I've seen a developing trend for avian shapeshifters, and I've read a couple of books featuring weredolphins, but reptiles seem to be ignored, or relegated to bad guys. Is that because reptiles are inherently creepy? Too cold-blooded and scaly to be suitable hero material?
Well, screw you guys. I'm going to write a story with a weresnake in it! And blackjack! And hookers! No, wait, not the last two.
- Mood:
curious
1. In a funny way, I feel liberated - Yes, I did the whole "OMG my life is over!" schtick when I first jumped ship, because melodrama is my thing and I need to indulge every now and then. I convinced myself no other agent would ever be interested again. But once I'd thrown my tantrum, yeah, I felt free. Free to write whatever I wanted without thinking "this has to be the one! This has to be the novel that sells!" And as a result, I think, my writing is better.
2. In a not-so-funny way, I feel anxious all the freaking time - I opened up a new email account just to deal with querying. So I know if there's a message in there when I sign in, it's either a request for more or a rejection. My nerves are shredded.
3. There are a lot more agents out there than you think - Seriously. I seem to find someone new to query every day. And it's usually the agents I thought would laugh me out of cyberspace who have requested a partial.
4. People are awesome - Let's face it; my writing is important to me, but it's hardly earth-shattering if I don't sign with a new agent. And yet people are perfectly prepared to listen to me bitch and moan and rant, and still offer support, encouragement, and advice. Thank you,
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chaostheory , preyforhuntress , kazdreamer , andj_rah 5. Sometimes it's all about the journey - This ties into 1. I suppose, as the last couple of years I'd been tearing myself to pieces trying to finish up books and fire them off to my agent, praying this time, this novel would be The One. Now I'm not doing that, I've remembered why I started writing in the first place - I love it and it's fun.
5 (and a half). Sometimes it's all about the journey again - Even if Death for the Born isn't the novel that wins me a new agent, I've learned a hell of a lot from being back on the query-go-round, things I didn't know this time three years ago. How to write a truly kick-ass query letter, how to be organised and sensible about querying, and how to keep up that candyfloss mentality when you get a rejection. So should I be doing this all over again with another novel in a year's time, I'll be well-prepared.*
*But of course, some smart, sophistocated agent will fall in love with my crazy novel any day now. It's inevitable, surely?
- Mood:
mellow
So Death for the Born is doing the rounds at my writers' group, and one of the issues that keeps coming up is wraith physiology. My main character, Yasmin, is a wraith who can take either the form of a human being or mist. And this seems to be a huge sticking point, because everyone wants to know if she has a fully functioning human body when she's in human form. Does she need to eat, sleep, use the toilet, etc? Does she breathe? If she has lungs, a heart, whatever, where do they go when she turns to mist?
And the answer is mostly, I don't actually know. I wrote the first half of this book for Nanowrimo 2007, so at the time it was just a case of "get the words down, sod it if it doesn't make sense!" So I didn't stop to think about whether or not Yasmin had human needs whilst in human form. I know she sleeps (mostly for narrative convenience; a character who's awake 24 hours a day requires a lot more plot than I had at the time). I know she eats human food, but she doesn't need to - it's a comfort thing. (The last chapter reviewed had her in bed eating a bacon sandwich which bothered one of the group who felt it ought to be a vampire sandwich).
Most of the other undead creatures in the book are pretty well set. I know my vampires, my Lich Lords, my ghouls, how they function, what they need to survive, and what can hurt them. Yasmin is a bit different and I hadn't really figured out all the answers by the time I finished the first draft. Having spent hours agonising over whether or not she has kidney stones, I came to the conclusion that I might be overthinking things. I'm not sure. Are these the tiny details on which the whole book will rise or fall? Or are they the tiny details that readers will overlook because they accept that we're dealing with supernatural creatures?
I'm setting the rules in place as I redraft, figuring out how much physical damage she take, what happens to her bacon sandwiches when she turns to mist, and whether a vampire could kill her. I swear though, if I have to spent another writers' group meeting trying to explain why vampire sandwiches are not going to happen, I'm scrapping the whole book. It's bacon all the way.
- Mood:
exhausted - Music:Summoning of the Muse - Dead Can Dance
So, anyway, I'm going to be 25 on Tuesday. I feel this is quite a significant age. I'll no longer be in my early twenties, and I can probably no longer avoid calling myself a woman, as opposed to a girl. I can't say I'm particularly happy about my continued aging, but as the alternative is being dead (or preserving my youth through ghoulish HP Lovecraft-style experiments involving ice and so forth), I suppose I shouldn't be too disappointed at it.
