Regarding rules and the following thereof: I had a bit of an epiphany while working on this latest story. (Ask any writer: you learn more stuff by writing a story, including stuff about yourself.) I was one of those rules-obeying kids who worried a lot about conciliating figures of authority so they would like me. And when I started trying to create Jordy, who is not like me, one of the things I knew about him was that he has no doubt about whether the important people in his life love him. But the thing is, I kept expressing that in my mind as, his parents love him in spite of his various flaws and the fact he doesn't live the type of life they do. And at a certain point I looked at the character, and I looked at the source material for the character, and I realized that the character's loved ones do not love him in spite of his flaws--they love him because of his virtues. Which led me to think harder about his good points and how they are expressed. Because it turns out that it is entirely possible to be a person who doesn't live the way your parents did, or think the way they do, and still have respect and affection for them. The difference between being a rebel and just being your own person may be at least partly a matter of attitude, and also possibly courage. Which was an interesting thing to discover about the source material for Jordy, and it's kind of cool to try to get that across in the character.

So. Twilight.

Half the people I know on the Internets are reading this series, and I think I have to get in on the fun. The copy at my public library is checked out and I am like eightieth on the holds list, and I have technical issues with the ebook...

So it looks like I might actually purchase this sucker. Dang.

I can tell myself it is an exercise in learning how not to write a spine-chillingly creepy relationship between two young characters. This is useful because Jordy, the main character in the Kowalski story, is not supposed to be creepy about his girlfriend Vanessa. It's not a big problem in this story because she's at home and he's in Texas, so she participates mostly via telephone calls. And Jordy is too worried about, you know, people getting killed all around him to have much time for creepy thoughts.

The thing is, I'm pretty sure I can avoid creepiness without such research. Jordy is not by nature inclined to try to control Vanessa's behaviour, and she is not by nature inclined to put up with that shit.

But hell. Even the excerpts people are posting all over the Internet makes this look like a creepy, creepy book. The author has said the no-sex-no-drugs story is an attempt to represent "the good kids who play by the rules." Based on the excerpts I really wonder whether her definition of "good kids" means ill-humoured and self-centred ones like her female lead, or controlling stalkers like her male lead.

I should add here that I have never really gotten the bad-boy thing. No, really. Heathcliff gives me hives and Wuthering Heights is not romantic in that way. Yes, I know--I am all about the dirty rock stars. Thing is, my initial interest in dirty rock stars began when I fell for Bruce Springsteen, who had the dual benefits of being attractively scruffy but also, inarguably, a fundamentally decent person.

[Oh, okay. I had the misfortune of seeing the movie Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band when I was eleven or so. And yeah, the villain band (revealed at the end of the movie) were represented as Aerosmith playing "Come Together" at the height of their filthy, drugged-out period. And I immediately sat up straighter and thought, "Wait, what's this?" and promptly rooted for the Future Villain Band, who were so much cooler than the good guys. But that was an abberation. And also, you know, Aerosmith. I don't agree that the devil has all the best music--hello, U2 and the aforementioned Bruce Springsteen!--but he certainly has a lot of it!]

So my thing is, I have nothing against "good kids who play by the rules," but the the kid in the excerpts I am reading doesn't strike me as a particularly shining example of being a "good kid." (We'll let the vampire off the "good kid" hook because--vampire!) She's uncharitable, unkind, and mentally inert.

I suppose the question is, whose "rules" do the kid characters play by? By my standards a sexually active dope-smoker who is actively kind to other people is a better example of a good kid than someone who stays within all the lines prescribed by adults but resents the hell out of everyone around her. (Yeah, I know--a lot of adolescents do go through a period of generalized angst... but this kid doesn't seem to care about or be interested in anything. Almost diagnostic for pain-in-the-arse kid rather than good kid, at least in my book!)

And, in an outburst of common sense rarely seen on the Internet, the major gripe people seem to have about this book is the way it makes it okay for the girl to be controlled by the boy. A whole lot of people have addressed this much better than I can (and cleolinda's is really damned funny) but I also appreciated the Amazon citizen reviewer who remarked that she has no fear of her daughter getting mixed up with a vampire, but she doesn't want her getting into a relationship with one of the zillions of selfish controlling abusive bastards that populate the world. When you think about the messages books send to "good kids"--well, that's a real fucking doozy.

To get back to my initial point, I could say I'm reading this for the how-not-to points. That's a lie. I want to read it for the snark.

But I have a feeling some of the things I'll get out of it won't be strictly amusing...

