Austin Scott Collins's Blog: Upside-down, Inside-out, and Backwards, page 6

Austin Answers Your Questions

"Do you ever look back on something you've written and wish you had done it differently?"

Oh gods and devils, yes! I often spot embarrassing mistakes, poor stylistic choices and egregious, inexcusable violations of My Personal Rules for Storytelling . It's mortifying.

Most of it is explained by simple, stupid goofs caused by some combination of laziness and absent-mindedness. On the other hand, I would like to believe that my horror at things I've written in the past is at least somewhat due to the fact that I'm getting better, but that's probably just wishful thinking.

I'm not sure any writer or other artist is ever completely satisfied with any piece of work. You've heard the saying, "A novel is never completed, it's just abandoned." The exception to that, naturally, is those writers who coast through life with robust self-esteem and an unshakable faith in their own infallible genius. I'm not one of those.

"Why don't you review books you don't like?"

First of all, writing is hard. Publishing a book is a big deal. It's a major accomplishment. I feel a lot of empathy for anyone who has successfully navigated that process all the way to the end. It's hard for me to harshly condemn anyone who has done that, even if I hate the result. You are really putting yourself out there when you write a book. It's like you're going up on stage naked for people to throw rotten vegetables at you. So I can't bring myself to review a book I didn't like.

Also, what I call "destructive criticism" is not helpful. It's both easy and useless to give someone a cruel, insulting review. It's not cute, and it's not clever. (Unless you're Dorothy Parker, but — and I cannot stress this too strongly — you are not Dorothy Parker.) If I like a book but I think I might have an observation or suggestion that could actually be of some value to the author, I will try to offer it in the most positive way I can. For instance, I might point out that a certain underutilized secondary character was extremely interesting, and express the hope that she will feature more prominently in future books in the series. It's completely pointless to say, for example, "this Regency-era romance sucks because I hate Regency-era romances." Then why the hell were you reading it? That is neither useful to the reader looking for her next book nor useful to the author looking to write her next book.

Finally, just because I didn't like a book, that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't good. I'm just not the right reader. Maybe it's a book about the history of soccer, and I'm not a soccer fan. Or maybe it's a book that spends a disproportionate amount of time describing car engines instead of getting on with the story or developing the characters. I would avoid rating or reviewing those books, because I am clearly not the intended audience. If pressed for my opinion, I would probably say something like, "this book would be ideal for anyone interested in the history of soccer" or "if you like to read ten consecutive paragraphs about adjusting the spark advance to deliver peak combustion pressures, this just might be the perfect book for you."

"How do I become a writer?"

That depends upon what kind of writer you want to become. Bear with me; I will answer this question in four ways.

(1) If you want to become a writer of high-quality, award-winning prose, the kind that gets studied in graduate-level workshops, then read, read, read, read, read, read, read. Seek out great literature across a wide range of styles and time periods and consume it ravenously. Read literary criticism. Read books on writing. Read books that criticize books on writing. Read, read, read.

(2) If you want to be a bestselling novelist, focus on reading what's selling right now. Do lots of market research. What are people buying? What are publishers looking for? What are the industry trends? To make money as a novelist, you have to produce something in a familiar, easy-to-categorize genre that has a well-defined audience. If dystopian erotic paranormal mysteries about vampire detectives are hot right now, then you will need to write a dystopian erotic paranormal mystery about vampire detectives.

(3) If you have a strong, clear, personal vision for a story that you want to tell, and you want to tell it your way and for your own reasons, then don't let anyone stop you. Publish it yourself if you have to. Maybe you are a total nutcase. That's fine. Publish it anyway. Lots of really interesting books have been written by crazy people.

If your grasp of spelling, grammar, syntax, punctuation and style is weak, you would be wise to invest in a very good editor who will work with you to clean up your manuscript before you show it to an agent or a publisher. Be aware that the world might not beat a path to your door if what you write is different. It could be absolutely brilliant, but no matter how passionately you believe in it, if it's not what your typical mainstream reader is looking for, you may struggle to get noticed. Be prepared to dedicate yourself to promoting your work and finding your audience, and accept that fact that there is a very, very, very small chance that your experimental project will be the next big thing in the book world.

(4) If you want to write for fun and personal pleasure, then just do it. Don't worry if it sucks. Just write what you want to write. Keep a journal. Write poems on napkins. Feel no shame. You never have to show it to anybody. Writing is a perfectly legitimate creative hobby. If you want to switch over to (1), (2) or (3) later, you can, but no one says you ever have to.

