Happy New Year!

Wishing you a healthy and happy New Year! May 2010 be a magical year for you and your family!


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All Consuming

At one of the Romance Writer of America (RWA) conferences, I heard a luncheon speaker say something along the lines of most people want to win the lottery and quit their jobs to have fun, but writers want to win the lottery so they can quit their jobs and have more time to write. I'm afraid that while the idea stuck with me, the speaker and which conference she said that at aren't in my memory banks. I don't even have her exact words memorized and I wish I did. I wish I had the speech on recording so that I could listen to that part again and attribute it, but I believe this was before the whole conference CDs--or at least it was before I started buying the whole conference CDs.

Anyway, the idea struck me because it's so true. At least for me--I can't speak for anyone else. All I've ever wanted to do since I was in 8th grade was tell my stories. If I won enough money to quit the Evil Day Job (EDJ), I'd do it in a heartbeat so that I could spend more time writing. I have so many stories and so little time! (And more keep coming all the time.)

When I was in college and worked part time, I used to tell people my dream was to not work. The women in my office (all older) were appalled. You don't want to work? But you'd be so bored. And I'm thinking to myself bored? How would I ever be bored?

Bored is sitting at a desk, doing a job that doesn't require any imagination or thought. Bored is getting up at the same time every day, leaving the house at the same time, working the same hours every day, leaving the office at the same time every day, getting home at the same time, going to bed around the same time, and then getting up the next morning to do it all again. Now that's boring.

And that's what I'm doing, going to my boring EDJ when I'd rather be home writing. When I write, I'm in different worlds and nothing is routine. Right now I'm writing about a demon slayer found guilty of murder...by the demons. :-) This will be coming out from Nocturne Bites in the first quarter of 2010. Before this, I was working on a story about a hero who is a deckhand on a charter fishing boat, and before that I was writing about a magical troubleshooter with PTSD. There's never time to be bored.

So Dear Publisher's Clearing House. I know I haven't entered your contest. I also don't buy lottery tickets, but would you please show up at my house on Super Bowl Sunday with the big check? I really need to write full time and not be bored senseless at my EDJ. Thank you.

Review: The Cat From Outer Space

I mentioned before Thanksgiving that my family watches movies on the holidays and that I was going with Disney classics since those are about the only films we can all watch together. I like action and adventure and my parents don't. On Thanksgiving, we watched The Boatniks and that was a huge hit, so I decided to try The Cat From Outer Space, another live-action Disney movie. It's from 1978 and stars Ken Berry as Frank and Sandy Duncan as Liz.

Warning, there will be spoilers!

The basic premise is that a spaceship lands on Earth in need of repairs and the pilot is a cat who can communicate telepathically and has a collar that allows his thoughts to transform into actions. The military shows up and takes the spaceship away, and the general goes to a think tank full of scientists to figure out how the ship is powered. The cat hears Frank's theory, and while everyone else laughs him off, our feline ET knows that Frank is the one to help him repair his ship and go home.

Not only does Frank have to outwit the military, but the think tank is employing a bean counter who is secretly working for a megalomaniac named Olympus. If you just scratched you head and went, huh, you're not alone. This plot line served no real purpose in the movie.

Anyway, the cat needs about $120,000 in gold to replace a filament on his ship and Frank enlists the help of another scientist to help them gamble their way to the money. They get the gold and the army shows up to arrest them. The cat freezes them, they escape and head to the army base so our ET can leave. Olympus kidnaps Liz (Sandy Duncan), Frank's love interest and fellow scientist, and the friend who helped him make bets.

Instead of leaving, ET kitty decides to stay and rescue Liz (friend was released to let Frank know Liz was held hostage) even though it means he's stuck on Earth forever because he'll miss the rendezvous with the mother ship.

This movie was bad. Maybe if you're a little kid you can enjoy it, but I found this ridiculous and disjointed. Olympus wasn't necessary, but his sole role appears to have been to kidnap Liz. Liz was unnecessary because she kept showing up, interrupting Frank trying to help the cat return to outer space.

The military in this movie had the worst security ever. And our feline hero, who might miss his chance to go home if he messes up, is constantly losing focus whenever Liz's cat is in the room.

