S.N. Graves's Blog, page 3

Rachell Nichole's Masters of Kink Scale!

I am so excited to share my blog space today with such a wonderful master of Erom, Rachell Nichole! She’s the most clever and funny woman you will ever meet, so listen up as she shares a little from her latest release, To Sir.
Hey there,
Thanks so much for having me stop by today to talk a bit more about my recent release, To Sir.
I wanted to share with readers a bit more about the book, in particular, something I created while writing it: The Masters Kink Scale! J
Now, there’s a scene in the book where my hero, Chase Masters, is describing the world of kink to my heroine, Liz Clark. Liz is an author who’s plagued by the idea for a kinky book she can’t shake, but she’s awash in a sea of the unknown when she starts down the path to writing Hawke and Sarah’s story. So she turns to Chase, a local Dom and club owner, to help guide her. But she’s unprepared for the carnal reaction she has in his presence, and for the way what started as research quickly turns into something much more personal. And terrifying.
I’d like to share how the Masters Kink Scale came to be. While I was writing the scene where Chase is explaining how kink works on a nun to kinky as hell scale, Liz, lovely writer nerd that she is, draws it up as a bell curve chart, I came up with the idea of Liz naming Chase’s bell curve… among other things. J So she draws it all out, and Chase takes her through it, step by step, from nun to all out Kinkiness! Liz was the one who dubbed it the Masters Kink Scale. I completely had nothing to do with it, I swear. She’s obviously far more clever than I am.

So here’s the Master’s Kink Scale: And that’s that, folks. So now, without further ado, here’s the scene from To Sir that I’ve promised you…


“So it’s not like the Kinsey scale of sexuality? There aren’t, like, two ends of the spectrum—totally gay and totally straight, and everyone is pretty much in the middle?”He twisted the napkin tighter in his fingers. “Well, maybe. So let’s put nuns on one end of that spectrum, then the vanillas—you know, people who only like straight sex, and by straight I don’t mean not gay; I mean sex without any kind of kink. Think like total-missionary, once-every-six-months, and blowjobs-on-birthdays kind of vanilla. Then as you move more toward the middle, you get people who like different positions, more spice, maybe ménages, and a bit of tie-me-up, tie-me-down with silk scarves and soft blindfolds. Then as you keep moving, you get to people who like the harder stuff, like whips and nipple clamps, spanking, debasement, orgasm denial, reward and punishment. Then all the way out here are the real edge players who use blades and fire and stuff.”Liz shivered. Fire and blades. How could you ever trust anyone like that? She started drawing the scale, in a completely nerdy bell-curve kind of way, trying to slow her pounding heart when she thought of a blade pressing against her skin while she was utterly at someone’s mercy. According to Chase, most people fell somewhere in the middle, between vanilla and kinky as hell.“For some, the line is here.” He reached over and traced an invisible line down the middle of her bell curve with his thick index finger. “They’re mostly vanilla, with a little slap and tickle, and they won’t go any further. For a lot of people who come on the scene the first time, they fall somewhere in here.” He rubbed back and forth from the middle to halfway through the second half of the curve in a sensual slide that made her throat go dry. She could picture that finger rubbing back and forth like that along her skin, and she clenched her thighs together, holding the heat at the center of her body close.“Sometimes they push themselves and find they’re actually out here.” He captured her hand in his, and she let him trace her finger to the outlying edges of her curve. “And some people think it’s cool and trendy and dangerous to pretend they lie here.” He brought her finger back toward the middle. “When really, they’re way the hell over here.” He jerked her hand all the way across the page to where she’d written Nun. The soft paper teased the pads of her fingers with every movement.“Others who have been taught how evil and dirty it is to want to be spanked spend their entire lives miserably stuck in Vanilla Land.” He circled her finger around the word. “They never admit to themselves, let alone their partners, what they want, what they need. And then they have unfulfilling sex for eternity. It’s sad.”She’d been watching his large, calloused hand as it held hers captive and skittered across the page. But now she looked up and locked gazes with him. His penetrating stare seemed to see deep into her soul, and she tried to shrink back from it. He didn’t let her. Was he talking about her? Her sex life wasn’t unfulfilling. It was nonexistent.“Okay, so I get the whole where-sexual-preferences-lie scale thing. I understand the hardwired stuff. And the need to be truthful to yourself about your desires.” Did she sound like she was admitting she was one of those people in denial? Or like she was consenting to let him show her how to stop denying herself? She wasn’t sure. “Hawke and Sarah know who they are, what they want. It’s not about them exploring boundaries or where they are on the Masters Kink Scale.”“What is it about?” He didn’t seem inclined to release her gaze, or her hand, anytime soon.“I can’t take notes with you holding me hostage,” she said, her voice breathy, restless.His tongue darted out and wet his bottom lip. Her thighs clenched tighter together, the pressure at once feeling wonderful and awful at the apex of her legs. He leaned in close over the table, his large frame suddenly crowding her, though there was still at least a foot between them. “If you really want me to let you go, you have to say so. Don’t make some passive-aggressive comment about not being able to write in this position.”God, this was like the best and worst game of are you nervousever. She’d played it as a kid at those parties she’d sneaked out to attend. She’d always won, while some boy’s—or girl’s—hand crept higher and higher up her thigh, attempting to make her squirm. But this guy made her squirm without even trying.Still, he was going to make her say it. Make her admit what she wanted and voice it. “Let. Go.”There. An implacable direct order that didn’t make her sound weak at all. She wasn’t asking, wasn’t pleading with him to release her. She was demanding it. But what the hell would she do if he refused?