The thing is, 25 seems incredibly grown-up to me, and I am by no means grown-up. I own the She-Ra movie, for God's sake. And I still have My Little Ponies, although Pip bought them for me, so that probably is okay. I remember David turning 25, when I was a whimsical 22, and I remember thinking how sussed he was. I'm so not sussed.
So here are some things I'm going to do to bring myself to that level of sussed-ness I feel a 25-year-old should be at:
Discover my body
Exercise is something I tend to do accidentally, if at all, and I would like this to change. I want to have more energy and less fat on my thighs.
Get confident, stupid!
I'm planning to discuss coming off the antidepressants with my doctor. This time I'd like to stay off them. I accept that my depression is biological and will probably come back, but I want to be a position to tackle it next time. I've been reading some books on self-esteem and anxiety and I think it's probably time I put what I've been reading into practice.
Beat the boss
(Not literally. Although sometimes she deserves it.) I don't want to be at the Institute this time next year. I want a job where I care about what I'm doing, and I earn enough money to enjoy myself when I'm not at work. I took this job for all the wrong reasons and I don't plan to do that again.
Eye of the tiger, baby
I'm going to get what I want, dammit, and what I want is to be a published author. I'm going to try to stop beating myself up about my writing/lack of etc... and just freaking write. Talia Gryphon got published, Sunny got published, I can get published.
- Mood: content
I was going to go all academic on your asses and write a massive essay comparing urban legends to fairy tales in terms of moral messages encoded in apparently fantastical stories, but I got caught up watching Hollyoaks last night (ZOMG, the incest!) so instead I'm going to explain why this particular urban legend is utter tripe. Hey, it's almost Halloween! You can do this at Halloween.
Lets take the basic scary elements of the story: teenagers alone in the dark engaging in illicit sexual behaviour (probably). Okay, I can roll with that. That's the template of slasher flicks the world over. So, next: teenagers hear warning on the radio that a lunatic/mass murderer/serial killer has escaped from a nearby mental home and can be indentified by a hook on his hand.
Now, having worked for the police for a while, I can say in complete confidence that no convicted lunatic/mass murderer/serial killer would be allowed to keep his hook. It would be taken away from him to prevent him using it against himself or others. And as we can assume that the hook is his primary murder weapon, it would be evidence and therefore confiscated from him. I doubt they'd give it back afterwards.
Next: our hooked psycho uses the hook to open the car door, which is why the teens then find the hook later when they've sped away to safety. So, let me ask you this: if you had one fully functioning, normal hand and one hook instead of a hand, which would you use to open a car door with? Keeping in mind that you're probably going to want the hook free for disembowelling?
Yeah, thought so.
In a sense, these details are superfluous to the point of the story, which is don't have sex in the back of your car before you're married (and possibly even then), but it's interesting how these cliche and frankly ridiculous story elements have embedded themselves into our culture. I read somewhere that urban legends are a form of meme, passing down cultural information in an easily absorbed form, which would tie in nicely with my intellectual ramblings about urban legends being a modern form of fairy tale... But I'll save that for later...
- Mood: chipper
Part of the fun of romance novels of any kind is seeing the couple come together, watching them overcome all odds to live happily ever after. The fated to mate idea nullifies that, because you know how the story ends before you even begin reading. That shouldn’t really change the excitement of the journey, and most of the time it doesn’t.
Sometimes, it does. I’m thinking again of the Black Dagger Brotherhood books, and I’m working on pure conjecture because I’ve only read the first one. But the reason I never bothered with the second was because I already know exactly how it will end. And the third, and the fourth and so on. It will end with a rampantly dominant man ensconced happily with his woman. Sure, a few people might have tried to kill one of them, but that’s a minor issue. The important thing is, they fell instantly in lust/love and everything that happened in between was simply confirmation of their destined love.
Contrast that with Hannah from Catherine Cookson’s The Girl (one of my favourite books ever). It’s not a paranormal romance, but it’s still a romance. Our heroine Hannah’s first love affair is with her handsome but insipid half-brother. Although he claims to love her as much as she loves him, he is unwilling to act on his feelings and their relationship never becomes physical. By the time Hannah discovers they’re not blood relations, he’s married someone else and refuses to acknowledge the desire he once felt for Hannah.