It was an excruciatingly long 1:45. In fact, it felt much, much longer than that. What really put the topper on bad for me, though, is the dramatic "climax." I put it in quotes for a reason.

Olympus takes off in his helicopter with his two henchmen, his spy, Liz, and her cat. Frank and our ET feline take off in a beat up old junker plane that the cat is keeping in the air by thought alone. Super spy (read sarcasm here) in the helicopter tries to shoot a flare at the plane and instead disables the helicopter. The boss and the two henchmen have parachutes and bail out--super spy grabs Olympus' straps and free falls with him. That leaves Liz and her cat in the disabled helicopter.

The ET cat maneuvers the plane close to the helicopter and Frank rescues the cat. Now he tells Liz to take his hand and he'll help her get on the plane. And Liz won't do it. She's dinking around forever. I finally yelled at the TV set, "Either let Frank help your or go back in the helicopter and land the damn thing!" As she continues dithering, I added, "You're too stupid to live."

And I think that summed up the entire movie for me--stupid. I love Disney pictures. Normally. I can even tolerate a great deal of cheese, but this was way too much for me. My recommendation--give The Cat From Outer Space a pass.

My rating: 1.5 stars (It got bonus points because the general was Colonel Potter from MASH and the friend of Frank's who gambled was Colonel Blake from MASH.)

Merry Christmas

Wishing everyone a safe and wondrous holiday! Merry Christmas to those who celebrate!


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Old Friends

Over the weekend, I felt a driving urge to read In the Darkest Night, my April 2010 book, and revisit Kel and his heroine. I don't know why since since I've had the Advanced Reading Copies (ARCs) of this book for a couple of weeks now, but I couldn't resist. So Friday night while I was doing laundry, I went through and read all my favorite parts.

And then I had an after-the-book moment come in. I've mentioned this before on the blog, but I almost always get scenes that happen after each of my stories is finished. I wish I'd written these down, but I never have and now I can only remember some of them in a vague way. This makes me sad.

My Light Warrior stories have had a lot of after the book moments pop into my head, probably because there are four of them all set in the same world, but most of it has either been big series overview stuff that probably no one except me would be interested in or X-Rated. Or if not that explicit, at least private and not something I felt like my characters wanted me to write down and share with the world.

But the scene I received this weekend is one I could write--and I still can't post it because Kel's story isn't out yet and it all takes place about eight months after the epilogue of his story.

Honestly, though, I probably wouldn't be writing it down anyway even if I did know I could share it. I'm on deadline right now for a short story and my time and attention needs to be focused that direction. When I turn this story in, I have three ideas for series that I need to work on and one of them has kept me obsessed for more than 2 weeks now. I'm dying to get back to it and figure out how I'm going to tell these stories.

That's the problem for me--time. I have so many stories in my head, so many characters vying for attention, that I had to stop and go back to write a scene with characters that already have their happy ending. And yet in a few years when this scene I got has faded from my memory, I'm going to be really sad that I didn't take the time to write it down. It's a constant struggle, or so it seems, between the future, the present, and the past. It doesn't help either that I'm a slow writer, especially at the start of a book. Or that my last project, the one my agent has now, required cutting and rewriting the first three chapters more times than I have ever had to cut and rewrite before. That's not even counting the minor changes.

It's too bad--in a way--that I can't hook my brain up to the computer and dump these scenes out without needing to take the time to work it all out through my fingers on the keyboard. I'm betting that someday we do, but right now, that doesn't help me.

After the Worldbuilding

With the bulk of my world building done for two different projects, I'm ready to think about the next phase. Series arc and each individual story within the arc.

These are tied together for me because each individual story needs to fit into the overarching plot. I might only know two paragraphs worth of the final story in a trilogy, but it's enough to give an editor an idea where the story is going and I always know what the goal of each book is. I liken it to a framework of a house--you have to put up the two by fours before you can hang the sheetrock. As someone who leans more to the seat of the pants side of writing, this is a challenge for me.