Oooh, boy. Wasn’t that yummy? As you can see Chase and Liz have a bit of an explosive relationship. Sparks most definitely fly when they’re in a room together. If you’d like to read more, and honestly, who wouldn’t, To Sir is on sale now!

Loose Id:  http://www.loose-id.com/to-sir.htmlAll Romance Ebooks:  http://bit.ly/1nzX2eTAmazon:  http://amzn.to/1wBI4yDYoutube: http://youtu.be/Y-fnuTLcDU0   And for all of your Sizzling Romantic Entanglement goodies, be sure to follow me on Twitter @RachellNichole, like me on Facebook: www.Facebook.com/RachellNicholeor check out my website for links and info on my upcoming BDSM books – www.RachellNichole.com
Thanks again so much for stopping by and I hope you fall in love with Chase and Liz, just like I did!
~ Rach


Rachell Nichole is a contemporary erotic romance author, who loves writing sexy romances about memorable characters who have to fight to hold on to love.
Rachell holds two undergraduate degrees, one in Professional Writing and the other in French. She also received a Master of Fine Arts in Writing Popular Fiction at Seton Hill University. She is the author of The Marietta Hotels Series, Spicy with a Side of Cranberry Sauce, Break(Through) the Ice, To Sir, and Queen of Hearts.
Rachell lives in New York with a mountain of books, a loving family, and an invisible cat who loves to snuggle.

Official Apology : I���m sorry I broke Amazon

For years I have tip-toed around the idea of self-publishing, but for one reason or another I always talked myself out of doing it. I finally took the plunge this weekend, and excitedly uploaded my work to Amazon.

I���m sorry Amazon readers. I���m really very sorry other authors who were trying to publish their own books. I���m sorry Amazon���I didn���t mean to break you.

Apparently what had been running as a well-oiled, predictable machine totally forgot how to Amazon when gunked up with my first dip into the self-pub pool. My work got stuck in queue, under review for days when less than twelve hours was the previous norm, and I took everyone else down with me. Self-publishing message boards everywhere were filled with people  trying to figure out why their books weren���t being processed, what had happened.

I happened.

I���m cursed.

If I touch something, it breaks.

If I want something, it���s gone.

If I love something, it dies���or runs away screaming because it knows what���s coming.

If I go ���Hey, that���s the best show ever!��� it gets cancelled (Firefly is probably my fault too. Sorry browncoats.)

If I enter a crowded room, it clears out (although that may have less to do with my luck and more to do with an inability to censor myself for polite society).

If I join a group, a team, a movement, it self-destructs.

So yes, Amazon, and all those affected by the great end of August slow-down of the review and publish process, I apologize. I���ll try not to let it happen again, but as I have four more parts to my serial to get out, I can���t make any promises.

Official Apology : I’m sorry I broke Amazon

For years I have tip-toed around the idea of self-publishing, but for one reason or another I always talked myself out of doing it. I finally took the plunge this weekend, and excitedly uploaded my work to Amazon.
I’m sorry Amazon readers. I’m really very sorry other authors who were trying to publish their own books. I’m sorry Amazon—I didn’t mean to break you.
Apparently what had been running as a well-oiled, predictable machine totally forgot how to Amazon when gunked up with my first dip into the self-pub pool. My work got stuck in queue, under review for days when less than twelve hours was the previous norm, and I took everyone else down with me. Self-publishing message boards everywhere were filled with people  trying to figure out why their books weren’t being processed, what had happened.
I happened.

I’m cursed.
If I touch something, it breaks. If I want something, it’s gone.If I love something, it dies…or runs away screaming because it knows what’s coming.If I go “Hey, that’s the best show ever!” it gets cancelled (Firefly is probably my fault too. Sorry browncoats.)If I enter a crowded room, it clears out (although that may have less to do with my luck and more to do with an inability to censor myself for polite society).If I join a group, a team, a movement, it self-destructs.
So yes, Amazon, and all those affected by the great end of August slow-down of the review and publish process, I apologize. I’ll try not to let it happen again, but as I have four more parts to my serial to get out, I can’t make any promises.

Find on Amazon

Zombie Night (Review)

Zombie Night

I’m a sucker for a good B horror flick. Toss in zombies, and I have a hard time not at least giving the film a single watch through. Add in John Gulager, the man behind the Feasttrilogy, and this became a must watch film. 
Let me just say, this movie was no Feast. One thing I have come to expect from Gulager is characters with a lot of bite (the puns here are unavoidable, my apologies). Characterization in this film was shoddy at best. The plot was nonexistent, explanations for the zombies nonexistent, decent acting over all pretty sparse, dialogue not remotely engaging. Even for a B horror film, most of Zombie Night was pretty disappointing, however, there were some shining moments that prove this film could have been amazing with a little focus, investment, and editing.