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I've been writing, but not necessarily on my mystery. It seems Gloryhound & the Skyhawks needed sort of a press release written for The Coast, our local free weekly. Someone had written them a draft that wasn't working out, the deadline was looming, and I understand at some point the question was asked, "Okay, who do we know who might be willing to write something about us?"

Well, now that you mention it...

Outside of work I am really not used to writing anything that comes with guidelines, so this was fun and kind of different. It was supposed to be 400-600 words. I sent Evan a message asking him a couple of questions about the major points I planned to cover. His responses were detailed enough to use as quotes (it was a bit like an email interview, really) so I wrote the first draft based on what I thought was important and sent it to him. The band had a look at it and Evan got back to me with their thoughts about what parts should be emphasized. We agreed to go over the word limit (which I did... by about 200 words.) It turned out the word limit was in fact firm, but at that point I knew what the band really wanted in the release. (We could have gotten to that immediately if we'd been in an office together working on the thing, but this wasn't an inefficient method either.)

So I went back and cut around the band's most important points, got the article down to within range of the word count (there was a little rewriting involved, as well as a few waste words to be removed, but fewer than I would have expected considering it's me) and sent it back to the band.

So we made the deadline with plenty of time in hand and the bandmembers I've spoken to seem happy with the results. I don't think there's any guarantee The Coast will actually use it, but I got it in under deadline and I think it expressed what we wanted it to. So yeah, kind of a fun thing.

I assume, if it's used, it'll be in the issue for the last week of May, to promote the CD release party at the Seahorse on May 31st. I've mentioned that, right? ;)

Over the weekend I spent far too much money at the book store. I got two Miss Silver mysteries, one of the Blackbird Sisters mysteries by Nancy Martin (Nancy is a member of DorothyL, the mystery discussion list I am on, and her books are at the top of my "buy now" list partly because I enjoy them, especially the character arc, and partly because Nancy herself has gone out of her way to be friendly and encouraging to the wannabe. I should probably write something about her series one of these days.)

However, the book I was really looking for was Diana Killian's new one, Corpse Pose.

Full disclosure: Diana Killian is D.L. Browne, list owner and head moderator of the Yahoo mystery writers' group Wicked Company, of which I am also a member and junior co-moderator. I am violently prejudiced in her favour... which in terms of reviews means that if I had bought this book and hated it, I would never have breathed a word about it. Ever.

Fortunately, I loved it. And if you're a fan of amateur sleuth mysteries, especially one with a specific hobby or professional setting, I recommend this one.

Our heroine is AJ Alexander, freelance marketing consultant and bona-fide Big City Girl. Think Cosmopolitan. Think Sex and the City. Think...

...of something else entirely, because AJ has never felt less like a Fun Fearless Female in her entire life. Her ten-year marriage to her university sweetheart has just collapsed--Andy has just left her for another man, which has left AJ understandably shaken up--if she could be so fundamentally mistaken about the most important relationship in her life, and know so little about the most important person in it, what else is she clueless about?

A complicating factor is, AJ is not what you would call an untroubled person in the first place: raised by a narcissistic alcoholic actress mother and what seems like an emotionally absent (now deceased) dad, AJ loves her mother best from a distance and considers her earth-mother aunt Diantha to be her rock.

So when she gets the phone call telling her of Diantha's murder, she is understandably devastated.

Especially when it becomes clear that, as heir, AJ is a prime suspect.

And then her mother arrives to deflect the attention of the police by declaring herself a prime suspect. Mother, thinks AJ, is a drama queen even by the standards of a retired actress.

If this was all there was to the story it would be fun but forgettable. What I really liked about Corpse Pose was the dawning realization that AJ's interactions with these other characters were not going to follow the rules of sitcoms. Andy the ex did not automatically become the Gay Best Friend--AJ was really hurt and angry, and Andy was hurt and felt guilty, and the two of them need to decide whether there is going to be an ongoing relationship and what form it will take. Likewise, AJ and her mother start out sniping at each other like a comedy duo, but it doesn't take long for the reader to recognize this as protective, and eventually the fact they are forced to spend time together makes AJ realize her mother wants, in a disorganized way, to make amends. And maybe AJ wants to let her.

The victim, Diantha, was the owner of a yoga empire (well, sort of) and was the sort of person who stood on principles. Actually, according to Andy, she was the sort of person who would "burn you at the stake for your own good." AJ loved her, but not everyone else did, although even some of the people who disliked her admired her.

And maybe one or more of the people who loved her also feared or even hated her.