In the trilogy being shopped around now, I knew my first hero and heroine and I had a fair idea of what their story was. This started out as a stand-alone idea, but when the hero's friends made it clear they had stories, too, it morphed into a trilogy. I knew all three men were impacted by the same incident and that their inner conflicts revolved around what had happened, but it wasn't enough to hang a series arc on. It required more thought.

It only took a few seconds to know I wanted to use the paranormal element from the first book in all three, but it seemed unbelievable unless there was some reason all three men would experience it. That took more thought, but once I had it, I had the series arc and then I knew what needed to be accomplished in each book for the series. I still needed a couple of paragraphs to blurb each book.

That's where my characters come in. Heroes two and three made an appearance in book one, the story on which I was writing chapters. I got their personalities loud and clear. It was the heroines I needed. Heroine 2 showed up and the basic conflict between the h/h unfolded and I tied that in with the series goal.

Book three was tougher. I didn't have a heroine talking to me here, so I used the series goal to figure out who she needed to be. And a funny thing happened--everything began to fit. I had her last name wrong, but her first name and job was right. That amazed me. And armed with this information, I put together a series overview and started working on the rest of the proposal.

Now, I have to do this again for two more series ideas. I'm closer on number one, but then this is an idea I had more than two years ago, so it's had some time to percolate even if I wasn't actively thinking about it. I still have logistical things to work out and lots of them, but at least I have some ideas.

Idea two doesn't have this much yet. Things might become clearer after I do more research--this is a new idea that only came to me a couple of weeks ago. At least I'm hoping ideas gel once I know more. It's frustrating, though, because I like having the framework and it's tough trying to envision the final house without it in place. And I really want to be able to close my eyes and see the finished structure. With the first idea, I do have that cohesion, enough that I can spend time working out each individual story and I want this with idea two. Now. :-)

Kindle Revisited

I've blogged a couple of times before about my Kindle, including reviewing how much I liked it. Now, nine months into my ownership, I've discovered a few drawbacks I hadn't considered or discovered back then. I still love my Kindle and it's awesome to be able to take more than 150 books everywhere I want, but there are a couple of issues.

The big one is something I discovered just in the last week or so. I'm reading a research book at the moment and fervently wishing I'd bought hard copy instead of the ebook version. The huge reason is this book has a lot of charts and graphs. These graphics were shrunk down to fit on the Kindle screen, but there is no way I know of to enlarge them. Making the font bigger makes the caption beneath the graphic larger, but that's it. The graph/chart remains exactly the same size. Which basically means I have a Kindle screen filled with shades of gray and fonts so tiny that I don't think Steve Austin and his bionic eye could read what it says.

Most of what I've been reading on the Kindle has been fiction, and while I have read a few research books, none have had the extensive graphics that this one has. It's been an eye-opener for me.

My second issue is my car. If this research book I'm reading right now was a paper copy, I would have hauled it out to my car this morning, dumped it on the passenger seat, and left it there all day. Then, after the Evil Day Job was over, I could sit in the parking lot, waiting for my engine to warm up, and read. I can't do this with my Kindle.

Reason number one--the temperature. The high yesterday was 5 degrees and it felt colder than that. I'm afraid that the cold would damage the reader if I left it sitting in my vehicle all day. I'd have the same concern if it was 95 degrees, but in the summer, I don't have to wait for my car to warm up. And no, I don't want to haul it in my tote bag up to the office. I already have that thing filled with heavy stuff, including my netbook to write on during lunch hour.

Reason number two--I'd be worried that someone would break in and steal the Kindle. My office isn't in a bad area, but you just never know. Why offer temptation? With a paper copy of this book, I could leave it on the seat and not worry about anyone wanting it that bad. And even if someone did, the book would cost maybe $20 to replace. The Kindle is still at $250.

I do like the idea of having multiple research books with me, but in this case, it's just not working out for me really well. I still love my Kindle, but if I had it to do over, I'd definitely buy this book in paper.

Christmas As It Never Was?

I've been listening to Christmas music the past couple of weeks. I prefer the classics sung by the classic artists--you know like Bing Crosby, Andy Williams, Dean Martin, Doris Day, etc--but there are a few newer performers, too. Josh Groban's O Holy Night is awesome and I downloaded Darius Rucker's Candy Cane Christmas when iTunes had it available for free and it's totally wonderful. It's a new song, but done with the heart and soul of the old classics.