What inspires you to write?

Basically anything other than sitting in front of the computer.

(For more Q&A with Austin, read his interview with H.M. Jones of Elite Indie Reads .)

My Personal Rules for Storytelling

DISCLAIMER! These are my own highly subjective guidelines, reflecting both my style as an author and my likes as a reader. I'm not claiming that this is the one "correct" way to write, because there is no such thing. Lots of writers who are way, way better than I are known for breaking these rules all the time, and that's fine. Some people like the taste of octopus, some people prefer granola. There is room for everybody in the literary universe.

1. Avoid explaining what characters are thinking, feeling, remembering etc. Let their actions and choices reveal what's going on in their heads. I have always felt like telling the reader what's in a fictional figure's mind was cheating or at least lazy storytelling, like voice-over narration in TV or movies.

2. In fact, avoid explaining anything. Trust your reader to figure things out. Be a storyteller, not an interpreter. (Warning: this only works if your story is coherent and makes logical sense. If you feel the need to explain, you might have a plot problem.)

3. Two modifiers are better than three. One modifier is better than two. No modifiers is best of all. Yes, sometimes you really do need a wrench, a screwdriver and a hammer to get the job done, but if all you need is a wrench, just use a wrench. And if you can do it with your bare hands, do it with your bare hands.

AWFUL: "She ran quickly and excitedly to the closed door, eager to find out who was there on the other side."

Running implies excitement, so that's redundant. And the fact that she is running tells the reader that she is eager. And explaining specifically what she was eager to find out is totally useless. There is someone at the door, so the object of her enthusiastic curiosity is obvious.

BAD: "She ran quickly to the closed door."

How can you run other than quickly? A good writer is an expert adverb killer. Also, of course the door is closed!

GOOD: "She ran to the door."

4. Characters must always, ALWAYS bring about their own outcomes. Their fates must be the results of their decisions. When terrible things happen to virtuous, innocent people that is either real life or sloppy melodrama.

5. A good story emerges from conflict, internal or external. When nothing but good, happy things happen to good, happy characters, that gets very boring very quickly.

6. Make sure you disagree with all your characters in some way. Even your main protagonists. Especially your main protagonists. If a character is nothing but a mouthpiece for your own opinions and feelings, chances are you are writing an essay instead of a story. Disagreeing with your characters helps to prevent gratuitous self-indulgence.

7. When characters start monologuing, interrupt them.

8. Interesting characters are complicated and damaged.

9. The test of a good ending is whether the reader thinks, "Of course! It couldn't have ended any other way." Everything should lead up to that moment, which should seem inevitable in retrospect.

10. Don't ever resort to magic or supernatural intervention to resolve a problem that is integral to the plot, even if the world of your story includes paranormal elements. "He suddenly changed his mind for no reason" certainly counts as magic. Why did he change his mind? The cause must be embedded in the text.

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Dicing Time for Gladness (Book I in the Victoria da Vinci series) is available now in print and e-reader editions. Click HERE to read a FREE preview on Amazon.

Crass Casualty (Book II in the series) is coming in November.

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http://austinscottcollins.com/

Slogging Diligently

Crass Casualty, Book II in the Victoria da Vinci series, is coming into focus. Still on track for a November release.

(What? You haven't read the first book yet?)

For me, this is the most difficult stage of the process .

I call it the "Connect-the-Dots" phase: the chapter outlines have been populated with a paragraph here, a paragraph there, a few full sentences floating like islands, a fragment or two, some images, a scattering of single words, a few short reminders to myself. I.e., [Victoria says something clever.] The first part of the "Connect-the-Dots" phase is to write the language that links each of these pieces into a logical and grammatical unit, expanding stubs into fleshed-out scenes, inflating an adjective into a description, getting a character from one room to another, shifting the topic of conversation from A to B without an obvious jolt. Transitions are the hardest thing in fiction writing. The second part is to comb back through it to make it all flow smoothly. (Did I really use the word "varnished" three times?)

Later, I will return to it and do another round of edits, but that phase is relatively easy — I'm just fixing mistakes.

The last phase is the final cleanup, where I try to make it pop and sparkle. Again, that's fun, because the elements are all there. It's just a matter of tweaking and tightening.

But right now, deep in the "Connect-the-Dots" phase, I have to force myself to

JUST.

KEEP.

GOING.