 CLICK READ MORE
(Spoilers and review under cut)
We’re going to start with the good:
The old, nearly blind woman, who is hysterical for most of her part in the film, has a scene where she is left alone in the basement. She’s terrified. She can hear noise upstairs, knows bad things are going on all around her, but she’s stuck alone in a basement…in a zombie film.
These are perhaps some of the most tense and emotionally charged moments of the film. For anyone who has had an ailing parent, to think of them alone and in the dark (she’s blind) when something like this is going on, it hits you right in the gut. 
In all the zombie movies before it, you have to wonder, what happened to all the old people? What happens to the parents of the hero after he moved away to start a family, only to find himself in the middle of a zombie storyline? Who is making sure Mom doesn’t get her throat ripped out, or your bedridden father doesn’t get slowly eaten, entrails first, while you are busy taking care of the family you’ve made yourself miles and miles away? This scene had the potential to be so much more than it was, and that potential has to be recognized as a plus. 
When Alan Ruck’s character is explaining to his neighbors that he can’t let them into the house, into his panic room where it is safe, you almost forget you aren’t watching a real, quality film. Through this scene, and the scene when his son is dying, you might end up asking yourself why is he not the main character. You feel his emotion, his desperation, and you almost forget the absurdity of him not allowing the neighbors in, almost forget that this is a terribly contrived plot device to keep the main characters of the film running for their lives outside like chickens with their heads cut off. He does an amazing job, and as a parent I really felt for him here.
Daryl Hannah kinda acts her ass off in this one. It’s like no one told her she was making a shitty film. She’s believable throughout and makes a lot of really crap dialogue a whole lot less crappy. Plus at one point she finds a sword! I kept waiting for the moment when her eye would get gouged out and she’d be sporting an eye patch to go with it, but alas, that wasn’t to be. Would have been great though.

Where the movie becomes terribad…
The biggest negatives for Zombie Night are definitely in pacing, editing, story, and overall polish. For the sake of not going on for three hundred pages describing its flaws, I’m just going to list the big ones that stood out for me here:

       The zombies were odd. Not intentionally odd, but lack of good training and direction for the actors odd. If they have enough presence of mind to stand there and front you, to think “I should dig” or “open the door” then they shouldn’t be senselessly roaming around and falling for dumb distractions like their target throwing a shoe in the opposite direction. Really, Zombie Night, what were the rules for these zombies and how they responded to being a zombie? It seemed all over the place, and a zombie was a mindless, shambling husk when necessary for the scene, and a demonic presence trying to seduce the target (like in the case of the zombie housekeeper mugging for the camera) completely dependent on what sort of zombie they needed for a given scene.  With this sort of genre story, knowing the parameters in which the monster must function are vitally important for suspension of disbelief.
         Double Tap. Seriously, how is it that a film set in the modern age has people in it who don’t know you shoot a zombie in the head to kill it? They know enough to think a bite could make someone turn zombie, but not enough to know AIM FOR THE HEAD?
         Guns are reusable. When the bullets run out, you can find more bullets and reload. No need to toss the gun.
         If a door opens outward…what good does putting a trunk in front of it do? Are we trying to trip the zombies down the stairs, or what? It was moments like this that made me wish some humor had been purposefully injected in the film--that could have been a moment to shine.
         If you’re going to have a cop be complete shit at his job, maybe consider casting someone who doesn’t try to play his character as competent? It was clear this cop had only been a cop for a few days, and hadn’t had even the slightest bit of training, but he was never presented as being a newbie, which makes all his fumbling and poor procedure look like writer error…which it probably was, but still, they could have played it off as being part of the character.
         Why were there no blankets in the safe room? You have food for weeks, but no blankets? Way to think ahead. It's not consistent that someone who would put in the money and time and effort into creating a safe room stocked for weeks would forget blankets.
         Your husband and son are dead, and your dead son is eating your husband…and you leave your youngest son alone in that to run downstairs…why?
         What was with the maid? The actress seemed like she thought she’d been cast in the next Omen movie, rather than a zombie film. Her over-acted, intense spiel on the end times just came out of nowhere and came off laughable. Every time the camera focused on her as a zombie, she looked more like she was playing a succubus from Demon Knight, not Zombie Night. So, yeah, she clearly just got her nights mixed up…

No love on the editing front
The first ten minutes are by far the most painful. It seemed to me as if they put a bunch of clueless actors on set with just a few hours to brush up on the script, told them they were in a zombie film, and the yelled ACTION! Usually in Hollywood films when an actor looks unnatural, is standing there watching something horrific when any real life person would be running the other way, they compensate for this by creative editing and framing of the shots. You don’t point the camera at the two idiots crouching there staring at the bodies emerging from the ground when they should be running like hell, you point the camera at the freakin’ things bubbling up from the earth. This way, you allow the audience to be captivated by the same horror that is somehow managing to make the story’s protagonist turn into a statue, rather than making your audience groan and yell “Run, you idiots!” at the screen. 
Those first ten minutes of film are probably enough to make most film goers change the channel, because without some careful editing to cut all the awkwardness, all the actors clearly being confused actors instead of their characters, the movie comes off beyond amateur. You find better editing on YouTube. Not to knock YouTube movies in any way, but given the budget Zombie Night had, I imagine even a mediocre YouTuber could have crafted a better end product.
Okay, so the housekeeper that this kid clearly loved just tried to eat his ear off, ripped out his brother throat. Then his brother dies, come back to life and kills his father, and he’s been trapped in this room with them while big brother eats out his dad’s guts a few feet away from him. His mom remembers she still has a son and comes back to save him, and just as he’s about to get past the horror that is dead dad and undead brother, his father wakes up and grabs his leg and tries to eat him.
Would you look at the glee on this kid’s face?