The thing that I find interesting is what this music evokes in me. I picture a simpler time, a time when parents weren't frenzied trying to make the holiday "perfect" and full of presents for their kids. A time when kids were satisfied with a few gifts and didn't expect the kind of frenzied consumerism we see today. I see a time when Christmas was about family and friends and not about buying and decorating.

Maybe this never existed. (After all, wasn't the Cabbage Patch madness in the 80s?) Maybe Christmas has always been prostituted by retailers in order to turn a profit. But I remember a time when holiday decorations weren't put out before Halloween. And when I was a kid, the expectations for gifts were a lot fewer and a lot less expensive. At least that's the way I remember it now. :-)

Maybe this ideal I envision is nothing but a fantasy of how a lot of people wished things were. The thing about this fantasy, though, is that while I can implement it to a degree in my life, I can't do anything about anyone else and it's their frenzy that wears me out. Traffic on the freeway near the Mall of America is horrendous and leaves me stressed. I can't imagine what the atmosphere is like inside the mall. It's all about consumerism and we've lost the holiday and the joy that we should be seeking rather than presents, presents, and more presents.

Or maybe I'm the only one who feels this way.

I used to love Christmas, but now I'm finding myself more and more often thinking, Bah, humbug because of what we've turned this holiday into. Of course, your mileage may vary.

Dear Hollywood

I read a news item a few weeks ago that the movie studios want to delay the releases of their new movies to Netflix, Red Box, and other rental outfits because they aren't selling enough new movies to consumers. This is my response.

Dear Hollywood Executives,

The problem with people purchasing movies isn't that we can rent them the day they're released. In my considered opinion, the reason you aren't selling more movies to consumers is that there are so few of them that are worth watching more than once. (And even once can be an iffy thing.) Why would I bother to spend $20 or more for a movie I might watch a single time?

If you would like to sell more DVDs, you need to release movies that consumers want to watch more than once. Movies they love so much they need to own them. You're not doing that right now.

Take me for example. I love movies, I love stories, and I would be happy to own copies of films I loved. In fact, I just did this. I watched the new Star Trek movie last weekend and loved it so much that I bought my own copy the same day I put the Netflix envelope in the mail. But these movies are few and far between.

Let's talk about Pirates of the Caribbean. The first movie was awesome and totally rocked. I bought a copy and watched it many times. I was eagerly looking forward to the second. And then I watched it. To say this was a huge disappointment would be understating it. Everything that was fun and wonderful about the original (with the exception of the very sexy Mr. Johnny Depp and Mr. Orlando Bloom) was missing from the second film. It became all special effects that overwhelmed the characters and should we talk about number three? I found that one the worst of the trio with characterization sacrificed to a boring plot and special effects that were a huge yawner. Why would I want to buy Pirates 2 or 3?

Or how about The Terminator, one of my favorite movies of all time? That one I own and I watch parts of it over and over. Even T2 was good, although it lacked the magic of the first. But I've never watched T3, and while I have T:Salvation in my queue at Netflix, I'm in no rush to see it. Frankly, I just don't care.

That's the problem with most of the movies you are releasing, Hollywood Executives--I don't care. I don't care enough to drive to the movie theater to watch them, and in the last two years, I can count on one hand the number of movies I've seen that I felt driven to own with plenty of fingers left over. And if I hadn't seen them on Netflix and loved them, I wouldn't have bought them because I've been burned too many times by lackluster films that rely on a franchise (Rocky 32) or some tie in (Batman, Transformers) to attract an audience.

Or ooh, how about all the remakes. You're going to remake Ice Castles? Red Dawn? Seriously? These weren't great movies the first time around, do you believe that they'll be better rehashed?

Dear Hollywood Executives, you want to sell more movies? Why don't you make movies that are so awesome that we, the consumer, can't imagine not owning our own copies. Yes, some of this is subjective--there are people who bought Waterworld--but some of it is not. Storytelling is more than special effects and a franchise name. The stories/movies that stay with us are original, well-written, and make us feel something for the characters and their journey. I'm not going to buy a movie just because Johnny Depp is in it or because it's Terminator Millennium. I purchase the movies that grabbed me and entertained me. So yes, I bought the latest Star Trek and the original Terminator among others, but these types of movies are few and far between.