On Being a Productive Member of Society

It's important to have useful talents and practical skills. At least I've heard that it is. I myself am not particularly good at much of anything, although I do mix an excellent gin and tonic.

I have vague recollections of writing books in kindergarten. These “books” were written and illustrated in crayon, and the binding process consisted of folding sheets of construction paper in half and then stapling the stack together down the middle. I seem to remember a teacher reading one of these masterpieces out loud to the class. The main character was flying magically through the air when an earthquake caused him to plummet to the ground. Even by the loose standards of kindergarten logic, that makes no sense at all, and I don’t remember anything else about the plot, but I don’t think it had a happy ending. I imagine it was too morally ambivalent for American readers in the pants-wetting demographic.

At some point in my life, however, I must have realized that making a living as a writer was not a realistic strategy. I never pursued it as my primary plan. I'm not sure if this was because I thought I had a better plan, or if it was more because I had no particular plan at all. Knowing me, the latter is more likely. I was envious of the kids who had a career track laid out. They took all the advanced-placement classes, had high GPAs, and knew exactly which university pre-med program they hoped to get accepted into. They looked to the future with such clarity. I had no such path before me; I was bored with today, traumatized by yesterday and depressed about tomorrow.

When parents, teachers, counselors etc. would try to get me to commit to any long-term course of action, I was most unhelpful (as teenagers tend to be in all cases). “What do you want to do,” they would ask. “I want to wander the world in search of knowledge and adventure,” I would reply in the grandiose and disaffected exuberance of youth, or some words to that effect. I wanted to learn to fly, to skydive, to sail, to scuba dive and anything else that would open doors to stimulating experiences. I wanted to backpack the full length of the Appalachian Trail. I wanted to ride a motorcycle from Alaska to Patagonia. You know, that kind of thing. “Yes, yes, fine,” they would say in frustration, “but what do you want to do as a JOB? You know, to make a LIVING?” And then I would blink at them uncomprehendingly and go off and sulk. Aren’t kids great?

I could never monetize my interests. I briefly flirted with getting a degree in geology, because the idea of being out in the field appealed to me — hiking alone in some remote desert canyon with a hammer and a pick, collecting rock specimens and gazing upon them in a thoughtful, knowledgeable way, having profound insights about Earth’s ancient and violent origins as an eagle circled silently in a thermal high above. But the reality, of course, is that I would have had to spend my time in a small room with fluorescent lighting, analyzing data and drafting maps for oil companies.

It’s interesting how when people ask you what you do, they always tend to want a short, simple, familiar answer. They don’t like it when you’re equivocal or nebulous. What they really want to do is figure out where you rank in the social hierarchy. If you say, “United States Supreme Court justice,” they will treat you differently than if you say, “Janitor.” (This is true even though many janitors are smarter than some Supreme Court justices, especially Scalia.) For many years, when I got the “so-what-do-you-do?” question, I responded, “commercial pilot.” That satisfied most people, and then they would always ask me a standard follow-up question like, “ever been in a really scary situation up there?” Then I would nod solemnly and in a grave tone of voice tell them, “Yes. Once I flew directly into a thunderstorm, crashed, and died.”

Part of it, I’m sure, stems from a simple desire to feel superior. But there is another, even more sinister aspect to this game: some people seem to believe, somewhere deep down in the dark abyss of their souls, that there is only a finite amount of success and happiness out there in the universe. They don’t just want to be happy and successful, they want to be happier and more successful than other people. A self-actualized individual makes these types of people very uncomfortable. They take great pleasure in the misery and failure of others, and they’ll keep on excavating until they find evidence of it. Because if someone else shows signs of being happier and more successful than they are, it means, somehow, that they lose. The best way to deal with people like this is to crouch down behind something and hide until they go away. If that doesn’t work, fake a seizure or pretend to be part of a foreign tour group.

Meanwhile, however, the question remains: what to DO? Everyone seems to agree that the “secret” is to vividly visualize what you want, and then then work diligently to achieve it. This method works great if what you want is to be is a software engineer or a database analyst. It's less effective if you want to be a wizard, or Batman.

The reality of employment can be depressing. George Carlin pointed out that most people work just hard enough to avoid getting fired, and get paid just enough not to quit. It's funny to hear kids talk about what they want to be, as if you can just pick and choose your lifetime career trajectory like a hat from a rack.

Perhaps the best course of action is to focus on short-term goals, such as wrapping up this blog post with a wise and insightful closing, which I will probably get around to just as soon as I finish this gin and tonic.

We Have Our Winners!

