the werewolf.

Still, werewolf-human communication is nothing compared to communication between an elf and a horse, as in my published novel The Stolen Luck.  Where most writers get in wrong in interspecies telepathic communication is animals differ from us un more ways than lack of speech.  They think differently than us, prioritize differently, and have different attention spans.  I was determined that Loren’s horse, Devil, remain horse-like, which meant Loren would have to communicate with him on his own level, limited though such communication must be.  Nothing makes an equestrian throw a book across the room faster than a horse that miraculously becomes intelligent enough to understand instructions to go to the next town and bring back a doctor.

The world of animal communication is wonderful, diverse, and complicated, a joy to observe for its own sake, and absolutely essential to understand if you are a writer including animals in your fiction.

 

Catitude

Hi! Samhain-the-cat here. I’m really not allowed on my writer-person’s computer (I tell you, I spill *one* glass of fizzy brown stuff on a keyboard *one* time, and I’m banished forever. The woman is a hysterical lunatic.) Anyway, she is relaxing with a book and a glass of port after her drive back from the coast, so I thought I’d sneak on while I can.

Though I don’t know why she needs to relax. She abandoned me for two whole days to visit friends on the coast. Friends with a big, stupid, slobbery dog. And what’s so great about the coast, anyway? Bunch of gritty stuff like what’s in my litter box and a whole lot of water that *moves*.

So, while she’s ignoring me again, I thought I’d let you know what I learned while doing her bloody research for her. Since her steampunk novel-in-progress has way too much in the way of werewolves and too few cats, I thought I’d help her by looking up some information about cats in Victorian England.

It turns out that Victorians were crazy about cats. Went hand-in-hand with their interest in Egyptology. (Ancient Egypt, of course, being the only place in himan history where cats were given proper acknowledgement. In other words, worshipped as gods.) Queen Victoria was co-owned by two cats, and the first cat shows were held during her reign. Even the poorest in the slums had cats, reportedly better-fed than the people they lived with because of the abundance of rodents.

Clearly the Victorians had achieved a higher level of civilization than their counterparts in the Middle Ages, where cats were associated with Satan, often tormented, and sometimes burned to death with their owners. I must say–

–adsfjdoska;–

Oops, Shawna here. Sorry, Samhain knows she’s not allowed on the computer. Apologies to dogs, dog lovers, and anyone else she might have offended.