Let your writers loose. Let them be creative. Don't rely on star power or a franchise like Rambo or tie-ins to comic books or toys to carry a film. They might be enough to get someone to watch a movie once, but these things alone are not enough to get most people to actually buy a movie. Yes, I want to see Johnny Depp, but I want to see him in an awesome movie, one without plot holes, one that keeps me entertained for the two hours it's playing, one that I can't imagine not watching a second time. To get that, you need writers. You need writers that aren't writing the same old thing because that's all you're buying and producing.

Please give me something worth buying and I promise you, I will purchase more DVDs.

Short Stories

I'd never written a short story before being asked to contribute to The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance 2. Okay, I did have a short story writing class in college, but a 10-page story is very different from a 25 to 50 page story. Also, I'd written a novella, but again, the word count requirements were hugely different, and writing different lengths of story take different writing muscles. At least IMO.

So I was asked to write a story for Vampire 2 and I said yes. And thought, OMG, how do I tell a story in such a short space? I bought the original Mammoth Vampire Romance book and read a couple of the stories. They seemed to mostly be vignettes rather than full stories and I thought, okay, I can do that.

A funny thing happened, though, as I wrote Blood Feud. First of all, I did end up with a full story. It was short, but it had a beginning, middle, and end. The second thing I learned was that I enjoyed writing short stories. Well, huh. I never would have guessed this. I write long, routinely coming in well over my word count total. When my contracts have minimum word requirements, I can't help but smile. Minimum isn't a problem for me--what's my maximum word count? ;-)

But I discovered short stories have a rhythm of their own and it's one I enjoy dancing to. I knew I wanted to write more and then I had this idea hit me. It was a great for a story, but the problem was it wasn't substantial enough to support 400+ pages. Sure, I could add other stuff to it, but it would dilute the original idea.

It was, however, the perfect type of idea for a short story.

About the same time, my agent and I discussed getting more of my work out there more frequently and Nocturne Bites came up. I put together a proposal for my idea--about 10 pages and a 3-page synopsis--and we sent it off. It sold! So look for another short story set in the same world as Blood Feud from Vampire 2. It will be out probably in the first three months of 2010 and I'm working on coming up with title suggestions. I'm really bad at titles.

World Building Part Deux

I'd been focusing my world building efforts on the heroines and their people, but I realized this morning that I also needed to focus on the bad guys. They're part of a different society and I knew nothing about them beyond some nebulous idea of evil. (In our opinion, of course. The bad guys have a completely different perspective on their actions.)

One of the things that surprised me a little bit was how learning about my villains helped me learn about the good guys. But maybe it shouldn't have because my heroines' jobs exist in large part because of a need to battle these beings.

The other thing that I'm finding interesting about the world building is that I feel like I'm missing something. I can't figure out what it is and I can't think of anything I'm at least not mulling over, but it just feels like there should be more parameters I look at. But then maybe I'm looking at it from a futuristic world building perspective and thinking that this is less intensive than that. I don't know, but it's bothering me because I hear about "elaborate" world building and I don't feel as if I've done that, and yet, I cant see anything that's missing.

I'm going to continue letting this play in the back of my mind, but my focus is shifting to my characters and the stories now. I usually get the handle on my h/h first and I don't have that yet--which might be part of why I feel unanchored. I also need to continue doing research. When I first had this idea come to me, I picked up some books that I thought would help and now I need to read them.

Character names are important and luckily my heroes and heroines almost always tell me who they are and I just move forward. My heroines did that and the first hero shared his name. The other two weren't nearly as forthcoming, but I did some looking and came up with a couple that felt as if they might work. Hero number 2 did, indeed, fit his name. Hero number 3, well, I have his name wrong. He made that clear over this past week. That means more time trying to pin him down and get it right.

I also need to find pictures of hero 2 and hero 3. Character pictures are big part of pre-book for me. And I guess that's where I am. Pre-book. It seems weird since I haven't worked on so many multiple proposals one after the other in a few years and I was just in pre-book.