THANK YOU to everyone who signed up for the giveaway! And congratulations to Barbara (FL), Monique (MS) and Andrea (CA), who won! Your signed books will be on the way shortly. (I just got back from a trip to Louisville early, early this morning but I'm heading to the post office tomorrow, I promise!)

This will be the last giveaway for Book I, Dicing Time for Gladness.

Book II, Crass Casualty, will be coming out in November — I just finished the new cover! — and so for the next six months I'm going to concentrate on getting that polished up and shiny. The next giveaway will probably happen right after the release.

Meanwhile, join me on Facebook if you're so inclined. Thanks again to everyone for all the support.

https://www.facebook.com/AustinScottC...

Art vs. Income

I was sitting by a pool in a quiet part of Pasco County yesterday afternoon (rough life, I know) and I found myself engaged in conversation with a charming young lady who had recently finished a graphic design degree. She paints and does photography and tries to find work.

I asked her how she reconciles the inevitable tension between the internal drive to express oneself creatively and the external necessity of making a living, and I was mostly expecting a well-rehearsed speech about finding your core strengths and focusing your commercial ventures there. Instead, she answered with honesty and self-awareness that startled me.

"I don't," she said with a sigh and a shrug. "I will probably be 80 years old and still be struggling with that."

Her practical realism startled me, especially since she was so young. But in an age of disillusionment and cynicism, I suppose it shouldn't be surprising.

Not that she's wrong. How many people generate enough money doing what they love to pay the bills? How many people have to compromise their artistic principles for the sake of buying groceries and covering the rent? Even flying solo, it's tough. It becomes even harder to justify and maintain any kind of ideological purity when one is responsible for the well-being of others.

Perhaps the solution is to do what T. S. Eliot did: he worked as a schoolteacher (teaching French and Latin) and also spent eight years working at Lloyd's Bank on the Colonial and Foreign Accounts desk. Yet he also achieved artistic and literary success as a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright and critic.

Of course, another approach is to go in the opposite direction: to sequester yourself from civilization and its needs and distractions the way Henry David Thoreau did. I visited Walden a couple of years ago and was inspired by the experience, although I recognize that to do this today one needs to wander much, much farther and try much, much harder to escape the reach of modern society.

I have tremendous respect for the courage of anyone who commits himself or herself completely to his or her art. It's hard to write The Great American Novel or achieve something extraordinary in mixed media or welding or pottery or woodworking or watercolors, however, when one is living in a cardboard box in an alley.

Sometimes I wish we lived in a culture that valued art more. I buy a lot of books, and I know plenty of other people who do, but people like us can't carry the economic load for the 80% of U.S. households that did not buy a single book last year, or the 42% of college students who will never read another book after they graduate.

My approach, I think, will always be closer to Eliot than Thoreau. I will make the best living I can, doing whatever I happen to be good at, and I will write what I want to write for my own reasons and my own fulfillment. If the stars should align someday and I can support myself with my writing, I will gladly accept that blessing of fortune. And if not, I will continue doing what I do for the same simple reason most writers write: we can't not.

On "Spoilers" and Fiction Writing

This blog is about aerodynamic devices that extend from an airplane wing to decrease lift while increasing drag. No it isn't. This blog is about the practice of "ruining" the ending.

You may have seen the uproar over Stephen King's tweet in which he revealed a key plot point in the season opener for Game of Thrones. He retorted to outraged inhabitants of the Twitterverse that the book had been out for 15 years, and followed it up with, "Another spoiler: Romeo and Juliet die in Act 5."

Well played, Mr. King.

In a similar incident, Martin Freeman was recently being interviewed about Peter Jackson's The Hobbit trilogy of films when the interviewer responded to something he said by exclaiming, "but that's a spoiler!" Freeman, who stars as young Bilbo, looked momentarily nonplussed and then pointed out that the books have been out for about 75 years.

People love to complain about infuriating movie trailers that give away the entire plot, including the ending, even when it's supposed to be a surprise or at least contain some unexpected twist. Popular T-shirts gleefully spoil movie or book endings, and one T-shirt I've seen is nothing more than dozens of spoilers for famous stories.

In a very interesting experiment at the University of California San Diego School of Psychology, researchers gave a group of undergraduates various short stories to read. Some involved a startling swerve at the end (such as Chekhov's "The Bet"), some were classic mysteries (such as Agatha Christie's "A Chess Problem") and some were literary fiction by writers like John Updike.