The boy is having a blast. Now, I’m not one for scaring children for the sake of a movie (Okay, so maybe I am. I did once send my kids through a trailer park, roadside Halloween Horror house that may or may not have been run by the people who inspired the events of House of 1000 Corpses, just so I could get a great home video of them running out the exit pissing themselves) but another take was in order here, maybe? A different angle? They linger so long on this kid’s goofy grin, and everyone else’s backs, that you have no feeling of fear or impending doom for the boy. If the child actor can’t carry the scene, why is the camera pointed at his face and his MOTHER’s rear end?
Never mind, I know that answer. The kid comes by his grinning in the face of terror honestly. 

Her husband is being gnawed on by one of the zombies that just ate her son. Should this be the look on her face?

Lady’s got some issues.
Biggest WTF of the movie
“Oh look, dear, a car. Maybe we can—”

Car explodes for no reason other than director sadism and a desire to show a man on fire in the cheapest flame retardant suit known to film making. 

“…”
Hazard of making an action film, I suppose. Something HAS to blow up eventually. There was no reason for that car to explode. It was just sitting there. Engine off. I think maybe along with Zombies, the vehicles got a little sentient too, and it saw this group of fuckwits coming for it and said, screw this. I’d rather implode than become part of this madness. Kaboom! 
At the end, few members of the two families are standing. Most of them died from an extreme case of stupidity that will leave viewers groaning and struggling to care. We find out that when dawn comes, all the zombies die, and viewers are left wondering, what happens when the night comes? Except at this point, it’s a stretch to think anyone left in the audience will care, and if a handful still do, the lead male character makes them all cringe when he looks to the child who just lost his whole family and assures him his wife makes great pancakes.
Your mother and father and brother are all dead. Pancakes? Lots of strawberry syrup, I’m supposing. 
In summation:
This movie was bad, terribad, but you know what? I didn’t turn it off. I’d say if you enjoy bad movies and go into this expecting it to be bad, it almost reaches that Rocky Horror level of fun that could become an interesting night with friends. It has a lot of Mystery Science Theater appeal, and believe it or not, not a lot of bad movies can say that. Some are just bad in a boring sense, but this one had some shining moments of stupidity that will stick with you for a long time. It also had some compelling scenes that could maybe inspire something better down the line. As a writer, it’s a great film to watch, because the sins you see the film commit in two hours are the same sins many genre novels commit over three hundred pages, but when you are in the moment of writing it (as I assume the makers of this film might tell you) it’s sometimes hard to see unless you are aware of how bad it is and how your audience will react to it.

Since/cents/scents/sense when?

The boy may be in college, but I can’t seem to turn off the internal Mommy editor. At least he has a good sense of humor about it.
Damien GravesIs it alright if I take a nap?
I’m not feeling well
Shannon GravesSure, honey.
Damien Graves
Alright
Thank you.
Shannon GravesAll right*
Alright is not a word.
Damien GravesSense when?
WTF since*
Shannon GravesSince*
Damien GravesOh.
Goddangit
Okay.
Shannon GravesSince is a time based indicator. As in “I haven’t talked to her since last week.”
Damien GravesYeah. I know. I’m stupid-ed
Shannon GravesSense is like "I have a sense that something bad is going to happen."
Damien GravesO.O
Shannon Gravesor "Sight is one of the five senses."
Damien Graveslol
Shannon Graves
Cents is a measure of money, usually in the form of coinage. As in "I have five cents."
Damien Graves
Goodnight dictonary.com
love you
and your ability to check my homonyms
Shannon GravesScents is something that triggers your olfactory senses, such as "The scent of the cookies and bread baking in the kitchen made me want to chew off my arm."Am done now.
Damien GravesGood night Sheldon!
Lolololol
That made my day.