Review: Star Trek (The Latest Movie)

This weekend I watched the latest Star Trek movie starring Chris Pine as James T. Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Spock. This movie is a prequel to the original television series and was released in May 2009, so I'll try to avoid spoilers.

The movie opens with an attack that didn't make sense to me at first, not until I realized it was a kind of prologue. The movie really gets started when Jim Kirk gets into a fight with some Star Fleet personnel in a bar. Captain Pike stops it and convinces Kirk to join Star Fleet. He does--of course--and we follow his adventures as he meets Uhura, Bones McCoy, Spock, Chekov, Sulu, and Scotty. There's a bad Romulan out there fighting Star Fleet and Kirk finds himself thrust into command through a set of circumstances no one could have foreseen.

I loved this movie! I honestly didn't expect to since I've found most of the Star Trek stuff kind of boring since the film where they rescued the whales. Was that Star Trek #4? But this was totally awesome!

It started off with a bang and never lost momentum anywhere. I found the movie fresh and fun and the portrayals fit, something that surprised me because the characters of Kirk and Spock are so set by Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner. The movie was high energy and fun and it seemed as if the cast was having fun, too.

I seriously only have one nit with the entire movie and that's the time travel aspect that changes everything. I think this was a cheat because the writers didn't want to deal with the parameters they'd been given in the series, but by sending a Romulan back in time who changes things before Kirk is born, now they can do whatever they want with Star Trek without worrying about breaking canon with the series. This does bug me, there's no reason why this film couldn't have honored the pasts/setups done in the series, but whatever.

Everything else about the movie was awesome and I'm going to buy a copy so I can watch it again and again when the mood strikes.

My rating: 5 Stars (And two enthusiastic thumbs up!)

Monty Python Meets Star Trek

I don't usually post videos, but this one is too good not to share. It covers a lot of my geekiness with both Star Trek and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. If you look at related the related videos, you'll see another one that's a mash-up of Star Trek and The A-Team. That one's pretty good, too, but the Python one is my fav.

Building a New World

I've learned a few things in the past couple of weeks about world building. I've done it for futuristic, including a proposal that I put aside and never pursued very hard, and I find this comfortable to do. Maybe because I can look around and extrapolate what I think the future will be. Or at least one possible version of it. The proposal that's sitting on my hard drive had some pretty interesting world events, including a water shortage among other things. That, unfortunately, I can see happening far too easily--but I don't want to talk about the real world or potential future problems.

I've also done world building for my Light Warrior series. But by and large, the Gineal live within human society and their council and magic is merely an extra layer. Their world is somewhat different, but not hugely so because their focus is to blend in and remain unnoticed. Yes, they have a council that rules them and their own particular societal hierarchy, but their world is much more a part of ours than separate from it. This is deliberate, BTW, so if anyone is expecting some hugely elaborate world building, it isn't happening in this series.

Besides it was Ryne who did the world building here. When she first came in, she talked for weeks nonstop about her people and told me nothing about herself until later. I had the basics of the world down before I had just about anything else, including her name or who her hero was.

But now I'm world building a very different society, one that operates on completely different rules and paradigms. Unlike futuristic world building, I can't look at now and project forward in time. In fact, I wasn't even certain what questions I needed to ask, but I had a couple of friends come through with suggestions and I've been thinking about them. What I'm finding is that it's complicated.

I'm still mulling, but yesterday the heroine from book 1 began to explain a few aspects that I hadn't considered, things associated with the job her "people" do. The thing that's interesting to me is that I didn't realize I needed this kind of information until she started sharing it. Why did she have to go into detail, though, on the commute home? It's not like I can write while I'm on the freeway and I don't own a digital voice recorder. I kept talking about getting one, but never quite did it. I hear the iPod Touch has one of those, though. Doesn't that make it a writing-related expense? ;-)

The other interesting thing about all this? I had this idea more than 2 years ago, but I was already committed to working on the proposal for Edge of Dawn. For all this time, the characters have largely been quiet. Mostly distant, even, but now they're awake. Well, at least the first hero/heroine are. I also have a handle on the second and third heroines, but their heroes are still vague. Working on that along with the world.

Back to mulling.