I concentrated on the characters in this entry because they are interesting enough to support a series, which this is going to be. The mystery part, including the investigating officer who likes AJ just fine but has no sympathy for "Snoop Sisters," works well. The reader will probably get the solution half a step before AJ, which adds to the tension. AJ does not pull and Too Stupid To Live moments and her mother turns out to be better in a crisis than I--or AJ--would have expected.

It's a very promising start to a new mystery series and I recommend it. Actually, because of my prior relationship with the author I recommend that you buy it new. But I'm sure it would be okay if you bought your copy new and then encouraged everyone you know to read it.

And I must say, if a person is going to be in a mystery-writing discussion group, it's nice to know it's run by someone whose writing I admire.

So I finally got to the shootout at the campground--I simplified the scene a little and had Jordy simply stand up at the wrong moment and get winged. My writing group approves of the part where Mrs Goodnight and her grandson return fire from the house. Elderly ladies in pink housecoats, carrying deer rifles, amuse them.

This scene sets up Gareth getting released by the cops, and also causes Jordy to start wondering why he was so sure Ted Goodnight was Mr. Goodnight. Which eventually leads him toward the solution of the mystery.

editorrent2 is doing a series on what to do when you have multiple characters of the same sex interacting and you start to find the pronouns confusing. I'm going to have to read this thread closely.

Not that I, with a vanload of young male characters (aside from Erica), am experiencing any difficulty!

The latest chapter review of the inept vampire story.

I don't know whether this one also includes horrifically bad amateur porn, but it's always wise to be careful clicking on the link.

I don't know whether the author uses "said" or other dialogue tags, but I think this story's problems run a great deal deeper than those choices.

I may have mentioned that the mystery list I subscribe to has a variety of recurring topics. One that shows up regularly is the age-old question of whether it is ever under any circumstances appropriate to indicate the speaker by using any verb other than "said."

I know, the answer is pretty obvious, but it's amazing and sort of amusing how earnestly this gets batted back and forth on this list (and occasionally on my mystery writing list.) It is actually much funnier on the first one because that's the reader list. The funny part is, why would readers, by engaging in this debate, try to tell each other what we should like to read? You can almost understand writers passing around this sort of advice as part of the quest for the magic formula for publication, but why would readers bother? If you like or dislike certain elements of style, choose your reading material accordingly.

( More behind the cut. )

As a writer, I fall into the camp of "use the most appropriate word you can find." So, a lot of the time Jordy just says things. A lot of the time he gets no attribution because none is needed. But if it seems appropriate for him to mumble or whisper or confide, then by golly he's going to.

Easy for me to say, since I am unpublished. But there are lots of books out there that use one or another dialogue marker, and a lot of them are perfectly good books. As a reader, I see no reason to try and inflict stupid artificial rules on writers who are getting along fine doing what they do. As a reader, I just read them.

"Don't be this guy."

In which the bloggers discuss the notion some of us have that any success someone else has is stolen directly from us. In this case, the success involved is publishing success, but it can certainly be true of other endeavours.

Pullout quote: "A rising tide raises all boats." Just something for me to keep in mind on those occasions when I feel cranky and competitive and jealous of someone else.

This is probably further to the rant post from a couple of days ago, but this morning I found myself thinking of something that's occurred to me before: this business of blogging, while certainly a significant time-waster in some cases, is really a very good thing for a writer. This journal, and an email list I'm on for mystery writers, represent the major way I talk about writing. And it's certainly not a bad thing for a writer to express herself in writing.

What I hadn't thought about clearly until this morning, though, is this: most of you folks don't know me. I mean, of the people on my friends-list, less than half a dozen of them have ever met me in person. To everyone else, I am the sum of my words and how I use them.

I am, in fact, the protagonist of my own blog. My own main character, if you will. And the comments I get in reaction to my post give me an idea of how well I'm doing, in terms of creating this character--her personality, motivations, wishes.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not creating a fiction here. The me I present on my blog is, as far as I am concerned, me. It's just that the character whose voice you are reading is created entirely by the interaction between my words and your reality.

I know I've thought about this before, because on the infrequent occasions when I post a picture of myself I sometimes think, "I bet that's not how some of my friends-list pictures me!"

So I guess, if I want to know whether I can create a character, what I need to do is review comments here and see what proportion of commenters seemed to understand the intent of the post they were commenting on.

I am either onto something that will prove really valuable to me as a writer, or I have taken too many pain pills this week.

I'm on a couple of writers' groups and I read blogs, and I am astonished at the comfort some would-be-published writers take in the idea that "readers today" are stupid or illiterate or lazy.