Some experimental subjects read the story as it was originally written, without a spoiler. Others read the story with a spoiler carefully embedded in the text by the research team, as if the author had deliberately given away the ending. And some read the story with a spoiler disclaimer in the preface.

The results were — in an example of supreme cosmic irony — a surprise.

For almost every single story, regardless of literary genre, readers reported that they enjoyed it more when they knew the ending in advance.

But perhaps this shouldn't really be so surprising. After all, think about great and famous novels and films that everyone has heard of. In the modern era, everyone already knows the entire story (including the ending) before embarking on a reading or viewing, yet we still enjoy Casablanca and Citizen Kane, we still enjoy "The Lottery" and "A Rose for Emily," we still enjoy Moby Dick and Julius Caesar. Why? Because we don't want to be distracted by tension and suspense, we want to enjoy a powerful, effective, well-told story.

Think about how excited we collectively get when there is a "reboot" of, for instance, Batman. We all know the story. We know in advance that Dr. Thomas Wayne and his wife Martha Wayne are going to be gunned down in the streets of Gotham in front of their young son Bruce, who will go on to become a billionaire playboy by day, costumed vigilante by night, obsessed with violent revenge yet driven by a strict moral code. We know what the names of his love interests and his arch-enemies will be. We don't go to the movie to "wait and see what might happen." We know what will happen. We want to see the story told well.

Why else would be enjoy the same play or movie over and over again, or read the same book over and over again? Obviously we know how it will end. That's not the point. And isn't it satisfying and fun to see how the author/director/playwright cleverly plants seeds to foreshadow what we know is coming?

I made a very deliberate decision to give away the ending in the first few pages of Dicing Time for Gladness. We learn that the New Stratford Proscenium Theater burned down during a riotous panic, and that the girls of the Daughters of Aphrodite Lyric Opera escaped. We also learn that it was not the first time they had been run out of town. Now the reader can (hopefully) sit back and enjoy how the story unfolds as we flash back two weeks and see it all from the beginning.

Knowing the outcome can also add power and poignancy to a story. When we hear Victoria hold forth about her grand plans, we feel a tinge of sadness, because we know that history will not remember her that way. Being born with genius and ambition in the wrong era makes her a tragic figure.

We don't like to invest time and emotions in anything that may or may not pay off. Think about how much more likely you are to read a book if a friend whose tastes and judgement you respect enthusiastically recommends it. Knowing the ending is an important element of knowing whether a particular story is a journey you will choose to take.

Four Things

Thing one: Progress on Crass Casualty continues slowly but steadily, and I am still on track to release it as scheduled in November of this year. I estimate very roughly that if I put out an average of half a page a day every single day between now and October, I will still have a full month to do my final round of edits. If that doesn't sound like a lot, try it. To clarify, completely re-writing half a page for the tenth time doesn't count. I'm talking about half a page of brand-new material every 24 hours for the next six months. That's about twice as fast as I finished Dicing Time for Gladness, but I keep telling myself, "you already know the story, you already know the story."

I already did plenty of hair-pulling and teeth-gnashing over the sublime agony of being mid-manuscript in this previous post, so I won't retread that ground, but I did want to say thanks again for all the wonderful support I've been receiving. You know who you are.

Thing two: We're doing one more giveaway of the first book before the second book comes out. The last giveaway was such an unexpected success — a thousand people signed up — that we're doing it again, only this time we're giving away three signed copies instead of just one. After this, I'm going to throttle down on promoting Book I and ratchet up on getting Book II finished. Mixing metaphors helps me relax.

If you want to enter the giveaway, click HERE .

Thing three: My interview with H.M. Jones of Elite Indie Reads (Eir) is up. You can read it HERE . EiR is a fantastic resource; with well organized ratings and reviews in multiple sub-genres, no matter what you're into, EiR has your next book.

Thing four: I just posted my own latest rating and review here on Goodreads — the extremely enjoyable Fringe Florida: Travels Among Mud Boggers, Furries, Ufologists, Nudists, and Other Lovers of Unconventional Lifestyles by Lynn Waddell.

You can read my review HERE .

That's it for updates. And now . . . back to work!

Enduring the Unendurable

All philosophy, it has often been observed, is really just a collection of mental strategies for coming to terms with the grim reality of life. What does this have to do with writing fiction? Don't worry, I'll get there.

The idea that the universe is cold, random, meaningless, unfair, sometimes unspeakably cruel and often utterly indifferent to human existence is too upsetting for most of us to take raw, so we find ways to cook it.