Hannah is then forced into marriage with nice-but-dim butcher, Fred. She’s thoroughly miserable, but she endures because she sees no other option. Fred is mostly kind and gentle to her, but she can’t stand him. True love eventually finds Hannah in the form of poacher Ned Riley, who has loved her since she was a child. They begin a furtive, passionate affair, which is soon discovered. There is a happily ever after, but only after Ned has nearly been killed by Fred and Hannah has suffered unimaginable cruelty at the hands of her family.
The Girl takes place over a number of years, giving the relationships time to evolve and grow naturally. You find yourself emotionally attached to the characters, cheering them on, sympathising with them, worrying for them. Every time I re-read the book (and my God, I read it like once a month when I was younger), I experienced the same highs and lows. I really, truly believed in Hannah’s story and I desperately wanted her to find happiness.
But, and this is the difference between The Girl and Jacob, is that happiness was not a guarantee.
So again, thoughts? Does any of this matter?
- Mood:
groggy
NB: This was supposed to be one short post, but it’s turned into an epic rant, so I’m breaking it up. More to come.
- Mood: sleepy
On September 11 2001, just after the second aircraft hit the World Trade Centre, photographer Mark D Phillips took this photo:
It appears to show a demonic face rising from the smoke. The photo is almost certainly genuine, with no apparent doctoring having taken place - it was transmitted within 40 minutes of having been taken. There have been many sad, defining pictures taken of this tragic event, but this one seems to have captured people's imagination more than most.
Personally I find the image to be particularly haunting. 9/11 was a day that reshaped global relationships and politics. It's a day that I will always remember. I know where I was, who I was with and what I was doing when I heard the news and I think this photo captures the feeling we probably all had on that day.
So what do you make of it? Is the image genuine? If so, what does it mean? Or is it just a coincidence, given deeper import by the situation? We live in a culture where Jesus and Mother Theresa regularly make appearances in oil spills - is this any different?
- Mood: pleased
So the challenge about opening lines raised some interesting reponses, both here, over at Blogger (shout out to the Blogger crew!) and on Lisa's post. Now that I've seen what people like in a story opening, and seen some people's story openings, I'm wondering...
... What's your favourite story opening? Which book captured you from the first line and didn't disappoint? And why?
I can't pick out my very favourite, but one of my favourites is this, from Angela Carter's novella, Love:
"One day, Annabel saw the sun and moon in the sky at the same time."
Now, I just love Angela Carter anyway, but I think this is great. We have a protagonist (Annabel). We have a question (Why did she see the sun and moon at the same time?) We have a beautiful visual image and we have (possibly) a time of day. There's a lot packed into that single line and it fits in perfectly with the dreamy, surreal story that follows.
So come on, step up and tell me your favourite opening.
- Mood: cheerful
I remember having to do a writing exercise at university where everyone in the class would write a first line and read it out. We then spent ages discussing what we thought that line meant, what atmosphere it conveyed and what questions it raised for the reader. Whilst there's a lot to be said for starting a story with a metaphorical (or mabye not) explosion, I think it's equally important to get the reader asking questions.
In the spirit of this exercise, I set you the following challenge: Post the first line of your current WIP in the comments section and lets see what questions people ask. I'll go first:
‘I’m thinking of leaving Harris,’ Lizzie said, plucking at a loose thread on her sweater sleeve.
- Mood:
busy
In comparison, Wild is pretty slow but I guess it's a different kind of story. Yes, there will totally be werewolves all over the place, there will be fights and politics and shocking personal revelations, but I think to show how everything that will happen truly affects Lizzie, I have to clearly show the kind of person she is before it all happens. And that's another worry for me - I don't know if Lizzie is a likeable protagonist. I'm pretty sure Scarlett is - she's loyal, compassionate and brave. Lizzie is a selfish woman living in a state of self-denial about her drug habit and I'm not sure people will relate to that. She changes throughout the book, naturally, but at the moment I've got 25k of a woman I personally wouldn't want to hang out with. Not that I don't like her as a character, but if she was a real person, I'd avoid her like ... a bad similie.
My critique partner is reading the first nine chapters and once I've heard her feedback, I'm thinking of taking it to Ricia for her thoughts. *ponders* I should probably attempt to write some kind of synopsis. Never fun, always necessary.