Maybe, if you can't get published, it makes you feel better to pretend that the problem lies in all those drooling morons out there who are too dumb to appreciate your gleaming prose. And of course, maybe you really are too good for the average reader.

But.

It's unlikely. There's probably more than one bright, perceptive, and literate person on earth, and if there really is only one left, you are almost certainly not it. The odds are against you. And I suppose it's possible to be bright and perceptive and irritatingly arrogant, but I have found that arrogance tends to reduce the bearer's IQ by at least ten points. Something to do with underestimating everyone else, and overestimating yourself.

And the thing I wonder is this: if everyone reading books today is a drooling moron, why do you want to write for these people?

There is some kind of fiction that should probably be kept for a notebook in one's sock drawer. Revenge fantasies about people who picked on you in high school is one. Inept vampire pornography is vehemently another. And stories intended to demonstrate how much smarter you are than everyone else is a third.

Because the problem with demonstrating how much smarter you are than everyone else is this:

Usually, you aren't. And everyone knows it.

Because, believe it or not, everyone else in the world is not an idiot. And most of them are smart enough to realize that.

Hmm. This is less a comment than a rant, isn't it? I do like aspiring writers, truly I do. But some of us need to learn to express ourselves better in writing.

Back during NaNoWriMo 2005 I decided I was finally going to write a story with a band in it. I had a plot, I had some characters, I figured it was time to try it. I liked the results enough that I eventually decided to turn it into a "real story" and have been at it ever since.

I've written, since then, a few posts about the decisions I made in creating the central band, Kowalski. An important and early decision was that the band would be more interesting and relatable if they were young, broke, and basically nice people. Most of the rock band stories I have ever read are about characters so rich and glamourous that I have a hard time giving a crap about them.

Since nobody but me has read the whole story (except for the original NaNo draft in the Memories section--a couple of people read that one for me faithfully) I haven't yet gotten any stick over whether rock musicians are, by their very nature, prone to be assholes. Since writing the first draft I have done enough shall we say field research among young Haligonian musicians to be confident that Kowalski is plausible.

But I was still amused when I visited a local message board yesterday and spotted a thread about Matt Mays, who regular readers of this journal will know is a local musician of some renown. The thread, apparently started by someone who was drunk at the time, is titled "Matt Mays is a nice fuckin' guy." I checked it a minute ago and it was six pages long. And nobody has yet challenged the basic premise--there's been some off-topic activity but for the most part the thread consists of people agreeing that Matt (along with various other musicians of local renown) is a nice fuckin' guy.

It's heartwarming, really.

And fuckin' nice to know.

I need to create a tag for the inept vampire story.

The poor hapless reviewer has posted another chapter review.

But before I link to it, I feel responsible to let you know that in this chapter the story changes from a merely inept vampire story (albeit a confused and tragically badly-written one) to inept, confused, and tragically badly-written pornography.

Seriously, I couldn't read most of it, and not because I am all that prudish. It's just... there are some mental images I just don't need, you know? And there is something kind of pitiable about really, really bad amateur porn.

However. Here it is, if you've got a strong stomach.

Edited to fix the link that was trying to protect us from ourselves!

I can't even remember what got me thinking along these lines this morning, but...

Like a lot of aspiring writers I know, I often find I can't read best-selling novels because the prose is so irritatingly clunky. I've long since reconciled myself to the fact that, as an aspiring writer, I pay more attention to writing style than you average reader and am therefore more easily annoyed. I'm not saying that to pat myself on the back, it just follows. People who know a lot about firearms are often irritated by errors I don't even notice. I get PO'd by horsemanship mistakes in books that are perfectly enjoyable to non-horsey readers. Readers read for different (equally legitimate) reasons, and they all have their own (equally legitimate) squicks and annoyances.

The thing about your average best-selling novel is, it tells a story that is broadly appealing. Obviously. And being able to come up with ideas like that is a talent of its own. It may be coupled with flaws that mean I, personally, won't end up enjoying the book, but it appeals to a whole lot of other people who like it for their own reasons.

I'm just rehearsing all this as background, and also to remind myself that readers who are not me are equally valid readers. In other words, just because I find some books tragically badly-written doesn't mean they don't have other virtues, or appeal to other people for perfectly sound reasons.

I am also rehearsing all this because it actually struck me this morning--and God, I am slow--that one thing I hear a lot of from aspiring authors of my acquaintance (not all on LJ) is a big emphasis on getting the words right, or having a facility with words, or having, as a writer, a real love of words.