Published Doesn���t Always Make Perfect

It���s a painful truth that nearly all published novels could still use a little work. It has been said that a book is never done, but due, and anyone who has been met with deadlines knows this to be a fact. An author or editor can always read back over their work and find something to fix, something to expand on, or something to perfect. An editor can always find a place for another comma. At some point, regardless of what shape the novel is in, it will go to print, and then if you are lucky, you���ll have a whole audience of people more than happy to point out where those missing commas go, what needed expanding, perfecting, and fixing. That doesn���t mean you shouldn���t take pride in the quality of work you send to print, or that you shouldn���t learn from your mistakes. In fact, one positive to backing away from a book once the deadline rolls in is that the distance can give you a better perspective to analyze what you have done and how you can do it better.Missing quotation marks, missing commas, extra commas, and small grammar flubs are often overlooked or simply forgiven by readers, many assuming they were a printing or editing error. Passive writing, echoes and repeats, misused words, and consistency errors, however, tend to be viewed as content errors and placed solely on the shoulders of the author. One trip through the Amazon reviews section reveals just how harsh readers can be about these things, and even five-star reviews lauding content can���t always win back potential readers if you have enough grammar Nazis and error watchdogs slinging low-rated reviews your way.It���s not enough to just sigh and say, well, my editor should have caught that mistake, should have pointed it out, because at the end of the day the only one hurting for the error is the author���the editor has likely already earned their end for the work and moved on to something else. The sad part is, if you do even a modicum of research and education into the craft of writing before you start, you���ll find a legion of writers before you have stumbled over these errors and weak writing devices and have shared them with the world. That���s not to say you can���t do it your way, even if your way is 100% against what the bulk of writing advice tells you. It just means if you do it, you have to wow with it. If it doesn���t make your reader pause for an instant and think, whoa, that���s new, then all you are doing is repeating the past mistakes.
How���s the weather?Elmore Leonard, along with a score of other experts on the subject, says that beginning a novel with the weather is a bad idea because readers don���t connect with scenery; they connect with characters. Even once a story is well on its way, if you have paragraphs of description of scenery or weather, you risk your readers skimming. Opening with the weather is the literary equivalent of small talk���nice weather we���re having, isn���t it? It���s the throat-clearing, getting-to-know-you sort of filler that even in real life we try to avoid.Have a look at Liz Carlyle���s Never Romance a Rake:The West Indian sun beat down on the still and verdant fields, searing all which lay beneath. Galleried white plantation houses shimmered in the heat, dotting the lush landscape like perfect, lucent pearls. Inside the fine homes, their broad corridors were steeped in shadow, and window louvers lay wide to catch the meager breeze, whilst slave children worked the fans which fluttered from lofty ceilings like massive raptors��� wings. (Ch. 1, para. 1)You���ll notice first that this opening passage is indeed about the weather and the scenery. What���s more, the author doesn���t bother to at least filter these details through the senses of her point-of-view character. If this information isn���t important to the character, why would the author assume it would be important to the reader? Modern convention leans toward a much deeper perspective than was expected even just a decade or so ago, and a narrative clearly flavored with the POV character���s voice is preferred. Readers have come to accept that if a detail is mentioned, then the detail is noticed by and filtered through the point-of-view character. Liz goes on for three paragraphs before she even introduces her characters, and when she does, it���s from a very distant POV.Compare the above excerpt to the one below by Liz Jensen:That summer, the summer all the rules began to change, June seemed to last for a thousand years. The temperatures were merciless: thirty-eight, thirty-nine, then forty in the shade. It was heat to die in, to go nuts in, or to spawn. Old folk collapsed, dogs were cooked alive in cars, lovers couldn���t keep their hands off each other. The sky pressed down like a furnace lid, shrinking the subsoil, cracking concrete, killing shrubs from the roots up��� (Ch. 1, para. 1)This excerpt too begins with the weather and setting details, but it���s hard to miss the voice of the character in the words. It has personality, voice, and the details are weighed through the character���s senses���in short, you know the character a little better just by reading it. Solid characterization is built through showing how your character sees the world around her, and in this excerpt, while a less-developed character might just say, ���June was hot,��� Jensen tells us what hot means to the character. It���s not enough to just tell the reader what something looked like or what the weather is like. In order to successfully break the ���Don���t start with weather��� rule, you have to show the reader how the character processes these details.