"An anti-hero in fictional works will typically take a leading role, performing acts which might be deemed "heroic" (at least in scale and daring), but by using methods, manners, or intentions that may not be so--they could even be considered underhanded or deceitful.(from Wikipedia)
The word itself is a fairly recent invention, and its primary meaning has changed throughout the years. The 1940 edition of Merriam-Webster New International Dictionary listed the word but did not give a definition. Later sources would call the anti-hero a persona characterized by a lack of "traditional" heroic qualities."
I've noticed a trend in fiction - paranormal romance, urban fantasy, standard romance, wherever - to describe male leads as "anti-heroes." I'm intrigued by the darker side of human nature, so I usually jump in eager to read about these flawed protagonists following their own moral compass and using underhand methods to achieve their goals. What I usually get instead is brooding, exotically handsome stallions who have mistreated every woman they've ever met until they meet the heroine. Once he's got his leg over with her, he's usually cured and all his angst is channelled into giving her multiple orgasms.
I call foul on that! That's not an anti-hero. That's fantasy wish-fulfillment, which is fine, but these hunky alpha males bare no resemblance to the likes of Frank Castle or Venom (my personal anti-hero pin-up.) They're watered-down, socially acceptable versions, in the same way I think a lot of werewolves and vampires have been watered-down. They're a dying breed, my friends.
Of course we can say that such men can be redeemed (by the love of the right woman, natch) through the course of the story and that often that's the whole point of his story-arc. I agree, but the minute such characters are redeemed, they're no longer anti-heroes anyway.
So what's the deal? Why aren't anti-heroes anti-heroes anymore? Is it because we as readers can't accept them as male/romantic leads? Or has our definition of the term changed, as these things are wont to do? Would you be happy reading a book where the male lead was deceitful, cruel or cowardly?
- Mood: contemplative
Take, for example, the vampire. Back in the murky realms of folklore, variations on the vampire ranged from the headless Indian penangalan, which hunted new mothers and their babies, to the Russian pijavka, a shape-shifter who would rip out the throats of hunters on winter nights. In more recent fiction, we’re more likely to find our undead friends desperately seeking their soulmates/lifemates/breedmates/delete as appropriate and angsting over their outfits. Really, when was the last time you read about a vampire actually attacking someone and draining their blood? (And by “someone” I mean “someone other than whoever tried to kill their soulmates/lifemates/breedmates/delete as appropriate.”)
That vampirism should be something to aspire to is … interesting, to say the least.
I mean, seriously: when did anyone hold Elisabeth Bathory up as a role model? That woman had issues. Scary ones.
Look at werewolves. I feel a disclaimer is necessary here, because I love, adore and worship werewolves, and there is some excellent werewolf fiction out there – Kit Whitfield’s Bareback and Gina Farago’s Ivy Cole and the Moon to name two. But I’m worried about werewolves nonetheless. Werewolves are the ultimate symbol of Man’s struggle with Nature. They are a perfect representation of the clash between the civil and the wild. Watch Katherine Isabelle battle her growing animal urges and bloodlusts in Ginger Snaps. Watch David Naughton struggle to come to terms with the monster he is becoming in An American Werewolf in London. The futile, often tragic, tug-of-war between bestial desires and human civility is beautifully played out in the werewolf myth cycle. Werewolves remind us of what we could become – and do become sometimes. Again, look at historical examples. Jean Grenier terrorised the Gascony region of France in 1603, killing and eating small children. He claimed he’d made a pact with the devil to become a werewolf, and right up until his death, he craved human flesh.
Compare that to your average fictional werewolf nowadays. His biggest problem is likely to be that his intended soulmates/lifemates/breedmates/delete as appropriate might not like the hirsute look. Or quite possibly, she might not approve of whatever psuedo-BDSM thang he has going.
Okay, don’t get me wrong. I love urban fantasy. I love paranormal romance. But I want my monsters to be … well … monstrous. If I were cornered in a dark alley by a man who tried to drink my blood, I wouldn’t be turned on. I’d be bricking it. If I saw a man turn into a wolf before my eyes, I wouldn’t fall in love with him right away. I’d be running and screaming. I don’t want monsters who wear Armani and fret about their hair. Any ordinary man could (and does) do that. I want my monsters bloody, passionate, ferocious and scary.
(And the first person to make a comment about the eternal loneliness and tragedy of being a vampire loses. Haven’t you people seen Lost Boys? They’re having the time of their lives!)
- Mood: content