Thus are born a panoply of worldviews, some religious, some not. But all of them are, in one form or another, Ways to Cope.

"It is impossible to experience one's own death objectively and still carry a tune."
— Woody Allen

How does one Endure the Unendurable? The notion of Death with a capital D, oblivion, the extinction of the Self, is so uncomfortable that nearly everybody in the world has some sort of cerebral defense against it. This can take the form of belief in an afterlife, or it can take the form of a philosophy that makes it possible to gracefully and peacefully accept the inevitable.

And what about the intrinsic injustice of life while it's still going on? Success and prosperity finds the undeserving as the talented and the hardworking languish in the murky gloom of poverty and obscurity. The virtuous suffer and the evil thrive. How do we deal with this? We can deny it, we can tell ourselves it's part of a Larger Plan (this is where a Being or Beings, Entity or Entities, Force or Forces may be invoked), or we can succumb to rage and despair.

In the Victoria da Vinci novels, various characters exhibit an array of psychological coping/defense mechanisms that are fun to write because they bring the characters into a kind of unspoken metaphysical conflict.

Victoria is a kind of techno-Utopianist; she deeply believes (that is to say, has convinced herself) that she can save the world with her inventions, or at least that the world can be saved. This certainly contributes to her messianic complex and her indefatigable ambition.

Prycie and Mistral are absurdists; they recognize the nonsensical nature of human existence and the futility of attempting to assert your will against it. So they seem to have made a conscious choice to celebrate the silly and the ridiculous, to let themselves be liberated from both logic and social convention. (As artists, they can get away with this.) People think they're crazy, but we always get the impression that their "insanity" is calculated.

Constance/May is innocent . . . at least up until the end of the first book. With maturity comes cynicism, and with growing intellectual freedom comes growing skepticism and mistrust. She was sheltered in a middle-class environment for most of her life, and her worst enemy was boredom. In the second book, she confronts some of the horrors of the real world for the first time.

Greta, being a sociopath, is unburdened by guilt. Her philosophy is more political than spiritual, and essentially depends upon the subjugation of the weak. Perhaps ironically, she is less troubled by self-doubt than any other character, never questioning the rightness of her opinions. She unrepentantly seeks power and wealth for its own sake, and takes sadistic pleasure in the annihilation of her enemies.

Righty is an interesting contradiction; on one hand, she has a carefree, happy-go-lucky attitude. On the other hand, however, she is a roll-up-your-sleeves, get-it-done type. She has lived through great personal hardship, and would rather enjoy life in the present moment than spend a lot of time contemplating the past or the future. When it comes to the big questions of what it's all about, she doesn't know and she doesn't care that she doesn't know.

Fiona is a nihilist, and in our time she would probably be diagnosed as clinically depressed. She has no hope, no faith, no reason to believe any good will ever come of anything, and reserves a disdainful contempt for anyone dumb enough to be starry-eyed and optimistic in this awful world.

Those who are already in a strong and secure position — people like Hautious Sugging and Josiah Blumfield — are primarily motivated by their intense fear of change (in other words, fear of losing their privileged status). They rationalize this fear by seeing themselves as guardians of the nation, protecting it from the forces of immorality and chaos that swirl around it like an army of barbarians. (Greta, meanwhile, is more than happy to exploit this fear and twist it to her own ends.)

One of the really enjoyable things about being an author is being able to bring together these highly divergent points of view and see how they bounce off each other when characters compete and cooperate. Writing a novel is like having a long, strange, multi-sided argument in your head, an argument in which you neither fully agree nor fully disagree with any of the perspectives involved. It would probably make an interesting case study for a cognitive neuroscientist — "Creative Dissonance: The Fractured Brain of a Fiction Writer."

DTfG Up for Review on EiR

* * 8 P.M. UPDATE! * *

DTfG has been chosen! THANK YOU to everyone who voted. You rock. Take a vigorous swing at the Karmic piñata, you've earned it. And peeking is OK.

So meanwhile, feel free to skip on ahead to my next entry, Enduring the Unendurable .

(original post below)

Greetings once again, dear readers.

Author Hannah Jones (aka H.M. Jones) runs a site called Elite Indie Reads (EiR) where she reads and reviews selected novels. Dicing Time for Gladness is one of the current nominees. If you would like to see DTfG be reviewed on EiR, please consider taking just a moment to vote here:

http://eliteindiereads.weebly.com/eir...

Thank you! You guys are the best. (But you knew that.)