More than a mouthful.It���s a good idea to always read your work out loud. It���s an even better idea to have someone else read it to you. I realize the latter isn���t always an option, but what we put on the page isn���t necessarily as clear and easily digestible to others as it should be. Often these bits will slip past editors as well, especially if you get an editor more concerned with grammatical correctness than readability. Meg Cabot���s Jinx, being published by a respectable traditional publisher, likely had a whole series of edits from content, to line, to proofing. Still many sentences are unreadable, especially out loud. Take the first sentence of chapter three, for example: ���Then one of the strangers, a girl whose jet-black hair matched the color of her minidress and high-heeled boots, came swaggering out of the gazebo and stood with one hand on a narrow, jutting hip while she eyed me suspiciously through heavily made-up eyes��� (Ch. 3, para. 1).This is a painfully long sentence fattened up so much by adjectives and adverbs that by the time the reader gets to the end of it, they may have to back up and read it again just to swallow the full image. Reading it out loud, as it is written, would require inserting an audible period that the author hasn���t provided. If the author had read her work aloud, she probably would have picked up on this and been able to correct it.Without changing the wording overmuch, the most effective fix would be to break the sentence up into two or three smaller sentences. And just for the sake of avoiding echoes (audible repeats), I would also suggest a slight change in wording for the last section of the sentence to do away with the eyed/eyes repeat: ���Then one of the strangers came swaggering out of the gazebo, a hand on her narrow, jutting hip. Her jet-black hair matched the color of her minidress and high-heeled boots. She gauged me suspiciously through heavily made-up eyes.���
Don���t tell me how to feel.One of the worst things an author can do is violate the reader by trying to ham-fistedly shove thoughts and feelings into their head. Trying to force a sense of urgency by saying something is urgent, or trying to create a feeling of humor by making all your characters laugh and say how funny something is, is the literary equivalent of bad touching your reader. Part of what allows a reader to connect to a story or a character is the feeling that they're discovering something new, that they're smart enough to pick up on clues that allow them to possibly know that character better than anyone else reading it. It���s the same principle as when someone you know casually shares a deep and intimate secret with you; it���s human nature to feel bonded over that. You want your reader to bond with your words, so you can���t use them as a bludgeon to get the effect you are looking for. Think of it like trying to convince your husband you need a new washing machine. If you just say outright that you need a new machine, you may get groans and sighs and resistance. Send him to work a few days with stained and shrunken shirts, and you can expect the new machine to be on order most ricky-tick.Consider Critical Impact by Linda Hall. At the beginning of the book there is an explosion, and the hero sees the heroine crushed under debris. His response: ���He ran toward the building because he had seen a woman fall. He needed to get to her!��� (Ch. 1, para. 17). With the clever exclamation point there, the reader knows they are supposed to be excited; they are supposed to feel that sense of panic and urgency. What I felt when reading it was, ���Really, Captain Obvious? You think so? Maybe we should just let her simmer a bit.��� Hall makes the mistake of trying to shake us into feeling the character���s concern. A more subtle and effective way might have been to simply say: ���The weight of the rubble would crush her. If she wasn���t dead already, she would be soon.���The benefits of not forcing the reader���s reaction to the information are multiple. The first is that if they are allowed to come to the conclusion that ���he needs to get to her��� on their own, they will be more invested in him doing so. The second is when you cut to the buried heroine in the next scene, we don���t know if he���s coming to save her or not. Yes, we hope he is, but since the author didn���t tell us that, we���re just as unsure how long the heroine has to live as she is, and this creates real tension, not the forced tension of before. Lastly, exclamation points in narrative are usually stupid, and this gets rid of one. Anything you can do to eliminate the screamy, attention seeking punctuation is a good thing.Forced urgency can be deadly to your prose, but forced laughter is like being stuck in a room with your obnoxious brother-in-law who passes gas and slings one-liner duds, but thinks he���s hilarious. Having your characters laugh at jokes and silliness in your work can often come off like the author just amusing themselves and waiting for the rimshot (badum-CHING) at every punch line. If something is funny, you don���t have to cue the reader to laugh; they will.For that matter, certain forms of humor don���t really translate well to fiction, and using them can be more tiresome to your readers than funny. Toilet humor and slapstick, or physical humor, have a harder time coming across as intended because these things work primarily as sight gags. It���s hysterical to see your favorite actress stumbling around and digging through trash for a lost cell phone, but reading about it just doesn���t have the same effect. In I���ve Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella, the author employed a number of traditional sight gags and slapstick and as a result the writing had a tendency to come off tedious and a little melodramatic. In my experience, you can���t just show the character running around like a chicken with her head sawed off to get the laugh; you have to frame it with emotional support���it���s the character���s response to these things happening to them and what they���re doing that has the greater chance to get a laugh.None of the discussions in this essay have been to say you should never do these things. There are no hard, fast rules of what a writer can and cannot do in their work. However, it���s hard to argue with overwhelming evidence and public opinion that, in general, these techniques don���t work. Don���t start with the weather. Don���t tell me, your reader, what to think or how to feel. Don���t let your writing outrun the reader���s ability to actually speak your lines. The breaking of these rules must be attempted experimentally, if at all, and with the understanding that it can really test your reader���s patience. If you can find a creative way to make them work, by all means, do so, but the aim should always be to connect with the reader and to communicate clearly, first and foremost.
Works CitedCabot, Meg. Jinx.New York: HarperCollins, 2007. E-book.Carlyle, Liz. Never Romance a Rake. New York: Pocket Books, 2008. E-book.Hall, Linda. Critical Impact. New York: Steeple Hill, 2010. E-book.Jensen, Liz. The Rapture. New York: Doubleday, 2009. E-book.Kinsella, Sophie. I���ve Got Your Number. New York: The Dial Press, 2012. E-book.