And then I got thinking about other conversations I've had with aspiring writers I admire, and thinking about books I love, and it occurred to me that maybe... maybe being too much in love with the words is actually a handicap to a would-be writer.

Maybe it's better to be in love with storytelling or creating characters or something like that. Because maybe getting too hung up on an attractive arrangement of words results in a story that serious writing types might admire, but nobody can really love.

Maybe sometimes it's better to think about the content first and trust that the carrier, the words, will work themselves out.

Actually, one of my correspondents said that writers need to be interested in people, if that's what they're writing about, and in understanding how people tick. Which may be one of the problems of the writers I'm speaking of, who I encounter here and there: they're so interested in their own words that they aren't really looking around at other people any more, and they're not creating characters who resonate because they're no longer interested in anything but the structure of the thing.

Mind you, that view can also be taken to annoying extremes, which is why there are books I find painful to read. But I guess what I'm thinking is, there does need to be a balance between style and content, and if a writer finds herself (okay, I mean if I find myself) worrying too much about the one side, then maybe I should specifically stop and consider the other, and whether I'm letting myself down there. If for no other reason than, it's possible to get so hung up on "but my prose is better than this published drivel!" that I get all pissy and discontented and start feeling that it's unfair that they're published and I'm not--when maybe the problem is that my book is a nicely-written "so what" that hasn't got much for the reader to care about.

Much like that band at the Seahorse last week, who seemed to have given their image an awful lot of thought but hadn't learned to play that well or write good songs.

Ooh. Now there's a cautionary tale...

A theory of protagonists, on editorrent2--it's interesting stuff, and includes this gem:

All of the ideas on the page spring, in some way or another, from the writer's individual psyche. We may think we've modeled the character of the waitress on a girl we knew in high school, but in fact, what we've done is model the waitress on our interpretation, our understanding, our memory and sensory impressions filtered through our own unique consciousness, of that same girl. The character has more to do with how we interpret people in our world than with who those people actually are.

When I talk about "character kidnapping," what I mean is that I am modeling a character on the impression I have formed of some real person (not someone I actually know, but have seen interviewed or watched onstage or something like that--someone whose personality has made an impact on me and caused me to think "that person is like this". Eventually it won't matter if I do meet and get to know the model, because the character develops an independent reality.)

In other words, when I talk about "character kidnapping," I am talking about exactly what the quote above says.

Cool.

...the other day I really gave some thought to the deceptively cheery "Casey Jones" by the Grateful Dead. It's roughly the old story of Casey Jones reimagined as a cocaine ballad, and there's foreshadowing:

Switchman's sleeping, train hundred and two is
On the wrong track and headed for you

And then what is, really, a pretty terrifying image:

Trouble with you is the trouble with me,
Got two good eyes but you still don't see.
Come round the bend, you know it's the end,
The fireman screams and the engine just gleams...

I was listening to the song the other day and I suddenly got a mental image of what that would look like--rounding a bend and there's the other train coming at you, and not one damn thing you can do about it. Brr.

And, as I say, it sounds so cheerful.

Something unrelated on a mailing list reminded me of this:

A while back I read an old article about Johnny Cash. When he was writing "Folsom Prison Blues," he said he wanted the character in the song to have done something unforgivable. So he asked himself, "What is the worst possible reason to commit a murder?"

And the result was what I consider one of the best noir lines ever, from the Man in Black:

"...I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die."

The heartless economy of the line is pretty much perfect.

I know we've been over this but:

I know I said I was all through with the Tudors, but as my last post makes clear, I seem to have lied. I'll finish The Sunne In Splendour and then it's ho for the Ives book on Anne Boleyn, which appears to be the biography of Henry VIII's second queen.

Over the weekend, however, I had two vampire novels by Barbara Hambly out of the public library. Over the past few weeks I have done considerable giggling and a little ranting about this one inept vampire novel, and in passing I commented that I really don't do vampires in the first place. Hambly's books, especially Those Who Hunt the Night (classed as young adult in my public library) were recommended to me as excellent examples of the genre. Subgenre. Whatever. I also signed out Traveling With the Dead (containing absolutely no references to Jerry Garcia) which is about the same characters (James Asher, Oxford don and former spy, his intellectual wife Lydia, and Don Simon Ysidro, 350-year-old vampire who "danced with both of Henry VIII's remarkable daughters"--a nice turn of phrase for sure.) The books take place in 1907-08.

( And my verdict is... )

So. Apparently I'm not into vampires, and apparently I know why.

Good. Now I don't have any scruples about dropping the subject and moving on to other things that interest me more. Whew!