Published Doesn’t Always Make Perfect

It’s a painful truth that nearly all published novels could still use a little work. It has been said that a book is never done, but due, and anyone who has been met with deadlines knows this to be a fact. An author or editor can always read back over their work and find something to fix, something to expand on, or something to perfect. An editor can always find a place for another comma. At some point, regardless of what shape the novel is in, it will go to print, and then if you are lucky, you’ll have a whole audience of people more than happy to point out where those missing commas go, what needed expanding, perfecting, and fixing. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take pride in the quality of work you send to print, or that you shouldn’t learn from your mistakes. In fact, one positive to backing away from a book once the deadline rolls in is that the distance can give you a better perspective to analyze what you have done and how you can do it better.Missing quotation marks, missing commas, extra commas, and small grammar flubs are often overlooked or simply forgiven by readers, many assuming they were a printing or editing error. Passive writing, echoes and repeats, misused words, and consistency errors, however, tend to be viewed as content errors and placed solely on the shoulders of the author. One trip through the Amazon reviews section reveals just how harsh readers can be about these things, and even five-star reviews lauding content can’t always win back potential readers if you have enough grammar Nazis and error watchdogs slinging low-rated reviews your way.It’s not enough to just sigh and say, well, my editor should have caught that mistake, should have pointed it out, because at the end of the day the only one hurting for the error is the author—the editor has likely already earned their end for the work and moved on to something else. The sad part is, if you do even a modicum of research and education into the craft of writing before you start, you’ll find a legion of writers before you have stumbled over these errors and weak writing devices and have shared them with the world. That’s not to say you can’t do it your way, even if your way is 100% against what the bulk of writing advice tells you. It just means if you do it, you have to wow with it. If it doesn’t make your reader pause for an instant and think, whoa, that’s new, then all you are doing is repeating the past mistakes.
How’s the weather?Elmore Leonard, along with a score of other experts on the subject, says that beginning a novel with the weather is a bad idea because readers don’t connect with scenery; they connect with characters. Even once a story is well on its way, if you have paragraphs of description of scenery or weather, you risk your readers skimming. Opening with the weather is the literary equivalent of small talk—nice weather we’re having, isn’t it? It’s the throat-clearing, getting-to-know-you sort of filler that even in real life we try to avoid.Have a look at Liz Carlyle’s Never Romance a Rake:The West Indian sun beat down on the still and verdant fields, searing all which lay beneath. Galleried white plantation houses shimmered in the heat, dotting the lush landscape like perfect, lucent pearls. Inside the fine homes, their broad corridors were steeped in shadow, and window louvers lay wide to catch the meager breeze, whilst slave children worked the fans which fluttered from lofty ceilings like massive raptors’ wings. (Ch. 1, para. 1)You’ll notice first that this opening passage is indeed about the weather and the scenery. What’s more, the author doesn’t bother to at least filter these details through the senses of her point-of-view character. If this information isn’t important to the character, why would the author assume it would be important to the reader? Modern convention leans toward a much deeper perspective than was expected even just a decade or so ago, and a narrative clearly flavored with the POV character’s voice is preferred. Readers have come to accept that if a detail is mentioned, then the detail is noticed by and filtered through the point-of-view character. Liz goes on for three paragraphs before she even introduces her characters, and when she does, it’s from a very distant POV.Compare the above excerpt to the one below by Liz Jensen:That summer, the summer all the rules began to change, June seemed to last for a thousand years. The temperatures were merciless: thirty-eight, thirty-nine, then forty in the shade. It was heat to die in, to go nuts in, or to spawn. Old folk collapsed, dogs were cooked alive in cars, lovers couldn’t keep their hands off each other. The sky pressed down like a furnace lid, shrinking the subsoil, cracking concrete, killing shrubs from the roots up… (Ch. 1, para. 1)This excerpt too begins with the weather and setting details, but it’s hard to miss the voice of the character in the words. It has personality, voice, and the details are weighed through the character’s senses—in short, you know the character a little better just by reading it. Solid characterization is built through showing how your character sees the world around her, and in this excerpt, while a less-developed character might just say, “June was hot,” Jensen tells us what hot means to the character. It’s not enough to just tell the reader what something looked like or what the weather is like. In order to successfully break the “Don’t start with weather” rule, you have to show the reader how the character processes these details.
More than a mouthful.It’s a good idea to always read your work out loud. It’s an even better idea to have someone else read it to you. I realize the latter isn’t always an option, but what we put on the page isn’t necessarily as clear and easily digestible to others as it should be. Often these bits will slip past editors as well, especially if you get an editor more concerned with grammatical correctness than readability. Meg Cabot’s Jinx, being published by a respectable traditional publisher, likely had a whole series of edits from content, to line, to proofing. Still many sentences are unreadable, especially out loud. Take the first sentence of chapter three, for example: “Then one of the strangers, a girl whose jet-black hair matched the color of her minidress and high-heeled boots, came swaggering out of the gazebo and stood with one hand on a narrow, jutting hip while she eyed me suspiciously through heavily made-up eyes” (Ch. 3, para. 1).This is a painfully long sentence fattened up so much by adjectives and adverbs that by the time the reader gets to the end of it, they may have to back up and read it again just to swallow the full image. Reading it out loud, as it is written, would require inserting an audible period that the author hasn’t provided. If the author had read her work aloud, she probably would have picked up on this and been able to correct it.Without changing the wording overmuch, the most effective fix would be to break the sentence up into two or three smaller sentences. And just for the sake of avoiding echoes (audible repeats), I would also suggest a slight change in wording for the last section of the sentence to do away with the eyed/eyes repeat: “Then one of the strangers came swaggering out of the gazebo, a hand on her narrow, jutting hip. Her jet-black hair matched the color of her minidress and high-heeled boots. She gauged me suspiciously through heavily made-up eyes.”
Don’t tell me how to feel.One of the worst things an author can do is violate the reader by trying to ham-fistedly shove thoughts and feelings into their head. Trying to force a sense of urgency by saying something is urgent, or trying to create a feeling of humor by making all your characters laugh and say how funny something is, is the literary equivalent of bad touching your reader. Part of what allows a reader to connect to a story or a character is the feeling that they're discovering something new, that they're smart enough to pick up on clues that allow them to possibly know that character better than anyone else reading it. It’s the same principle as when someone you know casually shares a deep and intimate secret with you; it’s human nature to feel bonded over that. You want your reader to bond with your words, so you can’t use them as a bludgeon to get the effect you are looking for. Think of it like trying to convince your husband you need a new washing machine. If you just say outright that you need a new machine, you may get groans and sighs and resistance. Send him to work a few days with stained and shrunken shirts, and you can expect the new machine to be on order most ricky-tick.Consider Critical Impact by Linda Hall. At the beginning of the book there is an explosion, and the hero sees the heroine crushed under debris. His response: “He ran toward the building because he had seen a woman fall. He needed to get to her!” (Ch. 1, para. 17). With the clever exclamation point there, the reader knows they are supposed to be excited; they are supposed to feel that sense of panic and urgency. What I felt when reading it was, “Really, Captain Obvious? You think so? Maybe we should just let her simmer a bit.” Hall makes the mistake of trying to shake us into feeling the character’s concern. A more subtle and effective way might have been to simply say: “The weight of the rubble would crush her. If she wasn’t dead already, she would be soon.”The benefits of not forcing the reader’s reaction to the information are multiple. The first is that if they are allowed to come to the conclusion that “he needs to get to her” on their own, they will be more invested in him doing so. The second is when you cut to the buried heroine in the next scene, we don’t know if he’s coming to save her or not. Yes, we hope he is, but since the author didn’t tell us that, we’re just as unsure how long the heroine has to live as she is, and this creates real tension, not the forced tension of before. Lastly, exclamation points in narrative are usually stupid, and this gets rid of one. Anything you can do to eliminate the screamy, attention seeking punctuation is a good thing.Forced urgency can be deadly to your prose, but forced laughter is like being stuck in a room with your obnoxious brother-in-law who passes gas and slings one-liner duds, but thinks he’s hilarious. Having your characters laugh at jokes and silliness in your work can often come off like the author just amusing themselves and waiting for the rimshot (badum-CHING) at every punch line. If something is funny, you don’t have to cue the reader to laugh; they will.For that matter, certain forms of humor don’t really translate well to fiction, and using them can be more tiresome to your readers than funny. Toilet humor and slapstick, or physical humor, have a harder time coming across as intended because these things work primarily as sight gags. It’s hysterical to see your favorite actress stumbling around and digging through trash for a lost cell phone, but reading about it just doesn’t have the same effect. In I’ve Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella, the author employed a number of traditional sight gags and slapstick and as a result the writing had a tendency to come off tedious and a little melodramatic. In my experience, you can’t just show the character running around like a chicken with her head sawed off to get the laugh; you have to frame it with emotional support—it’s the character’s response to these things happening to them and what they’re doing that has the greater chance to get a laugh.None of the discussions in this essay have been to say you should never do these things. There are no hard, fast rules of what a writer can and cannot do in their work. However, it’s hard to argue with overwhelming evidence and public opinion that, in general, these techniques don’t work. Don’t start with the weather. Don’t tell me, your reader, what to think or how to feel. Don’t let your writing outrun the reader’s ability to actually speak your lines. The breaking of these rules must be attempted experimentally, if at all, and with the understanding that it can really test your reader’s patience. If you can find a creative way to make them work, by all means, do so, but the aim should always be to connect with the reader and to communicate clearly, first and foremost.
Works CitedCabot, Meg. Jinx.New York: HarperCollins, 2007. E-book.Carlyle, Liz. Never Romance a Rake. New York: Pocket Books, 2008. E-book.Hall, Linda. Critical Impact. New York: Steeple Hill, 2010. E-book.Jensen, Liz. The Rapture. New York: Doubleday, 2009. E-book.Kinsella, Sophie. I’ve Got Your Number. New York: The Dial Press, 2012. E-book.

The Soundtrack

I have been writing since the invention of dirt, and one thing has always remained the same for me -- the need for soundtracks. I write to, plot to, and revise to a soundtrack that fits my characters and sometimes single scenes. My poor husband has often lamented that I subject him to Abu Ghraib style torture by playing the same song for hours on repeat, but if a song works for the vibe, I stick with it.
So far Arles and Sam (the characters in my thesis) have my favorite soundtrack to date:
(OMG can you believe they remade this SONG? OMG)



Lots of embedded you-tube videos after the cut. Please give time to load and do not click "read more" if resource heavy pages tend to slow down your connection.




 


 



  
 


And then, of course, I have my Carnal Company people and Alex to consider...










 
 
 
 

Love it when plotholes fill themselves. :3

So I am working on getting my thesis novel good and tight before I send in my first massive submission to my mentor, Barbara Miller.  There were some saggy bits, some repetitions in terms of scene purpose...and not nearly enough Alex. :)
I am happy to say I have been diligently fixing that all day and it's looking good. And Alexy...lots more Alex. :3

 EXCERPT: Takes place in an undisclosed near future. Fossil Fuel sales are illegal. A person's entire financial and personal history is kept on a SIN-card. ____________________________________

“You don’t look like you’re thirty.” The clerk behind the counter eyed Alex with a suspicion he was long accustomed to.
“If I was going to fake my credentials, don’t you think I would at least have a decent picture in the file?” Alex snatched his SIN-card from the clerk's hand and stuffed it into his pants pocket. “What do you care anyway? You’re selling gasoline out back.” 
“Yeah, and your boyfriend’s card ran clean for alcohol and tobacco purchase. You, kid, are going to send up red flags all over when the transaction completes.” He pulled the case of beer out of Alex’s reach.
“He’s…not my boyfriend, he’s my father.” Alex groaned and slapped his hand down on the case of beer, tugging it toward him. 
“Oh really.” The clerk tugged it back. “Well your daddy’s card says he’s thirty five. How exactly does that work?” 
Every time. Every damned time Jesse sent him in to buy the beer this happened. Why was it so easy to believe that Zakai could be thirty when he was as old as dust, but Alex couldn’t pull it off no matter how many times his birthday rolled around? 
“Fine, he’s my boyfriend. You caught me. Give me the beer before I have my boyfriend kick your ass.”

My guts are ugly :(

Working on my horror story for class, which has been kinda hard for me to write given how much of myself I am putting into it. Below is a conversation between me and my writing partner/editor extraordinaire.


Serena: I still reserve the right to stop if it makes me puke
Me: gonna make me cry
Serena: LOL
Serena: it's SUPPOSED to be sick
Serena: I am just soooooo not your intended audience
Me: am baring my guts here! LOL
Serena: yes I know!
Me: and my guts are gonna make you puke
Serena: goes to show you that I would not have survived your childhood
Me: I barely did LOL
Me: I'd never puke on your guts
Serena: my guts are much nicer and less traumatized than yours